The only problem with this is that, by the very nature of games that include this sort of functionality, they have to make the character ambiguous. So much can change based on the character you've created at the start that no story they can come up with will be able to cover them all while still containing the specific and distinct quality that we've observed in the Witcher.Throughout the story of Witchers 1 & 2, I think the developers have had one big advantage. 'This is who the Witcher is', they can say before any particular encounter. 'This is what he would do'. Even in the times when you chose what he did in the first game, the reasons for why he did these things are synonymous with his character. It makes sense that he'd make any number of these decisions (through clever writing and design), and his character (and the story/game by extension) felt a lot more real and engaging because of this. You lose a lot, if not all, of this certainty with character creation, and it makes an engaging story that revolves around the created character difficult to do well. Bioware's been toying with just making the face/gender customisable and giving the character a last name and voice, but it's still a fairly clunky way to go about it (in my opinion). It highlights the restrictions (why can I edit the face, but not anything else?), and often a created character just doesn't suit the voiced character it's been given. Quite a large number of players just used the default avatar anyway. So I think that if Mass Effect had done away with the customisation, and made Shepard an interesting, rounded character, the entire game would have benefited. As it is, you're left with your female/male nice/angry Shepard to run around the world in, and while this sort of system has its benefits, it has some very obvious restrictions on the player's behalf.Saints Row 2 was fairly successful with a wide range of character customisation, but it worked mainly because, in spite of the voice chosen, the character was an absolute nutter and that personality fit with pretty much any combination of look, style, gender, and clothing one could come up with. In the case of SR2, there were a lot of combinations.Nevertheless, the game was a bit ambiguous on the story. The focus was on the gang, not the unnamed leader, and the closest thing you got to interesting character interaction involving him was his tendancy to yell at the other Saints and a rather moving climax to a mission against the Brotherhood. The over-the-top style, and rather ridiculous missions available also took focus away from the main character. It was easy enough to ignore who you were and just go bonkers.Obviously this is not likely a method CD Projekt would employ given a customisable character in their games, but it is a very effective method of drawing attention away from who the character actually is. Personally, I think that if you're going to implement character creation, you need to go all the way. Nothing really did this better in my eyes than NWN2 (and by extension Mask of the Betrayer), while still providing a story starring your character. The options you have while creating your character, especially if you have all the expansions, is astounding. Levelling, class abilities, multiclassing, prestige classes, and the like brings about the deepest (and most complicated) system I've seen in decades of gaming. But again, to support all this, the story isn't very focused on the player. They're the protagonist, what they do affects what happens (to a greater or lesser degree), but the focus isn't on them. Instead it's on their decisions and the way they act. There's no real interaction between them and their companions, nothing that can be had on an emotional level, simply because the freedom given earlier restricts what the developers can do later (if they want to release on time, that is. They cannot predict what type of character they'll be dealing with at any given moment. With 24 races, 15 classes, 24 prestige classes, and all the optional abilities/skills/stat changes/history the player can choose from (not even getting into gender, alignment, or player choice throughout the story) it's pretty much impossible to know what kind of character is doing what at which specific moment in your game. They can throw in a cool little line for your Drow to say when interacting with giant sapient spiders, but apart from that you don't get much specifically tailored to your character.Which is the general point I'm trying to get across here. If you want customisation of the character themselves, you're likely going to be sacrificing one of the things you loved about the Witcher in the first place. That is, to say, character (ironically). The more customisation, the more ambiguous your avatar becomes, and the less the game can tailor situations towards you. It all depends on the style of game you want as to whether you regard that as a reasonable trade-off. As it is, I think a large part of why the Witcher is so engaging is because of who Geralt is. Whatever you choose, it's carried out by a disgruntled, philosophical monster-slayer who constantly feels like he'd rather be somewhere else, but doesn't trust anyone else enough to abandon his job to them. If RED wanted to do a game with more customisation, I feel it would be better served in a new IP. One which they have created and have complete creative control over. That might give them the freedom to have a game that can work its way around customisable characters smoothly.
and a totally new story..Maybe TW3? Hopefully it will still be available for PC..
