Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Character creation: suggestions, diversity, etc.

I think you guys are getting hanged up on past iterations of what elves are supposed to look like. This is the official 5e description of elves, which leaves it pretty open as to how they are 'supposed' to look:

Slender and Graceful

With their unearthly grace and fine features, elves appear hauntingly beautiful to humans and members of many other races. They are slightly shorter than humans on average, ranging from well under 5 feet tall to just over 6 feet. They are more slender than humans, weighing only 100 to 145 pounds. Males and females are about the same height, and males are only marginally heavier than females.

Elves’ coloration encompasses the normal human range and also includes skin in shades of copper, bronze, and almost bluish-white, hair of green or blue, and eyes like pools of liquid gold or silver. Elves have no facial and little body hair. They favor elegant clothing in bright colors, and they enjoy simple yet lovely jewelry.

I wholeheartedly agree on the "exotic races should look exotic". Especially elves that currently have very... heavy features. I would NOT guess that's an elf if I didn't see the ears. Some female options are ok, but most don't look "elfy" at all imo.

I must be weird, because I love the DOS2 and DA2 elves. My only issue with them is that DOS2 elves were just so different from Divinity: Dragon Commander Elves that there's no way to reconcile the lore there, and DAI elves weren't DA2 elves (why'd they revert ;_;).


The non-"white" ones are still too many for some. :| But as mentioned a few posts back, I would anticipate there'll be more choice by the time of the full release.[/quote]


Those people can piss off, and their opinions should be not just ignored, but ridiculed.


RE: beards for women: leave it in, it doesn't hurt anything and you don't have to use the option. If you don't like it... well, tough.

...and whipped, and drawn, and quartered ...what!? I'm being helpful! Sheesh...

Yup, "heavy features" is a good description for it.
Even the 5e description posted above states that they are "fine featured" and hauntingly beautiful. So whether or not they're human looking can be up to interpretation, but a lot of the elf options (once again, especially the male heads) weren't particularly fine featured.



ngl, the fact that this was an option was a pleasant surprise. lol Unintentional or not, I also see no harm in leaving it in.

It would be a really nice addition if they add the option to age our character and add blemishes.

Just some ideas to add a bit more variety into the custom character appearance department because coming across NPCs with the same face as myself or another kinda sucks.

I'm wondering if it's possible to:
- Add the option to swap Eye, Nose and Mouth shapes from other Head presets after selecting the Head preset you want initially - just to add a bit more diversity in appearance - especially if there's perhaps a particular element of a face that you just don't like and would otherwise think was perfect if only you could change it. That way you're still working with your assets and not having to create a bunch of new ones... though new ones would be appreciated as well haha
- Is it just the race I picked (Wood Elf) or is there a big difference in the amount of Female hairstyles vs Male hairstyles atm? I'd love more options. If possible, maybe adding a slider that let's you take the fringe of one hairstyle, but pair it with the length/style of another could result in some diverse looks.
- Add an expression tester option to the customizer menu? Just to test how our character will look when emoting.

I don't imagine any of this would/could be done any time soon but if I know that any of them could possibly be on the horizon, that would be amazing!

You are missing key wording of the officiall 5E description. I've pasted it elsewhere, but here it goes:



Likewise, here's official 5e artwork straight from the player handbook:



Granted, the alienness of older iterations is not as pronounced, yet you can see the key features remain there. They have triangular/heartshape heads and features, fine features. It is not so much that I don't want them to look african or asian, I am cool with that, my problem is that they look just like humans, and even worse, their eyes look like they're dazed.

The elves in 5e are just pretty humans with pointy ears. And slender. You are using males with square jaws to compare with the official 5e artwork, but look at the males in that 5e artwork, they don't look far off at all.

I think Larian has to make character creation a priority in the game, and why not right now, as it's the beginning facet of the game--the current choices are very limiting and feel incomplete--but, then, this is an alpha version. I'd like to see as many facial choices as there are hairstyles, etc. Would love to see aging, scaring--the ability to add white/gray hair to the various hairstyles. Some games really get detailed with facial structures--and they were created long before 2020, so it shouldn't be an issue today. I feel like they will add a lot to character creation, but it would be nice to get some supporting feedback on that from Larian. I tend to want to put myself in the game--or at least an idealized version of myself a bit younger--like a character in his 50s, for instance, a little gray hair, a few scars, a few wrinkles, etc...;) As well, the voices need a big boost in variety, imo. I also don't think it would be that difficult to put all the male voices together when creating males--same thing for creating a female with the female voices, etc. Allows the player to focus more intently on creating his character.

I think we are all pretty much unified about this! The color choices for skin and hair and clothes are robust & plentiful right now, imo. And I like the choices of hairstyles a lot--except for some of them--of course...;) But that doesn't mean other people won't like what I don't like, and vice versa. And so on...and so on...ad infinitum...;) Variety is the spice of life, ad nauseam.

The other thing I wanted to add is concerning the facial hair. When I was a kid long eons ago before the birth of Sagittarius, I had a device I loved called an Etch-A-Sketch. You used a magnet to move black iron filings inside a sealed box with gray plastic screen to draw things--anyway, that's what the facial hair currently reminds me of exactly--looks like it was drawn by an Etch-A-Sketch...;) I'm sure that's going to improve...!

