And the Champion of Cyrodil was of course a generic male imperial that only wore imperial legion armor. Anyone who knows these games knows that the options are there and the character is just made generically to put into screeshots and gameplay videos. As for the people that don't know this, a la me prior to playing oblivion. Will be able to figure it out.

*thundering voice* NOOO! HAHAHAHA under man law 5 article 2 no woman may be viewed as manly or in way that makes men seem less manly

Glad you got your answer Poke Warrior

Just wanted to say I completely support sheogorath88's determination to make a character who isn't the Dragonborn. (I forgot how to spell Dovakiin so I'm just going to say Dragonborn, OK?) I love the idea, for example, of a character who was just some psycho who came to Skyrim to look for their awesome Dark Brotherhood chapter to work for them. Then the last Blade or whoever helps him escape execution* and says, "Yo, you have a great destiny. Go learn your super yelling powers and save the world." And then the character says, "Yeah, right, thanks for helping me escape. I'll get right on that unlocking my mutant potential stuff, Professor X." twirls finger next to head in universal 'you are crazy' sign then runs off to join the local murder cult

*(I'm just guessing about the opening storyline, here.)

I do think he'll be missing out if he doesn't make a character at some point that does do the MQ, but it's his choice. Making a character that doesn't is awesome.

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As for Fallout 3, I hated the whole Liam Neeson conceit. I played through that game with three different characters: a pacifist, a scientist, and a cold-hearted killer. It began to grate on me after a while that all three characters had to have the same exact upbringing and even the same genetic background! (I don't care what color you made his skin. Daddy always looked exactly the same to me.) It rang really false that all my different characters came from the same origin, with the same deeply loving single father. The dialogue choices to be a jerk to your dad were all there, but there was no good reason to use them except to see what would happen, since he was so nice all the time. I don't know. I guess it's a great system for a game intended to be played once and only once.

Then again, I did play F3 through to the finish three times, and finished Oblivion's MQ only once. On the gripping hand, I never finished Morrowind's MQ at all. So I don't know where that puts me re: the rails of main plots.

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Mass Effect. I love my http://zombra.net/images/mass_effect_12.jpg, and I didn't feel constrained at all by ME's ad campaign. I guess I knew early from the previews that you didn't have to be that generic guy. I also felt I was able to role-play her to the hilt, since although there were never more than a few dialogue choices, there were always meaningful differences. Then again, I only played ME and ME2 once through each. I tried to do ME again a couple times with different characters but it's such a linear game that I didn't feel anything new about the experience despite vastly different characters.