Golfer's Gallery

An Ode to the Art of Character Creation

There is a lot to be said about video games and the custom avatar options granted to us players. I'd presume that untold amounts of hours go into the creation of every individual piece of clothing, hairdo, eye textures, skin textures, facial structure algorithms, and animation suites.

All of this dedicated to two purposes:

1. Allow players to express themselves, to feel as if they, themselves, are the main character.
2. For the love of God, don't let players create anything that looks broken.

Perhaps these two goals oppose each other, on a philosophical level. To truly allow a player to express themselves is to forsake all standards of Art Direction. One never knows when a player's expression demands, say, inhuman skin colors, disproportinately large (or small) body parts, or - in the case of Soulcalibur VI or Street Fighter 6, the ability to present oneself as a giant apple or wicker basket, obscuring one's form entirely.

That is all to preface that, here, things are once again going to get Weird.

Ruby, the Recurring (and Rational)

(Everybody's Golf, PlayStation 4 [among others])

Antonia Justine "Ruby" Travaglia is sort of my "default" character, whenever I get to make a character in a video game. She is plain, unendowed, red-haired and grumpy. She might be the most sensible and normal-looking of anything that's going to appear on this page.

Done on commission by 0tacat.	Kindly provided by Draayder.
Done on commission by Duelit.	Kindly provided by The_Gunheart.

In other games, she has been a journalist, a mercenary, a gambler, a bare-knuckle brawler, an investigator, a Warrior of Light. But is she ready for her greatest challenge yet: This Guy?

She certainly looks ready enough. She has no idea who that shadowy character is, in front of that explosion, but she wants that man DEAD.

Dr. Quartzon

(Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, PlayStation 3)

I suppose it's tradition for character menus to include a Randomize button, for those folks who just don't care what they look like. But, thus far, only the Tiger Woods games have offered such a wide range of Randomize buttons, to cater to those who want to look normal, versus players who want to create hideous monsters.

Why, yes, I'll pick the Extreme All course. Just mess me up. Go in like a lamb, and come out like a contrabass tuba. Or something.

I clicked Randomize exactly once and it gave me this man, who looks like he would have been a recurring villain on The Superfriends. I swear I changed nothing about him. He intends to win the PGA Tour by... I don't know, shrinking the other golfers, or deploying the spider drones, or... something.

Side note: PGA Tour 10 also has a bafflingly wide array of gimmick costumes for your golfers. It was made on the same graphics engine as Dead Space, after all, so it cost them nothing to port over the Isaac model, but the bunny suit is... a look.

And the moment they've been waiting for: Wide Jeremy

(Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, Mac OS X)

He's not overweight - he's just at the wrong aspect ratio. Wide Jeremy was another result from a randomize button, in a game that didn't have an Extreme All button. He mostly exists in this form because I enjoyed his facial expression so much, and the fact that the parting of his hair and the mustache kind of makes him look like the son of the Pringles guy.

This man wants to sell me some potato crisps. But it's primarily his dopey grin that makes him such a winner.

This man is just so psyched to be golfing. He just whacks that ball as hard as he can, and he doesn't even care where it went or how far. He's just happy to send it sailing into the wild blue yonder.

...as long as he doesn't throw out his back in the process.

Dent Compoundfracture: The Confusing Monster

(PGA Tour 2K21, Windows)

His hair colors are not consistent with anything genetically possible, let alone with themselves. It is biologically unclear exactly why his eyes look like that. His brow is more solid than the armor plating on an Abrams tank. We don't know why he plays golf, because Lord knows he's not very good at it. He speaks to nobody. Rumor has it he doesn't even travel to the course; he just climbs out of the hole on the 14th green every morning at 7 o'clock. The only thing we know for sure about him is what's on his clubhouse card: Dent Compoundfracture.

Oh, and he's a hat size MMXX-Large.