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Character Customization - TV Tropes

Altering the statistics of your character in relation to the game the character is in. It could either be altering the stats of an existing character, or it could be making one from scratch.

This has been around at least as long as Roleplaying Games have existed, and became a Video Game staple well beyond that genre. This is a popular mainstay in wrestling video games, which utilize the term "Create a Wrestler", or CAW, for the feature.

The exact statistics depend on the game, but there are some general ones:

• Name
• Personal information (age, family, background)
• Physical information (height, weight, gender, hair, skin and eye color)
• Equipment and clothes the character is wearing
• Attributes, often including at minimum a Three-Stat System or on average The Six Stats
• Skills and abilities
• The character's job (often means more how this character fights rather than a profession)

These are chosen either arbitrarily, from a list of presets, or randomly (such as rolling dice), but can also be a combination of the three. Sometimes, customization can also be changed later on if the game allows it (like when a character levels up). Expect Guide Dang It! when mistakes made early on turn out to be permanent.

Overlaps with Gaming Stat Tropes.

A Super-Trope to Special Snowflake Syndrome, Pre-Character Customization Gameplay (to give players an idea of their core gameplay loop before doing this), and Diegetic Character Creation.

Compare with Virtual Paper Doll, in which you change your character's clothes, and Class and Level System.

    open/close all folders 

    Action Game 

• Absolver allowed you to choose your gender, skin color and hair style, but you can't do anything about your face, considering it's constantly behind a mask.
• From Armored Core : fancy building Rei's Eva? Or Fokker's Valkyrie in Gerwalk mode? How about Rex? Difficult, but Awesome, go to it.
• Nintendo's Custom Robo series allows you to customize a fighting robot by putting together a central chassis body, a main gun, a secondary bomb weapon, a back-mounted pod launcher, and a leg attatchment.
• Drake Hollow gives you options for heads, bodies, hair, and color options for eyes, hair and skin. Character creation also gives you a small wardrobe of tops, pants and backpacks.
• Ghostlore allows you to choose your character's name, equipment, class, and even hairstyle before the first stage's briefing.
• Gundam Breaker has a lot of customization involved. The following features are all customizable on any given Gunpla you build in the game:
  • Your suit's basic parts (head, torso, arms, legs, backpack, and shield) and each part's specific stats
  • Your suit's standard ranged and melee weapons
  • Optional Builder's Parts that enhance your suit's performance or grant it new weapons or abilities
  • The color, paint quality, patterns, decals, and cosmetic damage level of each body part
  • The special abilities, attacks, and equipment that it can deploy
  • The nature of your Limit Break (focusing on attack, speed, health recovery, or time manipulation) and even what that attack is (such as the Heavyarms' More Dakka special or the Freedom's Beam Spam attacks)
  • Your Super-Deformed Robot Buddy's chassis, colors, and special skills
  • Your choice of personal avatar (based on the flight suits worn in the animes)
• Monster Hunter: World has an incredibly extensive character customization system, including one for your Palico. While there are no facial sliders, there are an extensive number of available bone structures and other facial features that help make your character unique.
• PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has this when you first boot up the game. You choose your gender, a face and hair style and could unlock more options with coins on.
• Ragnarok Odyssey allows the player a great deal of customization: face, hair style and color, clothing, skin tone, voice, and early on in the game, even character class can be switched. The only limitation to the customization is gender.
• S.L.A.I.: Steel Lancer Arena International has three levels of character customization. Firstly, you may choose to customize your in-game internet-based avatar from a wide number of various pre-rendered appearances, ranging from simple humanoid polygons on up to photorealistic humans. Secondly, you may purchase an AI chip to help you in your fighting and join in on your conversations in the course of the game. There quite a few of them, all of them being some kind of animal and possessing individual personalities. Finally, you may also customize your SV, first by picking a company to buy the core body from, then putting your Mini-Mecha together from a combination of limbs, weapons, additional gear, paint jobs, decals, and enough Elite Tweak options to make your head spin.
• Zombie Playground allows you to give the kid you play as any look, clothes, weapons, etc. you want. You can even give them a pet if you wish.

    Driving Game 

• F-Zero GX has a create a Vehicle mode. Incidentally, most of the player-made cars can or will be better than most of the stock vehicles.
• Mario Kart:
  • Mario Kart: Double Dash!! introduced interchangeable karts to the series, but 7, 8, and Tour are the only entries where the karts themselves are customizable, with different options for the chassis, wheels, and glider.
  • Tour and World allow the player to unlock different outfits for most of the characters.
• Twisted Metal 4 is thus far the only game in the franchise to offer an actual creation mode, allowing you to pick from among some vehicle body types and special weapons, then name and save the result. A few of the options harken back to past vehicles which aren't offered in the actual game.
• Being able to modify cars and paints in racing games is certainly not unheard of but this is what Forza is known for. Want any of Dom's, Letty's or Paul Walker's cars? Easy. Want police paint jobs? You can get Tasmania police paint jobs, standard, hi vis, forensics, for different vehicles. Want Ridge Racer? You can have a starting lineup of the real world cars the game models as well as the proper Dig, MMM, PRC, Assoluto, Age, ect designs for each one. Later games also allow you to design your own avatar.
• Need for Speed allow you to extensively customize car appearance in Underground, Underground 2, Most Wanted, Carbon, Prostreet, Undercover, SHIFT, the 2015 game, No Limits, and Payback, while the ones not listed only allow color changing or performance tuning.
• The two LEGO Racers games allow you to customize your character's appearance and construct your own custom vehicles brick by brick out of LEGO. More customization options and car sets are unlocked as rewards in the game.

