Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Afrocentric Hairstyles

Hello,

New to this forum BUT a huge D&D and RPG fan. I have a small and simple request to Larian Studios. Could you guys PLEASE add more Afrocentric Hairstyles to your games. I have been playing RPG games for years and have always felt left out when it comes to making my character. When making a character you might ONE or TWO Afrocentric Hairstyles like a small Afro or Dreads compared to the 100's of straight hairstyles. This is 2020 and there are plenty of people of color playing these games more than you know. I can say at least one positive thing, at least you guys got the skin tones right hats off to you for that at least.

More hairstyles is a request I think many people have. As many options as are available, there is rarely 'the one' that suits the character perfectly.

I agree that styles from different real-Earth cultures would be a nice addition. An extended selection might be something that is coded before full release, but these things usually arrive via mods.

But you must make sure that afrocentric hairstyles can only be selected by dark skinned characters as otherwise it would be cultural appropriation.

No.

I agree with Firesnakesaries "No"

I'm sure this would be an easy add-on. There will probably be quite a few mods for this on release also. Personally i prefer more realistic haircuts instead of everyone looking like they came right from the hairdresser. Short, long, none. But who cares.

It depends on the character and class for me.

Fighters and Rangers I tend to give short and sensible haircuts, or at least tied back. Wizards and Clerics I'll go with either elegant and elaborate or long and mystical. Rogues and Warlocks get whatever I apply to their concept, from elaborate con artist to scruffy urchin and mad zealot.

Yes, i agree. I definitely see some classes, like wizards having more .. eccentric hairstyles. Having 3 options "long, short, none" was an exaggeration. I just don't care for all the kids and their over the top haircuts. Kinda ruins the immersion. My point of reference for a fantasy setting would be something like the lord of the rings trilogy.

(I just realized this has nothing to do with the suggestion)

I dive into history and (usually European) geography for character inspiration, so I'll have a Irish Celtic character, a Medieval Finn, a Dark Age German, an Early Modern Venetian, and so on. I then try to match names, hairstyles and (where possible) armour and clothing to that concept. I don't worry too much about the character matching the rest of the setting culturally, but it does jar when the relative historical periods are too far apart. My Early Modern Germanic greatswordsman interacting with Classical period NPCs, for example.

D&D has long been a mish-mash of historical technology. Romano banded mail and shortswords running alongside full plate armour, heavy crossbows and rapiers makes me wince, but the game is what it is. If the NPC is supposed to be a desperate refugee but is wearing a fine velvet gown and has an elaborate hairstyle, well... 'it's only a game of D&D'. I wouldn't have made that artistic choice myself, but I can barely run Discord let alone code a PC game. My own tabletop game is where I get to determine what the NPCs wear and look like, not in a commercial CRPG.

I am so used to the mish-mash of different periodical technologies in dnd, i don't even think twice about it. Having all the mixed elements makes the game more rich mechanically. And i'm all for more variety of builds / playstyles.
I still want the crpg game i'm playing having some consistency within the limits of practicality when i comes down to fashion, including hairstyles. Like having a street urchin not wearing a velvet gown.

100% agree. It's one of the first things I thought when I opened character creation for the first time. I'm really happy with the skin tones available but it'd be great if every player could have the opportunity to represent themselves through their character, which in terms of hair is not currently an option for many players. Another thing that I'd like to see is to have certain faces available for more races. Obviously not like making a human able to have gith features, but for half-elves, elves, halflings, etc it'd be nice to see more diversity in the facial structures as we see in tieflings and humans. That's just my opinion at least

No one outside of Twitter actually believes this.

Not literally no one, but you get what I mean.
It's such an incredibly small group of people who actually believes this, media outlets just prop them up because it's financially beneficial for them to do so because drama sells.
But very few Chinese people are offended because a white woman wears a Chinese dress and very few black people are offended because a white person wears dreads.

Not to mention that dreads have existed in many cultures, they were just popularized in pop culture due to Rastafari...
So now people see it as a '' black hairstyle '' but that's a very modern idea.
The earliest findings of them are from Europe.
Some people just have a severely oversimplified view on culture.

I presumed he was sarcastic. O_o

I would agree on more hairstyles ...
But personaly i dont see much reason in focusing on just single style, and forgeting about every other. :-/
So i presume i will just see what moders offer.

I have seen quite a few.
You should draw the hairstyles you would like to see in the game.

Yes, but I am pretty sure that he/ she is trying to make fun of social issues.
Cultural appropriation is a thing altho very misunderstood and not just people wearing different clothes and hairstyles.

I count 6 male and 5 female hairstyles that are 'afrocentric', plus a few more that I have seen 'people of color' with irl. So Larian seems to have done a good job. The comment about 'ONE or TWO out of 100's' is simply not true. The total number of hairstyles (35 for male and 25 for female characters) are more than available most cRPG. Certainly better and more varied options than their previous Divinity games or any of the Bioware games.
And this is just the early access . . . there are expected to be additional options added later.

Plus 1 for diversity across faces and hair for Asian, Indian, Africans and people of Arabian descent

Hair styles for people of African descent is more obvious, but the others?
It's the same as Caucasians outside of some niche styles like Geisha hair or very oldschool traditional braids men used to wear.
If you want to get into that stuff then I mean there's a lot from Europe too that aren't in the game either, I can think of a lot from Scandinavia alone.
I think we might be taking it a bit far at that point tho xD, even if I think it'd be cool.

Edit: With that said, I went in and looked again and there really are quite a lot all things considered in the game already.
Not saying that they shouldn't add more, I'd like to see more all-around especially with straight bangs.

But I mean even as it is now I think that there are quite a lot of hairstyles fit for characters of African descent when you consider that it's just one out of many ethnicities.

I just wanna see more ponytails and braids. :3

Was it BG2's EE that saw almost universal dreadlocks?

I have to say that I changed pretty much all the portraits anyhow,* but I do recall a lot of people were completely bemused as to why the Sword Coast was suddenly dreadlock central.



*You might say that I had something of a Dreadlock Holiday.