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 Manchu wrote:
What I meant was, if there is exactly one female and one male design -- such that every agent and civilian looked exactly the same. That would be silly. But since there seems to be little to know face-to-face interaction (a la Elder Scrolls), it's not the biggest issue in the world as long as there is a variety of clothing styles and color palettes.

Pretty sure a lot less then that. They didn't allow women to fight aliens until the late 60s and once again if you showed up at XCom in anything other than a grey and/or black suit the boss would just send you home. Hell he'd send you home even if you just forgot your hat. Alien invasion is no excuse to not look professional.

 Manchu wrote:
Like? Do you mean, something like in Enemy Unknown?

No, something like how you created Shepard in the Mass Effect series.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Pretty sure a lot less then that. They didn't allow women to fight aliens until the late 60s

If it's set in a time when you cannot play a female character, I'm not buying the game. It simply isn't worth my money when I could be buying games that aren't stupid.

It might not have chargen at all. Maybe you're playing a predetermined character like in LA Noir or Red Dead Redemption.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Like? Do you mean, something like in Enemy Unknown?

No, something like how you created Shepard in the Mass Effect series.

Kind of a poor example of chargen if you're talking about physical features. I do like the idea of picking different backgrounds but again this wasn't very important in-game.

 Manchu wrote:
It might not have chargen at all. Maybe you're playing a predetermined character like in LA Noir or Red Dead Redemption.

If that's the case, I have even less reason to give a damn.

Kind of a shame, they were both great games.

It doesn't have a Chargen for the Protagonist. He's some dude called Carter IIRC. Hopefully you can choose the colour of his turtleneck though, that would be neat.

The game does look quite decent i suppose, a slightly more tactical Mass effect i guess. Not really interested though.

 Manchu wrote:
Kind of a shame, they were both great games.

I tried to be interested in LA Noire. Even liked it for a little while, but meh...

I got bored most of the way through it (I had just gotten through the Homocide division missions). Other games like Mass Effect, BL:R and Skyrim pulled my attention away, games where I wasn't forced to have some boring, generic, and incredibly forgettable white dude as my playable character. I've played those characters before. Thousands of times over the course of the last two decades. I'm BORED of them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Perkustin wrote:
It doesn't have a Chargen for the Protagonist. He's some dude called Carter IIRC.

Well, that's stupid. One more game I'm not going to get, then.

 Perkustin wrote:
Hopefully you can choose the colour of his turtleneck though, that would be neat.

No, no -- we'll have to wait for Dragon Age 3 for that.

That said, LA Noire did have some memorable lines. Like if you went a specific route with that South American ambassador
Lines like that were the only reason I kept going in that game.

That seems like a pretty extreme system you have there Melissia. Some wars were fought by mostly men. You're not going to play Company of Heroes for example because it's all men fighting?

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
That seems like a pretty extreme system you have there Melissia. Some wars were fought by mostly men. You're not going to play Company of Heroes for example because it's all men fighting?

Nothing good will come of this

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
That seems like a pretty extreme system you have there Melissia.

Are you going to start attacking me because I'm not interested in Madden 2013, too? Sports games don't interest me any more than playing a shooter starring some random, generic, and wholly forgettable white guy that the writers will inevitably fail to make me give a damn about.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Some wars were fought by mostly men.

I don't care.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
You're not going to play Company of Heroes for example because it's all men fighting?

I already own company of heroes. Played it to death. Same goes for the various World War 1/2 games (like the original CoD line). I've also played far too many RPGs and modern shooters and sci-fi games that force me to play as a dude, too, such as Dead Space. I'm not interested in playing the same old re-regurgitated crap as last year and want something different.

If this offends you, feel free to put me on ignore, because I'm not apologizing or backpedaling on it. I'm not getting this game if I am forced to play as some random white guy that I don't give a rat's ass about. And that's the direction they're heading. I've played that game before, and I'm going to instead spend my money on something that makes me actually care.

I think it's safe to say the new XCom isn't your standard shooter and just because the main character is a white male doesn't mean that somehow it just becomes one.

I think it's strange that if a game had a bunch of things about it that interst you you would pass on it because the protangonist is a white male. It's your money though so you get to prioritize whatever you want.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I think it's strange that if a game had a bunch of things about it that interst you you would pass on it because the protangonist is a white male.

Apparently it's "strange" (read: bad) to not want to have to play the same forgettable character over and over and over again, or to want to be able to create your own character or at least have different options than the generic forgettable white dude.

X:Com: The Bureau is already disappointing me and it isn't even about to be released. Meh.

Basing an opinion of a game on its character generation is like basing an opinion of a movie on its actor's facial dimensions.

Sometimes. It's important in RPGs but not every game is or should be an RPG. Some games are about a specific character and their story. Is the white guy over represented as the playable character? Yes, obviously but that shouldn't result in just throwing out the whole game.
As MLK famously said "It's not the pixel shades of the PC that matters but the general story arc which is still best broken into three acts and game play itself"

Ninja'd

 kirsanth wrote:
Basing a game on character generation is like basing a movie on its actor's facial dimensions.

No, it's not-- that's a very bad analogy. I don't interact with a movie. I just watch it. The audience of a movie are nothing more than passive observers, they sit around staring at a screen for a couple hours then it's over.

But I don't just watch a game. I interact with a game. I need to become the protagonist, I effectively AM the actor in the story. I am fully capable of doing so with a generic forgettable white guy-- I just have no desire to, because it's boring.

