The problem with Skate Characters: Race, Nationality, AND NO PERSONALITY.

I wanted to outline the issue with the characters in detail since they feel so far off the mark. I can kind of understand why they went this route as at least Skate 3 was sort of stylized to a degree. The problem is the "fortnite" appearance. But what is that really. 

Well, since the issue is mostly faces, it's this...

Every face in this image has almost the exact same expression, smiling, smirking, confident...whatever you call this look... That crossed arm, leaning against something with one leg crossed expression.

Now I don't play Fortnite, but I'm aware of what it looks like.

What you did was basically, what OG skate did which is give faces, eyes, and noses that work for different nationalities and weights, and races and such. But still like the above despite those nationality/race difference the faces really all look the same. if you cut out everything but their face there would be little to no character to gleam.

Now lets look at real skaters. 

tons of variety, even beyond nationality, they all "Feel" different. And the reason isn't cause they're real people, real people look more or less the same all the time. It's their personality, the character creator has NO PERSONALITY.

This didn't matter as much in previous skate games cause it was just generic realism and people accept that. But with a more stylized approach it matters a lot. 

And here's the thing WE SOLVED THIS PROBLEM ALREADY. Specifically, Rock Band did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlHBohxvX4Y

Potentially drastic differences with little else changed but face, with tons of personality. You can begin to imagine who these two characters are and even how they sound.

Rock band makes stylization feel realistic cause it feels like caricatures of real people. It feels like personality. The characters ARE something, they're worth the time spent customizing cause you can do so much with them. It doesn't need to be Fallout character creation, the tools allow for you to make a character that suits the users personality. 

And even when these devs talk about their customization they're not talking about the diversity and corpo buzz words, but how you connect to the character you made. How it makes you feel personally. That's what's missing.

The personal the personality. And that's what gets people invested. Making a character, not a corpo blob.