Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Amazing updates announced but still nothing new about character customization?

Really loving all the details that Larian is making. Its coming along amazingly and I have to keep myself from playing anymore and wait for the final release.
But one thing still concerns me is there has been nothing announced on Character customizations besides some vague assurances that we will be getting more hair or face options.

The current characters look fine but they all have the same physic. I want to make an old skinny wizard with a long beard or a heavily muscled warrior lady (Maybe a half-orc if Larian blesses us) but currently I am restricted to one look
Will there ever be more body types? I even allow Larian to cheat!
If a character puts on certain armors then their body type changes so for example put on a Wizard's robe and you get skinny and scrawny. Put on a barbarian outfit you get massive biceps and abs. No need to change ALL the models!

I would like to use this topic, and its quite open name to remind few hopes of mine, that also takes place in character creation:
1) Most importanly ... set ears and face separately.
2) Merge male and female hairstyles.
3) Allowing us to combine two hairstyles. :P
4) Set starting equipment.
5) Body tatoos.

Oh gosh no ... -_-
I would rather have one generic body than this. :-/

Idk about body type, to me feels ok the way it already is, but I would love to at least be able to customize the facial features of my character! I don't like the idea that all Tavs always have the same faces.
I wish I could create a character who, for example, has the nose and eye shape that I want. Having to choose between preset heads is pretty boring in the long run. Instead having the opportunity to customize your character's face much more would make the character creator a thousand times more complete.

Is there anyone else who thinks the same?

Of course, many probably wants more customisation, but that involves more development cost as the "realism" of characters increases. Faces are often scanned now rather than driven by algorithms, which can make modification morre difficult; and bodies often kept to a "standard size" to avoid clipping problems with the multiple layers of adornment.

I hope that over time Larian do find a way to make more options available with their chosen character technologies, as I suspect the current palette will feel rather dull over time.

Face scans are fine for human features but fundamentally when dealing with fantasy races they can be problematic; case in point being the Elves in BG3 who just look like humans with pointy ears. Dwarves and Halflings, while sharing obvious similarities with human features, should also be quite distinct so again, I'm not sure that human face scans are the most appropriate place to start. Non-human races aren't supposed to look human after all. Larian really need to provide a much vaster range of character creation options, personally I really struggled to create a character I was happy with over several different playthroughs; it all felt very limiting.

I totally concur characters ideally need more customisation and added options such scars, jewellery, eye patches, single horns (where applicable) , proper Dwarven beards, etc.

Firstly, with the appearance of everyone's favourite buff druid Halsin, I'm sure different body types are in the pipeline. You're 100% right, characters shouldn't all look the same.

Secondly,

From an art/animation perspective, human face scans are the perfect place to start - after all, what other species do we have to start from? (Please note I said species not races! We humans are all one species!) Then you move certain points in the face structure around a bit to create more face variations. However this takes the artists/animators a lot of work - also, they need human face scans so (from my very very basic understanding?) the dots align properly for motion capture on human actors to animate the faces in a believable way.

Reality is that character customization is one of the last things that will get worked on - and something that quite likely won't be seen until the final product is released. It needs minimal testing, which can mostly be done in house, and is not something that actual needs an early access or beta test.

Honestly, one very easy fix for the moment would be to allow us to use all hairstyles on all characters (is it me or the male hairstyles are a lot better? And we can already give beards to females so why can't I get that cool hairstyle too?) even if they create some small clipping issues. Like, who cares! XD
Same thing for the faces. There's a half-elf unique face that I like a lot but I can't select it if I play a purebreed drow and the faces that are available for the elves, as said by others in this and other threads, really don't look that Elven to begin with.
Just make everything available for everyone, let us create our characters without having to resort to mods.

Come on Larian I'm not even asking for NEW stuff, just to allow us to access what you've already made!

Half-elf male head #5 is very cute but only available for half-elves. I'd love for them to make this head available for humans, drow and (full-blooded) elves. I don't like any of the male head choices for humans, drow and elves.

This is my #1 request for the game.

I definitely want more variety, as well as some slides, but I’ll need to be fine with what we get. I really love robust character editing systems, so the lack of that is a bit disappointing to me.

All the races basically look like humans cosplaying these races. Hopefully Larian can make then a bit more unique looking...

Im affraid Swen was quite explicit about that they will not adding sliders. O_o
Unless something changed? o_O

Personally, I hope for at least being able to pick from a list of individual features (noses, lips, jawlines, ears, eyes...). Then again, considering that a "head" entity already exists in the game and is being used for all the NPCs, adding such feature selection would require reimplementing the way the game treats said head and reassigning the now existing features to NPCs, which is kind of a chore to do...

