Firstly, I hope this article is better than the one I wrote earlier today and promptly
destroyed in disgust.
(Today I tried my first shot at a blog here on destructoid: I made a really poor quality blog
about relating to gordon freeman, and it really really sucked. It got a few comments hinting
at how much it sucked, so I took it down in shame and rethought my life choices.)

Now, explaining the video's relevance; I think that, more than any character that the best
game design team could create, a player will relate most to a character they have any
role in actually designing. Just about any character that the player designs themself, even
the abomination above, will be more meaningful to the player than Solid Snake or
Mario will ever be able.....Well, maybe not Solid Snake...

The first thing that made me think of this was the character I made for Oblivion. I instantly,
as soon as I was prompted to make a character, tried to make a character that looked like
me, despite the ability to make much more interesting races and designs. Sure, when I
made another character later, I picked a race that had abilities that were more useful than
my first. In spite of this, no matter how many other characters I made, even if I gave them
more effective abilities, I never cared about them. I didn't so much as make them as let
the computer design a generic character of a race that had better abilities for my chosen
class. I could run them to their death more times than I could count and not batt an
eyelash, but if my terribly thought out first character so much as got injured, I actually
gave a damn. Sure, they were a sucky character, but they had character. They were MY
sucky character.



I thought that maybe it was the fact that the character had my face, and that I simply didn't
like the idea of something with my semblance getting injured, but that wasn't quite it.
Each time I put any time into designing a character, whether it looked like a pale, teenage
dork, or some ugly troll that wandered Azeroth (aka, a pale, teenage dork), then I cared
about the character.
All my friends that I talked to said they felt the same way about characters they made with
even the tiniest bit of effort over the better, pre-made characters. Maybe this was just an
indicator that me and all my friends are very, very lame people.....Well, we're probably
lame people either way, but perhaps my point will still stand!
What do you think? Have you ever connected with a character you made over other,
arguably better characters?

On a different note, can you please give me any advice you can spare on writing these
blogs? I admit this one probably sucked balls, but not quite as much as my earlier one.
That one was a crime against nature.