    Fighting Game 

• Wrestling games often rely on their create-a-wrestler mode.
  • The Trope Maker for this genre is Super Fire Pro Wrestling III: Final Bout on Super Nintendo Entertainment System: despite all you could do appearance-wise being palette swaps, it already sported deep movelist customization, as well as possibility to change the CPU's behavior. However, only Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium on the same console would be the milestone for the later installments.
    • One of the draws of the Fire Pro Wrestling series is the sheer number of CAWs you can have. And since Fire Pro has 2D graphics, a lot of the programming that would have gone into the graphics instead went into being able to fully program the behavior of the created wrestler, making it big for simulators as well.
  • The Acclaim series of WWF games popularized the CAW feature in the US. WWF Warzone had almost fully customizable appearance, and its sequel WWF Attitude had for its day an incredibly elaborate CAW feature including the first fully-customizable moveset outside Japan.
    • The Create-A-Legend mode in the Legends Of Wrestling game series was an interesting experiment, allowing any move whatsoever (even a regular punch or snapmare) to be a finishing maneuver and allowing the loading of an in-game wrestler as a physical template. Another added bonus is the fact that unlike THQ's WWE games, a LOW CAL will look just like an in-game wrestler and fit in perfectly with the rest of the cast.
  • WWF No Mercy sports a lot of customization room, but enough premade stuff that it takes a fraction of the time to make a No Mercy CAW than it does to make one on the Smackdown series.
  • Some wrestling games have actually tanked due to an insufficient create-a-wrestler mode, such as Rumble Roses XX, which only had a dozen different pre-made templates and pre-made movesets.
  • Sadly, later games (especially in the Smackdown vs. Raw series) are moving away from complete customization, preventing players from playing female characters (such as Cute Bruisers) in the story mode, and blocking any attempt to add custom patterns or objects near the crotch (and chest of female characters). Got to keep it PG, after all.
  • Averted in WWE 2K16 and it allows the Difficult, but Awesome method of going to 2K's site and import face photos and logos to use on your characters. You can have the real faces of anyone you can think of and paint the clothing they wear over the outfits in the game, paving the way for endless options for the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.
• The Busou Shinki: Battle Masters PSP arena fighting games lets you customize the dolls part by part, much like the real toys can.
• Def Jam: Fight for New York has a surprisingly advanced character customization system for its time. Besides the face and skin color of the Player Character, they can change their clothing, which can also be changed to have certain parts rolled up or worn a certain way, jewelry, tattoos and their hair's cut and color. Though there are some restrictions like not being able to put a hoodie's hood up if the player has long hair. This is without bringing up their fighting style, which can be a mix between a few styles and the player being able to use just about every Blazin' move in the game, whether they be from an existing character or one that is unique to the player.
• Dragon Ball:
  • In the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai series, you can equip different capsules on characters that can give them upgrades to their stats or items to use mid battle. Notably though you also have to give them capsules to let them use some of their specials and infamously in the original trilogy, for some characters, many slots had to be used up for Transformation capsules, of which several, like Goku and Frieza, had a lot. Infinite World consolidated this to one single capsule aptly named "Transform!"
  • All the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi games allow you to tweak the stats of existing characters. Tenkaichi 3 lets you equip 'Strategy' items, that cause A.I.s of your custom characters to fight a certain way, such as focusing on defense, or focusing on using blast attacks from a distance.
  • In Dragon Ball: Raging Blast, aside from editing an item deck which can improve a character's stats, you can also freely edit their move set, allowing you to suit each character towards your playstyle.
  • Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Tenkaichi is the first Dragon Ball Z fighting game to feature character customization, allowing players to create their own characters (albeit limited to Saiyan males of three body types).
  • Dragon Ball Xenoverse and Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 go a step further, borrowing from two other DBZ games (Dragon Ball Online and Dragon Ball Heroes) to give players the choice between male or female Saiyans, Earthlings, and Majins as well as Namekians and Frieza's Race, with a fair bit of customization including height, build, skin tone, voice, and every aspect of their head and face.
• Fighter Maker: An inversion in comparison to the fighting games mentioned above. The appearance of the characters on the roster cannot be changed (and thus can be more accurately described as templates), however, the moves can be altered in edit mode however the player wishes (some elaboration on this here for those who are curious). In fact, the fighters can even be made to move as weird and ridiculous a manner (as shown here) that even Voldo (from the aforementioned Soul Calibur series would seem average by comparison.
• Genei Tougi: Each game in the duology allows Character customization of the fighters' movesets. Notably Critical Blow, the sequel to Genei Tougi: Shadow Struggle, has a very extensive customization option via the "Trading Mode". In this mode, the fighters' movesets could be modified by adding new moves, either unlocked in game or from trading with other players via PlayStation save cards, or upgrading already acquired moves.
• Injustice 2 allows players to customize their favorite heroes and villains in the game, which not only affects how they look, but also how they play.
• Similar to Fighter Maker, Kakuge Yaro gives players the ability to customize a selection of character archetypes. While their appearances cannot be changed (save for their color pallets), their movesets are highly customizable.
• One of LEGO Brawls' main focuses is the creation of your own custom Brawler using parts you unlock through playing the game.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Mortal Kombat: Armageddon had this feature applied to almost every aspect of the fighter, including moveset and endings. The bad thing is, only one character per profile is allowed, and you may need to kill some time on unlocking additional attire and moves.
  • Mortal Kombat 11 carried over the customization features from Injustice 2, albeit with abilities and aesthetics being separate from one another. Both games were developed by NetherRealm Studios.
• Psychic Force 2 features a "Psy-Expand" mode where you can level-up your characters and give them custom move-sets by using moves from the other fighters.
• In the Japanese Rival Schools games, it's possible to create an unique student character with other players' moves from the ground up. Sadly, it's a feature exclusive to the Japanese versions' Nekketsu Seishun Nikki mode, a Visual Novel-like mode in the PlayStation games and a Sugoroku-style board game in the Dreamcast one — the overseas ports have to settle with extra preset characters.
• The Soul Series, starting from Soul Calibur III, allows you to have custom characters, via the "pre-existing moveset+new appearance" scheme.
• Spore Creatures: Interacting with an unoccupied or dominated nest will send the player to the Creature Creator, where any parts that have been collected can be applied to their creature. Each part contributes to the player's stats in various ways. In fact, engaging with this system is regularly required to get past obstacles, gain new abilities, and generally build a better being. The player's creature can also be painted in numerous ways and can be given a name at the beginning of the game, though both these things are purely cosmetic.
• Street Fighter EX3 has a limited customization option with the new character Ace, which can be given movesets from the rest of the game's characters along some unique ones.
• Street Fighter 6 introduces World Tour mode, and with it, a fully customizable player avatar that can not only learn different moves from different masters much like Ace in SFEX3 above, but they can also be used in the game's Battle Hub mode as well.
• In Sunday VS Magazine: Shuuketsu! Choujou Daikessen, almost every character has extra special moves, which can only be unlocked by spending orbs obtained in the Quest Mode. Every character has a special move limit, so it's possible to customize the character's moveset to select a few of them.
• Super Smash Bros.
  • The series started featuring this in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, though in that game it is only exclusive to Adventure Mode, in which you can use Stickers to boost various attributes. For the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U games, a more robust customization system is featured. All the playable characters will have customizable special moves. For the majority of the characters, these are mostly variations of their default special moves. For Mii Fighters and Palutena, however, their customizable moves are completely unique. Speaking of Mii Fighters, they are based on your Miis (who on their own are customizable), they can be Brawlers, Gunners, or Swordsmen (all three having their own sets of special moves) and they are able to have customizable clothing. Neither customizable moves or Mii Fighters are allowed in anonymous online battles. In addition, there are equipable items that, like the Stickers in Brawl's Adventure Mode, affect certain attributes of your character.
  • While Super Smash Bros. Ultimate would dispense with custom specials for most of the roster, Mii Fighters would return with their customizable movesets, in addition to a more robust selection of hair and eye colors courtesy of the Nintendo Switch's improved Mii Maker, along with different voice options for Mii Fighters. The equipable items from the previous game would also be replaced with "Spirits", equipable images of other video game characters that bestow unique abilities and attributes which forms the cornerstone of the game's Adventure mode.
• Tekken 5 had personalized character customization as new addition to the game. Compared to later games, the customization is rather barebones, with only a handful choices per body part and a limited color palette, but it's a novel idea at the time. Dark Resurrection adds more customization items, though still a far cry from the extensive options that would be later added by Tekken 6. Tag 2 has a deeper customization mode that has just included emblems, but would be simplified by Tekken 7.
• The Con (2005) lets you create unique characters with unique stats, clothing, and physique. There's only five fighting styles to choose from, but the combos can also be partially customized.
• Virtua Fighter 4, as well as its sequels, allow the player to change the already-existing fighters' costumes. Not to mention that Virtua Fighter has this also incorporated for the arcade-going player character himself.

