I'm of the belief that Sam from Death Stranding should've been a customizable character

[Saturday]

If you have a protagonist who is customizable, then naturally the developers would write the character to compliment that so I don't think it's true that it would always compromise a serious story. You don't put things into a game with no care, thought or reason behind it.....

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Yeah, a character can be written to be blank and accordingly the story as well, but vice versa applies. A story can be stronger written because the creator had a very specific look for them in mind.

You're not wrong about star wars and especially dragon age (had amended my post) but you brought up that Kojima is not to your tastes, so the point I want to stress here is that I'm not saying having a character be a blank slate or otherwise doesn't automstically become the detractor of a story but rather the creators intent and strength of writing.

Kojima is very much an auteur and in the case of Death Stranding I think he had a very specific person in mind, and that he wanted us to think of that specific person when we played through the story- and considering the plot itself (halfway through myself) I'm unsure how customization would have added to this.

In the end I think a lot of times video game stories are undeveloped or so disconnected from the main characters particular background so it's a lot of ymmv if it was a choice or not, but I stand firm with death stranding's choice of Norman Reedus.

Sorry, I might be rambling; I'm on mobile and I originally replied to your post thinking it meant something else so meh

 

[Fallout-NL]

No, this is the best thing Reedus has done. The game wouldn't have been as good without him and the character he portrayed. Still, had no problem identifying with him either.

 

[astro]

Like Shepard from Mass Effect, you choose Sam's face, gender, attributes, backstory etc. It would've really helped build on the belief that you were rebuilding the world with other players from the world with their own characters, but I guess Kojima just really wanted to have Norman Reedus be the star in his game. Man loves having Hollywood Talent in his games.... and Troy Baker.

But I think this would've been a better way to suck the player into the world... let it be customizable, let us create our own character, immerse the player into the world. This is something Death Stranding just doesn't quite deliver on.

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It absolutely does a better job immersing tbe player by pulling them into a personal tale, imo.

Your idea would have made the game so much worse.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

He's a defined character with existing relationships. This wouldn't make sense. Just because you weren't immersed doesn't mean other people weren't

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This.

 

[Hey Please]

Nope. While it didn't have to be Norman Reedus, the story definitely necessitated a pre-existing character. Having someone whose face can be cast right into the game means that 1:1 parity allows for less time cleaning mo-cap data in the production pipeline. Furthermore, it provides perfect references for rendering which is ever more crucial in this day and age of PBR.

Personally, I would have liked unique character models like in games like God of War, Uncharted, TLoU etc but that includes the additional step of translating (which, iirc, has been streamlined for TLoU) mo-cap actors' mo-cap data onto the custom characters' face rigs because of a personal belief that people are fallible. That said, I understand why the team on a budget did it.

 

[Deleted member 16876]

Nah.

The story worked as good as it did cause he was an established character who had a personality and the last couple of chapters shows why Sam couldn't have been a custom character. And yes, I found the game to be really immersive.

Edit: Something else that came to mind. How would you even make a female character playable considering some of the plot points later on in the game? Without going into spoilers, there is a couple of plot points that require the player character to be male.

And before you say "well, then make it male only!" that wouldn't be a fair thing to the female players wanting to play as female. Having an established character works way better for the plot and your suggestion would require a rewriting of a bunch of plot points to make it work. I was really satisfied with the end result personally.

 

[FakePlasticTree]

Yeah, a character can be written to be blank and accordingly the story as well, but vice versa applies. A story can be stronger written because the creator had a very specific look for them in mind.

You're not wrong about star wars and especially dragon age (had amended my post) but you brought up that Kojima is not to your tastes, so the point I want to stress here is that I'm not saying having a character be a blank slate or otherwise doesn't automstically become the detractor of a story but rather the creators intent and strength of writing.

Kojima is very much an auteur and in the case of Death Stranding I think he had a very specific person in mind, and that he wanted us to think of that specific person when we played through the story- and considering the plot itself (halfway through myself) I'm unsure how customization would have added to this.

In the end I think a lot of times video game stories are undeveloped or so disconnected from the main characters particular background so it's a lot of ymmv if it was a choice or not, but I stand firm with death stranding's choice of Norman Reedus.

Sorry, I might be rambling; I'm on mobile and I originally replied to your post thinking it meant something else so meh

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So I just wanna say one thing first. When I say that "Surely Sam Porter didn't need to have Reedus face" I was generally talking about his face, and not the actor playing the character. I haven't played the game so I don't know if Sam Porter could have been a womanm or could have just looked differently, and whether that would have changed anything about the character. In retrospect I feel the usage of celebrity faces in video games, as opposed to original designed characters kinda makes it harder for me to distinquish these characters fRom their character as opposed to the actor playing them, this video kinda goes into that a bit.


"Yeah, a character can be written to be blank and accordingly the story as well, but vice versa applies. A story can be stronger written because the creator had a very specific look for them in mind."
Neil Druckmann said in a documentary for the Last of Us that Ellie could have easily been boy, but ultimately they went with her being a girl. I don't think you necessarily always have to have a distinquish look for a character, and I don't think that makes them blank as a character or less compelling. There are plenty of examples of characters who are customizable without it hurting their character, or the story, so yeah— Guess we are just gonna have to disagree :)

 

[Kliemie]

 

[Van Bur3n]

I'd rather be Norman Reedus. How can you not be Norman Reedus in the Norman Reedus game.

 

[Devilgunman]

Nah. This game couldn't accomplish what it aims to do without Norman Reedus's acting. He might not be the greatest actor but his acting always has the kind of anti-social character to it since the Walking Dead and it fits really well to Sam's character. You put random face on Sam and everything is ruined.

 

[ActWan]

Heavily disagreed. It's a very personal story, Sam is a fantastic character and Norman's performance is integral. Everything connects to every little thing in this game and changing such an important thing will change the game too much imo.

 

[Rock Howard]

Only if it's the Def Jam Vendetta character editor