Yeah I never understood that, but I'm a short fat geek, why would I expect anyone slaying dragons to look like me?

Also I just sort of expect cosmetic options to look setting approperate. I didn't exactly expect caucasion features on my Jade Empire char. and if a "Oriental adventures" RPG ever came out (god yes please!) I'd likewise expect to be locked to asian features

More variety is always a good thing IMHO. A higher number of face types would be excellent. I would also love to see multiple body types-maybe with some unlocked by your physical stats (Strength, Dexterity & Constitution). More voice types would also be wonderful! I do suspect these will be added in during the EA period.

The few scant pieces of artwork compiled there is hardly conclusive for how all elves should look like.

And that's the issue right now. Just about ALL the male elf heads are square-jawed and super human looking. If they want to keep those that's fine, but I also think it's valid if people want to see more options on the slender/finer-featured side.
The female elf heads and half-elf heads already do pretty well with this. And I mean, there's already a great example in one of their own companion characters, Astarion. I think he's a great blend of having enough elf-like features while still being able to pass as a "pretty human" if you rounded the ears.



I'm Asian myself, and honestly the Asian option just looked...off to me? Would be great for a human male base, but if they want some good inspiration on more elf-like bases they should check out some of those historical Korean/Chinese dramas lol


BUT anyways, onto more general character creation talk, some of the hair options, especially the ones that are pulled back and show the hairline, look kind of like helmets? Like it wasn't properly "glued" down to their foreheads. I think that'll definitely be addressed by the time the full game comes out, but yeah that kind of stood out to me.

And personally I think a lot of the facial issues can be addressed with sliders, but eh I'm fine with default faces too, as I'm sure there'll be more.

More body types would be nice as well!

I don't think I need to mention this since its pretty obvious.

But more Hairs, faces, beards, tattoos and other choices is an obvious thing to ask for and if Larian doesn't add more after a year of more development then I will be incredibly disappointed in them. I mean its the least you could add!
A face and sculpting technology would be AMAZING but I am sure they already thought of it. So its either in development now OR it ain't happening.


Here are my suggestions:
1) Please allow us to have playable orcs/half orcs.
2) Please allow us to have MULTIPLE makeups, just give us more layers to add more makeup.
3) Please allow us to have BODY customization! Muscles, abs or scrawny looks at the very least! Maybe body tattoos like Shadowheart's on the coverpage! Maybe editing body models is too hard but at least custom texture player characters.
4) Please allow us to have jewelry like earings, nose rings, tiefling horn decorations, tiefling horn colors... preferably each race would have at least one or two race specific jewelry like Drow spider earings!
5) Please allow modders to add more character creation sliders and other options. Maybe by doing that the community can try to add near unlimited player choice variations, they just need the framework you can build to provide it.

Thank you for your time

Eddy

I do see it very clearly in the official artwork that I posted, including the male elves, but if you don't then I guess there's nothing more to say.



I'm a latina myself, so I'm mixed race, yet I honestly don't understand why bringing race into fantasy, non human folk (elves, dwarves, hin, gnomes, etc) when they're not supposed to be human. I do not need to see myself represented in an alien race, but whatever floats your boat. Just give us some fantasy too, please, Larian :'D

Can we please not turn this into a "what X fantasy race should look like?" thread?

Who care how people want to present their characters like in this game? Its a single player game, let people do what they want.
Lets make this thread something constructive about what YOU would like to see implemented to make the character you want.

I sincerely hope Larian is making a face sculptor or at least more options and I hope those options are as varied as possible.

I agree with eddiar i think things are straying a bit from the original topic which is how can the character customization system be improved and what would you like to see in it.

I agree that the elves look very 'heavy' as someone said before. Most faces (at least for male characters) look very... extreme.
I would be grateful for more options, especially more androgynous faces or at least some that are simply less extreme.

Would also love to see scars. Most companions have them, why can't we? I dream of being able to pick a tag for scars as well, which could trigger conversations such as 'How did you get that scar?' but I know, that's only a dream.

Adornments/accessories would also be nice and as was mention frequently, heterochromia would be lovely.

Sliders would be ideal, but I think more options in general is a must. I feel like my current character is 'the best he can be', given the limited options, but not what I want him to be.

I also was unable to create the character I wanted to create. I guess, since I pretty much create the same character for my first playthrough in every game, maybe I was kind of doomed to be disappointed with preset faces in a game where I have to see my character all the time in cutscenes, so I can't even pretend she looks like what I meant her to. I was going to create a human female, but I really didn't care for any of the faces, so I abandoned my usual character entirely and created an elf instead. I would really like to have some more options overall. And I was a little disappointed that the makeup was only eyeliner/eyeshadow and that you couldn't have the color of the eyeliner be a different color than the eyeshadow. Also, I agree that it's strange that there is no option for your character to have a scar.

Hey OP.

It would be cool if you could catalog everyone's suggestions into one post in your opening post.
That way both Larian and other posters can see of all the things suggested so far!