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I Found Zero Company's Customization to Be Unnecessary | Semi-Ramblomatic (Patreon)

Published:
2026-10-08 15:03:00
Imported:
2026-10

Content

This week's episode of Semi-Ramblomatic is now available!

Files

I Found Zero Company's Customization to Be Unnecessary | Semi-Ramblomatic

This video is brought to you by Crystals of Irm, an old-school RPG with a distinctive combat system and dungeon crawler elements. – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1971470/Crystals_Of_Irm/ Sometimes being able to customize your main character can prove to be a bit detrimental to the intended experience. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SecondWindGroup Second Wind Merch: https://shop.secondwindgroup.com/

Comments

dirtside

Right there with you. I actually *just* started Cyberpunk 2077 the other day and aside from picking the female avatar and a couple changes to hair and eye color, that was it. Most of the time I don't even bother that much, especially in games where it seems like the avatar's appearance doesn't really matter. If an evil genie forced me to choose between "all games have a face mangler" and "no games have a face mangler," I'd pick the latter in a heartbeat.

Mikey

Surprised he didn’t mention the most realistic reason for the addition of the face mangler in zero company, which is that some executive producer put it on a list of “things modern games need” and no developer underneath them could get it off the list without fear of getting laid off, and so it just stayed on by committee.

Fas

Gonna have to big disagree on this one. Zero Company's customisation is a big reason on why I picked it up. I actually played female Hawks (twi'lek) and genuinely had no issues with Hawks as a character. Character customisation is a point in favour of a game for me personally, it's rare I stick with the default option even in games with a clear character (V,Femshep, etc) as it feels like a bit more personalisation. It feels like the pure idea of interactive narrative, the creators character coupled with a few personal touches. Also if you cba to customise it's pretty easy to just mash the confirm button a couple times and get the default character started in less time that it takes to have a sip of tea

Mike Higgins

My hawks was a green twinged twilek. I would have had exactly the same amount of fun with it if he had been generic box art man 1. It's utterly irrelevant, I made him a twilek because I could not because i needed to

Allan Anderson

My worn-down Devonian Hawkes and his big sideburns are canon.

Jakob Hjorth Hansen

Funnily enough, Baldur's Gate 3 didn't have a face mangler per se. You had like 7 faces or something. That said, I generally enjoy with playing with the char-gen and picking out the outfit. But I'm a silly roleplayer who likes to change outfit in CP2077 when I enter a club

Sevan Pasch

Funny your brought up Cyberpunk 2077, I actually feel exactly the same even though I did spend the time to customize my V. My problem was the specific sound of the voice that ultimately killed my interest in playing before even getting Keanu Reeves in her head. My V was a obscurely non-white trans woman who grew up in a neighborhood filled with characters with Latino accents, yet had a voice of a white lady trying to sound gruff. Meanwhile I could never see any part of my physical appearance I spent a lot of time on past the immediate opening, even when I deliberately tried to when taking a shower.

Allan Mills

One thing I've not seen in a game that allows you to adjust your character look is the ability to feed in a photo or use a webcam to have it approximate your appearance.

William Alexander

Always a pleasure to watch Yahtzee’s (and SW’s) video essays! These stand out all the more as fewer places are taking the time and effort to edit and organize their thoughts

Kav

By weird coincidence, some of the most unintentionally hilarious cutscenes I've ever watched came about in a game, the protagonist of which has (very nearly) the same name as Zero Company due to a perfect storm of very strange creative decision on the part of the developer and an (I think) unique choice on the part of myself. Dragon Age 2 is weird because in the sense that it's mechanically in line with out-and-out RPGs like... it's predecessor, and so has the full suite of customisation, but its protagonist has enough fixed, defining aspects to his character that a lot of customisation options don't work (some to a hilarious degree). Meanwhile, it's the only RPG I can think of where I've gone in 100% blind - not even the slightest idea what it was going to be about - having bought it years after launch and not known anyone who played it so I took the opportunity to see how I'd do without looking up a shred of supporting material. The last factor is that you do your customisation before you're told the character's status quo. My DA:O character was a young, unimposing, pleasant sort who just happened to be ungodly good at magic so I figured I'd go in the other direction. My Hawke looked like a hypothetical guy who taught Geralt of Rivia everything he knows. Maxed out height and maxed out bulk despite looking at least in his mid-60s. The longest hair and the biggest beard on offer, both white as the driven snow. A face chiselled out of granite. The combination of a voice like thunder and a delivery style that radiated pure, unadulterated authority, to the extent that it wouldn't be believable that 99% of people would stop what they were doing and listen if he said a single word... ...and then I had to spend the opening section of the game watching him talk using deferential words but most definitely not a deferential tone to his mother, who looked at least 20 years younger than him, which was at least hilariously surreal. Conversations with Carver, though, were off-kilter in a way that, while still hilarious when Hawke vocalised his lines, really damaged Carver's character. He and Hawke are supposed to be 18 and... slightly older than 18, with conversation trees that make it clear that Carver, to one degree or other, resents Hawke because he feels like his achievements and abilities are overshadowed by him. That's not remotely rational, given what Hawke achieves by dint of... being the PC in a BioWare game - but it doesn't have to be rational when, to Carver, they're basically the same age with basically the same life experience - he can believe it's all about who got the opportunities to shine and who didn't. It works... I mean, a teensy bit less well when he's sulking about people thinking he might be less capable than Hawke when, to start with, Hawke has handled literally everything that's happened in the city so far, and, far more importantly, Hawke looks and sounds like he's that one guy in a certain type of Shonen battle anime who's, to a comical degree, stronger than everyone else in the show but has some contrivance that prevents him from getting involved most of the time. It changes the dynamic a bit, you know? Good times. Good, sometimes hilarious, often very confusing times.

Cal

There was a Wrestling game that had that. I forget which one. It looked good enough for the time.

Cal

I always spend god knows how long in the character creator if I see them in cutscenes. I always think it’s cool to see them and go “That one is mine”.

Tim Wilson

I made some terrible life choices with my Shepherd in ME1. Thank god they let you try again in ME2… which was worse somehow. Went generic for ME3, really helped my experience personally. I did have a lot of fun with CP77 though. It’s first person but whenever I get on my bike I chuckle as I’m reminded I accidentally made Cyberpunk Majima.