Hello fellow Bethesda forum members. I am Michael, but you can call me by my "online name" of Twisted. I've been gaming since the age of 5 (that's 14 years of finger twitching). I am an avid gamer and a very good one at that; which means I have no life . I am enrolled in visual design and am inspired by game design and will some day create the games I enjoy playing. If you'd like to know more about me feel free to send me a message on here or hit me up on my yahoo (which I believe I put on my profile however that shows up). Anyways now that I've gotten my first post out of the way as my introduction I'll get back on topic.

First off, I'd like to state that Brink seems like the most inventive game I've ever seen, I do wish that more could be implimented into the game, but do understand that there are limits that a developers have when designing a game. However, even with all the promises that Brink offer I'm a bit unsettled... It always seems like developers seem to overexagerate their games before release, for example, Borderlands which promised billions and trillions of guns.... Too bad it was the same 100 guns remodled for higher levels and slightly varying stats . Every person that competively play games understand how things become "mainstream" as far as character building is involved. This goes the same with Brink. The developers are promising a game that seems to have a large amount of character customization and have done the best that they can with it. However, it come's down to me wondering if all these promises are as good as they seem.

Now, I'm not trying to be a buzz kill or anything like that, I still think that Brink is going to be a very fun game and may even have a few sequels. What is worrying me is the fact that even tho character customization is very large, it seems very limited... I'm not exactly sure how many parts will be featured in the game, but what it comes down to is that all you can do is use pre-rendered items and change there color, I'm sure there's a lot more to the customization, but it always come down to the fact that were still limited. This isn't a bad thing of course, but knowing that in the past character customization can end in a lot of people doing the same thing, this worries me a little.

Is anybody else sharing my worries about the character customization not being all that it's cracked up to be?

Hello welcome to the forums. You've got me beat by a couple of gaming years haha. I've been gaming since I was 2 so that would be 12 years. :thumbsup:

To answer your question though. I'm not that concerned about customization as I am with gameplay, but I don't really think they're over exaggerating that much on customization. At least not like Borderlands that is. So I'm not that worried that customization won't be less than what the Devs say it will be. :biggrin:

afaik, the customization is all about looks, not building the perfect character or weapon

Welcome to the forums Twisted. About how long you've been gaming...



Same here, oddly enough.



Technically Borderlands delivered, as there were well over a million unique permutations. I just think people were under the impression when Gearbox said 'unique,' they meant each new gun was radically different from the last one. I don't entirely disagree with your disappointment, but I don't entirely agree with it either.



While I do think some archetypes (The Bug in particular) will be more common than others, I do think that the fact each team will have at least 9 unique clothing options for each slot (Head, Legs, Torso, etc.) with a wide range of coloration options will make people who dress exactly the same less common than you might think.

Also, I say 'at least' because there might actually be additional clothing options outside of the 9 archetypes available to each team.

Welcome to the forum bro. You and I share a very similar story actually. Gaming since 5, gaming about 13-14 years, going to college for gaming.....yeah. Anyway, I know exactly what you're talking about. So many things promised to be different, yet there will be a lot of copies unless you make your character look absurd. For example, there are going to be a lot of Angers and Bugs.......no avoiding it. If this happens, I might switch to a white firestarter.......but yeah, I know what you mean...

My only worry is that everyone has high expectations for this game... and if it doesn't meet "their" expectations there will be a lot of complaints.

You mean like how the people are in the Halo forums on Bungie.net because of armor lock and stuff? :whistling:

Oh geez I hated that when Reach first came out, especially when people threatened to go to CoD because of that little level cap :rolleyes:

I don't play reach much anymore. It's super repetitive.....

I took a break from gaming till Brink comes out :tongue:

I can't. Since it's my major, I need to know what works and what doesn't........

Eventually it will be my Major too. I'm only 14 so I can take a break, plus when it does become my Major I'll have about 19-20 years of gaming under my belt :thumbsup:

Only problem for me is that all the top gaming schools are in Cali....... :sadvaultboy:

Welcome to the forums Twisted... I really hope your worries are just worries but it got me thinking of many past promises that came up very short (like how Fallout: New Vegas promised hours upon hours worth of play just in the Strip, but it took me about 45 mins. to finish everything there) and well now I'm alittle worried aswell.

Hope nobody gets disapointed.

I was sure you were going to brink up black ops "Write on your gun!" but they didn't say it was pre placed and only 4 letters max........

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAIII.
Character customisation is reasonably extensive, but it's not an absolutely huge feature. We're talking Tony Hawk, here, not APB. There's an awful lot of results that can be made, though. There's some results in Features on the main website. Unfortunately, the results are bit tame and don't represent what can be done very well. Based on the video's, you can change your archetype, face, colour, head gear, face paint, face gear, outer top, inner top, tattoos wherever you want, lower, and shoes. Combine that with the customisation options for whatever weapon weapon you might choose and that is a very above average selection of customisation options.

This is taken straight from a quote by one of the head designers, Aubrey Hesselgren.


And this if from Olivier Leonardi, the lead artist

the customization looks like it will be really good

Are you really going to have enough time during game play to worry about whether or not somebody on your team has the same shoes as you?

Resistance wont have the same shoes as the Security and vice versa

Anyways.. About the customization..

Wont there be ''non-archetype'' stuff too? Ex: The Goggles, or The Boiler Suit?

If you haven't yet, take a look at the gallery. It should give you an idea of how many different looks you can get with the options available in Brink.

http://brinkthegame.com/features/customization/

Frankly, I found it quite obvious that the Borderlands-guys were joking about the numbers of guns in their game. In fact, they also explained their Diablo-style weapon-system (technically Diablo has a bazzillion of weapons as well) more than once and made it clear, that there are only a bazillion unique weapons stats-wise.

Now the same goes for BRINK, it seems. However, we're not sure if they have added some more depth to the texture-/colour-feature of the clothing. Some artworks give a hint that the different textures could actuall alter the item slightly.


The idea behind limiting character customisation is essentially the same like not delivering female player avatars: The Art-Style.

With BRINK's - so called - hyperrealistic art-style SplashDamage want to make sure, that every item inside the gaming-world blends into this art-style very well.
That means an APB-esque customisation is not possible. And at the same time a bazzillion items would not work either, because they'd all have to be very, very similar looking.

It's true a lot of the top gaming schools are here in Cali, I'm lucky I live here. :tongue:

there are a few good ones here in colorado

I know this may be a minor worry but what are your thoughts on the likelyhood of each customisation item being archetype specific?

For instance say that i wanted my character to have a certain Shirt/pant/whatever, but i dont want him to be built like a brick Sh*t house.
Do you guys think there will be any trouble with that or are the archetypes going to be truly just a base for your own world of customisation... or are we going to be limited to what we can use by archetype.

Do you mean customizing specific face features? (ie. The Sims, Fallout)
If so then no you can't do that.