I'm going to start by saying: I honestly don't remember if this is my original idea or if I heard it somewhere else.

But, what I've been thinking about and have come to the conclusion of 'why not' is.. How bad is an idea for a downloadable program-type thing from PSN (lol) XBL Marketplace or Bethesda's site, where you can create and design the physical appearance of your character before the game releases, the program or whatever it'd be called would be similar to Halo Waypoint, a dinky little free thing you can get to help out but you don't necessarily need.
My reason for this being, character design and look is important to me, extremely important. If I make the eye colour brown instead of hazel by accident and somehow notice in the middle of the game, I will legitimately start over from scratch or it will bother me forever. Now that was just showing why design is important to me, now, the purpose for this little doohickey would be for people like me who want to both: Design the absolute perfect looking hero, but also jump into the game and see what it's like.
So, I was thinking, why not make like a tab of saved models of different 'characters' you could name, then when you play and start the character creation there would be a "Upload from [insert program name here]" where you could load your model and even still edit if need be.

Is that so bad of an idea? :shrug:

It would take time away from game development, and time is something Bethesda doesn't have much of.

Nah. This really wouldn't benefit much and it would take time out of development of the actual game. Just be patient and wait for the game to be released.

I'd use it, just sayin'.

If I remember correctly Dragon Age: Origins had a character creator available before the game's release...also Spore had the Creature Creator.

Anyway I don't think releasing a character creator for Skyrim would be worth it. I'm hoping that the in-game character creator is going to allow you to save/load your characters though.

Same.

Dragon Age: Origins definitely had one of these. It was a nifty tool, and I did use it. If one was released for Skyrim, I would use that too.

On the other hand. I have to agree that I would prefer that they not waste energy on distractions like this. There's no such thing as "spare time" in game development, especially not a game like this where there is literally an infinite amount of work that people want them to do.

I would love it for the simple fact that it would let me flesh out my char without feeling like I need to hurry up and start the game.

When I bust into a new tes game im so eger to acctualy play that I feel like I rush the creation.


Implementing would be easy you just turn it on in the data files and when you get to the part where they ask what you are the person istead of asking you to explain would just say I have recieved some papers which one are you again and you pick your premade char.

Since I'll be playing in first-person mode anyway, and would rarely even see my character, I'd have absolutely no use for something like this. I'll spend maybe 5 minutes tops creating my character ingame, then after that I just won't care. I found it rather silly in Oblivion that I'd spend time working on the details of how my character would look, then afterwards I could barely even see his face because of the helmet he was wearing. So no, they'd be much better off putting that time and energy into the game itself.

I don't think it would take too much attention away from the game development and I would use it, but it is far from nesessary for me.

"Take away time from development?" It's the same damn program that's going to shipped with the actual game, what's it going to take away?

Anyway, I don't see this happening, but I'd support it. Loved the standalone Character Creator for Dragon Age: Origins, and made copious use of that to edit and perfect my avatars months before getting it.