Most video games start with a set character whom the player guides throughout the entire story. If they’re lucky, the player might be able to make decisions as the character, changing the narrative as they go, but they’re still that same person.
RPGs tend to offer character creation, thanks to their roots in tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, where the appeal is taking on the role of a hero and going on adventures, but the player determines the character’s personality and parameters.
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Video games have offered character creation for decades, with some simply being aesthetic choices, while others are far more in-depth, offering a wide variety of options for shaping the hero of the story.
In some RPGs, choices have little connection to the character. The world doesn’t react to them in any meaningful way, regardless of their class, species, or faction that they work with.
Some RPGs do an incredible job of offering players a wide variety of character choices, not just in the mechanical sense of their powers and capabilities, but in the choices they can make that actually shape a narrative uniquely their own.
10 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Custom Characters Are Way Better Than The Red Prince
While Larian Studios is best known for a certain Dungeons & Dragons game, the company has a long history of producing RPGs with character choices. Divinity: Original Sin 2 was Larian’s biggest hit for a long time, with a massive game world to explore and enemies to overcome.
One of the best aspects of Divinity: Original Sin 2 was its character creation system. Not only were there several set characters to choose from, with their own histories and personalities, but it was possible to make a custom character.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 used a tag system that determined different aspects of the character’s personality, which the game would react to. This meant it was possible to explore Rivellon as a hero as bizarre as their creator.
9 Neverwinter Nights 2
The Forgotten Realms Has Never Lacked For Heroes
For the longest time, Neverwinter Nights 2 was a pain to play, with only a diligent modding community keeping it alive on PC. Luckily, that changed in 2025, when Neverwinter Nights 2 finally received a modern port on PC and consoles, allowing more people to experience this classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure.
Neverwinter Nights 2 uses the 3.5 D&D rules, which are surprisingly close to the modern iteration of the game. The base game includes all the options players can expect, such as elves, dwarves, paladins, and sorcerers. The expansions add way more content from the later Dungeons & Dragons books, allowing for far stranger party compositions.
While Neverwinter Nights 2 suffers from a lack of evil options, especially compared to later RPGs, there is still a lot of scope for character development, especially when it comes to interacting with the party members the player meets along the way.
8 Dragon Age: Origins
Someone Needs To Stop The Darkspawn
Dragon Age: Origins doesn’t use set characters. Instead, it had an “Origins” system, where the player chose from specific backgrounds, which determined what happened during the opening hours of the story, all leading to the protagonist being drafted into the Wardens and sent off to fight the invading Darkspawn horde.
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The Origins system did pigeonhole certain characters, such as Mages being forced to take the deadly test in the Fade, or the Dwarven Noble, naturally, only being available to dwarf characters.
Locking the player into specific roles helped tremendously with the world-building, as each Origin path showed just how different the setting was from traditional fantasy RPGs.
7 Shadowrun Returns
No Room For Chooms On This Ride
The Shadowrun tabletop RPG is woefully underappreciated, but at least it has received some excellent video games over the years. The modern trilogy of Shadowrun games, starting with Shadowrun Returns, is all well worth experiencing.
Shadowrun Returns is set in a cyberpunk world that has all the standard fantasy races. This means the character creation has the best of both worlds, with elves and wizards standing alongside cyborgs and hackers.
All three games in the Shadowrun trilogy are worth checking out, but it’s best to start with Shadowrun Returns, as it’s designed as an introduction to the setting. It even features a cameo from the protagonist of the SNES Shadowrun game, for those lucky enough to have experienced that cult classic.
6 Dragon Quest 9: Sentinels Of The Starry Skies
Square Enix Needs To Hurry Up And Remake This DS Classic
The Dragon Quest series usually features set characters, with the only customization options being the player’s gender and character class via a job system.
Dragon Quest 9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies was the first game to let the player design their hero. Starting out as an angel, the player character is accidentally cast down from the heavens and must find a way to return. Unfortunately, they’ve been stripped of their powers and must learn the fighting styles of the mortals to survive on the ground.
