Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Character Creation Feedback

Oh I definitely agree, if it's just a paragraph of text, (or in the current case a list of options that we cycle through 1 at a time with a single line of description for each) I think the impression is bound to be kinda meh right?

Because there is no attendant visual feedback, the first tab is very skippable. Name definitely feels quite skippable. But perhaps if Voice was put here instead of in Appearance, peeps would be less likely to blow past it? Just because there'd be something interesting happening with the feedback, audio rather than visual in that instance.

It would be a different situation if say selecting Urchin displayed a kid in rags doing some kind of pick-pockety animation, or Soldier showed us a trooper saluting. Absent that, perhaps the background choice might change the environment of the Char Creation Avatar display. So say you choose Outlander, you might get the fancy waterfall and the trees and the pretty landscape, but if you choose Acolyte, suddenly it's a tile floored temple with mosaics or whatever. Perhaps Sage sticks you in a library. Then there is visual feedback to the selection being made and the player is more engaged. Maybe some kinda sound plays or we get a little melody to accompany the transition? Or perhaps the information is just presented all together in a nice little matrix that takes up the entire screen with something to grab us more in the overall sweep that way. You know, so the player has a reason to get excited about what's happening on that tab, or think to themselves 'hmmm maybe this is actually important and I should slow down to delve in a bit here.' But I don't think that's what happens when the Avatar your seeing remains static.

If Race was selected before Background/Origin, and we had our generic Avatar base from that initial choice, then perhaps Background could provide us with a simple outfit that conveys our heritage/upbringing in some way. So an Acolyte might have some kind of monastic getup, whereas a Charlatan gets something a bit more rakish, and a Sailor something all windswept and salty etc. These would be like our regular duds, or under armor, the clothing we get just for a start, before we deck out into something more Class specific, or ideally a full Starting Equipment selection at the very end. Or perhaps rather than an article of clothing, it's just some distinct accessory we get to see or hold because of the background we chose. I like the regular clothing idea myself, because those threads could be used to convey a distinct fantasy race theme at the same time. Doesn't have to be terribly complex I don't think, could be as simple as associating arbitrary colors with a background there. Maybe Soldier wear red, Outlanders green, Sailors blue etc. Again, just something to give the player a reason to say, 'ah now we're building to something!' hehe.

For a general rule, I'd say that the process should build one step on the next, tab to tab, such that the visual gets more refined as you go along, and each tab should then jazz up what's happening with the Avatar in some way. But at the start it's stripped down, like literally to the undergarments. I won't want to see a big Axe at the start, I want that to come a bit later, perhaps as part of the skills screen, which among the tabs listed is probably the more thematically appropriate spot for a weapon to appear (assuming they don't give us a proper starting equipment menu). At least there it would give us something to mull over on that screen. Or if it's a race with a weapons proficiency like a Rapier or a Longsword, then show that until we select a Class that has something else going on. But I don't want to get to far out ahead from Appearance just yet.

Instead, here's all the hair... lol



This is one aspect of the Char Creator that's remarkably impressive in my view, just for the sheer amount of attention it's received. The hair hasn't been gated by sex in a while, which is good, because while some styles clearly look a bit rough (squinting at you 10b! lol) some do look pretty nice, or least with a weird charm that some player out there might want for their PC.

The defaults do hop around quite a bit between list A and list B, and there are some styles that it's just a bit annoying to have to scroll through forever to find what you're after, but overall at least there's a lot of variety. Something like 60+ trims on offer now, but that is also a lot to cycle through. It would be nice to get a survey view on it, like those posters at the barber shop or the books at hair salons, which is why I wanted to do it up this way right quick. Sure some of that is a bit choppy, no doubt, but whether that's from whack meshes or just me running the game on the absolute minimum graphics settings for this, hard to say. The colors are of course all a bit off since the last patch, so this was as close as I could get to a dark brown or black, but again least gives an over all sense of what's there. When it comes to coloring it, we now have a two tone thing going on with highlights and greying, but I knocked those back to zero for a solid color, just so it'd be little clearer when they're all in a row.

My main thought here for the hair, is that the list groupings aren't very useful. Right now list A is for the more standard-ish female hairstyles, while B has more of the standard-ish male hairstyles. But that's still 30 haircuts for either list, and it's not like there's a drop down here. If you want to get from A to B you have click the mouse 30 times lol. My solution would be to group the hairstyles into smaller lists, of a dozen say. Then you could have a smaller series grouped by style: one for the updos, another for bobs and shorter styles, one for long hair worn down, fancy braids, curly hair etc. Ideally we'd be able to page through examples in a quickview (say half a dozen shown at the same time in a matrix). Find the hair we want that way, and then the game opens out into the detailing menu, where we can fiddle with the highlights and all that stuff. This would require some way to preview or load more than a single asset at a time, but if they could get that to work for hair, then they could do it in other places as well. Basically to make it simpler for the player to peruse a gallery of options, and kind of pan out to survey that way.

ps. one other quick note on the shortest of hairstyles. We're still missing a couple classic military buzz cuts. You know like Titus Pullo style. What we have now goes from razor'd clean off to like 2 inches in length, with nothing in between. All the heads need some kind of scalp tone as well, which has been mentioned a few times in other threads. Beards are missing the same thing. We go from clean shaven to scraggly mustaches with like no 5 o'clock shadows in between to balance it out. Even if it's just a more solid tone or simple gradient, to make the skin tone darker in those areas, but something that'll work even with all the settings all turned to low. Cause nothing looks worse than patchy blocky hair, whether that's on the hear or the face. Some minor clipping I can forgive and have cleaned it up a bit, but you still got lots of hairdos with strands the break or just float disconnected. Again though, the hair is pretty impressive. I only wish some other stuff would get that much love haha.

pps. Oh and another quick hair thought - So for any of the hairstyles where the part is clearly on the left or right side (rather than down the center), we should be able to flip the part to the desired side. The same haircut can present in different way, with a slightly different sensibility, just from the side it's parted on. For those hairstyles we should get the reverse-part alt next in sequence, which would also be a simple way to get some more mileage out of what's already there. Here's a quick example...


Within the Appearance tab, the top fields Head/Face, Hairstyle/Hair-Color, Skin Tone and Eye color are the big ones. But I'm not sure that the Subrace defaults should really be messing around with heavy eye makeup or tattoos and the like. Those should be available for the PC to tweak of course (lipshade and jewelry would be nice as well) but I think they should stick with a more no-makeup or subtle makeup version for the defaults on everything. That way the cosmetic fields don't change around all over the place, when choosing a different Sub-Race. Like why do all High Half-Elves need to default to super heavy eye shadow, or Gold Dwarves need to have painted dots below their eyes? It's just one more thing the player needs to undo, if they're not really vibing on it. I've seen some mods that tweak the tattoo field into a full cosmetics feature (lipstick and blush and such) and I think that's great, but it should be something the player can add on to the default look, rather than defining it, if that makes sense. I think there also needs to be some parity between features likely to be used by either sex. So having a ton of beard options is great, but just recognizing that they're probably not being used one female heads, just like heavy eye makeup and lipshade probably isn't being used with the male heads all that often. Face tats are cool and all, especially if they are faded out to look more like complexion elements rather ink, but sigils and flying birds and full tribal designs all over the mug seems pretty niche. Having stuff like warpaint in addition to more regular makeup would be good I think, just to make it a bit more adaptive. Some simpler designs there too, like just a basic black stripe on the cheeks under the eye to block off glare and such.