I've been fiddling around with the Dragon Age Character Creator for a few of hours over the weekend. Dragon Age is, well...you should just do a search and find out what it is lah. Go find out before coming back to read the rest of this post...and this only applies to people who like single player computer RPGs or have played games like Baldur's Gate 2 and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and would know what i'm talking about.
Anyway, i've got a criticism of the Character Creator...why are there so few customisation options available??? The game creators kept boasting about how the Character Creator would be so great, but i'm sorely disappointed...in terms of customisation, Elders Scrolls 4: Oblivion was better, even though that game came out nearly 4 years ago, when the NVIDIA 7800GT graphic card just got released onto the Singapore market. Oblivion had so many more options...one example would be the option to
alter the length of hair, which allowed gamers to obtain precisely the look they wanted for their characters.
On the other hand, Dragon Age gives male characters only about 10 FIXED hair styles...and all of them are ugly!!! They're either bald, G.I. Joe, tribal themed, or medieval English themed. I know the Dragon Age world is backwards, but why can't i have a character with a more modern hairstyle? Or is it simply because the people at Bioware have no sense of style??? I want a character with a long fringe, and i don't want the fringe tied back! Haven't the game creators ever heard of the new age Japanese hairstyles??? Haven't the game creators played Final Fantasy or ANY Japanese RPGs???
Sigh, i should have expected this disappointment though...Bioware kept talking about how Neverwinter Nights 2 and Mass Effect would have great customisation options, but both options sucked big time DESPITE being released after Oblivion. In Oblivion, i could easily create a character (without using any presets) who looked very much like Squall from FFVIII, while in Dragon Age, i can't even make my character's FACE (nevermind the hair) look like Zack from FFVII when i'm referring to his pictures on my laptop while creating the character on my desktop.
Heck, i can't even make a character who doesn't look like some medieval peasant/barbarian/noble or some US Army jock or some Australian Aborigine or some Native American. Sigh, doesn't Bioware understand that we want our main characters to look GOOD??? So many of the options give rise to characters with troll/ogre-like noses and chins and freaked out facial features in general...what's up with that?
On the contrary, female characters have a bit more options and they LOOK better too...for example, i can easily make an attractive female character who looks about 18-20 years old, while the potential male characters on Dragon Age all seem to have a minimum age of 30. Doesn't Bioware know that most of the players will probably be guys, and most of them AREN'T the type who would create female characters and have them make out with male NPCs???
In addition to the Character Creator part, i've got a few concerns as well...
One that i can remember, is the choice of NPCs.
First, there are too few NPCs. For most races, there is only one NPC to recruit, and there are much fewer races in Dragon Age as compared to Baldur's Gate 2. I also think it detracts from the open-endedness of the game a bit when the NPCs are already announced to us way beforehand. This, of course, stems from the problems of over-hyping any game and revealing too much. So now, i won't have a scenario where this person unexpectedly joins my team; i would have seen it coming a long time ago, and would have taken steps not to kill him off, etc.
Also, nearly all the NPCs are outstanding talents in their respective fields...why can't my teammates be normal dudes? Like i want the fifth best healer and just another of the witches to join my team, not the best healer ever known and the daughter of some legendary witch. I'd want my teammates to make a name for themselves under my influence; i'd rather have a group of adventurers starting out small and later joining the big league, instead of having some walking VIP circus troupe. What's the point of leveling up? To be able to start out small first and later become demigods both in skill AND in NAME. Right?
The NPC choices are also
too varied, in a way. Given that there are so few NPCs to choose from, why spread them out and give every race a representation? I understand that Bioware might think that we want to try out every race, etc, but it also increases the feeling that this game isn't as open-ended as it seems - like the game's path was already all planned out for you. You have so few NPCs, and - just nice - each race has one! Except for the human race; humans are special, so we will give you one choice per class...one white mage, one black mage, one assassin, and one sword fighter! You don't get players with similar races and similar roles in the team (for eg. Imoen and Nalia, and Minsc, Keldorn, Anomen and Sarevok in BG2), where you could choose who you wanted based SOLELY on who looked better and whose personality you liked, etc.
I probably sound like i'm nitpicking here, BUT Dragon Age is supposed to be - for an open-ended single player fantasy RPG fan like me - the greatest game ever made. So i've got high hopes for it...and exacting standards come with those high hopes! I hope the game itself would alleviate some of my concerns...although my concerns of the Character Creator have certainly been realised. -.-
