FFXIV vs c Character Creation
With the days slowly counting down until Final Fantasy XIV hits retail stores all over the world, a lot of gamers attention is being focused on the current Beta. All over the internet you will discover article upon article featuring details about the upcoming MMO from Square Enix. We’ve all been scouring pages of videos and reviews to find new details about the game, but lets take a look at this new MMO in comparison to other current titles. Today we will be mainly focusing on Aion in particular, a comparison of the character creation system existent in both titles.
I can’t help but say that when writing this article I am already to begin with a little biased. I am a huge Square Enix fanboy, and own nearly every Square Enix title released in English, even the older titles from when they were Square Soft (including the original FF games on Super Nintendo). So my opinion is a little tainted, but also lets face it; Aion is terrible.
Aion Character Creation
Lets begin with Aion, the game uses CryEngine 1 (FarCry 1’s engine) and was a very promising upcoming title, until everyone played it. I personally did like the character creation system within the game, it allowed for great customization and left you with a relatively unique character.
The character creation system allowed for a huge array of customization options, with over 20 different faces for each sex on either side, a whole deal of different hair styles and even the ability to change your characters voice; you were left with a lot of options.
The nice touch that any character creation system should have these days is the colour wheel, preset colour tones (such as in WoW for example) are just not enough to get that perfect tone of skin or hair and is one step closer to everyone looking like clones.
The true icing on the cake, and where the game engines capabilities really shine though, lie within the true customization capabilities of Aion’s Character Creation System. You are able to customize your entire face and body frame to your exact liking, truly defining you from the rest of the players. I remember making a midget scout that stood at most, up to everyone’s knee-caps. She was my little pocket rocket rogue, harder to spot and dealt a great punch. This aspect was about the only thing that brought me joy from my time in Aion. Anyways, now on to what everyone REALLY cares about.
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Final Fantasy XIV Character Creation
It’s kind of hard to make a comparison between a final release version of a game that has had a substantial amount of time on the market to a game that has only just launched its CBT. Obviously there is going to be a lot more options available to players when Final Fantasy XIV receives a full retail release, so in this comparison we are going to look at mechanics of the character creation and not the quantity of options available (eg. Not how many different hairstyles, or faces to pick from but how you can choose them).
The Final Fantasy XIV character creation system is pretty much a cookie-cutter concept you’d expect from most MMO’s these days. You have different hair styles to choose from, faces, and markings etc. The team at Square Enix aren’t trying to claim that they have an amazing and cutting edge character creation system, and instead are boasting a ‘simple yet comprehensive’ character creation system for players to utilize in customizing their avatars. Square Enix lives up to this claim, as any of you who have seen footage from the Beta test will know.
The character creation system within the game is rather unique, instead of a one screen customization screen FFXIV offers a series of pages in which you can customize your avatar. Beginning with choosing a race filled with fantastic lore you are then lead to choosing a “sub-race” of sorts. Each race consists of sub-races which hail from different regions. This is a nice and simple touch, even though you might be the same race as someone else you can still have a different background.
Once you have selected your race you then proceed to choose a basic appearance. There are 4 presets to choose from and you can either keep these as is or continue on to further customize your character. I assume everyone will customize their characters experience so choosing a preset at this point is rather irrelevant. This is the only part of the character creation process that I don’t understand, it’s right at the beginning and you have to proceed through customization options anyways, it’s rather pointless but I can see the idea behind what Square Enix is trying to offer.
Related FFXIV Character Creation News:
Clicking onwards through the process the next step is customization, this is where your avatar truly comes to life. This page (as shown in the screenshot above) lists the following options:
Height: Choose the height of your character, ranging from really tall to really short.
Voice: Each race currently has 3 voices to choose from, there is the normal voice and then the others are higher pitch or lower pitched tones.
Skin Tone: There is no colour wheel within the character creation system of FFXIV, but they do put on offer a great deal of selections in colours and tones.
Hair: Clicking this opens up a new set of options, you can choose from an array of hair styles as expected. There is two options from colouring your hair, you choose a base colour and then if you please you can also add highlights to your hair.
Face: Clicking this once again opens up a new set of options. While there is no system in place as advanced as the one within Aion, there is still a great deal of options available. You can choose your basic face, then choose from different types of eyebrows, eye shapes, iris sizes, noses, mouths, features and of course choose your own eye colour.
Characteristics: This is the final option within the customization page; here you can choose different things like facial hair, scars and tattoos.
The next page in the system is choosing a Class, a class within FFXIV is a Disciple. There are currently four to choose from; Disciple of War, Magic, the Land, and the Hand. While you can participate in aspects of more than one class, here you choose your starting class. I quite like the class system that Square Enix have set up, it gives freedom to the player to participate in whatever aspect of the game they wish to partake in and you can become as powerful within that class as you want to be, as long as you are willing to put in the work of course.
This sounds a bit basic right? I mean surely that can’t be all that there is to a class! Well fear not, each Disciple consists of an actual Class that is linked to it. As shown in the screenshot above, a Disciple of War can choose to become a Gladiator, or an Archer amongst many other things. Separating everyone into their own unique role.
A nice touch I quite liked was the ability to pick a Nameday and a Guardian. Moving on from class selection, you will come to the Nameday & Guardian screen. Choose a month and day of the year for your Nameday, and a Guardian to go along with it. We are almost at the end of character creation at this point.
To finish off the character creation process there are only two more steps, choose a name and starting location. Once you have done so you are transported into an intro cut scene and the game begins!
So as you can see Square Enix have indeed provided a simple yet comprehensive character creation experience for upcoming players. While the system may not have a million different scroll bars for you to tweak the bridge of your nose, and get that perfect complexion on the colour wheel; they do provide you with plenty of options to create a relatively unique character. Making a comparison of the two is hard, once again I am already biased but I guess at the end of the day it comes down to what you prefer. Do you want to be offered endless tweaking capabilities such as Aion’s character creation system? Or do you want to stick to the lore of the world the developers have created and be given preset options on how your character can look?
Both have their pros and cons, but one in Final Fantasy.