Starting any new RPG game should be that moment when your blood is racing after having just installed your fresh new game and are dying to see how everything plays out on your system. Some people are very eager to see the game first, often rushing through character creation just to get there and take a look. I think the decision of many gaming companies to reduce the time spent creating your character in RPG's must be from a fear that today's modern gamers don't want to spend time creating their character from scratch, and just want to dive right in and get busy.

I mean, for an RPG, EVERY EFFORT SHOULD BE MADE TO CREATE MORE CHOICE AND MORE DIVERSIFICATION BETWEEN CHARACTERS. So that everything you do will help to make your character more unique and varied, for added replay value on 2nd and 3rd runs through the game. But the trend these days seams to be to cut down skills, cut down starting time, and get the player into the game as quickly as possible. That's fine for FPS games and such, but for RPG's, this is for many of us what defines an RPG... the CHOICES that are available. As such, I feel the industry is falling down in these matters. Someone needs to remind them that less is not more when it comes to RPG's ... more is more. More is better. More choice, more ways to diversify your character, especially at the beginning. If I could help design an RPG, and I truly wish I could, then here's what I would like to see go into Character Creation, and why....

1. Don't start the game with character creation. Start the game with fun. Show a great CGI cut-screen with awesome animations and visual effects. Make us feel the full nature of the epic world we've invested into. Show us the grand scale, awe us with your dazzling visual display to help set the scene. I refer to Blizzard games for references to this expression. They always pull you in with their intro movies and make you wish they'd make real full-length movies set in their game worlds too. Then ... move the CGI film into in-game action. Put the player in the world doing something dangerous and exciting right off the bat ... maybe by showing a dizzying ride aboard a sea-going vessel amidsts a turbulent storm, with water waves crashing into the ship and water everywhere, and darkness, and ghosts ... really scare the shipoopy out of us .... and then during all the chaos have a man in charge of the ship run up to us and ask who the heck we are .... to then allow for us to ....

2. Initiate Character Creation. Use a dialogue system to allow for this conversation while continuing the action onboard the ship. People running about, more storm, more danger, more spellcasting going on ... After each question you answer, there should be a break in character creation to allow for some more action to unfold. You run here, you fight there, you help flesh out your character through the sequence. The battle ends just as you end your character creation, and the ship crash-lands on shore somewhere, and you are thrown overboard into the violent sea. You wash up on the shore by morning barely alive and crawl onto the mainland to begin your adventure. Since we always end up in prison in Elderscrolls games, maybe at this point the guards have come and arrest us and take us off to jail to await a hearing.

During Character Creation, there are a number of options I would love to see added, so that even if the Dev's Main Quests don't use these ideas, community MODS could make use of them!

A> Flaws:
The game should let us select flaws to add into our character creation. For every flaw we add, we can take a Talent to match it. A sort of re-balancing built around life's cruelties, that would add immense flavor to character creation. A person could have a limp that causes the screen to shake more when walking, or his hearing could be bad, resulting in missed "Spot" checks for enemies in the nearby area. Your character could be extra dumb, and not be able to gain anything from reading books. Your character could be extra weak and pathetic physically and yet be more magically inclined as a result. The list of flaws could be very large and interesting to choose from. The flaws in hardcoe Mode would actually change the game somehow, such as being deaf would remove the audio from people speaking in the game and you'd have to "read lips" to get what was said ... meaning you'd have to read the subtitles which could have one or two missing words on occasion. Outside of hardcoe Mode, however, the flaws would not affect the game in such ways.

B> Talents:
In contrast to the Flaws above, Talents are much more helpful. They should provide a very huge list of options, with a number of good ideas per each kind of class, so if you intent to play as a thief down the line, there could be 5 or 6 options to choose from, leaving you salivating over which one to finally pick. This would replace Birthsigns, since if don't choose your class, birthsigns no longer make any sense as those were predicated on the Class system of MW & Oblivion but which is gone per se in Skyrim. Talents, however, are things any character can use to make them better, and are not predicated on any particular classes per se. Yes, many of them would only be useful for certain classes you intended to evolve your character into later even if you don't choose your class initially.

C> Scars:
You can choose from a number of nasty scars from a variety of cool graphics, but in addition to the appearance aspect, there is a backstory aspect as well. The scar ... who gave it to you? You can select a name, a class, their age, and one particularly awesome weapon that enemy carries with them as a family heirloom of some kind. That enemy can be assigned a presence in your life via the Radiant Story engine picking a random unimportant NPC, renaming them with your selected name, and retrofitting their class based on your specs, and dropping the selected pre-fabbed cool weapon onto the character. If you kill them one day, you can take their cool weapon as reward.

