Uploaded April 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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I'm sure this is a sign of a quick "project" that'll be open and shut soon. Just look at Iggy's Reckin Balls!

As often I doth protest too much, I feel like... at least in THIS case, the version polluted with uncanny puppetrcraft is the... ... ... "less unbearable" alternative. If I may grudgingly be forced to admit so myself (under extreme duress), at any rate.

If you're like me and want none of that and crave unadulterated game-only content, by all means may you suffer with dignity:
youtu.be/xZ-DRAaABaA

And REALLY bad eggs:
twitter.com/yuugijoou
discord.gg/bKT9pRW

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There's no surprise and a mountain of evidence already entered into the record that I seem to take character creation VERY seriously. I think. Sort of. It's... complicated!

Whether properly accurate or effective in taking a personal inventory, I'm one of THOSE people who likes to treat these situations as a chance for a blank slate to insert myself into a new, unfamiliar, and exciting situation. (counterpoint: the unbridled freedom to sin against nature offered by Street Fighter 6 shows that I'm woefully lacking in my understanding of what makes a human being... um... human?)

But what if, instead, this isn't your average character creator engine? Sure, all the pieces and parts are there, and there's an incredibly exciting diversity in individual expression and a frankly jarring breadth of body types being made possible.

Possible.

Because you don't actually CONTROL any of it. You're not so much creating a character as you are evaluating as many possible candidates for your player character as you care to see ferried into the interface for your perusal and approval. And... that's more or less it. Don't like them? Try again!

You CAN lock any slot that you feel might be compelling enough to keep around, but the option doesn't seem especially constructive, since you won't be able to do anything with or to them, just one less generation per roll of the dice.

I want to be very clear: this idea has merit. It's used quite effectively, in fact. To varying degrees in various contexts. And in the sole context of populating a piracy simulator and open seascape for the players to freely interact with, this is a mighty impressive feat of how to fill said world with actually amazing diversity in its people.

But, aside from bespoke NPCs designed exactly as intended and serving specific functions, the PEOPLE populating this world are. Y'know. People. Humans. Playing a game. An online game. Each one will be somone different. Someone unique. And quite likely someone uniquely nonrepresentative of themselves?

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I actually really enjoy it in games that are significantly more roguish in persuasion. Getting brand new, uncontrollable generations of characters in the likes of Rogue Legacy or The Swindle and such is positively refreshing, whether or not the difference is really anything but cosmetic.

I'm loath to use it as a proper counterpoint, but there's also a certain degree of this in my very early, formative evaluation of Fortnite. That is, bereft of any actual cosmetic items of their own, every new player will boot into the preeminent battle royale as a completely arbitrary... somebody. And each new game thereafter, they'll be someone else. It actually felt kinda impressive and practically self-aware that cramming a hundred people on an island and having them have at one another would by necessity run through a metric ton of personnel in an awful hurry, so populating them uniquely seemed like a nice fit.

Until you acquire a skin. Any skin. I thought at first that maybe it was a unique fashion statement that the random people-generator underpinning it all would suit up with in fair turn... but even the seemingly nondescript Twitch tie-in gal wearing otherwise normal clothes would come back time after time for more without variation.

Obviously where THAT diverges from my expectation is the fact THAT game lives and breathes on grotesque amounts of monetization of visual dissimilarities each available for an often exceedingly real price. And people do love their very pretty, very specific blank slates to project onto, so I'm definitely in the wrong in my misaimed iota of admiration that quickly fell off a cliff when I realized.

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In THIS game, it was succinctly summarized to me by a veteran player that if people could freely choose their character... we'd be overrun by Jack Sparrow impersonators and the like. Oh well.

All it costs ME is about fifty minutes of rolling the dice and trying to separate form, function, and stylization against my already questionable sense of residual self-image. (...and a fleet of self-esteem crises just simmering on the back burner. It's actually cool! I swear!)

"Ghoulish facsimile" is one of my signature physical attributes, no?

Believe me, it could've been worse. (I can be MUCH worse.)