I was watching gameplay of the old fighting game Arcana Heart (the first one) and I while I had always remembered it featured full body portraits on the character select screen unlike most other fighting games (most likely due to the smaller cast) I had forgotten it had this cute little detail where it displayed characters’ names as their personal business cards. It provided some extra personality to each character, showing off their aesthetic preference (the youngest character’s is literally her name scribbled on notebook paper).
There are many games that portray the character select screen as a bar. Anarchy Reigns has every character chilling in a dive and the camera jumps to them when you hove over them on the character selection grid and choosing a character makes the them do a quick animation. It look pretty nice and summarizes every characters’ personality within a couple of seconds. Jack is being grumpy at the bar, just waiting for a job to come up when you select him, Big Bull and Garuda are really into their arm wrestling match. Rin RIn and Fei Rin are playing cards together but the youngest sister Ai Rin is playing video games, and gets so frustrated she breaks her game system.
The MMO Tree of Savior’s character creation takes place in an overhead view of a bar wherein the male and female variations of every class is hanging out. You can click on any of them to get them to stand up and be customized on the spot. The male wizard is reading a book, the female warrior is sitting with a dog, and both archers are sitting casually at the bar with each other.
Dragon’s Crown has a nicely detailed picture of all six character classes eating together at their table, animated in the classic Vanillaware style and it looks great. Everyone’s got a very small animation but their (very traditional) personalities look clear.
Post some cool character selects and details.