    First Person Shooter 

• Brink! has a very large customization system in which outfits are unlocked as you level up.
• Deep Rock Galactic gives each playable class a default appearance and weapon loadout, but leveling up lets you invest in combat perks, weapon upgrades, new guns, and a staggering away of cosmetic items from both the in-game item shop and the (permanent, free) seasonal Performance Passes that let you customize your look. Unsurprisingly, a lot of these are increasingly-elaborate ways to style your Dwarves' beards.
• Destiny is a first person shooter that incorporates RPG elements, including a character creator in which you can choose one of three classes, then one of three races, gender, then create your custom appearance. In game, the player can pick up and use a variety of different armors as well.
• FBC: Firebreak: The game features a variety of customization options for your kits and character. Along with collected research being used to add new buffs and gun alterations to your kit to affect gameplay, secondary customization (armor pieces and voice lines) which doesn't give any advantage are available to be earned with the same points. Specific sets of equipment can be bought with real money.
• Generation Zero allows you to change your face, gender and skin tone. Initially, you can only choose from a wardrobe of pre-selected outfits and hairstyle is tied to what style you select, but more options pop up once you get to the first safe zone.
• Every Halo game since Halo 3 has allowed you to customize your character (Noble Six, a random Spartan-IV, etc.) for every game mode, especially from Halo: Reach onward: you can pick gender, armor colors, and dozens of armor pieces that you can purchase with credits, earned in the game for just about anything. All the changes are completely cosmetic, though dialog will change slightly depending on chosen gender. This is especially funny since the original Halo: Combat Evolved was infamous for having everyone play as identical Faceless Mooks, in contrast to most FPSs where all the character models are default options for MP, and typical servers are full of custom player models.
• Many modern military shooters do this by providing the choice of equipment and perks in lieu of premade character classes. Modern Warfare is quite robust in this area.
• In the Rainbow Six series, Vegas allowed you to choose a head, facial hair and paint and pretty much nothing else... but it allowed you to scan your face to make a custom head.
  • In Vegas 2, you can customize Bishop to your liking, whether they'd be a man, or a woman. Unfortunately though, you can only pick one at a time per profile.
• Shadowgun Legends allows you to play as a new Shadowgun recruit (unlike it's predecessor where you exclusively play as veteran John Slade) whose character traits you can customize before the game begins. You can be of any gender, ethnicity, choose your armor designs, and even design tattoos and facial markings, hairstyle (or just go bald), jawline shape, forehead height, etc.
• Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has a fully-customizable character for the first time in the Borderlands series. It also has an option for "slider overdrive", allowing you to make characters with wildly disproportionate facial features.

    Hack and Slash 

• The Empires sub-series of Dynasty Warriors allow you to create your own warrior and edit their costume, body type, voice, and weapon style. The increase in number of custom character slots with every iteration also supports the 'have fun making as many characters as you want/can' mentality: DW4E had only four slots, DW5E had ten, DW6E had 100, and finally DW7E tops them all at a whopping 200.
  • DW4E allowed you to use original weapons, a la Soul Calibur 3, but in DW5E and DW6E your characters can only replicate styles used by the canon DW characters. Also, because its revamped battle system contained several characters with 'cloned' movesets (characters sharing weapon styles save for single 'EX' moves and Musou attacks), DW7E allowed for further, limited customization of your characters' combo strings and special attacks.
  • Another of DW7E's unique features is allowing you to set your creations as 'stand-ins' for the many, many generic officers in the game. You can't make everyone unique, as there are more generics than there are creation slots, but you can come fairly close.
  • DW7E also allowed for one to create characters with one of six "Fame" types that provide bonus stats and abilities: "Brave" (stat-buffing abilities, can be promoted to Marshal more easily), "Wise" (can use terrain-altering abilities and be promoted to Strategist more easily), "Kind" (contracts and alliances last longer, abilities that center around buffing oneself and others), "Orderly" (higher troop strength, can use more Strategems), "Affluent" (can earn more money and build special bases), and "Evil" (stat-buffs that are more powerful than "Brave" at the cost of harming allies, along with allies being more likely to defect unless they're also Evil, sworn siblings, or married to you).
  • Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires expands on the customization options of the previous game, allowing the player to also edit their troops, steeds, and banners.
• Koei's other mainstay, Samurai Warriors, allows players to both copy existing character weapons or use a generic spear, katana, or naginata moveset. The greatest distinction from the canon characters was the use of alternate skill sets, which might not quite completely mesh with a standard moveset. Fortunately, few Game-Breaker combinations happened as a result.

    Interactive Fiction 

• 80 Days: player character Passepartout's "character" and "manner" are influenced by player choices.

    MMORPG 

• Virtually every MMO ever created has some sort of character customization. Due to the (obvious) multiplayer focus of the genre, this is done for players to make their own characters be unique to them instead of choosing from presets.
• Dauntless allows you to choose a head template, skin colour, gender, hair, facial marks and has sliders for your facial features.
• Destiny 2 allows you to choose between three races, human, awoken and exo. Humans and awoken have different hair and skin options, humans having natural tones while awoken have purple and blue skin. Exos don't have hair, but they do have different head ornaments.
• As shown in the page image, EVE Online uses a mix of templates and sliders to determine most properties, but then also allows players to hover over their character's model, and click-and-drag certain highlit regions to re-shape body and bone structure. In a bit of grand irony though, because EVE is a game about spaceships, and further because most players play the game with multiple accounts simultaneously, virtually nobody will ever see much of the customization that goes in to any one character beyond what's visible in their portrait.
• Final Fantasy XI allows you to use any of the game's jobs (classes) as a sub-job to the main job being used, at half the main's level, provided it's been sufficiently leveled up before. There's also the option of earning Merit Points for boosts in stats or abilities, but those are only after you reach the level cap. However, some main/sub combinations and merit builds tend to be more widely used, although one can define a character by having a less-used build.
• Final Fantasy XIV gives players a choice between one of eight races, either gender, and a fairly robust variety of options for further customizing your character's appearance. In addition to the series's Job System allowing players to take on any class in the game, the Glamours system also allows players to project the appearance of any gear over their equipped armor and weapon.
• Perfect World International, an Asian MMORPG, has a HUGE character customization system; in addition, you can alter your character's appearance within two days of creation, and the Boutique item Makeover Scroll allows you to customize after that. Not to mention your choices in skin color...
• City of Heroes by Paragon Studios had, as one of its main selling points, a robust character creator, and the complete separation of costume and powers. This allowed for absolutely freaking ridiculous levels of customisation, and it was no exaggeration to say you would never encounter two identical characters that weren't made so deliberately. To elaborate, There were 3 Body types, 8 sliders to adjust that body type's individual "build", 4 different areas of the costume with each around 6 subzones which you pick a item for, which was then color customized with 2 colors and a pattern for those colors, and even the attacks were customized. There were also colors you could customize and for weapon-users you could change and recolor the stick you swing around or shoot people with. Then comes recoloring everything.
  • The Mission Architect feature allowed you to create custom missions and also allowed you to use the same character creator to make custom enemies as well.
• Star Trek Online has a massive amount of this. You are fully capable of customizing the race and appearance of your captain, of all your bridge officers, of your ship, your ship's interior (well, the bridge at the moment, with more coming), as well as the names, biographies, and abilities of your captain and all your officers. So long as you want to be a humanoid biped. The developers said this might be amended in expansions.
• The Multi-User Dungeon New Worlds Ateraan allows complete customization, from all the general ones mentioned to far more personality traits, accents, and more; since the game itself is based on roleplay, with players able to write their own characters (within certain guidelines), this results in a wide variety of characters.
  • For instance, the available clothing and jewelry is nearly all player-made, running the gamut from concise to incredibly detailed. Though there are rules set in place to prevent immersion-breaking items, there's still a gargantuan amount of text describing all sorts of outfits and garments. Similarly, tattoos and piercings are described by players in text, as is the sight, smell, and taste of food.
• World of Warcraft: May just be face, skin, and hair, but then you realise it has 8 (and counting) races with 2 genders, all of which have 3D models. You can make your character wear just about anything and have the final gear stats. While this isn't unique to the WoW, we are talking about a game where weapons are as varied as lightsabers to your plain old insanely large sword to a tentacle to a fish.
• Phantasy Star Online 2 has an extremely extensive character creator that in addition to allowing customization of basic features like hair style, skin tone, and eye color, allows you to fine tune your character's physical features like the shape of their eyes and face, arm and leg length, and muscle mass. The armor also doesn't obscure your character as in some other games (simply being small attachments on their costume that can be hidden if the player wishes), so your efforts won't end up feeling wasted later. Episode 4 also introduces "Layered Wear" which allows players to mix-and-match different costume parts.
• Korean MMO Black Desert Online has an incredibly diverse character creation system. In addition to the standard selection of eye color, hair, etc., it also allows custom-created hair, pupils, skin color, and extensive body morphing, including adjusting length of limbs, size of body parts, and more. All of this is done via clicking and dragging. See the trailer for it here.
• The fictional MMORPG Magience has so many options there's an AI to help the player through character creation.
• The Division has a very limited one, where you can select your character's gender, hair color, and other accessories.

