EA has a series of events nearly every hour going on at their booth at E3 right now, and I happened to catch a bunch of their presentation on the character creator for the upcoming All Points Bulletin.  In short: City of Heroes has nothing on this.  The characters come out looking top-notch, just as the presenter kept saying– as if you were a developer of the game, not a generic avatar in an MMO.  Granted, the video we were watching was someone who was extremely creative, including adding in tattoos, stripes and designs on the clothing in ways I’ve seen few real-world folks do with such finesse, but I could see a randomizer (with color-coordination built in) potentially generating similar results.

Similar to some other games’ character creators, instead of dealing with sliders, some aspects (such as body weight) are handled by sliding a cursor around in a box, where each of the box’s four corners corresponds with a specific trait, such as muscle mass versus body fat, skinny versus heavyset.  Eyes can be scaled and tilted, skin tone and clothes changed a rainbow of colors, but in one particularly cool effect, the hairstyles can be grown or shortened with a slider, expanding and retreating like that old computer morphing special effect that was overdone in Michael Jackson’s Black or White video… regardless the simile, really awesome to see in action.  Plus, your gang’s logo can be easily put together, and the cars you drive can be equally customized to sport your gang’s colors and logos.  Oh, and clothes?  Often it’s “choose from the long sleeved jacket or the tank top,” but in APB, you can layer clothes and accessories on top of each other, like a t-shirt over a long sleeved shirt, or a bra, shirt and jacket for a girl… it all results in complex and gorgeous characters.

The presenter explained that this deep character creator is so powerful because they want to get away from the common names-over-heads presentation that’s prevalent in most MMOs.  They want characters to be memorable for the things they do, and the appearances they sport.  I think this developer is well on its way to accomplishing that.  I can’t wait to see more.

DC Universe Online and another MMO that’s slipping my mind are playable on the showfloor, as well as League of Legends.  I’ll try to get some time in with those and share thoughts there too.   Want me to check out something else?  Leave me a comment!