Not only does the player create the main character in Dragon Quest 9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, but they also create their entire party. This involves not only their appearance but also their jobs and skills. Hopefully, these aspects of the game will be kept in the inevitable remake.
5 Final Fantasy 14
The Warrior Of Light Comes In Many Forms
In Final Fantasy 14, there is only a single Warrior of Light, one who holds back the darkness and slays the Primals whenever they appear. Unfortunately, the game is also an MMO, which means there are actually millions of Warriors of Light, but every other player is just “one of their adventurer friends,” who gets called on for boss fights.
Final Fantasy 14 has multiple playable species and jobs to choose from, to say nothing of the countless pieces of equipment and mounts that can be used for extra visual flair.
While the player choices in Final Fantasy 14 don’t affect the story much, few games offer this much variety in terms of aesthetics and visuals. There’s a reason the community is obsessed with taking photos of their Warrior of Light: Eorzea is essentially a giant catwalk.
4 Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
The Camarilla Welcomes People Embraced Within The Past Hour
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines offers seven Clan choices, which act in a similar manner to character classes in other games, as well as a choice of gender. While this might not seem like a lot of options, there are few titles that differentiate their runs more than Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.
Sure, picking a Brujah, Toreador, or Ventrue is the same as playing a generic charming vampire, but the other routes play out drastically differently. The Tremere are mages, with access to all kinds of blasty spells that are extremely useful, even in a modern setting, while the Gangrel are similar to werewolves, with all kinds of monstrous transformations at their disposal.
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The two biggest divergences are the Nosferatu and the Malkavians. The Nosferatu are hideous monsters who always need to hide from the general public, forcing a stealth run on the player, while the Malkavians and their madness react to everything in unique ways, allowing for a completely different vampire playthrough.
3 Fallout: New Vegas
The Wasteland Doesn’t Need Character Classes
The Fallout series eschews traditional character classes. Instead, it favors a completely skill-based progression system, where a character’s traits are determined by their stats, rather than a single choice at the start of the game.
Want a character that is good at everything? In theory, that’s possible, but it takes a lot of grinding. Instead, the player has to pick what’s going to be useful in the short term and build from there.
Fallout: New Vegas not only expands upon the excellent character creation system from Fallout 3, but it also adds a ton of factions with lots of unique content to explore. This results in a character that has far more influence on the direction of the story.
2 Pathfinder: Wrath Of The Righteous
Try Being A Legend Instead Of A Hero
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous takes the usual Dungeons & Dragons fantasy-style adventure and cranks it up to eleven. Not only does the protagonist have their usual character powers to call on, but they gain the might of the heroes of legend, thanks to the Mythic Path system, letting them transcend the limits of the usual groups of giant rat killers.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous starts out with the protagonist entering the city of Kenabres on the day it’s invaded by an army of demons. They’re soon infused with mystical power that lets them walk many paths, such as that of an undead Lich, a celestial Angel, a Loki-style Trickster, or even wield the power of the Demons against them.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous already has a ton of character classes and species options available, but throwing in the Mythic Paths adds a staggering amount of replayability to the game, to say nothing of the actual choices that can be made, which change how the story plays out.
1 Baldur’s Gate 3
All Tavs Are Beautiful To Their Creator
A huge part of the appeal of Baldur’s Gate 3 is the sheer number of character creation options for the player and how the game world reacts to them.
Baldur’s Gate 3 comes with the standard Dungeons & Dragons 5e options, and throws them into a world where every choice can matter. Larian Studios also did a great job offering countless solutions to problems, making every run feel unique, even when the stupidest plan can succeed with the right dice rolls.
Baldur’s Gate 3 launched in 2023, but it still has an active playerbase to this day. The reason for this is how distinct each run can feel, especially on the evil route, with Baldur’s Gate 3 having one of the best in gaming history.
Millions Of Baldur’s Gate 3 Players (Rightly) Changed One Character’s Class
Larian Studios has revealed that millions of Baldur’s Gate 3 players changed the class of one character because the original selection was so bad.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