    Platform Game 

• Android Hunter A: Before tackling a mission, the player can outfit A with eye-wear, head-wear, back-wear, and an aura.
• Cocoron offers 8 weapons, 16 body parts, and 24 head parts for when you make your six characters during the course of the game. This allows for 3072 combinations of characters.
• LittleBigPlanet lets you do this with the Gameplay Tweaker and various other Level Editor tools.
• Pizza Vs. Skeletons: You can buy things with coins you earn in the game to alter the pizza's appearance, from bodies, to face pieces, to clothes, to toppings.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic Battle (a Fighting Game spinoff), Emerl can be customized with skill cards, changing his moveset, power, and appearance.
  • Sonic Rivals allows you to customize its characters by obtaining cards. The first game in particular allows you to mix and match different outfits.
  • Sonic Generations allows you to customize either Sonic with skills, which alter the gameplay in various ways. They are categorized under Classic (exclusive to Classic Sonic), Modern (exclusive to Modern Sonic), and Timeless (available for both Sonics).
  • Sonic Forces features a customizable original character, with the base animals being a bear, wolf, dog, cat, rabbit, bird and hedgehog, each with their own inherent abilities. They can be equipped with gadgets called "Wispons" and can be further customized with a large number of cosmetic clothing which is awarded after completing levels. Male Avatars can dress either as much or as little clothing as possible, and surprisingly enough, female Avatars are capable of undressing to the same level as the opposite gender's default amount with the right cosmetics.
  • Sonic Colors Ultimate allows you to customize Sonic in various gloves, shoes and auras by obtaining Park Tokens throughout the levels.
• Toy Odyssey: The Lost and Found allows you to customize Brand with a variety of clothes and weapons.

    Puzzle Game 

• In Quilts & Cats of Calico, you can create a custom cat that can appear in the game as a visitor. You can customize its appearance such as its body type, fur color and pattern, and even make it wear clothes.
• Wonderland Adventures allows you to design the appearance of your character, or use one of the four existing characters.

    Rhythm Game 

• In the Rock Band games, you start out by picking your character's name, hometown, attitude (Rock, Metal, Punk and Goth; this determines what moves they use onstage), skin color, eye color, hairstyle and color, and set their physique with a pair of basic height and weight sliders. They all come with some basic clothes and instruments; new ones have to be bought later, using money earned in Tour mode.
  • However, due to memory limitations and pre-recorded song scenes, the Wii and PS2 versions of the first Rock Band feature pre-made characters, similar to those in Guitar Hero. While the Wii version of the second game has character creation, the PS2 version still does not.
• In Guitar Hero (which, starting from World Tour, included a character creation engine to help it compete with Rock Band), you can also choose the moves your character uses before the gig, after they have played the song, or if they got booed off the stage.
• Soundtrack Attack: Each of the game's save files house a seperate character — a Quartz, a Pearl, and a Ruby, respectively — while their gem placements are set, their colors, outfits, weapons and even some "Earth accessories" can be freely chosen by the player.