The Bureau would have been a better game if they included a customizable main character, or at least a choice between several different characters if they HAD to go with pre-written ones. But they're not going to do that. So it is less than the game it could have been. So I have less desire to own it. It is simple as that.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Sometimes.

All the time.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
that shouldn't result in just throwing out the whole game.

Only according to you, a white male who doesn't have to stretch their suspension of disbelief in order to play these games. When you hear their grunts of pain, or their heavy, manly breathing, you don't have to push aside that instinctive reaction that says "that's not me". When you hear their voice talking in storyline moments, you don't have to stretch your imagination to think "that's me".

I quite get your point though: anyone who isn't a white guy is the "other" who needs to be shunned for not being a white guy, because it's okay to pretend to be a white guy, but anyone who wants something different is weird and bad.

Assuming you are going RPG, otherwise it seems daft.

The idea of a role playing game is not really to (always) create a character, but to play a role.
Thus the term.

D&D rolled random character because the original point of the RPG was to NOT create your own role, but rather to have a game to play a NEW role.

editing to add:
Thus the apt analogy I am sorry you missed.

 kirsanth wrote:
The idea of a role playing game is not really to (always) create a character, but to play a role.

And I have no desire to play the role of a generic forgettable white guy.

 kirsanth wrote:
Thus the apt analogy I am sorry you missed.

I didn't miss it. It was a bad analogy.

After all this time, I still find it weird how people react so negatively to me wanting something different than them when I spend my hard-earned money on games.

 Melissia wrote:
And I have no desire to play the role of a generic forgettable white guy.

You prove you miss it with this.

If you think that the character is forgettable and generic because he is a white guy, there are larger issues involved.

If the character is generic and forgettable, that has nothing to do with it being a white guy.

editing to add:

 Melissia wrote:
After all this time, I still find it weird how people react so negatively to me wanting something different than them when I spend my hard-earned money on games.

React to games you spend money on?
You spent nothing here and stated you won't.
You implied it was because you had to play a white guy, which is forgettable and generic - regardless of anything else possible in the game that you know.

Awesome.

Melissia wrote:

I quite get your point though: anyone who isn't a white guy is the "other" who needs to be shunned for not being a white guy, because it's okay to pretend to be a white guy, but anyone who wants something different is weird and bad.

Wow really Melissia? Where to start Melissia? The Straw Man? The subtle accusation of racism? The assumption of my race? Let's just rest on the fact the only one who's ever said they wouldn't play a character because of their skin colour is you. That's bigotry at its most basic level.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
[snip]

I'm taking this to PMs. this is getting far too off topic.

 kirsanth wrote:
If you think that the character is forgettable and generic because he is a white guy

He won't be generic because he's a white guy, he'll be a white guy because he's generic. It's the industry default, the same exact character that's in almost every other game, and it appears taht The Bureau won't be any differnt.

I don't think it's unreasonable to want protagonists to differ from game to game I mean it seems a bit odd not to play it just because it's a white male but at the same time it seems kinda odd that you almost constantly play a white male...

If that is the case, that would be a valid complaint.

Phrenology isn't.

Your statements are made in ignorance and it comes across.


Bear in mind I have no idea what this game will be like. I thought Enemy Unknown had plenty of combustibility customizability and personification.

Especially in a squad based game. If this one has anything like it cool. If it is better, I will probably think most of it is a waste of time.

Being able to play the exact same game with the same story and character interaction with a different colored/shaped/wtfever character does not, in any way, make a better game.
Making the CHARACTER better does.

 kirsanth wrote:
Being able to play the exact same game with the same story and character interaction with a different colored/shaped/wtfever character does not, in any way, make a better game.

Having choice over your character's origins, fate, and nature always makes for a better game.

Making the story fit the character is most important in a story based game.
If the game is not story based, then the character is basically irrelevant.
The player is. That is when you start seeing sandbox games.
That is really a divergence of RPG as it does what you are stating.

If you want to tell and create your own story, that is cool beans.
It has its place. It does not mean that telling a story based game in a place that does not meet your world-view is bad.

 kirsanth wrote:
If the game is not story based, then the character is basically irrelevant.

If it really was irrelevant you wouldn't be objecting so hard to someone asking for something different.

Why not?
Is the game not story based we are discussing?

Most(? I think all) of what I asked was regarding story based games.


Editing to add:
When playing ,say, Mortal Kombat, if you could spend weeks customizing simply how Skorpion looks down to facial reconstructive surgery level that would make the game better than it is now?

 kirsanth wrote:
Is the game not story based we are discussing?

It doesn't really matter; my concerns are the same either way. Whether or not it's a sandbox game or a game with a dedicated story, it is still a better game when you have more choice in the character.

 kirsanth wrote:
When playing ,say, Mortal Kombat, if you could spend weeks customizing simply how Skorpion looks down to facial reconstructive surgery level that would make the game better than it is now?

Undeniably yes.

The character creation / customization bits of the Soul Caliber series are the reason why I play it over almost any other game in the fighting genre. Indeed, in X-Com: Enemy Unknown, I modified the ratios of nationality and gender of my soldiers (it defaults to, for example, 67/33 male/female, and certain countries are under-represented) to be more even and enjoyed the game more as a result.

Gotcha.
So a game that looks better is better than a game that plays better AND has a better story.


Totally different pages.

Of different books.

A QWOP fighting game with hours of combustibility to the pixel would stink.

Especially when you port its amazing graphics to the RPG - KILL THE GUY ON THE LEFT!