: Definitely with you here on "blank" characters. I've never
: understood the point, really - I am, myself, not a blank slate, and
: therefore do not emphasise with moving pieces of wood. In the modern video
: game as a storytelling medium, "blank slate" translates for me
: into boring. It's part of why I have no inclination to play Destiny - if I
: know nothing about my player avatar, why should I care? It worked for ODST
: because the Rookie wasn't the real star of the game there - Buck and Dare
: were, and you were seeing their story through the eyes of another. Same
: with Reach - Noble Team were the stars, not Six. But when the story is
: happening to you, you want to know the personality and history informing
: the character's actions.

Precisely! You hit the nail on the head with saying that the audience is not a blank slate. If you're going to afford the ability to transfer ourselves into a video game world, using your character as a vessel, let us consume them as much as possible. I can't see myself in this universe the way you want me to unless I can make that character my own. That's why Mass Effect is so near and dear to my heart. The Milky Way Galaxy I traveled around in felt like it was personally affected by Natalie Shepard, a pansexual paragon whose childhood was spent following their military parents. That's exactly me. I might not be a war hero, an officer in a star-faring navy, or a super duper special galactic secret agent, but that personality and that background is all there for me to claim as my own.

How can I "become legend" in Destiny when it seems like nothing I do with my Guardian matters when you give me no hint of making them my own beyond a cool hairdo? The same goes for Halo even in its infancy. I can't make the Master Chief my own. I know that's someone else completely, an individual in their own right. He's a guy, I'm not. He doesn't talk a lot, I certainly do. He was raised from childhood to be a supersoldier, I'm not. I don't want to pretend I'm him because I want to see who he really is.

It's not like Bungie didn't afford the Master Chief any real ability to serve as a blank slate "vessel" to begin with. Even with the few words he says, relying instead on his actions and intentions to convey his feelings, that says a lot about who this character is. Plus there were so many subtle world building moments in the first game from Cortana and Captain Keyes to even Guilty Spark that made the Chief someone with an explicitly detailed past. I just don't think you can do all that and then say that this person is someone you can simply inhabit to express yourself.

That's actually why I have the complaints I do about Noble Six having a defined gender when it's so easy to avoid the topic entirely even in canon. Almost everything about this Spartan is shrouded in mystery having lived in the shadows for their entire career or was lost to memories destroyed by war. Sure, it's not much. After all it is just a mere gender option. If that was really the case, however, why did they go through the trouble of giving this character dialogue, vocally unique to the two genders provided, unlike the speechless Rookie? No matter what gender you chose for Noble Six they said the same things, performed the same actions, and were perceived by others with no difference. It gave Reach a sense that these two options were equally valid in terms of canon.

Customizing this lead character with respect to canon could suggest that the legend of Noble Six has an indeterminate gender or that all of the files on them were lost in some unknown chaos. Perhaps Noble Six even had a "fluid" sense of gender, never restricting themselves to one identity or another, playing on the simple act of changing one's gender in the menus at the player's luxury. Noble Six, or at least how I personally see them, is the kind of limited blank slate I can easily subscribe to and get behind. There's commonality between players and an effort to give hints of a determined background.