    Role Playing Game 

• Isometric CRPGs, being descendants of Tabletop RPGs, have a tendency to include character customization in one form or the other.
• ATLYSS has you choose from five different races, and allows you to customize their body (including hair, tails, height, width, chest (with or without boobs), arms, belly, and rear), their body and hair colors, what weapon you start with, their starting stats, and the color dye most of their equipment gets colored with.
• Baldur's Gate, being based on Dungeons & Dragons has always had a significant amount of this, though the depth depends on the game.
  • The first two games have the player build a character in second edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, choosing a race, class, stats, and setting the colors of skin, hair, and clothing. The character also selects a portrait from one of several dozen included. Some versions of the game (or those using a Game Mod) can add new portraits to choose from.
  • Baldur's Gate III zigzags this trope. Players have the option of creating a custom protagonist or selecting one of seven Origin Characters with a set backstory and quests relating to them. Custom characters and The Dark Urge are fully customizable, choosing among races (some including Subraces like wood elves or high elves), classes, as many as four body types (male, female, plus a taller and more muscled version of each that doesn't affect gameplay). Each class then gains a subclass somewhere in the its first three levels that further differentiates it both thematically and mechanically. There's also an extensive cosmetic creator...that's only usable by custom characters, The Dark Urge, and hirelings. The remaining six Origin characters, and the four recruitable party members who can't be the main character all have a completely fixed appearance, not allowed to change to so much as a hairdo. Origin characters are free to change their class once Withers has unlocked respeccing, but Shadowheart, Wyll, and Gale's personal quests will still treat them as their default classes for storyline reasons.
• Beastieball: Not only the appearance of the protagonist is customizable, but also their phone color and pronouns, including gender-neutral they/them as well.
• Present in Bound by Flame, albeit very limited. Each gender has five options for faces and six options for hairstyles. Skin color is tied to face and hair color is unchangeable.
• This is one of the biggest draws in Dark Souls. You're given a choice of ten classes, eight "gifts" that can be added to your starting equipment, and have access to a powerful appearance editor with more options than you can shake a stick at. The game is also a Stat Grinder, focusing on leveling individual stats to fit your build. And that doesn't even touch on the metric shit ton of gear and spell options available in the game proper.
  • Between the Souls games and Bloodborne, From Software lets you spend an awful lot of time tweaking individual facial details that - given the sheer variety of face-concealing helmets, masks, hoods and the like you can wear - nobody will ever see.
• Code Vein has an impressive character editor, with dozens of options for everything, from eyes to makeup, to scars. It also provides an extensive array of accessories and, to top it off, utilizes a color palette for everything mentioned. This allows fully customize your anime protagonist, assuming you don't care for facial sliders at all.
  • God Eater, from the same developer, also has a character creator but with less options for everything than Code Vein.
• Cyberpunk 2077 allows you to create your protagonist, named V. You can change their hair, eyes, sculpture their face, pick out tattoos and teeth. The game has a fluid approach to gender, and because of that you don't simply pick out a "male" or "female" V- instead, you can choose a body, voice and even genitals separately. You also assign points to appropriate stats and pick out one of three available "lifepaths", essentially giving your V a backstory. You can choose from Nomad, Streetkid or Corpo.
• Deltarune:
  • The game opens with a Subversion. The player is presented with what appears to a typical character creation sequence, which gives them the option to design, name, and give a few traits to "a vessel". However, upon completion, the game first congratulates the player on their new creation, but then informs them that said "vessel" will be discarded immediately, since the player is not actually allowed a choice in who they play as. The game proper then begins, and the player is given control of Kris, the protagonist, who's name and appearance is predetermined.
  • In Chapter 1, the player can customize a machine that the villains plan to use to thrash your ass. The Thrash Machine comes back in Chapter 2 to be used by another boss, before being used by the heroes, with its properties in both instances being affected by the components used to make it.
• Deus Ex starts with distributing skill points among JC Denton's skills, choosing one of predefined skins for him and giving him a "real name" (which matters little as characters call him JC Denton anyway).
  • It is also possible to choose JC's skin color, which also affects his brother Paul. But just as well, this makes no gameplay difference.
  • The option to play as a female JC was planned, but rejected due to time and budget constraints. This was added much later by a fan mod.
• Divinity 2 has a very rudimentary system that allows you to change four things only: the character's gender, head preset, hair, and voice.
• Dragon's Dogma and its sequel provide a deep level of character customization for yourself and your personal Pawn.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest III has you build your own party and choose their names, genders, and vocations (which can be changed later on, except for the player character who is permanently locked to being a Hero), which is actually pretty impressive for the 8-bit era. The SNES remake introduces personality as well (though as Heroic Mimes, this only affects stats and not story), and the HD-2D remake adds four different face/headgear sets for each gender/vocation combo, hair colors, and voices.
  • Dragon Quest IX has a TON of Character Customization. The player can choose skin tone, hair color, hair style, and eye color and style. They can choose the character's vocation (which can be changed later on) along with which weapons to have them use and level up with. What's more, there are over 900 Clothing Items to choose from.
  • Dragon Quest X lets you make a character from one of Standard Fantasy Races, and choose your character's vocation (which can be changed later on).
• In Dungeon Dreams 2 Azure's skills, traits, and appearance can be tailored based on player choices.
• Every game in The Elder Scrolls has allowed for customization of the Player Character during character generation. Starting off by giving the choice of a few pre-made faces per race, the options for customization have advanced dramatically as the series has gone on with the expected game engine and graphical enhancements. Unfortunately, choosing to wear heavy armor often leads to Concealed Customization, as heavy armor helmets quite often obscure your character's face. From Morrowind onward, since (humanoid) NPCs are all made by the dev team from the same character customization system, you can even edit how they look if you're willing to poke around in the creation kit.
• In Faery: Legends of Avalon, players have a variety of standard options (gender, name, and appearance) at the start, but during the course of the game, they have the opportunity of changing the customising their character further, since certain upgrades effect appearance as well as gameplay. Some changes are relatively minor, like getting tattoos, but others involve growing horns, antennae, extra wings, or tails.
• Fake Happy End: The player can name the protagonist and is given a template image in the game folder so they can use a different image for the protagonist's combat portrait.
• The first two entries of the Fallout series only allowed you to choose which gender you wanted to play as. Tactics allowed you to choose your character's portrait and the colors of your armor. The 3D games had a much more fleshed out system that, among other things, provided facial sliders and racial options.
• Fantage has a lot heavier focus on customization than most other non-fashion based kid's games. It could be argued that the real point of the game is to get as much money as possible so you could buy tons of accessories, outfits, and costumes.
• The multiplayer component of Final Fantasy XV, "Comrades", allows players to create their own character using a very extensive system. After creating their character, players can unlock additional outfits and hairstyles, as well as equip up to four unique weapons, including (but not limited to) katana, daggers, spears, crossbows, and shields.
• In For the King, a character's class determines their starting stats, abilities, and equipment, and their basic appearance (in combination with gender/species: each class has a single human male character model and a single human female character model; additional species such as Fish People and Cat Folk may be unlocked, in which case each class also has a single character model of that species, gender not specified). Players can choose their character's skin color, hair color and costume color (which any clothing item the character equips will change to match), pick their starting outfit (which has no gameplay effect), and name their characters whatever they choose.
• Aside from letting you choose your gender, GreedFall has a selection of faces, hair styles, and skin, eye and hair colors for you to choose from. You won't be able to remove that mark on your face but men have the option to grow a beard over it.
• The Forgotten City has an incredibly limited variation of this. You can select your gender, but that only affects your voice and your hands. Male hands are slightly bigger and rougher than their female counterparts. You can then choose your hands' skin colour before choosing among four backgrounds.
• Knights of the Old Republic begins with choosing your character's gender and class, picking one of appearances, giving them a name and allocating stat points, skill points and feats.
• Insignificant 2019 allows you to dress and arm your character any way you like.
• Marvel: Avengers Alliance lets you customize your Agent's gender, facial features, skin tone, hair color and style, and name, though in the last case everyone will still call them "Agent".
• Mass Effect games open with an extended exercise in face-building, followed by picking a class and choosing a bonus talent. Mass Effect 2 on top of that also has customisable paintjob for your armour.
• Miitopia features Mii characters in a prominent role, allowing players to not only create their own party of adventurers with a variety of different classes and personalities, but other key figures in the game's story, including the Dark Lord and the royal family.
• Used in every Dungeons & Dragons-based CRPG ever written, with varying degrees of freedom. Neverwinter Nights 2 has the most extensive system. You pick a racial group (e.g. elf, planetouched), usually a subrace (drow, aasimar), put a face together and pick your height and weight, choose an alignment, a class, a patron deity (optional unless you're a divine spellcaster), ability scores, a background trait (optional), and then you can either choose from several class builds or develop your own from a list of skills and feats. Then you pick your name, age, and write a biography.
• Unlike its predecessor, Ni Oh 2 allows you to select your gender and race from the get-go, alongside an incredibly in-depth character builder.
• The Outer Worlds, much like the game it spiritually succeeds, has a pretty good character creator that matches its zeerust theme. Unlike most other examples here, the game is played with an entirely Unbroken First-Person Perspective, so the only time you ever see your character is when you look at yourself through your menu.
• In the JRPGs Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5, you choose the Main Character's name, and due to the Dialogue Tree, the character's overall personality. (This doesn't effect how the characters think of you, however. At least not during Social Links.) Further, later releases' fusion and skill card systems let you make teams of Guardian Entities with customized skills and stats.
• Pillars of Eternity and its sequel. The players are able to select the name, sex, class, race (including sub-races), culture, traits, ability scores, portrait, and class-specific skills and talents for their characters at the beginning of the game. In the game, however, there are no equipment restrictions period, meaning you can equip whatever you want. Unless you're Godlike, in which case you cannot wear any type of headgear, for fairly obvious reasons.
• Pokémon X and Y introduced this for the first time. Along with the standard name and gender, the player could also pick the character's skin color. Later on in the game the character's hair and outfit can be customized by buying clothes and accessories in game and visiting hair salons. This feature returned in Sun and Moon and Sword and Shield. In the generation 1 remakes, Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee, you only get outfits from certain NPCs, but you also get identical outfits to customize your Partner Pikachu and Eevee.
• Sands Of Salzaar allows you to select your class. Once you select your class, you can either use the preset or make your own character. However presets have their own world sprites, while custom characters must choose from generic sprites.
• The Super Robot Wars series is understandably limited when it comes to the weaponry of the various mecha under your command, although the distribution of pilot and/or skill points and parts can be used to make Kouji Kabuto into a nimble dodger, even though he's predisposed to be more of a Tank. The Original Generation games, though, are a little freer in the availability of mechs, and at least half the weapons can be freely distributed among any Real Robots on your team, making it much easier to alter various pilots to fill a needed niche in your forces.
  • Super Robot Wars Alpha allowed you to choose from eight starting characters and then customize their name, birthday, blood type, and other details. The birthdays determine which Spirit spells your main pilots get. All eight of the default characters featured in the Original Generations series.
  • Depending on the origin of the character in question, and the various plots surrounding them, you can even customise what they pilot. Many Super Robot pilots are stuck in their mecha of origin, except for certain mid-game upgrades into something better, but most Real Robot pilots can switch into anything else in your roster, so long as it's from their series, (and thus has controls they know how to use) so you can have Amuro Ray in a Rick Dias, or Emma Sheen in the Zeta Gundam, or even put Boss into the Mazinger Z, and Kouji in the Boss Borot. Not that it's a good choice, but you can do it.
• Used oddly in Torment: Tides of Numenera. You can customize the Last Castoff's class, skills and abilities to your heart's content, but you cannot change their physical features at all outside of deciding their gender. This is actually a plot point: the Last Castoff was born in the Changing God's most recently-abandoned body, and so has to deal with the consequences of wearing someone else's face.
• Twilight 2000 offers the ability to customize a character's entire background, choosing hobbies, career and education for the character throughout his entire lifetime. Each choice allowed the player to increase specific skills related to that choice, giving a character who has both a history and physical/mental attributes to match that history.
• Tyranny has this as well, but not to the extent of most isometric fantasy RPGs. You still have a lot of options for faces, hair and tattoos, you only have three body types and humans are the only race present.
• White Knight Chronicles gives you complete customization of one PC. While he doesn't say anything or do anything outside of battle, just seeing him get into position for a boss fight gives you a jolt of pride because ''you created him."
• In Xenoblade Chronicles X, there is an extensive character customization where you can customize the gender, eyes, hair, height, skin tone, facial features and even voice and personality of your character. The player can also set a specific outfit so the outfit stays the same when switching gear. Mid way through the game, the player can complete a small chain of sidequests to unlock the ability to redo most of the character customization. This is justified because the humans in this universe are Ridiculously Human Robots.
• Grim Dawn lets you customize your name and gender at the creation screen. During the game, you develop your attributes, masteries, skills and devotion. Respec is possible for your attributes, skills and devotion, but not for your name, gender and masteries.