D> Family Members & Their Status (Alive/Deceased)
You can define the names of NPC's that will be used by Radiant Story as your family members. They will have a high disposition toward you if you are a good family, but if you're a bad family, they may even be your biggest enemies, depending.... You type in their names, then select their professions, status in society, income, and current location in Tamriel (outside of Skyrim) ... so that they can be used by Radiant Story as plot vehicles for causing you to feel strong emotions. Some of your biggest Skyrim enemies in game could come and taunt you with proof of having murdered your parents. It would be too hard for your parents to exist in Skyrim due to all of the complications they would bring to the programming team, so that's why when you select their location, such as MW or Hammerfall, you are just providing a way to attach them to several plot devices that can potentially rouse up your anger and wrath.

E> Childhood Enemies.
You could define childhood enemies based on a number of pre-fabricated plotlines such as being bullied, being stolen from, being teased, being tricked, being ganged up on , or a one-time-good friend who somehow eventually grew to hate you, and a lot more. The childhood enemy is assigned to a random NPC who then for the entirety of the game is your rival. Their disposition will be so low, merely seeing your face will be enough to cause them to draw their sword against you. Childhood enemies are the ones who can give you scars in the options above. If you have a scar, then you'll have the guy who gave it to you written into your character creation, and at some point that bad guy is gonna return to your life in an epic storyline arc generated on the fly by Radiant Story based on a number of pre-fabricated templates. This is so that your enemy's dialogue for the interaction you have will not all be the same every time, allowing for greater replay value. Your childhood enemy cannot actually be killed for the first 5-6 encounters with him or her. This is so you can feel their presence in your life (aggravating you, hindering you, pestering you, taunting you, infuriating you) over a longer period of time than a single battle. So that it feels more like a story is being played out that YOU sort of helped to design when you started your character. You gave them their name, their stats, their legendary item, their reason for hating you (from a number of templates of pre-packaged dialogue story arcs. One gets assigned to your enemy based on their reason for hating you and they act out that template throughout their hunt for you throughout your game). So that every time you select a childhood enemy, he can have different dialogue for why he's after you, what he claims you did to him, or stole from him, or cheated him out of ....

G> Back Story.
Additional training in your past. With back story, the idea is that you can select some kind of training or experience you encountered during your upbringing that will give you a small boost to your character's abilities beyond what they should normally have. Perhaps your parents are rich, so they send you some money after you are released from prison, and so you get a nice starting package to help buy your first good set of armour or some spells. Or perhaps you were sent to a military training camp to learn how to fight better. So you're combat skills are already 2 levels higher than they should be for you at 1st level. Or perhaps you broke rocks in a prison mine and are now a bit stronger than the average fighter at your age. Some of the ideas here could also include additional skill at cooking, chopping wood, enchanting, alchemy, etc ... where you worked for a time to help your family survive in some way.

Anyone who uses backstory, however, would then be open for the game's "balancing" feature for back story called "Jealousy" ... which means you can cause random NPC's to become jealous of your special upbringing and will treat you poorly as a result, often slinging insults, holding grudges, and refusing to help you. They may even try to interrupt your active quests in some way, aggravating you immensely until you lose your cool with them. Now we will truly know why those mysterious story replacement arcs of having an NPC's "sister taking over her brother's shop when you kill him" are even needed, hahahaha!

Even if Bethesda's Devs never used these Character Creation tools, as long as they were built into Character Creation in some way, then Modders could come along behind them and go to work putting these features to full benefit. Pretty soon, there'd be a lot of people telling stories about all of the fun they had playing the game the 2nd time because of how all of these features so completely altered the feel of the game that they felt like it was an entirely new experience from start to finish over their 1st game.

Overall, I guess I just miss the old days of gaming when you had to take your book for the game in the can with you to study it and try to determine which way you should build your character at the beginning of the game. Where you had to study every aspect, make a plan, and then execute it to see how well the idea paid off. Where you had to think a long time about what combinations of flaws, talents, skills, and such, it would be necessary to experiment with in order to find just the right balance of power and usefulness throughout your game experience.

It seems like to me, the longer we go along in the RPG industry, the more options they remove at Character Creation, causing RPG's to look more and more like FPS's set to fantasy "themes" ... Bethesda, please do more for Character Creation to restore the feeling of being in a epic fantasy game instead of another Dungeon Siege fantasy-based action game.

