Facial Customization

by option2401, Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 19:18 (4055 days ago)

So far, to the best of my knowledge, the entirety of what we've seen of the Guardians has consisted of fully suited and helmeted men and women. There was one pic in the November leak where we could see the upper face of a man wearing some sort of breathing apparatus, but I don't know if he was meant to be a Guardian or some sort of NPC.

Regardless, the faceless Guardians have got me thinking about how much we'll able to customize our own Guardian's facial/physical appearance, if we can at all. We could get full customization along the lines of Mass Effect/TES, or maybe pick from a number of presets, or perhaps we won't be able to customize at all beyond helmet choice.

Reasons for No-Faces
- Bungie could save development time by not having to create a facial customization engine, and could ease performance by reducing the number of polys on a Guardian model.
- To recreate the "slip into your character" theme they had going in Halo with the Chief/Rookie/Six. If you never see a face, you can more readily put yourself in your Guardians shoes.
- FPS. If Destiny's an FPS, then you'll rarely see your Guardian's face, helmet or no helmet. Then again, I never saw my EVE Online character, and they have a full customization suite. Also, Bungie has called Destiny an FPS, and although we've seen in-game third-person shots that appeared to be from a player-controlled camera (specifically the PS4 trailer, 1:23), I'm inclined to believe that those were created with a dev tool, and won't be in the final product. No evidence for that, just a feeling.

Reasons for Faces
- With all the RPG elements we've seen so far (armor/weapons, levels, etc.), a full appearance customization seems like a natural progression.
- It would make sense to be able to create a unique face to set your Guardian apart from everyone else's.
- If they are making faces, I doubt they're as presentable as they'd like at this point in development.
- More helmet designs (e.g. visors, goggles, rebreathers, etc.)

So what do you think? Will we be able to customize our Guardian's faces? What about their body (buff, skinny, scars, color, hair, etc.)?