...then again(1), there are some characters who use other races' heads (e.g., some of the petrified drow by the Selunite outpost who have either half-elf or even human heads) with features swapped for authenticity (like elf ears on the aforementioned drow), so, who knows? It'll be a hard ask trying to find suitable sorta-matching head shapes for giths, tieflings (who already have a few cases of horn incompatibility), and half-orcs, though.

Still, it would be really nice to have more freedom with the game focusing so much on close-up shots and having far greater graphical fidelity than D:OS2 which could get away with using a few preset heads on account of not having a cinematic dialogue camera, and something like PoE or Pathfinder are entirely isometric and can mostly not bother with overly detailed character appearance in the first place. Seeing the player character's clones here and there is a bit of a bummer. Heck, at least being able to choose more details for preset faces, like having an age slider or some scarring (it's strange that there's just one heavily scarred head, and it's a halfling one (Montaron throwback?), and most human faces look like they are in their late thirties or older), would already be a great addition. Something like The Outer Worlds gets away with having relatively few face presets and not much slider effect by being able to cover them with a combination of scars, grime, makeup/facepaint/freckles, and age, so with a bit of creativity it's possible to make a character that actually stands out - if only the game had a functional third-person camera to appreciate that...

I think that's my issue with using face scans for non-human races. Some of those Elven faces have a jaw line straight out of an 80s Hollywood action movie.

Well, it did work in Witchers, all of them in fact. Maybe Swen thinks he can get away with it, too?

Jokes aside, I think this task should have a very low priority at Larian. They need to be rebuilding the foundation, not repainting the walls, so to speak.

Yes... but no. The fundamental problem is character faces are hell to get right. Consider, for example, Mass Effect. Male Shepard's default was based on a model and barring tech limitations of 1 and 2, he looked fine. The female default was, as far as I know, simply a sculpt/made up (until mass effect 3) There is a massive difference in the quality, the detail, and it's especially glaring in Mass Effect II when Miranda is in the same shot as a female shepard as Yvonne Strastky (or whatever her surname is) has clearly defined facial structures
So, if you have faces you can make, it's going to be very, very noticeable when you're talking to Shadowheart or Astarion or whomever.

In the absolute sense, you could have faces scanned and then mr-potatoe-man it. However, the big problem with that is faces aren't like that and it wouldn't look right. The final option is what Larian's done; they 'just' scanned people's faces and that's it, beyond minor tweaks that's it. Personally think this is the best decision, because I'd love customisable faces but I have a long and illustrious history of making horrible faces. I'd rather have a preset selection of nice faces.
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However, I'd love more customising for them. Freckles, more tattoos, more scars, ect.

I know, it’s Hollywood all over again. Can’t they just hire actual elves and halflings?

PS. Joking aside, I don’t quite get what all the fuss is about. To me characters look excellent, and from what I have seen rather accurate to 5e art. More face choice is always welcome of course.

Well that did make me chuckle. Personally I know a few out of work Elven and Halfling actors who could have done the job.

Some of the faces are good, others not so. I assume the character creation will be expanded greatly eventually. I can’t get into the game if I’m not feeling how my character looks, as superficial as that may sound.

It's dangerous to make assumptions about an EA, which is why it would be ideal if Larian would be a bit more explicit about their plans (for this feature and other ones).

More in topic, I know that this can't necessarily apply to any game, but s a general rule of the thumb a good test to know if your character creator is in a good place would be what I call the "doppleganger test".
Pick a bunch of random characters from fiction (comics, TV shows, movies, novels, etc) and make an attempt to reproduce them in your editor. The most frictionless the process feels, the more you can tell that your range of options is broad enough.

This, for the record, is applicable even outside of cosmetic details, when it comes to reproduce "archetypes" following the game's ruleset.
For instance I remember playing Fallout 2 and deciding upfront "This character is going to be some sort of Bruce Lee clone", then picking perks like small frame, very high dexterity, expertise in hand-to-hand combat, etc.

I don’t think that’s unreasonable in a game that pushes main character in front of the camera as much as BG3.

Personally, I don’t have an issue with picking from a limited set of faces, as long as there are enough of them. But I am more of a “I can work with that” kind of guy.

Still, I am always fond of custom face generator aka. Mass Effect - it’s kinda sweet that my Shepard’s Al Pacino knockoff. Helped in making Shepard my own, in spite of otherwise limited customisation. I don’t expect it in BG3 though, as there is no indication of such technology in development.