They said they are making the classes more diversified this time. Also I don't like the idea of a CG intro.

"It seems like to me, the longer we go along in the RPG industry, the more options they remove at Character Creation, causing RPG's to look more and more like FPS's set to fantasy "themes" ... Bethesda, please do more for Character Creation to restore the feeling of being in a epic fantasy game instead of another Dungeon Siege fantasy-based action game. "

I disagree. RPGs are not about initial character creation. They are more about character development. Having less prechosen traits for your character in no way makes it closer to an FPS.

Character DEVELOPMENT. I agree whole-heartedly. But that development ... where does it come from? From random adventures within the game that are always the same every time you play through the game the next time? Or from somewhere else? Like your own Character History? Where, when you first develop your character, you initialize the aspects of your character you would wish to see developed later in the game.

I know there is development in Elderscrolls games, I'm not worried that there is not any development, I never said that. What I am saying is that I think this kind of development is repeated between games and could actually be helped by taking some time in the beginning to choose a kind of development which would creep into the game later on but which you yourself set up based on how you see your character's arc going.

So you play the Vanilla Skyrim, and enjoy it immensely, but on the 2nd time through, you use the full Character Creation options available at startup to program in an entirely new arc within your story that will help your game feel, in no way similar to the game you played first. I think having these sort of options increases the potential for character development.

And I didn't say having less prechosen traits is the reason for these games feeling more like FPS's, I said it was because the Character Creation portion of the game is now so small, so unimportant, that you basically just type a name and begin your game. That's how FPS's are started. Type your name for your profile, and click "Start" ... a small in game movie plays, and then you are shooting stuff. Now with Skyrim: You choose your race, name, and appearance. 1.5 minutes. Then you press "Start" and you are killing stuff. How is that NOT almost like an FPS? It's ridiculously close, IMO.

I always like more options for my RPGs, I agree mostly on what you say. Not sure about the CGI intro though, doesn't seem necessary. I always wish there were more character options in every game i play. I hate playing with an already defined character, especially in RPGs though. Isn't that whats happening in Dragon age 2? Stupid. Wheres the "role-playing" if your using some other guy with a predefined personality, voice, history etc.?? (have to admit though, i didn't read your whole thing, a bit too long for me.. )

As a writer, I can tell you that detailing every little aspect of your character in spreadsheet-like format is not character development. It's background information. An encyclopedia entry. Actual character development comes from setting the character loose on the world, figuring out who he is based on the actions he takes, how he interacts with other characters. Sure, the history behind a character is important, but not half as important as what I just described.

In terms of the player character, there's not much the dev team can do in the area of character development, because they can't directly control what actions the player takes. So I suppose in this instance, back story is about as close to character development as we can get. The features you described are interesting, but I can't see a developer using them in the near future. It's a lot more work for comparatively little improvement to the game. Personally, I'd prefer if they saved that effort for perfecting the world and the characters within it.

Hi,

You are a writer. RPGs can be seen as storytelling devices, fiction, in away. I was wondering whether you subscribe to Robert Mckee's ?Story? and the newer Storylogue, his take on Story structure, character development and Character versus plot. Any thoughts on how that could apply to an Elder Scrolls type of game?

Regards

If the game starts with character creation they should give the option to make a quick start character like Mass Effect does or do what Morrowind does and start with by playing as a unknown character that cannot use third person mode until character generation is complete. Also a big turn off for a lot of modern gamers is the tutorial dungeon that Oblivion had, maybe they should let us start in a city or a ship like Morrowind.

Well, things are a little confused here now. We know character development, and that's fine, but I want more options for character creation. At least with these games you can rely on mods that add more features like that. I'm not annoyed at games for lack of character development, because I can handle that as I play, but I am annoyed at lack of character creation. Its just my taste, everyone likes different things.

Yes! I'd hate to start off playing a big turtorial. Make it like Morrowind's or Fallout's beginning.

Meh. I've never written (or dreamed up, or whatever) a character "history"/family/etc for my characters. Not even in most of the pen-and-paper games RPGs I've played. To me, a character in a crpg is an appearance (gotta have lots of options for choosing appearance) and the playstyle and skills I'm going to use. Anything beyond that is defined by the setting (either fully set up, like the more linear games are, or "define yourself by the choices you make" in non-linear games.)


