Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General Character creation: Larian developers, tell us!

When it comes to any videogame genre, I love being put in the shoes of a specific character with their story, appearance, and personality.
But when it comes to an rpg, the thing I demand from that type of videogames is creating my own character.

Larian Studios hasn't told us if in Dragon Commander we can create our own character. The trailer so far showed the protagonist marrying an (undead!) princess. I am worried that this means in this game we won't be able to customize our hero, and even worse, we won't be able to play as a female character.

Since lack of character creation is a deal breaker for me, when it comes to decide wether to buy an rpg or not, I wish Larian developers would come and tell us if we can create our hero/heroine like it was in Divinity 2.

Dragon Commander is not an RPG. It's more a strategy game with RPG elements if I would have to label it, although I'm still unsure how much of these elements could really be labelled as RPGish.
Furthermore what would be the purpose of customizing your hero if you can't see yourself? When you are a dragon it plays in 3rd person view and you can probably customize your dragon with equipment, but as a person it looks like it is played in 1st person view. In the demo you didn't even walk to other locations on your ship, you just 'jumped' there.
I also don't think you will be fighting as a person, you fight as a dragon only. As a person you give orders and decide on your next moves.

All in all I think the character creation is not essential in this game. Choices and consequences are essential. Which path shall I take? Shall I attack or not? Should I get rid of my princess in favor of another princess who can give me the technology I need? But, that would mean I loose the benefits she gives me now and what is this new princess going to need from me? Maybe I should take that technology by force instead.
Choices like that are interesting and could play a role in how you evolve in the game.

Then again, non of it is final, so who knows.

If you don't get to walk around on your base or anywhere else, character customization is not essential, but just a small customizable character portrait could still be nice if only so you get a sense of what your character actually looks like. Also, there may be cutscenes featuring your human self. So while having Saints Row-level customisation may not be essential, it would still be nice to have some.

Also, the option to pick your gender is essential for the roleplaying. Especially if the choices involve princesses and princes.

In Oblivion and in Fallout 3, I hardly ever used the third person view. Yet, having the choice on who my character was and what clothes he/she was wearing has been one of the most basis and important things in the game to provide the immersion.

Character customization is NOT related to being able to see yourself. In real life, you are yourself, but you can see yourself only when looking at a mirror.

If Dragon Commander doesn't at the very least give me the choice to choose the gender of my character, I'm afraid I'll pass on this game. It may not be a pure rpg, but since apparently a deal of the story is about talking to npcs in the base, I still see it as an rpg (interestingly hybridated with other game genres).

So, I would like for Larian developers to answer my question, so that I'll know wether I should start hyping this game, or forget about it until it's in the bargain bin.

Hey guys - we're still debating the very issue of how far we want to go with customization internally, so we can't give you any definite answers on this one yet. We'll let you know once it's set in stone.

Thank you a lot for the answer!

In my opinion, customization should be divided in levels of necessity, from the basis one to the least important.

1) GENDER SELECTION - I think choosing a male or female protagonist is fundamental, for this game

2) HAIRSTYLE/FACE MODEL CUSTOMIZATION - that'd be nice too

3) BODY/CLOTHES CUSTOMIZATION - the least necessary, but would be a blast


Fellow posters, any thoughts? You agree with me?

Personally, I agree with you. Although I would put body customization below clothes/armour customization myself. One can put some personality simply in how the face looks (and, of course, giving your character a face gives them a face ) and a lot of personality in the way one dresses, but the look of the body itself is, in my opinion, largely aesthetic and thus of far less importance customization-wise.

Allowing a choice of gender would involve doubling much of the dialog, artwork, etc. Choice is good, but I wouldn't want to sacrifice on plot or quests, etc, to get that in.
In Divinity 2 you could choose (and change) your gender, but other than voice it did not have much of an impact; there were few places in the game that even acknowledged your gender, and only one quest (in FoV) that depended on it.
Personally I've played games/RPGs with pre-set male and female main characters, and when given a choice I have created male and female characters. Generally the difference is pretty superficial, IMO.

Besides, having a skeleton princess with a couple apples stuck in a dress is innocuous and slightly amusing. A skeleton prince similarly stuffing clothing might run afoul of the rating boards.

You're the Commander of an army plotting to become absolute ruler of the country. Because of that, I think most of the dialogue would be gender neutral (since it would mostly deal with politics and tactics and whatnot), so it'd hardly be 'doubling', especially if the PC doesn't actually speak out loud, but only has written lines.

As for doubling the artwork... well, the artwork PC, certainly. Everybody else? Well, the princes and princesses maybe.

It would be more work, certainly. But I don't think it would double much of it.

Dragon Commander

Really? Yes strategy plays a role (large role) but so does combat and I'm pretty sure that if you didn't level up your dragon, he'd be killed easily. It's a game where choices matter as well, so yes, the RPG elements are huge and they matter just like the RTS elements. It's (IMO) a RPGRTSAction game.

Didn't I here Larian Conferm that there would be Ground based battles as well or was I only Dreaming.

