I was making a new character and haven't done so in a while so I decided to hit new game for once. Rare, I know! Who hits new game anymore? Most people just reuse a save from the cart right before you and the Stormcloaks are going to be executed. So I go through the speech and I get to make a character. So I make an Orc. I put effort and love into making him. I truly did. I couldn't make him look perfect, but then again most people aren't visually perfect so it's really no big deal but I was content with him the way he was.Then came THE hardest part of all:NAMING the character! I was deciding on a name when I got a message, so I clicked the guide button on the 360 to read my message so it backs me out of Naming my Character because it uses a system from the Xbox Guide. However, once I read my message, it just goes and continues! So my Orc was named...well, Orc. I got pissed and switched to my other character. After that, I decided to try it again. Instead I reloaded the save with Ralof #2 and made my Orc again. However this time as I was trying to come up with yet another name, I realized I messed up my character so I pressed the Back button to fix it, but noo it doesn't ACTUALLY bring you back. Oh no. You see, when you pick a race, your name is whatever your race is by default so since I was an Orc, I got stuck with the Orc name again. How? Apparantly by hitting back when I was naming my character, it deletes the fact that I typed something in and sticks with Orc.

There is zero way to change your character through character customization and it is rather stupid. In Oblivion, I can adjust my face hair color(I miss you, RGB!) etc. AND change my name without all this stupid stuff. In addition, there is ZERO respecs in the beginning and that is stupid. In Oblivion, you chose who you were, and went through the tutorial. At the end, your character would be finalized but it allowed you to make changes in case you changed your mind part way through. This even extended to race, name, face etc. Why doesn't Skyrim have this? Why can't I be able to change my name or add in that one part of my face I forgot to add after Helgen? That is disappointing.

So TWICE I got screwed by the way character creation is implemented this time around. I had zero problems with Oblivion's character creation, I don't see why this iteration should either.

Thanks for hearing out an angry man.


P.S. Why is there no RGB wheel for hair/war paint? I don't really like most of the colors. Also, why is there no hair length slider? I'd much prefer that over the ridiculous amounts of choices we have now which are really just a limited amount but slightly longer and call it something new. It's like Apple inspired the hair system, just like the skills layout!

Simple, think of the name before hand to beat this bad system or if possible on PC maybe there is a mod to change Character Creation a lot! .. Just think of the name before hand and make sure you read no messages etc or do anything else until he is created.

- Emkayz x

Seems as if you needs mods to do anything these days.

This person is on Xbox, she said so.

Now the simplest solution is to think of a name prior to making your character. Tamriel Rebuilt is a mod for Morrowind, but it comes with a utillity for making NPC names; I often use it for making my character's names: http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/ngen

WARNING: Seemingly random outburst ahead.

As far as Oblivion VS Skyrim goes, it's a bit complicated but Skyrim's looks a ton better. Obviously, technology had its toll on that but...not as much as you'd think. Look at an Oblivion face and then a Fallout 3 face. What's the difference? One offers thousands of customization options, but no matter what you do it is hideous. The other always looks nice, but short from the facial hair, head hair, and eyes it will look the same as anyone else (maybe a little different). Skyrim took the same approach as Fallout 3. With today's technology, and even the technology in the far future, you will never see a facegen that looks as good as Skyrim, and has as much customization as Oblivion. It's just not graphically possible yet.

That being said, I do miss the RGB color option. Why was it removed? If I had to guess, in Oblivion you could make your character blue skinned (through glitches I believe; unless it was a mod) and have green hair. I'd guess Skyrim didn't want that kind of image anymore. They wanted a serious, this is a realistic medieval game, look so they just through out the options to make your hair whatever color you want. I don't have a huge issue with it, but I do miss it a little.

As far as "mods doing everything", c'mon...Sure mods are great. Sure, to me, they're the best part of a game but theres no way the developers of Skyrim could fit in one hairstyle for every person in the world. It's nice to have some customization, but imagine if you had to go through 9823 hair styles. You could just select a random one, but the people who want strong customization would go through each one and write down the numbers of the ones they like. After 20 or so hours, they MIGHT pick one to use. I'm a huge fan of customization in a video game, but asking for a billion types of hair styles just ain't cool. I don't have a single problem with Skyrim's customization. Mods even make it possible to change the facemaps for different races which alters how they look extremely. And if your on a console, you can't really complain about lack of customization. You choose to play on the console; I'm not saying that's better or worse, but console gaming does not offer mods or as much settings options. If you really care about customizing your game, pick it up for the PC. If you want to just play the game normally relaxing on a sofa far away, pick a console. You cannot have the same customization on a console as you do on a PC. It just doesn't work. At the same time, everyone on the PC that doesn't have a god-pc will experiance more crashes and lagg than on a console.

My point in that is if you choose to play on a console, you can't complain about lack of customization. That's PC territory. Just like you can't complain about crashes if you choose to play on the PC (although the consoles did have that infamous water bug :'( ).

This time, pick a name, make sure your look is final, and then continue on. I have my doubts you could mess up again

Just because you are forgetful, does not mean something svcks. Could I come to the conclusion that a manual transmission vehicle svcks because I am unskilled in its uses?

Should always save right when you jump off the carriage.

I did that once. Made a really good-looking character, but messed up the naming thing. I had to do it over again, and I ended up making an even more good-looking character.

Wow! I actually really like character creation. Even without mods I found it the best of the TES games so far. I guess everyone has a different take though


I don't really know what ypu mean about zero customization and not being able to go back. I see tons of customization and I can go all the way back until I actually name my character. The character name at the end is blank and I admit I've never tried to contiinue with nothing at all filled out for the character but its flashing cursor .

Can you go back on PC for some reason but not on the 360 . Doesn't make sense to me.

I know the people in Oblivion are hideous, but I'm talking moreso about how char creation was handled, not really about how they turn out aesthetic wise. I mean layout and stuff.


No, it's not an error on my part. I figured Skyrim would continue with set precedent. Is it wrong to assume that Bethesda would keep a sequel's mechanics fairly intact? How was I supposed to know that the BACK button, which means to go BACKWARDS, not FORWARDS would actually just send me FORWARD?

The lack of respecing ability at the end of tutorial and RGB sliders are valid complaints, but the name thing you mentioned isn't really the games fault. It's down to button mapping where they decided "back" =/= "accept". And I think that's fine, really. I wouldn't want two buttons doing the same thing anyway.

As for the message thing, that's just bad luck.

I'm not entirely sure how char creation in this game svcks. Playing on your Microsoft Xbox you received a message from a friend on Xbox Live that you decided to read while Skyrim needed input from you. And since you opted to skip away from the game, your name got messed up. Sounds like it isn't so much a problem with char creation.

The only problem I have with the character creator is the fact that there is no way to edit it after you're done (pre-Dawnguard). Just because there are no attributes, classes and birthsigns doesn't mean I don't want to change how my character looks after I've seen how they look in-game and played with them a bit. A edit right as you're about to exit the cave would have saved a lot of restarts.

Also, shorter haircuts.

I was also suprised that I could not finalize my character at the end of the tutorial level like in Oblivion...such a pain...oh well..

I admit, the first time was my doing by reading that message, but honestly, if this was Oblivion, NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. Also, you CANNOT name your character except at the VERY end, so if you accidently do something, you have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN. Again, this wouldn't matter in Oblivion since you could edit your name any time during creation and then you have to actually press "finish" unlike Skyrim where it automatically forces you to proceed...

Maybe if there was a respec after you finish the Helgen Cave maybe I wouldn't mind...