- Sep 18, 2021
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I'll always be an advocate of allowing players to choose their avatar in a narrative-heavy game with choices. If nothing else it allows the player to play as the character and immerse themselves better if they identify with the person they're playing as. I think it definitely helps the player to see themselves as the main character rather than just watching "someone else's story" play out. And I know at least in my case, I tend to enjoy placing myself in the shoes of main character who isn't "me", because it encourages me to decide in my head what their personality would be and then RP out their reactions, and not just "pick the choice I would if it was me". So getting to choose gender (and potentially even being able to choose appearance via character creator options) is always a huge plus for me. The more I get to shape the main character's persona (gender, preferences, "career", backtory history, etc.), the more invested I am in their story.
(Half the reason I kind of dislike Fallout 3 and 4 is because I feel like I'm playing the same story every time. Half the reason why I've played Fallout: New Vegas more than a dozen times is because it kind of feels like my Courier is a radically different person every time, based on how I build them and what backstory I craft for them in my head.)
That being said, I definitely understand that it makes more work for a Ren'Py dev to effectively have to create double the scenes (or even triple for the occasional trans/futa game). And deciding the gender/preferences/backstory of a main character ahead of time allows the writer to work in nuance that they might otherwise have trouble implementing (say, the average JRPG versus the average Bethesda RPG). So there are certainly advantages for a dev to limit who the MC is (and disadvantages to flexibility).
I'd never condemn a dev (especially here) for simply saying "this is who the main character is", but I definitely get more out of a game if the dev basically allows me to decide who the main character is. So I do think there is value in giving players the option.
It's sort of why I often say things like "my Kylie does this" or "my Kylie thinks this" when discussing the game - because I have a strong idea in my head who she is in my version of the game (and I'm very aware that other people are almost certainly playing her differently). Being able to decide for myself "Yeah, she's still totally hung up on her old relationship" or "She's the kind of person who holds grudges" makes me way more invested in the character and the story. And deciding that she IS a she (or a he, or a they) is itself a major choice in crafting that persona.
That can happen regardless. In this game, we're basically playing as "Nelson", of indiscriminate gender (and likely different first names since players can change their name - mine is actually Serra (short for Seraphina)). She (or he) has a history and a job we can't change, but there's a lot of room to fill in the blanks for a lot of facets of their life and personality.
In a hypothetical Book Two game, we could just as easily be playing a main character of indiscriminate gender whose first name we can pick and who we can fill in details in our head for, but still have them be a different main character of indiscriminate gender. They'll just be called "[charname variable] Sinclair" or something, and look different (since you're doing the renders for them). They'll also likely have different backstories, different friends, different jobs, and different powers. The two MCs could even theoretically meet, if you're willing to deal with the hassles of continuity. If you're sufficiently twisted, you could even make one MC a potential love interest for another (and players can essentially go fuck themselves).
It's sort of like how the Dragon Age games allow you to create your own character at the start (gender, race, name, stats, skillset, and so on), but all three are distinctly different people. Even if you give them all the same name and try to make them look as identical as possible (especially if you're trying to make them copies of your real self), the story treats them as different people (and canonically gives them different last names). And if you're a lore-obsessed weirdo like me, you do at least one run where they're all related (which is technically possible if you play Circle Mage, Hawke, and a human Mage - the first two are automatically and canonically second cousins - the third is a Trevelyan but could easily be related to the Amells via noble intermarriage).
I definitely don't think giving players the option to choose aspects of their character at the start somehow means the main character has to be the same one in every game. The only real factor there is if you decide, for instance, that you want Aiden Drest to be the main character of the next game for very specific story reasons, so allowing the player to choose their gender or name would completely screw things up.
