Ask Cryptic answers custom animations query

This week's Ask Cryptic is kind of all over the place. While there may not be a nicely organized cohesion to the questions and answers, there are some very cool new bits of information. Last week the community finally got their answer on the subject of custom animations. That is: tweaking and adding personality to your typical energy blasts and martial attacks. The verdict was unfortunately no, as that something of that nature would be far too time consuming for the animators to tackle. This is true, animation -- the high quality kind -- takes quite some time to get just right.

Surprisingly -- to the Cryptic team, at least -- the community outcry was so powerful that the team sat down to talk about what they could do in this department. All they'll say right now is that it probably won't make it into the game by launch, but that it's being planned for as later content. Whether that content is in a big patch or with the first expansion, is left up for us to guess.

Aside from this, the last question brings character creation itself into the spotlight. Something very cool that has been revealed is the level of avatar customization available at character creation. We knew that Champions Online was going to have to beat City of Heroes in this area to garner fan interest and this new piece of information is the first step.

Character height, muscle and thickness can all be modified as expected. However, it will also be possible to adjust particular parts of the bone structure of your avatar. Eyes, noses, chins and hands are given as the first examples of areas that players can customize. It's still a tiny bit vague right now, as we can't see it for ourselves, but when Cryptic is ready to show us we're sure that screens (and maybe a video?) will be released.