Oh god no, no appearance changes with your skills, that was my biggest complaint about the fable series and how it ended up hurting certain playthroughs because of the visual changes.

How would Endurance and Agility shape the body? I get the Strenght making you more muscular. But Endurance and Agility?

Muscular =/= strong. This is a real strong person, even if he looks more chubby than muscular:

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2012/08/08/sports/WEIGHTLIFTING2-1344384628440/WEIGHTLIFTING2-superJumbo.jpg

People like Schwarzenegger are not superstrong. bodybuilding has nothing to do with strenght. Body building is about your apparence. Not about strenght.

Yeah, I never liked the idea of our stats affecting our appearance; I'm not even sold on realistic hair growth or getting scars/tattoos from quests.

If I want to make a Rambo character that's short and fat, that's my prerogative.

he IS very muscular but also fat. i never said that muscular=thin. you need muscules in order to be strong. thats how the body works.

Ah okay. I just hear to often people who think on Rambo or Schwarzeneger if they talk about strengt. Even if bodybuilding has nothing to do with strenght.

It already is optional. Think of the stats you are going to use before hand and then make your build according to those stats.

This is only if making your build is actually possible.

a few people beat me to it, that muscle appearance has nothing to do with "real" world strength...worked a moving job with a former NFL'er a few years back that was what he called a slim 350 lbs as he was all muscle, but he had to take the most breaks out of the crew...

I bet he had 8 STR and only 3 END.

I played Daggerfall. Or I should say I tried to a lot. If I could even get it to load without crashing. Amazing game for the time it came out. I have always appreciated how Bethesda is always pushing the envelope of what is possible. This is why they are one of my favorite developers despite the bugs. They seem to be getting better over the years.

I look at this guy and I see STR 9+. Try to picture him running a 5K? Probably not going to happen. He is also not very trim, so lacking in cardio, However, not a complete couch potato, so I would put Endurance maybe 3 or 4.

Agility harder to pin down and is really a reflection of how he moves. Is he quick? Can he do rolls and flips? Does he trip a lot? Can't really picture a power lifter being that graceful, so Agility around 5 is my guess.

I make the assumption that since body configuration is already in the game, then the artwork is already in the game for STR and END so the additional coding for tying the graphics to the stats should be fairly easy and a simple option box can solve the fears of all those who are terrified from their Fable experience.

As for Agility, it was already in the previous Fallout games as reflected in perks that unlock at certain agility levels, Dodger, Quick Recovery, Silent Running and many others. I doubt they would remove it. More that likely they will improve on it. I would love to see them bring back localized damage and have limping animations for leg injuries.

Honestly, that's quite the assumption. (Skyrim's body customization, for example, was just a simple slider - small-to-large. Just because FO4 has an option for picking your body, doesn't make me think that it's necessarily a multi-variable thing with aspects that could be tied to STR and END.....)

Totally agree, 10 in P would also give you an giant nose, playing khajiit in skyrim with an smell mod.

For added realism being very evil gives you horn and tail

Lots of people are happy about how fable solved this.

I only remember fable from the pre release morrowind forum as an game who was promised to have way more dept and features than Morrowind

We know they put a considerable effort into increasing the facial customization, even having custom dialog between the husband and wife when certain features are selected. However having more than one variable in an entire section dedicated to body is too much to assume?

I suppose you could be correct, but that would be strange to see them put so much effort into the face and none into body.

Another thing that I have been wondering, is for everyone who has been responding with the 'i don't like the idea' responses, I am curious to know if you are planning to play as male or female? I only ask this because, sometimes, on a second or third playthrough of a game, I will go with the big briasted barbiedoll mod and I realize that it would be very important for my character, either sporting the crotchless leather armor or bikini style power armor, above all else, to look "hot" while doing it. On such a game, I too would want the option to disable any dynamic alteration.

I only play female characters. And I typically use the smallest briast size I can find, when picking body mods.

Like everything else regarding Fable, I liked the concept of the appearance-development system, but the implementation was a bit sketchy. My main gripe was how incongruous Skill's appearance change was:

Strength: Thin <=> Bulky ... Makes sense.

Will: Plain <=> Magical tattoos ... Still makes sense.

Skill: Human <=> Giraffe-thing? ... What the crispy crap? What does my skill with a gun have to do with the length of my neck?

Personally I think Skill should have changed your animations, from ponderous-looking and stompy at 0 to graceful and precise at max. Would follow the same idea of giving you a visual representation of your character's development without being so... Island of Dr. Moreau-ish.

I really don't expect much in the way of body customization. I think it will be like Skyrim at best (the same body but with the girth shrunk or inflated by like 30% max)

The optimist in me thinks we will get Skyrim's body slider at least! Lol

I hope they've taken inspiration from Elder Scrolls Online. If Fallout 4 has even a fraction of ESO's wonderful body customization options I will be very happy.

I haven't played the game but I have read about the character creation and it sounded really deep.

It's a bit amazing what some people have been able to do with body customization mods in Skyrim (i'm thinking of the BodySlide mods, with dozens of sliders for every body dimension).

But the issue there is that, whatever you modify the body to be, you also had to then apply the same morphs to the armor you wanted to use (otherwise the body changed when you put armor on), and the same body changes were applied to all the NPCs. In other words, the body changing wasn't done "on the fly" as it were. It's built into the 3D meshes..... the basic default Skyrim body sizing is done just by a simple morph between two pre-set bodies (small & large) with matching pairs of armor models.

I believe someone eventually came up with a mod that allowed the PC to have a different body than the rest of the NPCs, but it involved having an additional set of armor meshes to go with that body (since, again, you'd otherwise shift to a different body shape when you put the armor on). And I don't think Beth is going to go that route, if only to avoid having to install multiple copies of every armor & clothing.

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For those not aware, the armor system in their recent games (OB/FO3/SK) works not by sticking the main armor bits over the player's body, but by actually replacing the body part. Lesser pieces and "accessories" are stuck over the body, though.

For ex: the model for a halter top includes not just the top itself, but also the rest of the torso & arms (and sometimes the legs, depending on game). So if you're using an armor mod that lets you use parts of armor instead of full-body suits, your other parts need to be built on a matching body. Otherwise, when you put that top on, there can be very obvious seams at the waist or wrists (when the legs are using a different-body-shape set of armor) or the accessory bits like boots & gloves may clip because they are just stuck on top of the body & they were modeled for different-shape limbs. Another issue you can run into is if the skin texture on that revealing top was defined differently, so you might end up with torso skin that doesn't match the head & legs.

tl;dr - the armor is not dynamically scaled onto the body in previous Bethesda games. This somewhat limits what you can do with body shaping.

The eso setup is decent, you have plenty of body sliders, even an rectangle for main settings as in thin- bulky - muscular. Now you set details like hip- stomach and briast size even arm and leg width.

And it works well for armors except an minor clipping at the extreme settings.

ESO has layered armor, belt, shoulders and tabards go on top of upper body armor.

You missed one. Clearly my character can't be handsome/beautiful/attractive without having a high Charisma, so obviously those choosing a low Charisma have their character's face covered in warts. No thanks.