LET'S TALK PCS: AVATARS, VIEWPOINTS, AND CUSTOMIZATION

I will agree with Ratty in that I believe any type can work well enough, but overall I prefer defined player characters, and that includes when I work on my own ideas.

Depending on the narrative, sometimes the ability to customize the pc has resulted in something really neat; playing as a lady elf in DA Inquisition & Trespasser springs to mind. That was reliant on world building over the course of the series and the inclusion of a (broadly speaking) unconventional romance option.

I'd like to break down the various types of PCs in games and tell what they can do well and where I see issues (listed from most to least customizable):

Custom character approaches

1) Blank Slate
You determine almost every aspect of this character yourself. You don't start out with any ties to the plot or choose the ones you do have.
Examples: Dragon Age Origins, Might & Magic series, Temple of Elemental Evil
Perks: The avatar will be adjustable to the exact specifications the player wants and you'll have a feeling of making all the decisions by yourself.
Issues: You'll need a whole lot of customization to not disappoint your player that they can't play a certain type of character. Furthermore, not having any relevant ties to the story means you'll have a hard time making the player care for the game world and its inhabitants.

2) AFGNCAAP
You have little to no means to customize this character, but they generally don't have any traits that influence the story in a meaningful way.
Examples: Undertale, Zork, Pokémon
Perks: This particular player character greatly enhances the setting as it dials down the importance of the avatar. Furthermore, not being given any traits prevents the character from being unrelatable.
Issues: Not being given any traits will dissuade players that want their avatar to be special. It also stifles character-driven narratives greatly.

Hybrid approaches

3) Take this role
You customize your avatar, but the character has some significant traits and plot involvement laid out already.
Examples: Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Quest IX, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
Perks: You gain the advantage of letting the player make a character to their liking, but also have a laid-out character-driven narrative.
Issues: Certain points in the story may alter the character or force a decision the player wouldn't want to make, causing them to feel cheated if it happens.

4) Follow the main
You get to design a character like in type 1) or 3), but you'll follow a main character provided by the story.
Examples: Fire Emblem: Awakening, Lords of Xulima, Final Fantasy Tactics
Perks: You can fully focus on your main character's development in the story without having to enforce anything on the player and their character.
Issues: A strong segration between the avatar and the main character is likely - the main could either make the player feel like a meaningless extra or the main could feel like a useless load on the player.

Provided character approaches

5) You are that one
You can enter a name for an established character and maybe tweak them a bit to your liking.
Examples: SNES/PSX Final Fantasy games
Perks: If the character is likable and acts like the player would, it's incredible for them as they can be in the shoes of their favourite hero.
Issues: If the player hates the character, they can get constantly annoyed to the point of losing interest in the story.

6) Play someone else
You don't customize the character in any personal way. The game makes it clear that it isn't you.
Examples: most licensed games
Perks: Similar to type 5, you can make the player cheer for the main character. You do have a failsafe in that the player will generally tolerate actions not matching their own personality, as well.
Issues: Not having an avatar can prevent the player from being immersed. Furthermore, a bad lead character will also discourage the player.

You mean you're doing something like Mass Effect, where a player creates their own personal Shepard and chooses their dialogue? Yeah, I can get behind it.

I'm a pretty boring guy, so I typically like to interact with the game's world in the shoes of a defined character, especially if there's some unique aspect about that character that makes playing as them interesting. Having a complete blank slate like what you see in Skyim or other similar RPGs takes me out of the immersion since I don't feel a part of the world I'm in.

I've never played a TTRPG, so perhaps the variety in DA Origins didn't feel quite so limited to me because I haven't really experienced that sort of role-playing before?

Origins was so much more effective for me than, say, Fallout 3, because the surrounding characters, lore, and plot were much more engaging, despite the latter having an addictive dimension of exploration that coerced you into learning about the game world. The pull of the narrative in the latter was not great enough, and the player character too flat. Even though, as far as I can remember, the dialogue for the pc in both games was delivered in more or less the same way (both in tone & the exclusion of voiced dialogue for that character).

So I suppose it is about execution and personal taste, to a large extent. And wider experience. If you are well-versed in TTRPG then you naturally would identify the flaws and limitations of games trying to mimic, in an inorganic way, that type and degree of world building and character creation.

Ratty
Overall, I think every type of PC can work well in their own right, but I do feel like preset characters run a lot more risky ground. While it allows for a stronger focus on narrative, there is a chance that players might be put off by their main character's personality, or playing someone that doesn't appeal to them.

I think that this can be used as a very effective tool to aid certain kinds of narratives. I also don't think that it's necessarily disengaging, although the interactive nature of the medium definitely can make the player feel worse about the character's actions (but again, this can be a good thing). There are plenty of films and shows about antiheroes, after all. Examples of effective narratives in which the player is required to do awful things might include, hmm... Knights in the Nightmare comes to mind. I know there are others but my brain's not fully firing right now. I would not include Undertale or other player-choice games because you're not forced into doing the awful thing.