I can see that some people (for example, the people reeling out pages of family histories of their ES characters in some other threads) the things you're proposing would be interesting. But I don't think it would be considered an improvement for everyone, and I certainly wouldn't want to see every RPG evolve in that direction.

Actually, for most people, it'd probably boil down to an FAQ list of what bonuses each option gave, and they'd pick the choices out of each menu ("Ok, let's see..... he's a homeless orphan, +2 toughness and sneak; his family was rich, +gold and good equipment; he's got connections with the circus, +2 agi..... yeah, it doesn't make any sense, but those are the bonuses I need!")

Which Fallout are we talking about here? Fallout 3's beginning was more annoying than Oblivion. Fallout New Vegas was good, Fallout 1 was good. Can't say anything about Fallout 2, Tactics, or Brotherhood of Steel because I have not played them.

I can see the main flaw in the whole thing. More is not better. Quality over quantity.
The reason character creation was "dumbed down" is because in the old days you could easily create a weak character, and only halfway trough the game you realize you can't finish it with this character, so you have to start over abandoning all of your progress. This is not a good thing.

The CG intro and Initiate Character Creation is already part of games today, so I don't know why you had to bring those up...

The talent/flaw system sounds good, but I doubt that we will ever see it Skyrim, because it is a form of class dedication. In Skyrim instead of beginning as a class, you become a class during gameplay.

As for the rest, I think you overestimate how much replayability they would give. So you have a rival now somewhere, and he will act randomly according to your class, progress and level. It doesn't sound any different than the rest of the Radiant Sotry quests...

My personal view, very simply :
Start as a fully fleshed out character, do some adventuring, improve some things : 0
Start as no-one, do some adventuring, become fully fleshed out character : 1

They should add both types of character creation. When starting a new game they should ask are you a casual or hardcoe rpg gamer? Selecting yes will allow us to have our beloved deep character creation while selecting no will allow us to quickly generate a character with less options.

So true. A pity so many misinterpret redundant gimmicks (a la Fable) for true depth. Dialogue, choices and consequences over the entire span of the game is where it's at.

While a huge deep character creation process like that is great the first time, after the 10th time or 20th time having to watch the same battle field unfold and having to slowly set character details based on the progression of a scripted event when you're already fully aware of the set up you want to choose, char gen starts to get annoying.

Anyway, it's the things that we do in the game that should count, not the things we said we did before the game.

i agree with more character creation choices. but the long process to completing it should be "skippable". ive always had quick start mods since Beth.

i dont know why the OP is so objectionable to some. its not like he's advocating less character development post-character creation. he wants, as do i, more and better char gen options without sacrificing char development after it

all of these may seem good but you wont see anything of these kind of options in the next few years...
but one thing i dont get is that some of you want the option to be deaf.. really? would you play a game without any sound mainly because their excuse is "your character is deaf".. and if u still do, why do they do all these efforts to make amazing dragon shouts and stuff like that? so u can be deaf? someone please explain because i really dont understand this.

Let me just stop you there for a minute.

No.
No, no, no and ... no.
I cringe when I think of the beginning of Mass Effect 2, having to watch about 15 minutes of cutscene before I finally got to play the game. This plague better stays out of my Elder Scrolls.

Well it certainly won't be as long as Oblivion's tutorial. All you do in Skyrim is pick your race and play out the short beginning sequence, unlike Oblivion's full dungeon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjTJR80rWng

I don't feel alot of what you said is needed in-game, although they are mostly good ideas that would be cool. Fact is, I RP add most of that stuff on my own using good ol' imagination. Sometimes you just need to get creative, not everything has to be in the game for you to use it, in my opinion.

I disagree strongly with Number 1. Go look at Mass Effect 2, how many people really want to sit through that 10 minute sequence just to fix a nose. Thankfully Mass Effect one got that right. Dragon Age 2 is almost as bad however that sequence only takes 3-5 minutes max and you can skip the conversation parts to save time.

Some of your ideas are interesting but I don't see them happening for Skyrim. Those Ideas I think would be better suited for Fallout 4.

I don't know what's people's problem with long intros.
Unless you start a lot of characters then it can get annoying.

Did you play fallout new vegas, it's not entirely everything you asked for but it had a fair amount of it, a CGI of New Vegas starts the game, finishing with some nice VO from Matthew Perry. Character creation is pretty spot on, you get two perks you can optionally select that both strength and weaken you (for example 20% rate of fire but lose 20% damage, or you can take a -1 on perception but gain +2 perception for weaing glasses).