@Raze

Me personaly, as much as I find the concept of a skelleton Princess funny it's not exactley high on my list of things to look forward to in this game. The thing is (for me at least) as much as I love my RPG's there are time's I find them insulting, yeah I get it the guy's fantasy rescue the girl win her heart save the world. In most game's like that they make the Heroine out to be a hopeless fool that always needs the hero to come save her. I find the a bit insulting, me I'm no Lady I'm a Woman I have a mind of my own & am more than able to look after myself without the need for some guy with a complex to come & save me every 2 secs. That's why I love game's like Divinity the abiliy to choose a male or female character for me is a dream come true. I felt like I was actually in Divinity 2 because a lot of the diolog options in that game were actually something that would easyley come out of my mouth in situations like that. Eg, MAXOS, I felt like I was stood infront of Amdusias because I've actually done things like that before in my life lol. The more he insisted that I not say Maxos the more I said it, I've done that to different people before when we've been arguing or fighting lol. I'm a woman of action that's why the idea of waiting for my hero to come save me instead of doing something to save myself while he's busy fighting elsewere is insulting to me.

In the real world I'm not the type of girl to stand by & watch someone hurt the one's I love I certainley would'nt stand there while my lover handled everything alone. I'd be there right by his side fighting with him to protect whatever it was we were fighting for, not sat in the cornner going oh my hero. Sod that I'd be there side by side with him taunting the idiots that threatednd my love going BRING IT ON, I'd protect my love with my life as much as I'd expect him to do the same for me.

Yes, ground combat confirmed. As for my opinion on character creation, there will be some customisation but nowhere near as deep as previous games. Difficult so say yet as there is no ground combat (yet) and most character creation will be on the Dragon I think. But as Lar said above it's too early yet and they have yet to decide how to go about it. Obviously if you can fight on the ground in human form then there would be more character customisation such as appearance, basic skill sets etc. But if you are just a dragon during combat then I think any character building will be rather basic. Going by the game's title I'd imagine all real time combat is dragon based. You will just have the ability to attack ground troups this time & hopefully land and fight with tooth and claw. It's a case of waiting and seeing.

Gender selection, personally I don't really care if the hero is male or female but for people that do it would be nice to have the option. The Skeleton princess would have to be a prince though if playing female - this has been discussed in other threads.

In the game Zanzarah (kind of an adventure story with fairy combat), the female lead character would sometimes make comments if you stood in place for awhile without doing anything (ie nice view... but I have stuff to do). Once when I was going through the inventory, I got a comment something like 'Should I just wait here until my prince comes?'.

LOL game's like that I think are awsome & I find them sidesplittingley funny, like Scared I think is brilliant.

Why? Because it'd be gay? So what?

I'd suggest that instead of filling the game with all princesses or all princes depending on gender, the land is filled with a mixture of both and then just let the player decide whether their marriages are purely traditional (a business deal to forge alliances and exhange property) or more modern (for love).

Making this distinction was already possible in the demo version with the skeleton princess, so I don't see why it shouldn't carry over to every other possible candidate.

Yeah I agree 100% there Anubis, they've said that your marriage to the Skelliton Princess is optional in the game & that there are many candidets to choose from. So the option to make a female dragon knight isn't an inpossible concept, granted it would mean a few tweeks to the diologe options but it would be a much better game for it.

You played it ?

I only know few people who have actually played it ... Besides, an Add-On was planned or even made, but THQ, who still holds the rights, lost interest and never released it. That's why I hate THQ.

Zanzarah is the one and only game within which I have ever lost my track within a wood ...
And every other free-roaming game is therefore compared to it by me - regarding woods.



Back to topic : Personally, I believe that a gender selection is kind of a "must have" - the rest is totally unimportant for me.

And to me, this game still is *not* any kind of RPG - those who quite forcefully claim it to be one I say : Be warned : You might be disappointed if you really press yourself (and others) to see this game as an RPG ONLY !



Apart from that, I'd like to see other races as Dragon Knoghts as well, perhaps, if possible : Elven Dragon-Knights, for example ...

Yes, makes sense to me, that sounds a better way of doing it; let the player choose.

yes combat plays a large role too. But in my meeting with Lar one of the first words of him were 'it is not an RPG'. That can be interpreted in many ways, but I doubt the RPG elements are huge. There are other ways of increasing the strength of your army besides leveling up and distributing stat points. Still I do belief there will be a healthy variety of RPG elements in the game, but it will be more of a strategy game than it will be a RPG.

As to ground combat, I interpreted it that like you have armies in the sky you also have armies on the ground. So your armies are fighting other armies and as a dragon you could create some mayhem on the opposing forces, like the other dragons could do on yours. You shouldn't be able to do that as a human in my opinion, soaring as a dragon over them and breathing fire would be just great

You played it ?

I bought Zanzarah a while after you recommended it in an old topic about game music. At the time the soundtrack could be downloaded from the developer's site (so I didn't need to worry about extracting it from the game files) and I burned that and a few other King Einstein songs to a CD.