Rift Previews: Character Creation
Last week, MMORPG.com Community Manager Michael Bitton had the opportunity to visit Trion Worlds HQ in San Francisco. As part of Gamer's Day, Mike scored a hands on look at Rift: Planes of Telara. The first feature that Mike looked at was character creation and he's got the skinny on what it's like.
By Michael Bitton on August 10, 2010
We got a chance to sample the character creation of Rift: Planes of Telara at Trion’s Gamer’s Day event in San Francisco this week. So, today we’ll be taking a look at what options players can look forward to when bringing their character concepts to life within Trion’s high-fantasy world of Telara.
Player characters in Rift are basically the souls of the “Ascended”. The Ascended are fallen warriors who died during the Great Shade War that have been revived to beat back the forces of Regulos and prevent Telara from being overrun by invading forces coming into the world through dimensional rifts.
Your very first choice when creating a character is that of your faction. Rift uses a two faction system which is comprised of the Guardians and the Defiant. Both factions have opposing views on how to deal with the crisis on Telara and this is reflected at the most basic level during creation by way of race and class choice. The Defiant revived their Ascended souls through the use of forbidden technology and they adopt a proactive stance in dealing with the crisis, using anything and everything at their disposal to deal with the invasion. The Guardians, on the other hand, are basically training armies for their gods, while erecting temples and praying to the gods for a miracle.
If you care about the lore involved, you’d make your choice here, but if you’re like me I decided to check out both factions to look at my race and class choices.
On the Defiant side you have the desert-dwelling Eth, who are basically your human race. Next up are the strong and clever Bahmi, who are a tribal race that make their home within the Rhaza’de Canyons. The Bahmi share similarities with the Eth by basically being Human, however, Bahmi male characters are generally quite large and burly by comparison. Finally, you’ve got the Kelari. The Kelari made their debut at the Gamer’s Day event and are basically the counterpart to the Guardians’ High Elves race. They’re basically Dark Elves. The Kelari are fairly similar in appearance to the High Elves, however, you can select from an array of darker skin tones as well as different facial patterns.
The Guardians feature three distinct races as well. The basic human race is represented by the Mathosians who are a legendary race of humans whose history is filled with great heroes. Next are the High Elves who are fairly typical in their strong aptitude for magic and elegant appearance. Last but certainly not least are the Dwarves, who, like the Kelari made their debut appearance at this week’s event. Dwarfs are restricted to the male gender, though we aren’t sure whether or not Trion plans to add female versions to the game. Someone at the event suggested female Dwarfs have beards and we were told that would certainly make adding them to the game quite a bit easier!
Another thing to consider when choosing your race are racial abilities, each race comes with three racial abilities, which are typically one or two click based abilities on a moderate cooldown and a passive. The passive ability usually ends up being a bonus to resistance of a certain damage type but we were told that some of the racial abilities were placeholder so they may be replaced with something a bit more interesting in the future. For example, the Eth come with a bonus to Earth resistance, a damage absorption shield, and a buff that affects a number of stats.
Once you’ve selected your race you then choose your “Calling”. Rift offers an interesting multi-class system, but players must first select from a base class to start out with. The base classes are broken down into the familiar cleric, warrior, rogue, and mage archetypes and you’ll generally find around three to four callings per archetype at creation, with several being unique to a particular faction. For example, the Paladin is Guardian only, while the Warlock is only available for the Defiant.
For the readers out there as vain as I am you’ll be pleased to know that Rift offers fairly decent options in designing your character’s appearance. Once you’ve made all the important choices for your character, you can customize their appearance by tweaking a number of options including: skin color, eye color, eyebrows, hair and hair colors, makeup if you’re female, facial hair if you’re male, and facial markings. You can also do some face morphing by dragging a pip along a triangular slider (think Age of Conan’s character creation). Unfortunately, you cannot morph or adjust the physical attributes of your character’s body.
