I wound up trying Champions Online after a friend of mine hyped its character creation system to me. It's a game where you play online as a super hero, and the amount one can customize a character really is amazing.

What Tedd states in this comic is accurate. You can have multiple looks for each character via "costumes" and have every costume appear completely different with the exception of gender. Your character can go from a 4'7" scrawny human with a cat tail to a 7'0" winged cyborg behemoth between costumes, but they have to stay the same sex while doing it.

With the exception of the last panel, this is a genuine comment and suggestion I'm putting forth. There are several legitimate reasons why one would want access to both genders for a single character, and that includes plenty of non-dirty minded reasons. A female character who doesn't want power armor with prominent breasts is a genuine example.

Another reason? There's a night club in the game where people can gather, and I can think of no faster way to get a jerk who can't take a hint to back off from a female character than insta-morphing into a bulky male form. I could've used that ability at least once; would've been a nice alternative to having to go so far as to report the guy.

(Not that I want to give the impression that the club is a bad place, mind you. I chatted with Mookie of Dominic Deegan there once, which was fun, and it's the one place in the game where 90+% of the people seem to stay in character.)

I can think of several technical reasons why they don't allow the option. For one thing, not all costume pieces have cross-gender counterparts, meaning the opposite sex version might look fairly different in some ways. I don't think that's a good enough reason, though. The player can further tailor the costume to their liking, and there could be default settings to handle such issues. There are likely complications beyond that, but if they can reasonably make it happen, I think it would be worth doing.

Overall, I think the game is pretty good, but it has yet to take over my life and keep me from my responsibilities. Isn't taking over everything, like, a feature on the back of the box with these kinds of games? I was all set to put it in charge, but I'm still running the show. What's up with that?

Tags: Tedd, letter, video games