Games simply about antiheroes, or that explore the antagonist far more than the player's avatar, also have merit as compelling narratives even if they might be unsettling. Wine & Roses did pretty well, after all, although the gameplay is probably what drew more people to it than the somewhat Faustian central character. To tie this a bit more into Sooz's original topic: while you controlled the Roses in battle, the actual "protagonist" is up for debate (and I say this as the sole developer). I purposefully designed the playable characters to be very customizable, but still have a specific strength. While they all had text written by them, it was never dialogue. Nobody in that entire game actually talks to another character except for the final boss. To this end, they're a blank slate except they're defined. What? I don't know. The antagonist is the most personable and talkative character. It worked, I think.

I think that's what's important to me. Does your choice of character, preset or not, fit and enhance the narrative? If so, you're golden. No need for categories.

As a third and final concept to bring up: I think that silent/blank slate characters can be fully defined in their own right. Think of either Portal, and the first time you saw Chel through the portals. What a defiant, determined and creative woman. Wait, but she's also you. You're Chel... but Chel is a definite, known entity. What a game! It works. It enhances the narrative of test subject #50815 escaping the Aperture complex. Chel is you, you are Chel, but Chel is Chel and you are you and nothing Glad0s or <spoilers> do can take that away from either of you.

You can do interesting things with it, as well as terrible things like Hatred.

I finally remembered: Hotline Miami. I cannot play the game because the graphics and music do bad things to my brain, but I've read a lot about it and find it fascinating. There's a few steps going on to justify the mass killing to the character and the player's brain: those are Bad Men (you can uncover that you're weeding out russian spies or something), you're just a player and not the killer, you wear a mask so clearly you're not crazy enough to want your face known, etc.

But then the character breaks down. Things go wrong, you have to start killing police, your apartment becomes disgusting... but you keep doing this mass murder, even shooting your way out of a hospital. Is there any real justification? Probably not.

Like either Portal, it's an interesting take on having a set character appearance (mask aside) with a scripted personality shown through their apartment and other details -- but also having the character as a mirror for the player. Once the music gets you, the effects blind you, and you're just killing... who are you? Why are you doing this? What would your mother think? Hotline Miami asks you these questions without blatantly asking you like some dumb indie games would. I'd consider Hotline Miami to be a work of art, to be honest.

i'd rather have discourse than sycophants, ratty

I don't think any game could be disqualified from being considered art (Though I agree on the fact that art can be terrible).

But Craze, Undertale giving you a choice to be terrible makes it kind of more interesting in that you're against your own morality in a sense. But I think Flowey can explain this better (pretty big ending spoilers):

author=Flowey the Flower

Show

I was back at the garden. Back at my "save point." Interested, I decided to experiment. Again and again, I brought myself to the edge of death. At any point, I could have let this world continue on without me. But as long as I was determined to live... I could go back. Amazing, isn't it, (Player)? I was amazed, too.
At first, I used my powers for good. I became "friends" with everyone. I solved all their problems flawlessly. Their companionship was amusing... For a while. As time repeated, people proved themselves predictable. What would this person say if I gave them this? What would they do if I said this to them? Once you know the answer, that's it. That's all they are. It all started because I was curious. Curious what would happen if I killed them. "I don't like this," I told myself. "I'm just doing this because I HAVE to know what happens." Ha ha ha... What an excuse! You of all people must know how liberating it is to act this way.

Yeah, Undertale does what it does very well. What I'm saying is that it's not an example of the kind of defined character that something like Hotline Miami or Knights in the Nightmare has.

Warcraft 3 is a really good example of what Craze is talking about. It forces the player to play as about ten different main characters as the game goes on, fighting on six different sides of a worldwide war. One of these characters is an honorable and compassionate hero, while another is literally trying to destroy the world. The rest are somewhere in between; there are even a couple of Macbeth-style tragic heroes.

I think that the changing viewpoint works very well in combination with less-than-heroic main characters, and also with any character that you're worried the player will be unable to relate to. It doesn't prevent the problem where the player says to themselves, "I just don't like playing as this character," but it prevents them from quitting your game over that problem. It's also extremely effective at telling both sides of a conflict, which is how it's used in Warcraft games and a lot of other RTS games (though most RTS games don't actually have a defined character whom the player is playing as; Warcraft 3 is pretty unusual in this regard).

Surprisingly, JRPGs seem to only rarely use a changing viewpoint, even though it seems like such an obvious choice for them. FF6, FF13 and Suikoden 3 all did it pretty well, but when most other JRPGs change the player's viewpoint it's only for an short side-segment, and then we're back to the main character.