Once you’ve finished tweaking your character’s appearance it’s time to give your creation a name (or hit the random button!) and enter the Shadowlands where you begin your adventure. Be sure to check back soon for our full hands-on preview to learn what we experienced during our first steps into the world of Rift.
awesome! sweet new info about the 2 races
So I can choose between actually trying to do something about the rift invasions as a Defiant or sit on my hands as a Guardian...such an intense moral dilemma...*yawn*...
Great information, can not wait ahhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrr.
I like what i have read so far about how this game is shaping up. Definately looking foward to more information and the release.
Great work mate, give us the goods! :D
eh what?
both sides have reason to shut or use the rifts... what are you yawning about?
maybe if you wasnt trying so hard to be bored you wouldnt be so bored. Just a thought.
I want Screens of the 2 races! :(
This game is fast becoming the one to watch. But patience is not only a virtue in this hobby its mandatory.
The Guardians and Defiant live in the world of Telara which is being invaded and both factions are under attack. How they deal with the interplaner dimensions and other issues such as PvP is a matter of political, religious, and ideological difference.
Wow, so much info given in this article. Nice one.
But hmm I cannot morph or modify the physical attributes of my character... so, this means I can't be fat, short, long, square, straight or twisted? Sounds a bit weird in my opinion.
Not that I could see, no. But you can morph the face.
Oh okay, thanks. Perhaps ascended beings go through some kind of homogenization process when they are shot out of the soul stream ^^
Once again Mike you nailed it! Thanks for the first official confirmation of Dwarves and the Kelari. Lots of speculation going around on those and this is the first it has been confirmed.
ya I have been watching and waiting for rift for a Long time and now that its comeing out im moveing to the philippines :-( and I don't think i can get it there OMG GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
plz dont let all this talk be hype talk.....if they deliver the content they say they will then this game will be pretty good.
looking forward to it
I didn't say both factions were boring - I was just pointing out that usually in a 2 faction game like this (besides the ones that are meant to be good versus evil) they try to create some sort of moral ambiguity for the player so that they can make a case for themselves to be on either side equally (for example in WoW, you could sympathize in some ways with either the alliance or the horde - and they both work to address the greater threats in their world).
I don't really see that in RIFT from how they describe it. They make it seem like the defiants are doing everything they can to fight the invasion while the guardians sit around and pray all day. It doesn't really matter how pious you are - refusing to do all you can to save your own world is pretty ridiculous (if anything, you'd think they'd be the more zealous of the two sides, believing their gods supported them in the conflict). If I ever play this game, I'd play defiant - they seem like the more logical of the two sides...
If you didn't catch what he was saying, both are trying to close the Rifts!!!
To quote the article:
"The Defiant revived their Ascended souls through the use of forbidden technology and they adopt a proactive stance in dealing with the crisis, using anything and everything at their disposal to deal with the invasion. The Guardians, on the other hand, are basically training armies for their gods, while erecting temples and praying to the gods for a miracle."
So they both might be closing RIFTs, but apparently one faction is more directly active in the effort to stop the invasion than the other, implied by this.
Pity that they choose to restrict certain classes to one faction or the other. This would put the onus on the devs to have well-balanced classes to prevent one faction dominating the other in terms of class strength, especially if the game features a faction vs faction war.
This hasnt been confirmed yet, ubless you can throw me a link?
Indeed, good new info.
erm.....like.... read the WHOLE article.....
I did.
Sarcastic tone of yours aside, are you talking about these statements... "is reflected at the most basic level during creation by way of race and class choice" and "...you’ll generally find around three to four callings per archetype at creation, with several being unique to a particular faction. For example, the Paladin is Guardian only, while the Warlock is only available for the Defiant." ?
Because if so then that may well only apply to initial character creation.
Take the Paladin for instance. This is a soul, according to the class designer himself last week, that will be restricted to Guardian upon character creation as a first soul, but could well be opened up as a soul to be achieved for both sides via play.
This was what I was refering to. The devs themselves arnt actually decided on the issue of opening the souls up universally, so no need to be dissapointed yet.
Here, listen to podcast 6 from 02/ 08 http://www.riftpodcast.com/ ... it goes into it all a little bit more.
Dark Elves? I'm sold...