PICK YOUR PARTY VS PICK UP YOUR PARTY

FFT's storyline is fine. It was the localization that sucked.

post=90563
Someone who is kind/caring/considerate generally won't go "fuck that, I have my own standards". That's the whole point...

Generally, no. but then again, do we want the most stereotypical characters ever? That's the whole point... /pause

bahleted

post=90574
characterization and storyline is only a vessel to progress through the game. Gimme a custom party please.

Depends on what kind of game!

Gonna admit I was an idiot saying blank slate characters have no personality. My bad. (although I do prefer games where the writing and gameplay are more inclusive than exclusive)

post=90602
Also, even when a game has lots of extra characters that you can pick up, I always end up using the characters that have the most relation to the storyline and are the most characterised anyway. Unless they absolutely stink in battle.

Heh, it most certainly does depend on the player! When they chuck loads of optional extra characters in, e.g. Suikoden, I always make sure to use at least a few complete nobodies. To use Suikoden V as an example, I never really saw the point of going Hero-Lyon-Miakis-Georg-Kyle-Galleon... they've made all the random in-one-quest-then-quiet-forever characters, I always try to use some of them!

Also seems I was wrong to classify the first option in the original post as little to no character development necessarily... it's just easier to get away with less in that one.

post=90606
Heh, it most certainly does depend on the player! When they chuck loads of optional extra characters in, e.g. Suikoden, I always make sure to use at least a few complete nobodies. To use Suikoden V as an example, I never really saw the point of going Hero-Lyon-Miakis-Georg-Kyle-Galleon... they've made all the random in-one-quest-then-quiet-forever characters, I always try to use some of them!

Yeah, it does the whole extra characters stuff well, i don't mind using nobodies in suikoden, because i feel like most of the time they're not really nobodies, theyre all very stereotypical.
Though i gotta admit, sometimes it puts me off when there are a million extra things to do in a game.I always feel like i need to complete it 100%, and in some games it ends up as a chore.

post=90527
So if you pick your characters, you do not get personalities with them?

You can get personalities, but y'know, you lose the part that makes them interesting and individual if you just stick stock personalities on it... Er, well, maybe, I dunno, I need my games to be story driven.

I honestly can't bring myself to care about the hero(es) of a game if I create them myself. Games like Oblivion - to which I'm totally addicted, by the way - are different because they don't have just one path for you to follow; it's totally freeform and encourages you to deviate from the main story of the game. However, in games which are more story-driven but where you need to create the main party yourself, I can't get attached to the game at all. And I can't enjoy a game that I'm not invested in... maybe it's just me, but I have to actually care about some core aspect of a game - the characters, plot, etc. - in order to have fun playing it. I care much more about characters that are handed to me, because then I suppose it's like saying "here's how the story goes, this is what happens, react to it." Like when you're reading a novel, you typically don't fill in the names of all the characters as you go along. That's kind of how I feel about it with linear RPGs; I don't include games like Oblivion in that category, because I don't consider them to be linear.

I do a bit of both where the characters are ones you pick up, but you can kind of change the different kinds of characters they will be.