I am waiting for SR3 to come in the mail and have been toying with the character creator on XBL. I am hoping that the options in the character creator are not the full range of customization options available in the full game. There doesn't seem to be any greater number of clothes available, and there actually seems to be FEWER piercing and tattoo options, than Saints Row 2. And there are many fewer voices available...only three for each gender and a "zombie" voice. I can't imagine that Volition would actually REGRESS, compared to SR2, on the number of options available in the full release of SR3.

My question: is the character creator representative, or are there a lot more options in the full game?

@EODTech said:

My question: is the character creator representative, or are there a lot more options in the full game?

Yes, what you get in initiation station is pretty much what you get in the full game. There are few more clothes available in the game but not that many. Also there are no new hair, body, etc options in the "full game". Content-wise SR3 has less stuff than SR2.

I've not tested the stand-alone character creator, nor did I play a whole lot of SR2.

However, I can confirm there are only 7 voices (3 female, 3 male, 1 zombie) - but the main protagonist does a lot of talking, and doesn't repeat themselves terribly.

However, character customization I never had an issue with, playing through the game in coop as Doctor Manhattan (regularly testing out whatever was the silliest clothes I could think of trying at any moment), with a coop-partner who kept changing his appearance very regularly.

There are certainly some things that I felt was missing (like a tattoo with a small circle on the forehead), but nothing that detracted from how much stupid fun it was.

@charlie_victor_bravo: @charlie_victor_bravo said:

Content-wise SR3 has less stuff than SR2.

That sucks. I'd have thought they would go bigger, not smaller. After GTA4 sucked SOOOO HARD in the customization area (have your pick of a whopping THREE tracksuits--all in varying shades of poop brown!), and since Volition has kind of made one-upping Rockstar their thing, I was expecting more. How disappointing. I was looking forward to a lot more tats and piercing options. So it wasn't just my imagination...browsing through the characters uploaded by users on saintsrow.com I was thinking they all look alike, and was hoping it was due to lack of creativity on users' part. Nope. Many fewer options. Boo, Volition. Boo.

What about pads and vehicles? Can you trick those out as much as SR2, or not? The pads in SR2 only had like three options for each, although the vehicle pimping mechanic was pretty great.

@EODTech: Less pad customisation; just 2 upgrades that give you cash and respect bonuses.

Vehicle customisation is still pretty solid, usual speed and strength upgrades, nitrous (although you can get a character upgrade that gives you automatic nitrous for ANY car you drive) and knee cappers. Body mods for each part of the vehicle, tyre profile options, hubcap styles and various colour options.

Upgrades for your character and weaponry and great unlock-able items meant I forgave the few features that were lacking once I started playing. It's streamlined and I think that makes for a great experience overall.

Play the 'http://deckers.die' level and your mind will be blown.

@I

Upgrades for your character and weaponry and great unlock-able items meant I forgave the few features that were lacking once I started playing. It's streamlined and I think that makes for a great experience overall.

It is case of quality over quantity. For example there might not be as much clothing options but what is there looks better than in SR2.

Thanks for the quick replies, guys. I am disappointed that Volition apparently went with less customization rather than more. I was hoping that SR2 signaled a trend in gaming toward more and more customization, but I guess it was an outlier. In any event, no matter how disheartening the facts are, I thank you for your rapid responses. Still really looking forward to playing the game when it comes in. If it's only half as good as SR2 it'll still be better than most recent games.

I find the customization of clothes to be satisfying. I remember thinking that there werent to many clothes in the initiation station and being pleasantly suprized when there were more selections in the full game. Does my memory fail me? ... With each clothing option there are as many as 3-4 different color layers and a good spectrum of color to choose from. I think its decent and am hoping for big DLC in the future. Wish I had a PC to fool around with mods though.

I actually think its great, I've spent more time with this character creator than any other

http://www.saintsrow.com/community/characters/details/126189313140482260

The character creator itself is significantly better than SR2's, allowing you to more easily create a character who doesn't look like a garbled mess. The clothing options and customisation variety is much larger in SR2, but there's still a decent amount of stuff to play dress-up with in The Third.

I think it's about the same as SR2.
 
But there's a large amount of  new crazy weapons, vehicles, and skills in SR3. I think that alone makes it many times better than its predecessor.