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Joined: Aug 2013
Waltc Offline OP
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Saw the teaser releases today centering around character creation. I was left with an impression that was pretty powerful, so I wanted to share it with the creating artists. I realize this is early days yet, but what struck me forcefully about the heads and faces I've seen so far in the teaser portraits was that every single one of the characters either looked miserable & very unhappy with his/her lot, or else pouty (bottom lip protruding) like maybe a spoiled brat unused to being told "No!" or with a distinctly childish attitude. What both my wife and I noticed about the characters right off was that a dull sort of general unhappiness/misery seemed to pervade them. Thing was they were *all* that way...;) I know that BG3 is going to be dark, and that's fine--preferable, even--to a story that's so bright it hurts at times and doesn't seem real. But I hope the characters will look as if they have some life in them--some enthusiasm for their fortes or their abilities specialties. Take the dwarf, as an example--I thought the artwork was really great, btw--but there was no amused "sparkle" in his eyes or expression, as if he was singing within himself a work tune that only dwarves might sing--ribald good humor. A zest for life that dwarves are reputed for, etc. No liveliness.

The faces I saw were flat--dull, boring, and uninspiring frankly. Character creation should in my view not be a purely mechanical process like Dr. Frankenstein adding dead limbs to his monster. Giving these characters *depth* and dimension is needed badly--the whole being more than the sum of its parts, etc. Not everyone has to look angry, mad at the world, depressed (let's leave "bi-polar" and "manic depression" in this world...;)) and so on. A few of those characters beside a few positive personalities would present a great and lively contrast--adding in much more of that all-important "suspension of disbelief" that Bacon wrote about...

But, anyway, I know this is an Early Look and all of this may already be on tap to do. But it was a powerful impression my wife and I both had and so I thought I'd pass the suggestion on!

Really looking forward to BG3... claphands


I'm never wrong about anything, and so if you see an error in any of my posts you will know immediately that I did not write it...;)
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I've seen this point made a few times today, some of them being on this forum.
They didn't go through any of the toggles on customization at all for facial features. They showed some examples of what each race could look like.
I very, very much doubt that everyone's going to get just a standard face with no customization options.
But I guess we'll all find out in... 3 days?


I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought.

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None of the characters looked angry or sad to me. Those were all neutral expressions. It would be nice if you could pick your characters’ default expression, though.

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Theyre face scanned real life people. I personally find this approach boring but saying they dont look like they have depth is quite ironic.

Personally im having fears that the reason why races like dragonborn arent announced yet is due to them relying on face scanning for the player models.

I also would prefer a strong character editor (which we know we wont getting) to over realistic faces that we only get to pick and choose.

Regardless, i do admit that theres a certain unattractiveness to almost all charactes weve seen in game so far.
However, the models shown in the new community update looked decent to me, specifically the wood elf was an actual attractive female character, a first for BG3 so far.

So i dont think i can make any general statements.

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Well, given that the PCs have found out that they have the life expectancy of a chocolate teapot, they can hardly be expected to be full of the joys of spring. I for one would be quite happy with an expression suggesting a significant hackedoffness.


Someone must have spiked her senna pod drink!
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They look neutral to me. They are just showing what they should: the physicality of their traits. They don't have origins stories so how would the devs decide what kind of expression they should put on them if they don't know what kind of personality you will choose during your playthrough afterwards. It doesn't make sense to me.

So I am pretty happy they keep a neutral expression in the character creation tool so I can just focus on how they look like and not how lively they're gonna be later, in the game. Because I am sure, with the help of motion captures in cinematics, they will have all sorts of expressions, many we haven't seen yet.

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I think they look great. They make face animations in cutsenes. I think we could not have asked more.
I think what they could do is just add some basic animation to the face, while it is in character creation.

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I think how expressive the faces are in character creation is less important than how expressive they'll look like in dialogue and cutscenes. We'll have to see if that makes a difference.

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Character creation happens while the character is lobotomized by a tadpole. Why would they look happy?







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