So what was this game about again?
(media.scored.co)
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Another game that would have been fine with a neutral character creator. It's amazing how they insist on forcing you to play the equivalent of the female druid in D4 in every game now when the solution is just to give everybody what they want and focus on gameplay, story and mechanics instead of identity politics.
You want to be a bald headed black lesbian? Fine just use the sliders and have at it. You want to look like yourself or your favorite waifu? Go for it. I guess "owning the chuds" is far more important than selling games these days.
Having character creator is extremely limiting on story writing because you have to pretend that tabula rasa is real or ignore the choices altogether (for example female Shepard). Imagine for example Yakuza Kiwami if they made Kiryu male or female, it would completely change the storyline and make a good portion of it extremely bland. The problem is that the western RPG story writing is so shit anymore that no one cares about a dedicated character anymore unless it’s a JRPG. I can’t think of a single decently written AAA western rpg since what, Witcher 3? Meanwhile in JRPGS there’s been Persona 5, Dragon Quest XI, Nier Automata, Like a Dragon, etc that are all standouts for dedicated characters.
Shepard worked because the high restrictions of the Paragon/Renegade system usually led to a consistently written character being made by forcing you to commit, most of the time, to being one or the other to not lose out on points you'd need in it to make bigger decisions.
At least in ME1, its been so long they all blend together and I can't remember if that stayed in 2/3.
Shepard worked because they wrote the story entirely for a guy static character and then made some minor dialogue changes for the female option. The illusion of choice dialogue options has been overdone as is, they never actually make massive impacts or punishments to the story.
I find the gender difference far less egregious in a universe basically dominated by the Asari, who seem to be the ones corralling all other races together. Its still generic "sci-fi egalitarianism" but it at least is inoffensive.
The true failing of the character creator is the background choices, which should lead to considerable differences in both your treatment and your choices but instead if just a handful of "we referenced it 2-3 times randomly with no effect" moments.