Fallout 3 character creation

Inspired by the very promising look at the rebooted Saints Row options, what are your expectations for the next Fallout?

One of my least favorite systems in gaming is the advertisement of customization, where there are only a small handful of preset faces to choose from. No matter how realistic or cartoonish the art style of the next entry is, at the very least Fallout should not regress further back or be more limited.

Face/Head:

F4/76 share one of the better face sculpting tools in gaming, forgoing most sliders for actual sculpting. While this might be a subjective improvement, it was also paired with a significant number of points of articulation. There might be games which offer more, but these two are definitely on the upper end. Off hand, there was no part of the face which I can remember having difficulty morphing, but more edit points are always a good thing.

Layered textures were also a phenomenal addition to face creation. Plenty of games have makeup effects or face paints, but F4 added in scars and burns, which not only had some 3D pop, but could be layered over one another, with no limit to the number applied at the same time. You could not reposition damage marks, but you could play with the intensity. Placement and mirroring would be a solid addition which could already improve issues we see in game, such as the 76 eyepatches only being made for the right eye, despite the overwhelming majority of eye scars being set to the left eye. (Which is a totally separate eyepatch issue than the covered eye still being the one visibly seen using scopes in the already curiously left handed, left eject style weapons.) Another addition to worth seeing new options would be teeth, which is something we see with RDO. It’s a little touch, but the oral hygiene and state of teeth, as well as the idea of horrifying cybernetic jaws or mutations, would be hugely interesting. Plus, we could all laugh at the wastelanders with Jet mouth.

Hairstyles are decent in F4/76. There’s games with more and games with fewer. It lags behind in terms of color, where other games have more customization for things like matte vs luster or multiple colors, whether those are highlights or natural salt and peppering. Hair physics and interactions with various types of headwear is also on the shakier side. A game like RDO currently has one of the better hat/headwear to hair interactions. One major improvement would be the ability to customize different parts of the head’s hair in the same way different parts of the face can be edited. Having some presets is fine, preferable even, but being able to select a portion of the head to choose from the individual elements would be interesting. Even if it’s not something every player is likely to use, it would be to the benefit of NPC variety.

Body:

Skyrim introduced some very basic body morphing, allowing the Dragonborn and NPCs to move up and down a scale of lean to jacked. Fallout 4 further refined this with the muscle, lean, fat pyramid (coincidently what Saints Row showcased for the upcoming game). This greatly increased the types of characters we can encounter in game, as well as opening up more freedom for designing our characters. Physical appearance can be as much of a story telling device as mannerisms and dialogue exchanges, so the ability to see a ragged looking man be scrawny or a mobster obese drives home the sorts of details missing in older iterations of the Bethesda engine. No longer is a decrepit old man going to be indistinguishable from a peak of prime warrior.

Improvements here would be the inclusion of the textures and layers seen on the face. No matter how battle-scarred, roughed up, painted, tattooed, or sunburnt the face could be, below the neck, the body is in fine condition. This was especially odd with tattoos, which were hilarious face and neck only in F4 (can’t remember if they’re in 76 at all).

Alterations to height/player scale, the torso, and limbs would be just as big. Using Dragon’s Dogma as an example, it has both a height slider as well as alternate styles of limbs. Long, shorter, different ratios of forearm to upper arm, thigh to calf, shoulders to hips, etc. There are already short and tall NPCs, so this should not be an issue. The Pyramid of Mass could also use some assistance in finer details. You can be a body builder but not a barrel chested “world’s strongest man” body type. You can be decently curvy, but only with an hourglass, not just bottom heavy. Old folks don’t have that weird old people body, where arms a flabby despite being thin or stomachs are disproportionately bloated compared to the limbs, and there’s a distinct lack of goiters in modern Fallout, even though an old talking head or two had them.

Tying into textures, skin types (think sagging old man skin, not race) having an affect on the body. Readable dispositions, more so than NPCs, but would be a solid expansion of existing mechanics; certain characters already make use of a slumped shoulders posture, but as far as I can remember it’s only been applied to a handful of “sad” characters, not used to convey age. There’s no alternatives for upbeat or cheerful either, just default. While these could benefit players by offering more choice, it again gives NPC variety.

Finally, visible cybernetics and mutations. Despite cybernetics being included for the player, they only ever show up on other characters or certain creatures. Any degree or physical alteration would be welcome. This ties into appearance customization, since there is the possibility of limb replacements, whether it’s for the cool points of a robot arm or the inclusion of players with IRL being able to mirror themselves in their character. It’s a little touch I noticed in Halo Infinite as well as the SR video.

Quality of Life

All the Bethesda era games have fantastic lighting in the creators, even in F3/NV. This sort of consideration was absent in Red Dead Online and Dragon Age Inquisition, which themselves are competing for best tools available…but by placing the character in an area so dimly lit, the actual choices made are not always immediately apparent. Unlike Fallout, these have quality of life issues which need to be addressed to get the most out of the set up. RDO was especially bad, because it also has (or at least had) limited rotation for the head/face so changes to depth could not be observed from all angles. Fallout just needs to stay the course with lighting.

Another addition which I recently saw in an older character creator in a game I already forgot (so the mechanic stayed with me more than the game) was a compare button. Many games have an undo button or an ability to cancel an alteration before saving it, but this compare button worked just like an RPG style stat comparisons on weapons or armors. You could toggle back and forth between the existing face and potential alteration while moving the camera to see the changes made from different angles. An awesome idea that should be an easy standard.

Not mentioned at all here was clothing, because that could be an entire taking point of its own, with the series in desperate need for more options. But that’s me rambling on about what I would like to see, y’all, what do y’all hope for or expect?