I know that the first thing I’m suggesting has been addressed by others already, but the second is (I think) unique.
First, will we be able to submit nationality, gender, etc. or just name and nickname?
Second, will we be able to give some kind of physical appearance to use or will it just be randomized? I guess that comes with the question of will we be able to customize characters appearances.
You will be able to submit first name, nickname/callsign, last name and select the male or female body-type preference. At the moment, no confirmation on nationality, but it’s probable. You will not be able to customise the appearance.
Will we be able to customize the appearance of soldiers in game?
Yes you will. There will be soldier customisation similar to XCOM
So, essentially even though we wont be able to customize the look of our solder that gets put into the generator but once they come out and are generated for the game we can go back in and customize them then?
@Father_Nature Correct. When a player receives a new soldier, the game will pull one of the backer submitted names from the list with the appropriate model type (and possibly nationality). The appearance will be randomised. Once you have this new soldier, you can rename them and customise them.
Thank you, i really like the nationality possibility. I think the previously mentioned format is a good system, it allows you to customise the model how you want and fixes the other worries. Thank you very much for responding.
Nationality may not matter . in a game like this… heck is America even America anymore in this setting… there are these other factions that seem to be running there own sectors. the Nations that make up our world today may not even exist in this one. that being said identifying with a flag of country that no longer exists may not be immersive in this setting.
It may not matter if you are in North America, but in places where there are (a lot of) different cultures living relative close to each other, it can be important.
It can decide appearance (color/hair/etc. typical to a region/nation), accent (if everyone will speak in the game’s chosen language), maybe some different name-pools for different regions/nations (Sven Svensson would be a strange name for an asian, right?), so unless the post-apocalyptic setup is so far away in the future that the people changed a lot, nationality can still be used to describe someone.
Even more with the limited travel-distance in PP, where havens are mostly local people trying to survive together, there will be a lot less “mixing” with “foreigners” (other havens, who may be hostile… or not, you can’t know).
And because we, the players still know the nations, giving nationality to the soldiers helps us remember them, maybe treating them differently (be that positive or negative), but makes us care about them just that little more.