Take Oblivion (The Elder Scrolls IV), for instance. At the game’s start, you find yourself in a prison cell, without even as much as a name to your character. The game greets you with a bounty of customizable options, granting you the option to entirely manipulate your overall size, your disposition, your facial structure, and an uncanny amount of other features. Each player essentially gets to create their character in the exact way they want to, whether it be a build that looks intimidating, attractive, cool, average, humorous, sneaky, or anything in between.
After creating your avatar’s appearance, you get to decide what type of combat and skills you’ll specialize in moving forward. The player’s avatar in Oblivion is truly a carving block, waiting to be sculpted into the exact design that each player has in mind – into the identity that each player seeks to inhabit. “If man, as the existentialist conceives [them], is indefinable, it is because at first [they] [are] nothing. Only afterward will [they] be something, and [they] [alone] will have made what [they] will be” (Sartre 345).
