Wait, so when do you create your own characters?

[cjhangen]

Did I completely miss something? I think I'm on the third mission (perhaps still in the tutorial?) I'm only able to pick from a group of generic characters. At what stage do I customize a character, or do I pick from these characters and modify them?

[Hydrorox]

you have in the main menu the charcter pool

[(MAD)Mendeck]

Either modify your rookies, or before you start a game create a character pool and in the pool thats where you create all your troopers, dark ai and people who need saving. If you modify any rookie in a game you can always save them to your character pool to use in another play through

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

You CAN customize those RNG generated grunts as soon as you get access to the "Armory".

However, ideally you'd create your very own soldiers even before you start the game by doing so in the "Character Pool" option at the game's main menu.

[FrappeWarrior]

as others said, in the main menu go to character pool there you can create as many characters as you want and you can even set if the game picks only from your pool/pool plus random/random only. and ingame you can customize the random troopers and in there you will find an option to add tehm to your character pool for future playthroughs...

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

If you want to have only custom soldiers to appear in your playthroughs be sure to create at least 16 soldiers otherwise the game will still add RNG babies onto your playthrough pool.

[lwn_1978]

When you click on a soldier, you are taken to this screen. Note the highlighted portion that says customize.

This was taken to show the kill count and kill ratio, but had it handy and it shows the customize button and all.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749933141

[cjhangen]

Ah, ok that wasn't intuitive (coming from a past Xcom player :).. thanks for all the advice. I'll probably just start over - for some reason modifying the existing characters I've played a few levels with doesn't sit right on the role-playing side, to me. :-)

[red255]

I gave a balding guy a hat. it sat right with me, but no... I don't like change their genders or anything. even though I have the technology to do so.

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by cjhangen:

Ah, ok that wasn't intuitive (coming from a past Xcom player :).. thanks for all the advice. I'll probably just start over - for some reason modifying the existing characters I've played a few levels with doesn't sit right on the role-playing side, to me. :-)

As a past xcom player you would know that you could edit your squad and customize them in game at any time

[cjhangen]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Originally posted by cjhangen:

Ah, ok that wasn't intuitive (coming from a past Xcom player :).. thanks for all the advice. I'll probably just start over - for some reason modifying the existing characters I've played a few levels with doesn't sit right on the role-playing side, to me. :-)

As a past xcom player you would know that you could edit your squad and customize them in game at any time

No, I get it, and was aware that I could modify my existing "generics" - just didn't want to create characters that way. Perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly (been a few years) but in the previous XCOM game I thought you created your team at the onset, in the regular single player game, like a typical rpg.

[lwn_1978]

Originally posted by cjhangen:

Originally posted by Kunovega:

As a past xcom player you would know that you could edit your squad and customize them in game at any time

No, I get it, and was aware that I could modify my existing "generics" - just didn't want to create characters that way. Perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly (been a few years) but in the previous XCOM game I thought you created your team at the onset, in the regular single player game, like a typical rpg.

Nope, you may be thinking of something esle. But in XCom, even back when it was x-com 20 plus years ago, the game auto generates generics and you can can change them however you like. This one, with its 'character pool' option is the closest to what you are thinking of out of any of them so far.