Not into the sexy Clan of the Cave Bear look eh? heheh
Honestly, the more I stare at these outfits, the clearer it becomes that the design team doesn't understand how basic clothing works, either that or they just don't really care. Granted, everyone knows that standard fantasy gear is replete with excessive straps, pointless buckles and asymmetrical wonk, in addition to all the usual modern fashion anachronisms, but BG3 takes it to another level. Nothing makes functional sense. Every outfit is a hodgepodge of draping and layers and accessories that just seem to float like they were stuck on with velcro or hot glue.
No wonder nobody wants to get undressed at camp - it'd probably take them like 3 hours to put their clothes back on lol
Everything is it's own element, barely held in place by some strappy sash or a tiny buckle. I don't just mean the random patchwork we've come to expect with 'hide' armor, but really, they're all like that. Even the cornball renaissance fair duds, where they could probably just rent something to see how it works, don't seem constructed but instead just drawn on like pattern prints. Half the time the 'armor' looks like something you'd pick up as a Spirit Halloween costume. You know, where everything is made of polyester and designed to fall apart the next day, with the 'metal' blending seamlessly into the 'leather' or 'cloth', as if it was all part of the same iron-on applique.
Not trying to be overly harsh here, but it's like they're just riffing DA photoshop style, without any point of reference in reality to ground it. That's fine for concept art I guess, but I'd expect a bit more from Baldur's Gate. Sure there are some designs in there that I do like, but when you cycle quickly through all of them at a steady clip, you can tell that most of the time it's actually the same basic design. They're just embellished slightly differently or with a different pattern/color, but you can see from the shapes of the major pieces that they're all built of the same mesh for each outfit type.
Yeah, this reminds me of the simple leather boots that every character seems to be wearing (an issue I will get to in a second). Check these things out:
https://i.imgur.com/MECKk0B.jpegWhat the heck are those supposed to be? They literally look like a pair of taller boots tucked into ankle booties or something. They are just weird looking for no reason and don't even match the inventory icon.
Anyway, the bigger issue is that everyone is wearing them and they all look completely identical. That makes no sense unless we all shop at the same exact store I guess?
But yeah, my solution for this is....why not lean more heavily into the world of Faerun to differentiate the various armor pieces? Take some simple leather armor as an example. Leather armor from Waterdeep might look different compared to leather armor from Icewind Dale....which in turn might look different from Calimshan, etc etc. Bonus points if we get some nice item descriptions that add a bit of lore about those regions similar to the Souls games.
I do need to mention that I have not played a lot of this EA and haven't even turned it on in a long time. So I haven't seen every clothing/armor item in the game. I am just mainly going over our characters' initial looks and how a lot of the earlier armors look identical.
So yeah, more variety by leaning into the lore of Faerun would be welcome.
