7 minute read
FINAL FANTASY XV
Steve Hogarty is... The Fixer
Steve sets out to fix the looks of character creation screens
Yank those sliders up and down. Embiggen that conk. Now stretch out your earlobes and paint your entire body a sickening shade of acid green. Make one leg extremely long, the other loop back on itself, then retract your fingers so much that they turn inside out like a horrible Marigold made of human skin. Finally, shrink your eyeballs down to the size of dried peas, so that they rattle around inside their empty sockets like beads in the saddest pair of maracas you’ve ever known.
No, not some fancy new yoga workout from London. I’m talking about the process of creating a custom character in a videogame. But where does this longstanding practice originate? Well allow me to completely fabricate the history of character creation to explain…
The very first character creation screen appeared in 1972, when Atari allowed players to dress up their Pong bat in a two-pixel wide moustache and suspenders, and choose from one of three voices: sassy, gruff and Tim Curry.
Since then, character creation screens have become increasingly elaborate, adding different varieties of bow-ties, top hats and hand-painted wooden clogs to the mix. In the 1985 platformer classic ‘Lord Montague’s Horrible House Of Spikes’, players could adjust the protagonist’s neck to one of 256 different lengths. Later, with the advent of 3D graphics in the 1990s, character creation tools could allow players to enlarge different facial features to grotesque proportions, such that each bit of the face would tussle with the others for domination of the head.
The problem
By the time we reach the modern era, the degree to which you can customise a character has reached new and ridiculous heights. What began as a these obscene mutants – to play as a living, breathing refutation of a caring god – and then have those inhuman disasters appear in otherwise normal cutscenes, sobbing over the body of a friend as they bleed out in the street, or waiting patiently to receive orders from a mob boss who doesn’t seem to notice or care that you’re a 24 stone bearded man wearing star-shaped spectacles and a fluorescent orange nappy.
We players have proven ourselves incapable of handling the responsibility of choosing how large our virtual chins should be, and we should now be stripped of the privilege until such time as we’ve collectively learned our lesson.
way to subtly curate the appearance of the game protagonist, and therefore make you empathise more with them, became a means to spawn nightmarishly disproportioned clown monsters.
Open-world games are especially notorious for allowing players to create
The solution
Character customisation panders to the worst of our consumerist instincts, this idea that the customer is always right. But the customer is a gibbering idiot. Imagine if you were forced to choose the shape of Marlon Brando’s face before watching The Godfather, or if a cinema audience could toggle Daniel Day-Lewis’s moustache on and off mid-scene. That’s no kind of world I’d want to live in.
Evidently, I’m not the only person who feels that the job of character creation should be left to the developers. Sea Of Thieves takes character customisation and reduces it to a dice roll, offering just a handful of randomly generated pirates to choose from, and not allowing you the option to fine-tune their knees to your exacting specifications.
This is progress, but we can do more to reduce customisation in games. Going forward, we must replace every protagonist in every game with just one default person, called Sharon, with perfectly average stats and very normal shoes and a regular sized face. Then, and only then, will we be rid of sliders that give your character a big arse. Steve writes for City A.M where he isn’t known as Sharon either.
Daniella Lucas is... The Traveller
Dani goes diving in crystal waters in Sea Of Thieves
While the idea of island-hopping between various beautiful tropical landmasses is very much on my bucket list, it was the ‘sea’ part of Sea Of Thieves that won my heart. The open ocean might not be a very friendly place when you encounter other players on the hunt for whatever rare goods you’re holding in your hull, but when you’re in a little sloop on your own and the wind is behind you, this game feels like no other thanks to the endless waves dipping up and down around you.
The bays around islands are a safe place to start and also have the greatest variety of life, with coral reefs teeming with brightly coloured fish. I found myself spending more time splashing around in the water of every island I visited than searching for treasure. There’s a joy in trying to find secret underwater caverns and examining the sandy floor for lost items. I’ve found bones from long-dead sea beasts and even secret pirate hideouts tucked away in places that most people never think to look in. Taking the extra time to paddle out a little further during your adventures is worth it so you can take in just how wonderful the watery world Rare has created is. Wave hello
Sure, white sandy beaches and sunshine are lovely, but dip below the water and you’ll find the game’s real treasure. Full of corals, fish, shipwrecks and the odd hidden ruin, it’s where I’ve had the most fun exploring. Admittedly the deeper parts of the open ocean are quiet and empty but there’s something soothing about diving into nothingness and just admiring how the light filters down playfully through the water.
Occasionally you’ll find ships that ran afoul of bad weather or rock formations and have become submerged, all their contents left to float aimlessly while across a captain’s chest or some rare, valuable tea to sell. That element of luck somehow makes them all the more intriguing, as does the threat of shark attacks – it’s just the right amount of risk to get your adrenalin flowing.
It’s not the only danger you’ll face out at sea: sometimes the waters themselves will turn against you in great, stormy swells that threaten to swallow your ship whole. A storm hitting your tiny sloop is even more terrifying than meeting the Kraken; at least then you have tentacles to fight but there is no battling the sea – you just have to ride it out and hope for the best. It’s amazing just how terrifying the water can be when it changes – one minute it’s paradise and the next it can rip you apart much like the real thing.
trapped inside the hull. I love how depressingly limp these empty, broken ships feel when you find them. There’s also excitement at the possibility of the treasures you might find tucked away inside. Maybe all you’ll get is a few extra bananas, but occasionally you’ll stumble
Cod of war
Even when you drift off course past the edge of the map and the sea turns an angry red it still has an amazing sense of place even without a single island in sight. The rising winds and creaking and cracking as your hull rips itself apart gives the experience a horrible, intangible otherness that makes it feel like an area beyond comprehension.
The sea holds many riches, but I do wish that Rare would do more with it. The water it’s created is a technical marvel and feels so wonderfully natural, but it’s full of fish that you can’t interact with. Sure, you’ll meet plenty of sharks that want you to snuggle in their teeth, but you can’t catch all the colourful little creatures hiding in the corals, and whales and dolphins don’t exist at all. The game also lacks enemy variation, so why not turn to the sea – fish people would be a natural fit, or a fishing faction. The ocean can provide far more than just waves – here’s hoping we’ll get to experience even more of it. You can see more of Dani’s gaming travels on Instagram: @daniellamlucas.