    Shoot-em-up Game 

• Comet Busters! gives players the ability to customize their ships' attributes — acceleration, max speed, turning speed, bullet speed, and the strength and type of their special power.
• R-Type Final 2 has way more customization options than you think a shmup ever needs. You can customize your pilot's name, look, and your pilot's profile. You can customize any ship with a variety of colors and decals. You can set any Gallery image as your menu screen. You can change the name of stages. You can even change the game title for whatever reason.

    Simulation Game 

• Animal Crossing
  • Rover's/Kapp'n's quizzes at the beginnings of the first games determine your character's face. In the later games, having Shampoodle in your town allows you to change your hairstyle, hair color, eye color, and replace the default face with your Mii. Starting with New Horizons players were free to customize their looks in their home mirror from the start and do so at any time.
  • Happy Home Designer changes it up by having Tom Nook lose his hiring forms when his newest employee is about to arrive, asks Lottie for their name, and has to recall their gender and appearance. Unlike the other games in the franchise, this gives you actual freedom to customize your appearance, with twelve different eye styles (which ones you get depends on the gender chosen), six eye colors, eight skin tones, sixteen hairstyles (again, depending on the gender) and sixteen hair colors to choose from.
• When you begin APICO, you are able to create your character from a simple menu which includes selecting their name, clothing color, and hairstyle.
• In Card Survival: Tropical Island, you can customize your player character by selecting between several portraits and adding as many perks and handicaps as you'd like to adjust the game's difficulty.
• Each playable spaceship in FTL: Faster Than Light comes with a predefined crew whose names and skins (and gender) can be freely changed on the ship select screen. Their names can also be changed later on the crew manifest.
• Growing Up:
  • Starting in elementary school, you can customize your character's clothes and even request new ones from your parents. In middle school, you can also spend money on more clothes and even new hairstyles, but you can no longer request new clothes from your parents in high school.
  • You can choose from eight preset appearances for your parents, and your character will inherit their skin and hair color. However, this can only be done in your first playthrough as subsequent runs will use your character from the previous run and their love interest^note whether it's one of their classmates or a randomly generated NPC as the parents of the next protagonist.
• Hometown Story has this as well for the character's appearance. Everything can be changed later in the game except for eyes and skin color.
• Kitty Powers' Matchmaker:
  • Players can personalize their character and perform a personality quiz to create their own profile. There is an option that allows players to allow their character data (minus the name) to other players, who will try to successfully match the character with other people. As the series takes place in a world where same-sex marriage is considered both normal and legal, clients can ask to be matched up with someone of the same sex.
  • This plays a role for the client before starting the date. You can change their appearance to better appeal to their candidate and even buy a gift for them, but doing so is time-consuming in-game. Spending too much time getting your client ready will earn you a strike from the candidate for showing up late.
  • Customizing your client returns in Love Life, where giving them a makeover will impress their partner when leveling up their relationship. It'll also allow them to discuss topics related to their look again if they already talked about it to their partner before the makeover.
• In Potion Permit, you can choose between a male or female avatar at the start of the game, and also customize your skin color, hair color, hairstyle, eye color, and clothing color. You can change your appearance any time at Silky Stitch Tailor's, which provides more color options for your hair, eyes, and clothes.
• In the Doctor Mode DLC of Project Hospital, you can create your own employee for a fee by customizing their facial features, hair and skin tones, occupation, and perks.
• Roots of Pacha: At the start of the game, you can choose your gender^note there's a nonbinary option, hair color, skin color, hairstyle, eye color, eyebrows, and clothing color. You can change your appearance (except for gender and skin color) anytime with Jukk while you can buy new clothes from Jizu.
• The Sims allowed you to create your own custom household, allowing you to select the age and gender of your occupants. It also has various sliders for face, skin color, hair, eyes, body shape, muscle or fat levels, and all the other clothes and accessories you could want.
• Story of Seasons started offering this first in Harvest Moon 3, where you could change the color of your two main characters, Pete and Sara. A bit more customization was offered in later games (changing clothes in More Friends of Mineral Town with a mirror, buying clothes for you and your kid in Animal Parade) but A New Beginning allowed players to be able to completely dress up as another gender. Then starting with Story of Seasons (2014), players could at any time change their looks from head to toe in their closet, including full changes of hair, eye shape, and hair color and skin tone. The remake Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life (and followed by Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar) lets players choose three gender options (male, female, and non-binary) by picking their pronouns at the start. There are also different skin colors, eye colors and shapes, hair styles, and in Grand Bazaar additional facial hair options.
• World's Dawn permits you to choose your Purely Aesthetic Gender and one of eight hairstyles (four for each gender). As the game progresses, you can also get new clothes.

    Sports Game 

• In Arc Style: Baseball!! 3D, you can customize every member of your 12-man team, including name, body build, skin color, haircut and hair color, eyes and eye color, mouth... Even handedness.
• Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions: In the Episode of New Hero mode, it is possible to create a personalized player who enters the Musashi, Furano, Toho, Hanawa or Nankatsu teams. Not only his position, stats and appearance can be personalized, but he is also able to learn techniques (including the special shots) from the other characters in the game by befriending them.
• All of the various EA Sports Street series include custom characters and single-player modes built around building them up into unstoppable athletes. NBA Street is notable among these for being the only one to allow both male and female characters.
• There're no visible human players in Golf With Your Friends; rather, you can customize the ball itself by changing its color and choosing one of many hats and trails.
• The Madden NFL series has included Create-a-Player mode as far back as 1995, but it wasn't until 2005 that it began to include Superstar Mode, devoted specifically to that custom player's career. As for how much you can edit the real-life players, that varies from year to year, but at the absolute maximum degree of freedom, you can change their name, stats, and appearance completely.
• The NBA Ballers trilogy absolutely loved this trope, and each game featured its own story mode specifically designed for custom characters.
• NHL Hockey: Though players can make their own players, there also exists a way for them to create NHL players that were otherwise passed over by the game.
  • NHL '12 now allows for female players to be made.
• Puck OFF: You can create your own player and change his clothing while unlocking clothes from the game. If you manage to get a dev build, there's even crazier clothes as you can use the clothes of every single boss of the game.
• SkateBIRD: You can alter Bird's species and put little hats and accessories on them. You can also change the design on the skateboard, as well as the colour of the wheels.

    Stealth-Based Game 

• Subverted to hell in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. At the start of the game the injured protagonist is told by his doctor that he requires Magic Plastic Surgery in order to conceal his identity. The player is then given access to in-depth customization options that allow them to alter many aspects of their character's physical appearance up to and including a Race Lift. After this lengthy process the doctor confirms your selection and then is abruptly assassinated before he can change anything, leaving the player with Big Boss's default appearance. The process is not entirely pointless however as the created character can later be used as an avatar for multiplayer and in single player after The Reveal at the end of Episode 46 that Venom Snake is actually the Medic from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes.

