Saints Row's Character Customisation Is The Game's Best Feature

thegamer.com:

I recently had a hands-off preview for the upcoming Saints Row reboot, and my main takeaway was that it felt exactly like a Saints Row game. More precisely, it looks like a slightly more polished Saints Row: The Third, capturing all of the best aspects of the series’ peak. Some of the gameplay looks a little bit dated, with janky QTE fights and slightly blocky animations with graphics that have a shiny cartoon feel over the increasingly expensive photorealism many games chase. If you like Saints Row, I think you'll like this Saints Row, and really, that should be enough. You can read my full thoughts at the link above, but I wanted to carve out a little bit of time to discuss the character customisation specifically.

In so many ways, Saints Row's customisation is the anti-Cyberpunk 2077. CDPR's game was frequently labelled as offering gaming's first transgender character creator, even though earlier Saints Row games had offered more and CDPR failed to endorse this identity aside from slapping a dick onto a feminine body. Even voice was gendered, locking up into a pronoun choice. Saints Row is much more fluid, letting you mix and match a whole variety of body parts however you want. You can also change on the fly, something Cyberpunk didn't let you do until recently, and even then, limited it to your apartment.

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The Cyberpunk comparison is important because its character creator has been lauded, even away from the generous interpretation of its progressive trans acceptance, for its intricate detail. But this detail is useless if it wrests control away from you. In Cyberpunk, as in a lot of other character creators, you only get to see your design in the specific menu lighting,