Right on! Thanks for the link! I was actually searching for it earlier and couldn't find it! hehe
OK now I feel like I can start start diving in and really rambling here. Maybe I'll just take it one step at a time to suss things out a bit.
So as a new player, the very first thing that happens - We are shown an introductory cinematic where a Mindflayer is getting at a Githyanki gal with a toothy brain worm (Wrath of Khan style), before he does the same thing to us in POV.
Then we are thrown straight into the Character creator menu with this screen...
![[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]](https://i.ibb.co/VW2smNM/Origin.png)
Nothing much about the setting has been introduced at this point. It's a Forgotten Realms campaign set in Faerun sure, but that's not really established in any meaningful way at this point. Instead the first thing we get is this Elf babe with her giant Axe, with a lot of terms numbers and abbreviations that might mean something to you or might not, depending on your prior familiarity with D&D.
The first word we see, if we don't touch anything and allow our eye to drift kinda normally is the "Origin" tab. It reads as follows on the default...
"Select Origin"
Female or Male (shown as symbols)
Custom (with 5 other named options, but those are blanked out).
So at this point, if you know something about D&D or FR or BG3, you can probably discern that those 5 other options are Prefab characters and proper names, but if you don't know much, you might actually wonder a bit I suppose. Is an Astarion a culture, a species? maybe the Gales have been fighting the Shadowhearts for centuries? Whatever, the player's potential confusion here doesn't matter, it's all blanked out, and they will learn soon enough who the Origin Characters are I guess. Then we get this field/description...
Custom Origin
"You've always felt you had a greater calling, but it's never borne fruit. Everything changes when you awaken imprisoned on an alien ship. Perhaps your time has finally come."
Character Name: Tav
(Tav is provided as the default. If you don't click-in here or forget to come back and change it later, that's your Charname in BG3.)
Select Background: Acolyte
"You have spent your life in service to a temple, learning sacred rights and providing sacrifices to the god or gods you worship. Serving the gods and discovering their sacred works will guide you to greatness."
Background Features: Insight Proficiency, Religion Proficiency.
There are 10 other Background options, each with a brief description and listed proficiencies. If you go in the suggested order this is the first cycler we get to mess about with. So if I choose Charlatan the next option after Acolyte, I will see that some stuff changes for the Char synopsis window on the far left. If you know something about D&D this info might be meaningful, or perhaps not, again depending how familiar you are.
What's missing from the Origin/Backgrounds Tab?
Well how about something like...
"Every story has a beginning. Your character’s background reveals where you came from, how you became an adventurer, and your place in the world. Your fighter might have been a courageous knight or a grizzled soldier. Your wizard could have been a sage or an artisan. Your rogue might have gotten by as a guild thief or commanded audiences as a jester. Choosing a background provides you with important story cues about your character’s identity. The most important question to ask about your background is what changed? Why did you stop doing whatever your background describes and start adventuring? Where did you get the money to purchase your starting gear, or, if you come from a wealthy background, why don’t you have more money? How did you learn the skills of your class? What sets you apart from ordinary people who share your background?" [In Dungeons and Dragons all characters have a Background, granting them proficiencies in two skills.]
That is just ripped directly from https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/personality-and-background#Backgrounds, but it could just as easily be reworded to be more BG3 centric. The main point is just to explain (in some general way) what the character is actually doing when they select one background rather than another. The main problem I see with doing this as the very first tab, is that is uses concepts which haven't really been introduced yet, namely Class and Skills (proficiencies). Kind of a sequence issue I think.
The next tab is Race
![[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]](https://i.ibb.co/h8JdKPX/race.png)
"Select Race"
This is our first opportunity to see the visual for the default Avatar actually change, from an Elf barbarian babe, to a Tief barbarian babe, or Drow barbarian babe (not an Elf there I guess?) or Human barbarian babe etc.
We get another opportunity to select a gender afterwards, in case we want to change it.
Then "Select Sub-Race" which is available for each Race presented except for Humans and Githyanki.
Clicking stuff here will provide another change to the Avatar visual, tweaking the skin color or the hairstyle etc of our default Barbarian.
Changing the cycler in these fields will pull up a lot more information about "proficiencies" or traits and bonuses, and will change the numbers around on the left hand side of the screen. Once again, that might be meaningful to you, or maybe not, depending on prior familiarity or understanding of what those terms and numbers actually mean.
What's missing? How about something like...
"Humans are the most common people in the worlds of D&D, but they live and work alongside dwarves, elves, halflings, and countless other fantastic species. Your character belongs to one of these peoples. [...] Your choice of race affects many different aspects of your character. It establishes fundamental qualities that exist throughout your character’s adventuring career. When making this decision, keep in mind the kind of character you want to play [...] Your character race not only affects your ability scores and traits but also provides the cues for building your character’s story..."
Again ripped from beyond, with some abridgement. Then for each Race (Race, not Sub-Race) give a general description there as well, and provide some of the background lore specific to this particular setting, which isn't generic D&D but specific to the Races in the Forgotten Realms. You know, so we can learn a bit in a fruitful way, while we're building out our character.
The main problem I see for this one, is that it quickly bleeds over into the Appearance and Class tabs, encouraging the player to skip back and forth to try and achieve the desired visual. I think this happens because rather than telling us what an Elf or Githyanki is (some general lore in vignette) the approach is more like "this is what an Elf/Githyanki looks like."
Which is fine I suppose, but because it's a specific Avatar being visualized, as a Barbarian in this case (female elf blonde etc, until you click in to change something) it thrusts the player into appearance minutia, before that should really be happening in earnest. The player starts making choices based on the visual feedback they're being shown with the stuff that is changing, trying to create a visual they want, when it shouldn't be there yet. I don't like that haircut, I don't like how I'm dressed etc, hanging up on that rather than the specs independent of the visual, if that makes sense.
The next tab is appearance, but I feel like going into that will require many more screens. Since my laptop starts roaring and firing up like a fucking jet engine just trying to run BG3 and GIMP at the same time, that's probably going to take me a hot minute to get sorted. But least it's a start here.
What I'm most interested in right now is not the character art assets per se (I'm sure I'd like to see way more than BG3 will ever be able to deliver! lol) but rather how the stuff that is on offer here presents itself. The layout of the screens and the sequence, or trying to find a more natural breakpoint where we can go from generic and abstraction, to more specific and visually detailed.
