Can you name your characters?

[GKNoMu]

Just wondering if it is like Xcom where you can name certain people in the field

[Novantico]

Originally posted by Stubbieoz:

I played the demo. Not being able to even pronounce the characters names made it harder for me to get attached to them.
Renaming would have been a nice feature to have.
Surprising that the devs did not implement it as it is a common option in these sort of games.

I can sympathize with this a little bit, but at the same time, you could more or less just as easily make your best attempt with, or just arbitrarily decide what you want/think their names should sound like and go with that, or hell, nickname them based on either their actual name or something else about them. This can really only be so much of a reasonable barrier to one's enjoyment imo.

[Stubbieoz]

Originally posted by Novantico:

Originally posted by Stubbieoz:

I played the demo. Not being able to even pronounce the characters names made it harder for me to get attached to them.
Renaming would have been a nice feature to have.
Surprising that the devs did not implement it as it is a common option in these sort of games.

I can sympathize with this a little bit, but at the same time, you could more or less just as easily make your best attempt with, or just arbitrarily decide what you want/think their names should sound like and go with that, or hell, nickname them based on either their actual name or something else about them. This can really only be so much of a reasonable barrier to one's enjoyment imo.

Yeah, it's not a reason imho not to buy the game, or a big deal in the scheme of things, just would have been nice to have the option to do it.

Just before posting this I had this happen totally by coincidence....
I just started playing Phoenix Point and didn't like all my characters names and had no option to change them to sound more like the character I thought I would build them as.
Oh that's a bummer I thought but the game is good so just keep playing.

After doing the first couple of missions I was then taken to the Geoscape section of the game and low and behold, I am now given the option to rename all my characters..... yay.

Just a really nice feature is all.

[[R] Iglix]

Originally posted by Novantico:

I can sympathize with this a little bit, but at the same time, you could more or less just as easily make your best attempt with, or just arbitrarily decide what you want/think their names should sound like and go with that, or hell, nickname them based on either their actual name or something else about them. This can really only be so much of a reasonable barrier to one's enjoyment imo.

That is part of the problem. Game does not allow you to even nickname your soldiers from what I could see. And considering that you can have somewhere close to 40 soldiers, it is unreasonable to think that I will remember everyone by their names, not to mention your silly idea of then on top of that also remember personal nickname for each of them.

Its not as if their names are historic. THQ made pretty clear that their names and specific stories are made up (probably for legal reasons).

With so many names and with character pictures that are not distinct from each other much it makes it unnecessiraly hard to figure out which one is the specific soldier you are looking for, especialy when you have to click once or twice further to get relevant details for that soldier.

If it would happen once every while, it would not be issue, but with 40 soldiers and with squads that you need to regulary shift around, it looks like pointlesly annoying increase in micromanagement just for the sake of apearances.