    Third Person Shooter 

• Aliens: Fireteam Elite allows you to create a custom marine with an assortment of faces, skin, hair and eye colors, and hair styles. In addition, you can select a class kit and further customize your character with cosmetics. You can even change the color of your guns.
• Battlefield Heroes, while it doesn't let you customize your character's gender, gives you total control of them otherwise. Hair color, skin tone, and background are all up for grabs, as are weapon loadout and clothing.
• Defiance allows you to choose your gender, class, race (human or alien), and skin color. Your character can be further customized with options for eye color, hair, makeup and tattoos.
• Possible in Ghost Recon Wildlands not just for you, but for your squad. While lacking any facial sliders or non-tactical hair options/colors, the system allows you to have a diverse squad at your disposal.
• In a first for the series, Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain allows the player to customize their EDF soldier to an extensive degree, changing their gender, body type, hair, face, clothing, and other aesthetic choices, alongside the more relevant to gameplay "PA-Gears," effectively a class system.
• Outriders has a series of premade heads and military hairstyles. You can choose the colors for your skin, eyes and hair, men can have beards, women can wear makeup, and both have access to scars and piercings.
• Remnant: From the Ashes allows you to choose your gender, age, voice and colours for your eyes hair and skin tone. There are no sliders, but you do have a preset selection of heads.
• Sunset Overdrive allows you to change your character's physical appearance, gender, and clothing to your tastes.
• Splatoon allows you to customize your gender, skin color, and eye color, with Splatoon 2 adding hairstyles and legwear on top of it. The rest of your clothing must be bought at the shops, as your outfit is tied to your abilities.
  • Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion adds two more character customization sequences where the player determines the appearances of both Agent 8 and Agent 3 in a manner similar to the initial character creation in the main game, with the differences being that both Agent 3 and Agent 8 have no legwear options, while Agent 3 has no hairstyle options and is limited to only seven eye colors as opposed to 14. Both are justified: the former just has the one outfit until they reach Inkopolis at the end of the campaign, while the latter is a deliberate Call-Back to the more limited options in Splatoon 1.
• Downplayed in Star Wars Battlefront (2015). You can customize your Rebel character's species, and their head/face if they're human. You can customize your Empire character's armor, and head/face if they're a standard stormtrooper.
• Warframe has the usual color and accessories customizable titular Warframes, but not only that, later in the game after you discover your actual avatar character, you customize them too.

    Trading Card Game 

• Yu Gi Oh World Championship , ever since 2009, not only allows you to create your own dueling deck, but also your own character. This includes clothing, duel disk, hairstyle, and face, rendered in 3d. More customization can be unlocked through gameplay.

    Turn-Based Strategy 

• The disc-based version of Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! allows the player to make their own monster.
• Fire Emblem has featured this in recent installments:
  • Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem lets the player create a character a la the tactician from The Blazing Blade. One can choose their hair, face, eye/hair color, and their class.
  • This feature returns in Fire Emblem: Awakening. However, the role the character plays in the plot is far more significant. He/she also has the privilege of being able to support with every playable character, marry any of the opposite sex, and has their own unique class, Tactician.
  • It returns again with Fire Emblem Fates, with the addition of the created character now becoming the central Lord rather than the deuteragonist as in the previous games.
  • In a recent update, Fire Emblem Heroes has given limited customization options to Kiran, the Avatar of Heroes. After the Version 5.2.0 update, Kiran's previously ambiguous appearance became customizable to a limited extent.
  • Averted in Fire Emblem: Three Houses onwards — this time, you can't change their physical appearance beyond their gender (likely because of the inclusion of CGI cutscenes that clearly show the Avatar's body).
• You can change the eyes and hair of your daughters in Othercide. In addition to that, you can change their clothes, weapons and particle effects.
• Nearly all of Nippon Ichi's games feature this to some extent, but the really big one is Phantom Brave. Through a very complex fusion system and a level cap of 9999, your characters and their weapons can become customized to a huge extent. You can cut a bloody swath across the dungeon while wielding a starfish.
• Warlock: Master of the Arcane allows player to customize his or her wizard.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown allows you to customize a soldier's name and callsign, appearance, nationality, headgear/hair, and armor style. XCOM 2 goes even further, allowing you to mix and match armor components, add tattoos or facial decorations like goggles or piercings, pick a non-English language, and even select a soldier's personality, which affects how they compose themself on the squad select screen and their battlefield voice clips. On top of that, the Steam Workshop is full of mods that add additional purely cosmetic options to help make every XCOM soldier utterly unique. The joke goes that players can spend hours customizing a soldier, only for them to die in their very next mission.

    Wide Open Sandbox 

• The ultimate selling point of Cereal Soup, an animal MMORPG that allows players to customize their avatars from their size, color, eye and nose shape, claws, markings, ears, tails, tufts, manes/hairstyles, horns and tusks, and while not necessary, they may also write in their character's biographies, gender identity, and even their body scent in the Character Creator before loading them into the game.
• Darklands also pursued a complicated background-based character creation, where choosing your character's upbringing and career allowed ending up with extremely varied results. This sort of character customization naturally takes more time, but results in a character that has a reason for his particular stats. You could also customize the character's appearance as well as his coat of arms. Unfortunately, a bug in the game meant that occasionally, a character's visual appearance data could get corrupted, ending up with neon-colored hair, clothing or both.
• Your diver's gender and looks in Endless Ocean and its sequel are determined by your answers while filling in your employee information with the diving service you've just joined, but they are limited to adjusting your skin tone and hairstyle. You unlock new hairstyles, as well as more diving gear to equip, by completing missions during the story.
• Far Cry 5 and Far Cry: New Dawn allow you to choose your gender and customize your character from a bunch of pre-selected faces, hair styles and clothing options.
• Grand Theft Auto V's sub-game GTA Online allows you to create your own character, male or female, defining his/her appearance with a genealogy system (i.e. depending on who you choose your father and mother to look like, your character will take after both of them).
• In Here Be Monsters, you can customize your Folk's hair color, hairstyle, skin color, eye color, and clothes.
• Your avatar in Hytale has a large amount of features to customize in the "My Avatar" menu, such as eye color, hair style, hair color, facial hair, clothing, hats, accessories, ears, expression, and race. Some of the clothing options were created to fit in the Adventure mode's fantasy world, but there's also modern clothing and themed costumes for player expression in minigames. Server owners have the ability to override how characters can look if they wish to stick to a particular theme.
• In Impressive Title, players can customize their lion avatar by changing head and tail shapes, color, size, markings, and if they wanted their character to fly, also add bird, dragon/bat, or butterfly wings as well.
  • FeralHeart adds more features, such as the ability to choose different animal species (albeit from only two species, which are feline and canine), along with increasing or decreasing the lengths or sizes of the chin, nose, eyes, and forehead so characters can have different faces on top of their already-customizable bodies.
• Minecraft lets you change the skin of your character by uploading an appropriate texture image to your account.
• Mount & Blade allows you to choose your character's gender, background, stat distribution, and appearance. The first two traits determine your starting gear and some of your baseline skills and stats.
• Outward has a limited system, with only a few choices for each of the standard options.
• Available in Planet Explorers, to a moderate degree. Players can customize their character's skin colour, hair colour, hairstyle, face, eye colour and body shape.
• The Saints Row series has a very extensive character appearance system that allows you to change virtually all of your physical features, including your body weight and walking style. In the 2nd and 3rd games, you can also change their voice and gender, the former of which has become famous for its literally insane levels of in-depth customization far surpassing that of many MMORPGs. In fact, it's so in-depth that every NPC was made with it - and here comes the tutorials for making your character look like Johnny Gat or Shaundi.
  • Prior to the release of the remake, a free demo was released specifically to show off the improved character creator.
• The gameplay of Spore is based on this. The parts you use for your creature determine its abilities.
• The Precursor vessel in Star Control II is left entirely to your whims in terms of modules and armament, once you make contact with the Earth Starbase and have sufficient Resource Units. Crew quarters, fuel tanks, weaponry, and storage units are all available to pick and swap amongst the available slots, and given you can sell them back for just as much as you spent, it's encouraged to maximize your efficiency.
• Wasteland 2 allows players to create a party of rangers, customizing their stats, appearances, and backstories (nationality, religion, favorite brand of cigarettes, etc.). The Director's Cut version of the game includes "Quirks and Perks" for further customization, with quirks providing different advantages and downsides.

