@Background Pony #4CE0  
Meta wise maybe, but the palette swaps were present even in the animes. Heck, several characters being recolors of each other were actually minor jokes to full on plot points.

@Spiritus Arcane  
.Hack//ROOTS shows a vast amount of different player avatars. The palette swaps are either coincidence or ps2 memory limitations.

@deyogee  
It’s alright, yo. At the very least, if you meant the late ’90s, you only missed the mark by a few years. Either way, the original games are about 14 years old now.

@thps48
 
Sorry for some reason I thought it was the 90s, I suck cocks ●︿● how embarassing

@deyogee
 
@thps48  
As de said, it was actually the early 2000s, (unless Sign came out earlier?) but in either case, several MMOs at the time already had VASTLY better character design options than what was presented in .hack. Don’t get me wrong, was still a great game series and anime, but it always made me giggle that the world monopolizing MMO of the future had worse character customization than Star Wars Galaxies, which I was playing at the time I was introduced to .hack.

@deyogee  
.hack came out in 2002 for the PS2.

@Spiritus Arcane  
Oh ‘The World’ is hilariously unrealistic, I agree. But remember that this was the 90’s though, VR in itself was like ‘WHOAAAAAA AMAZING, INCREDIBLE’, I’m pretty sure that was a step up from playing DOOM on your PC haha.

@RIG  
I always found ‘The World’ to be the most unrealistic futuristic MMO ever, simply because in a future that allows immersive VR like that, the players were limited to recolors of pre-generated character models, when most MMOs today have at least some level of avatar customization beyond color, with some even to the point where you could actually sculpt your own features if you took your time with it.
 
This is especially hilarious when you consider that ‘The World’ apparently had zero competition, yet apparently had a shoestring budget when it came to their character creation.

Sorry double comment.

@thps48  
Nope, never ever

I should ask this someplace else, but do Kite’s or Blackrose’s names ever get revealed and is Haseo’s name his real name or is his real name something else? (I should probably point out my only experience with the .hack series is from both PXZ. lol)

@RIG
 
Haha, they have the same character class and model but they have different colour schemes and markings :)
 
They even meet each other at in the last episode of //SIGN, and in the videogames you meet up with an old friend of Tsukasa’s who will comment on the fact that Elk looks similar to him.

@deyogee  
NANI?! I hate when different characters use the exact same avatar.

[oops double post]

@RIG
 
This is Elk, not Tsukasa :)
 
Elk’s character is male, and is biologically male in real life.
 
Tsukasa’s character is male, and is biologically female in real life.

I was always confused about one thing…  
Was he male or female? Its player was…female? I was nver sure.