I’m just wondering if there’s much new info on character customization, specifically facial cusotmisation (I haven’t seen much of Brink since the end of 2009). I’m particularly interested in facial hair. Most games give you head hair and a single type of facial hair. You can mix and match a little but for the most part your at the mercy of the game designer.
What I’d love in Brink is the ability to use sideburns and stubble independently, and then stack on two layers of facial hair styles. Normally to get flat top hair, side burns, stubble, a mustache and a goatee you just have to pray that ‘flat top with side burns’ and ‘stubble and full goatee’ are options (and that they’ve used the side burns, goatee and mustache you want). With this system its a simple matter of:
Hair: Flat top.
Side: Mutton Chops.
Stubble: Thick.
Face Style 1: Thick-wide mustache.
Face Style 2: Goatee.
The system is still fairly limited but it takes a lot of the pressure off the designer and converts it into a more creative outlet for the player. Its simple enough to be practical while complex enough to allow the player to personalise the character to a degree where you could recognise him/her by sight.
I’m loving everything I’ve seen about Brink so far, particularly Richard Ham talking about how Brink works and more importantly why it works the way it does. Normally I don’t bother getting my hopes up when it comes to facial hair customisation since nobody seems to do a decent job of it, but from what I’ve heard the development team has really put a lot of thought into everything they’ve done and they’ve also made a point of doing good customisation, so I might luck out.
*Fallout 3 is praised for it, and realistically its probably one of the best on the market, but at the end of the day they just added heaps of beards without changing the quality of the results. I have lots of choices but I still don’t have the tools to make my character look how I want it to (be it a clone of myself, or just the sort of guy I picture walking around the Fallout universe).