    Other 

• AI Dungeon 2 allows this through the use of the remember command. While most of its stories start out with a predetermined number of scenarios, using the command before going too far will allow the AI to better create a story around the character.
• Boyfriend Dungeon has a sprite creator that includes your name, pronouns, skin color, and hairstyle. It also has a wardrobe for the various outfits and hats you unlock.
• CardGames.io allows you to change the avatars and names of both the player character and the AI opponents. Previously, the feature for customizing computer players was locked before the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• The main draw of Cribbage With Grandpas. You can create your own grandpa to serve as your AI opponent, customizing his name, facial features, personality traits, and how chatty he is.
• Facebook allows you to create a custom avatar for your messenger stickers that is surprisingly option-heavy with a bevy of hair styles, face and body shapes, and facial options and accessories.
• In Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, color schemes, patterns, faces, and costumes (consisting of top and bottom halves) can be used to give your character a unique appearance.
• Flight: The plane's color scheme and pattern can be customised.
• Forge Quest allows the player to customize their character's outfit, hair colour, and species before the game proper starts.
• Gunnerkrigg Court offers a non-game example here, as a robot is told to pick its new appearance. Options include an adult male, a girl elf with purple hair, an old man, and the robot is advised against green skin with orange hair.
• Harry Potter: Puzzles and Spells: You can create a custom avatar for your player profile, with options to change facial details, hair color and clothes, along with adding glasses. You can also select your house and wand.
• Loch Ness: The character customization screen is available from the title screen. In it, you can change your character's appearance and even give them, among other things, horns.
• "LEGO DC Super-Villains": From the start of the game, you are allowed to make your custom characters from power-ups,hair, emblems, abilities, and much more.
• To add to the menagerie of genres Pixel Piracy already exhibits, each pirate you hire has his own set of skills and stats that upgrade over time.
• Hero Forge takes the Hero Machine: You can choose races like humans, raven persons and naga, customize their faces and body types, add horns and wings and choose their colors and gear. You can even have it 3D-printed as a miniature for a fee.
• Midnight Fight Express: Babyface can be customized in various ways, complete with different skins that can make him look like different enemy types.
• The itch.io game Juice Galaxy allows you to create your character. Character customization is purely proportional, but allows you to have an oversized/undersized head, chest and butt, among others.
• The whole premise of the web video Monster Factory is using character creators to make the funniest "monsters" possible. This results in outrageous creatures of all shapes and sizes, whose faces you have to see to believe.
• The Perfect Tower: There's an option to customize the tower that costs 2 rare gems. It allows you to change its color and put assets on it.
• Pikmin 4 is the first Pikmin game that actually allows you to customize your own captain to play as. Picking the color for your captain's suit also decides the color of the rest of the Rescue Corps' suits, as well as the designated accent color for anything related to the Rescue Corps, such as Oatchi's collar.
• This is present in Ludia's ports of game shows as of 2008, such as The Price Is Right, Family Feud and Press Your Luck.
• As is constant among Choice of Games titles, Sabres of Infinity allows you to customise your character's name, age, background, family gift, and aptitude in Soldiering, Intellect and Charisma.
• In Sheltered, you can choose the appearance, genders, names, and personality traits of your chosen family.
• Toca Life: Players can create up to 30 custom characters by mixing and matching elements from pre-made characters.
• The Point-and-Click game, Unavowed, offers a downplayed version — which is still considerably more than usual for Adventure Games — by letting the player first choose been a male or female Player Character, and then asking them to choose between three different backgrounds (Actor, Bartender, or Cop), all which leads to a different playable prologue.
• The Winx Club Play Dungeons and Dragons:
  • The Winx are going to play Dungeons & Dragons and therefore they need to craft their characters à la DnD Character Classes. Almost the entirety of the plot revolves around this and it’s the source of much snarky commentary (from Musa and Stella) and otherwise comical situations.

    Flora: Can we be fairies?
    Tecna: [trying to not break Flora’s heart] Umm… no… but there are elves! They’re like fairies.
    Flora: [cheerfully] Can I be an elf?
    Stella: Ugh! I assume you’ll all be elves then?
    Musa: Not me! [proceeds to pick her character]
    Flora: Oh! [claps approvingly and supportingly]

  • Musa chooses a red Tiefling Quirky Bard armed with a lute to blast out killer tunes.
  • Flora picks an elf Druid with a flower crown because she wants something as close to a fairy of nature as possible.
  • Layla decides to be a water Genasi monk with ombre dreadlocks like the ocean.
  • Stella enters the game just to prove she can create a character much cooler than the rest and crafts an angel with sun powers, a halo, and feathery wings. In other words, an Aasimar light cleric.
  • Roxy reveals she used to play DnD and her character was a half-elf Forest Ranger with an animal companions—which Bloom was about to pick for herself. Roxy's ranger is an outcast and the princess of a lost kingdom fated to save it. Now having very similar backstories isn’t as funny, huh?
  • At last, Bloom selects a half-elf Eldritch knight wielding a flaming sword with her bunny Kiko as her sidekick.
  • As the Game Master, Tecna plays all the non-playable characters, but the other Winx teasingly pressure her to tell them her chosen Player Character—a gnome artificer with robots to use in combat.

    Tabletop Game 

• Just about every Tabletop RPG does this, since Dungeons & Dragons set the standard.
• The Hero System is quite literally the most customizable tabletop game in the history of tabletop games, to the point that all of the subsidiary "rule books" aren't rule books at all, but guidelines and advice on how to use the base rules in a new setting. Essentially anything that can be imagined can be given stats using basic games rules and enough time. Originally designed as a Superhero system, Champions.
• As mentioned, GURPS is second only to the Hero System in terms of sheer variety (the only thing keeping it from overtaking the Hero System is the fact that GURPS needs brand new rules that tweak the base system for every new setting and genre, while with Hero System, the basic rules don't need tweaking at all to be truly universal).
• Not far behind either of those two is Mutants & Masterminds, Especially with the more customizable 3e "Afflictions", where their point-buy system and usage of certain cost-reducing tactics allows nearly any character to be very well recreated, even as a PC build. Granted it falls apart with Glass Cannons (Minor Offensive and Defensive Level trade offs being a glaring example), but minor houserules can fix that.
• Risus is yet another RPG with customization potential, although it's thoroughly streamlined. Basically, you can create your own Character Class in only a few seconds. This is exactly as powerful as it sounds.
• Numenera by d20 System developer Monte Cook uses a three-stage system. You pick a character class (the system uses the Strength, Sorcery, Finesse archetypes specifically), then descriptors (e.g. "clever, tough, strong-willed, or mystical"), then a build focus.
• Tephra has a highly customizable system: You choose from race, nationality, religion, and Attributes that further split off into Skills, Specialties, and Augments.
• Big Eyes, Small Mouth is another high character customization system along the same lines as HERO System, and a case of parallel evolution with it since the designers had never heard of HERO when they decided to make their Anime-themed game. Eventually they released rethemed versions, the generic Tri-Stat dX and the superheroic Silver Age Sentinels.
• Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game aims to give you a Superhero experience featuring all the versatility of Mutants & Masterminds but without all the fiddly bits. Instead of a point-buy system the game has you assigning dice to powers and qualities based on Backgrounds (eg. Upper Class, Law Enforcement), Power-Source (eg. Powered Suit, Relic), Archetype (eg. Blaster, Speedster, Powerhouse), and Personality (eg. Stoic, Mischievous) and then assigning those powers and qualities to combat abilities based on the aforementioned Power-Sources and Archetypes. The system heavily encourages players to put their own spin on things, urging them to rename abilities and outright forcing them to make up a quality unique to their character. Through the simplicity of the system and heavy focus on roleplay and storytelling, SCRPG allows one to create almost any character, even outside its intended genre.

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