Mascots!
Alternate Title: Ruki Justifies Spending Hours in Character Creation Menus
Mascots: We all love them. Those... uh... sometimes adorable characters that help symbolize our favorite... uh... whatever it is we're interracting with.
Many companies, restaurants, and franchises have their beloved mascot. There's that animation company with the mouse, that restaurant with the mouse, and a certain game franchise most people on here love with the mouse. An identifiable mascot helps everyone recognize a brand.
Okay, jokes aside, a lot of things have mascots to help "personify" their brand that helps make them stand out, but they also give whatever they represent character. I've joked a few times in the past about making a "mascot" for Rukinations. Recently, I had a thought: why make a mascot for Rukinations when I can make all of the mascots for Rukinations?
And so, my collection of characters from various games that let you create and customize avatars purely for the fun of it was born.
Here are the rules for what counts as a mascot for the purpose of me doing something silly on my personal website and blog:
- Customizations make no direct impact on the character or game. Does wearing certain clothes or armor give them additional strength or stats? If so, it doesn't count. They can wear regular clothes underneath, though; the picture just can't include the armor that makes them all blend in with each other.
- It can't be an already established character I'm making my own.
- One per game. If I add a new picture for a game, it goes with the same character.
Arlo
Meet Arlo!
Arlo is my first character I made when the Hytale early access first dropped. When that game dropped, I expected the game to play out a lot closer to RPGs such as (what I imagine from) World of Warcraft or The Elder Scrolls Online just in a voxel sandbox world. Which, to be fair, it will probably eventually be that, but it's not quite there yet. (And no classes to worry about)
Hytale's not one of those games with directly printed lore readily available; the game, even in its barebones early access state, had a lot more "subtle" or "come to your own conclusion" storytelling. We know that gods used to be a thing but they got cursed in some way. We know a handful of factions remain and most of them are hostile towards anyone else who may come across. We can find the occasional ruins above or underground that paint a picture of cultures that used to be, but that's it.
Arlo either used to be a god or is on their way to godhood, depending on how the "Cursebreaker Arc" goes. I'd like to imagine that cursed mark on their right arm is a symbol of the curse on the world that they are trying to cure, both symbolically and literally. They're an elf of some kind, though they don't look like any of the factions that currently exist so I'd have to presume that they're a different kind of elf.
I happened to prefer using the dual-weilding daggers when playing, which made Arlo a very fast elf, madly dashing around the field and quickly taking out whatever targets they snuck up upon, whether that be cattle, a skeleton, or one of those wasps that give me the heebee jeebies (where's the accessibility option to hide those, Simon?).
Now that I'm looking at Arlo again, I'm not quite sure why they have modern sneakers. Maybe there is some Pokémon Legends: Arceus deal going on at the present.
Coach
Meet Coach!
Coach is the trainer from Pokémon Champions that almost immediately takes over a gym and begins running it for Coley. Kind of an easy selection process, I had to audition by following a pre-determined script during the tutorial where I was railroaded into picking the correct options to get the job. I wish it was that easy.
Originally, I was going to wait a short while before customizing the character in Champions, but the default options were so awful that I had to change them as soon as possible. The biggest issue I have is that you're stuck with that Rotom floating next to your ear that I had to build around. I call them Robin. Robin gets on my nerves a lot (I genuinely don't understand its purpose, in-world or in-gameplay).
I might change Coach's outfit around a bit once we get more colors that compliment Robin's red more, but in the mean time, this is the best we have.