Actually prefab houses can have as much character as any other suburban house (many will argue this is zero, but even those people will get an idea of what they can look like). Several of my neighbors live in one, and I didn't even know if for years: they look like a normal house. The need to bring it to the lot on a truck places some limits on the size of rooms and where walls much be to resist shipping issues. However a quality mass produced house is cheaper than regular construction.

Manufactured houses earned their bad reputation though. Many of them are/were junk. A lot of them are made by the same guys (and quality) who make trailer houses. Many city (suburban) codes, or HOAs will not let you put one up at all. This means that you don't see many of the quality ones. Most people are not actually qualified to judge quality of construction, some of them even today look nice for 10 years and then the maintenance nightmare begins: the parts are not standard home center sizes so it is a lot of labor to fix anything.

For most suburban houses you can take tens of thousands $$$ off the cost of new construction, get a good floor plan, and have your house built in 1/4th the time as regular construction. Anyone who is thinking about building their own house should look into this option (remember what I said about quality above though), but there are more energy efficient options that I think you should pay extra for even though it drives you back to site built.