Exoplanet: First Contact - Predefined Protagonist

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Why does Exoplanet: First Contact work with a predefined character?:

PREDEFINED PROTAGONIST

We tell you how we decided to create a predefined protagonist.

Hello friends!

You have asked us if there would be an option to create your own character. In this article we'd like to explain why we can't give such an option to the players and why we made such decisions.

Of course, it's great to be able to create a character based entirely on your own preferences - to define his appearance parameters, like in Skyrim, or even choose a backstory, like in Mass Effect. And many players will feel a strong attachment to such a custom character.However, fully predefined characters also have many advantages - remember Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2 or Geralt from The Witcher. So what can be said about our hero?

Jack Sharp -- the one and only?

When thinking about what our main character would be like, we considered many factors, such as the technical and production complexity of implementing full-scale character customization. And by designing a predetermined character, we wanted to achieve certain creative goals, which we'll talk about next.

A fully customizable character means always a massive amount of work. Just giving players the ability to change the gender of a character, for example, would require creating a lot more assets and adapting each of them to additional animations!

[...]
Thanks Couchpotato!

More information.
 
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Where's the link on the full article? The link in the post is on the game in steam shop.

That said, and before reading the full article, clearly for RPG, perhaps also for many other genres, it's an eternal debate.

I'd say there's positive and negative in both approaches. But then there isn't only two approaches. The quote highlights backstories, origins of DAO could also be quoted, but there's also for example:
- Two predefined protagonist one male one female.
- Predefined protagonist for sex and vocals but fully/very customizable for appearance.
- Predefined protagonist for vocals, one female, one male, but fully fully/very customizable for appearance.

Myself I prefer diversity in video games so my vote is for all approaches none being inherently better than others. But I saw too many games with predefined character not exploiting it at all but for having one vocal actiing and limited amount of 3D graphics for main character, that makes regret games without vocal acting (and not with huge walls of test). Moreover games with predefined female characters seem sell quite less well past a very few exceptions and it generates an annoying dis-balance.

It seems there's a difference between players on level of identification to main character. For me there's no identification at all, at best empathy, more like a hero in some novel or movie, video game context changes nothing. For sure the problem is more critical for players having a higher level of identification to main character of a video game, but a male should be able to manage without much restrictions because male main characters are widely dominant in video games.
 
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Personally I almost forgot about this as development is already a few years behind schedule. Seems the kickstarter was just for publicity, and not just early funding.
 
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This project is a joke. I backed it on Kickstarter in 2015, and 8 years later it's basically still in Beta.
 
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It doesn't look very interesting from where I'm standing... good luck to them regardless.
 
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This project is a joke. I backed it on Kickstarter in 2015, and 8 years later it's basically still in Beta.
That's still better than Sui Generis, where the game itself is not being developed at all, and the prequel is still beta.
 
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Colour me in as another that supported this kick starter way back when, and is still awaiting the game to be finished. In their defence I'll at least say they are still issuing updates and such, which at least keeps hope alive.
 
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Well, "now" is not the right term. Sui Generis is still supposed to be the name of the game when it's released in 2054.
But the prequel is names Exanima, yes. It might well be that the very positive rating in Steam is justified. They seem to be building a nice looking engine with a great combat simulator. But it's not the game that was supposed to be developed.
 
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Well, "now" is not the right term. Sui Generis is still supposed to be the name of the game when it's released in 2054.
But the prequel is names Exanima, yes. It might well be that the very positive rating in Steam is justified. They seem to be building a nice looking engine with a great combat simulator. But it's not the game that was supposed to be developed.
Ah ok. Googling Sui Generis led me to Examina, so I thought it was the same game. Hopefully they at least finish Examina someday. It looks like there's potential for a good game there.
 
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