General Content Poll
A feature in Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven that players seem to enjoy is customizing your character's physical features. Players like selecting hair color, eye color, and even race. In general, do you enjoy games that allowed physical customization?
Comments (8)
ZE: SH has a lot of character customization which is appreciated. But spending 5 mins to fine tune a character to one's liking and not seeing its effects in the game world would be kinda underwhelming. When I played the teen route I found out that Taylor talks about MC's tattoo or scar. That sort of interaction is why I would really spend enough time to customize my player.
As others said, I think a lot of it boils down to seeing if there are any actual effects or flavor dialogue in game. Do people talk about your scars (people think it's fine if you're a soldier, but maybe freak out if they see a scarred teenager)? Does your height and build actually matter (maybe influence stealth and strength checks)? Do you get any unique dialogue talking to the Southern Ute as a Native American?
Games where you can spend an hour customizing your character only for them to always wear a helmet even in cutscenes kinda frustrate me, the illusion of customization, looking at Skyrim. The more time I can invest in appearance in a game the more relevant, the more exposure I expect the game to deliver but I'm often disappointed in that regard.
My criticism for safe haven is that the scars and tattoos can be very specific in design and placement but I never saw them specifically mentioned in dialogue, the input didn't match the output
Its fun, but is better when its mentioned when other characters talk about yours. Off the top of my head, I know its done in the Teen Route, where if you have a tattoo and go in the pool and flirt the girl in the pool mentions them. And then in Thelma's where you can get discounts. Its just nifty when the "world" of the game acknowledges your characters looks/career in it. Its why I also love the movie actor/ess routes. Cause you get noticed a bunch
Look, granularity is fine, but I find myself too often getting lost in the weeds. A dozen different kinds of firearm, each with its own caliber of ammunition is realistic, but misses the forest for the trees in terms of story telling.
One of the biggest things I love about Interactive fiction (especially in the CoG and Hosted games space), is the character customisation and just how diverse & unique you can make your characters! The more customisation the better! (Within reason, people don't want to go though the effort of CC for everything to be ignored or not affect anything) In the same vein, I had a question! Do you have any plans to add the option to play a Transgender character in ZE:SH?
I'm not sure. It's one of those features that are more involved the more I think about it. There are a lot of nuances, so I would have to consider all the angles to do it justice.