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

The Character Creation process is the first thing we engage with in BG3, and I'm sorry, but it just isn't doing its job to my satisfaction.

Things have been added to it, sure, obviously there are more classes now, but the default presentation and the sort of skip-around back-and-forth that goes on here makes a lot of the most important Char creation stuff seem rather static or inconsequential or irrelevant to what the experience is going to be. Basically it gives me the impression of a being a random grab bag, where too much information is presented at once and the player has too many things/tabs to manipulate and fiddle around with from the same menu there, without enough structure or step by step flow. It's not quite orderly enough and I think it could be much stronger.

First, I don't think we should be shown a default Avatar until the player has actually clicked into something and selected some stuff first.

As a player once I'm shown a visual for the Character's avatar, I immediately want to start tweaking the appearance, but that tab is in the middle and really that's just not how it should start. In BG3 it's a bit like taking the process outlined in the PHB, but where the pages are all cut out and rearranged on the floor in a nice survey spread. But then some pages are tapped/stapled to other pages, such that if you pick up one page to get a closer look and read the deets there, it starts pulling the other loose leafs around until it's all a big mess again.

On Beyond they give the following sequence...

1. Choose a Race
2. Choose a Class (and a Background)
3. Determine Ability Scores
4. Describe your Character
5. Choose your Equipment

In BG3 we get this... but it's not really a sequence, just how stuff is arranged from left to right within the same general Char creation menu/screen.

1. Origin (Name and Background)
2. Race
3. Appearance
4. Class
5. Skills
6. Abilities

The way it's presented now, before actually doing/clicking on anything, we are immediately shown a High-Elf Barbarian female named Tav ,all dressed up and ready to go, with Ability scores and the like already shown on the left hand side of the screen. If you want to see something else displayed, you have to skip over to Race or Class to pull up another Avatar default, then click into appearance etc. But again, because of the way you can just skip around, the whole process is a bit muddled.

The game asks us "Who Are You?" when the screen is launched, but really the way it's presented the actual question is more like "Is this who you are?" And then the player has to say "No, that's not who I am" and change a bunch of stuff in the middle. It's just leading where it doesn't need to be.

The appearance tab, which is the most interactive and probably the most important in terms of satisfying what the player is actually looking for at that point, is all jammed together into one spot. Other tabs, which should probably be more about providing a gloss on critical information about D&D systems, is subordinated to the specific Avatar being visualized. There isn't room to present stuff like Abilities or Background in a compelling way, because you have to see the Avatar at all times in this screen.

The player wants to manipulate what will actually change the visual though, and so they start banging around and skipping ahead. Way too chaotic. I don't know how other people engage with it, but that's how I do. I see something visual and I want to start manipulating that visual immediately.

In my view this shouldn't happen first, it should happen last, in the describe your character part. We don't get to choose Equipment in BG3, since that is generic and determined by our Class choice, sadly. In BG3 the last fields to tweak are Skills and Abilities, which are going to be by far the most confusing for anyone not already familiar with D&D. But rather than getting a separate treatment with room for the game to describe what's going on here or for the player to really explore it, it's just sort smashed in like an extension of appearance. Like at best you'll get a little drop down arrow to collapse/expand some details, but even there, it's like it's all being compressed for the quickie and encouraging the player to just blow straight past half the material to get to a visual they want.

I think they should completely rebuild this aspect of the game, rather than just 'polishing' it. Many of the pieces are already there, but this jigsaw isn't nearly complete.

It has received very little substantive work during the EA, despite being the literal first thing that the player will interact with in the game. The BG3 Char creator should be a glowing triumph by now, but honestly it looks and feels the same way it did in 2020 to me.

The Tutorial Prologue is pretty similar, in that it has maybe changed at the margins in a few respects, but remains more or less the same, even after two years of development.

I know this is a perennial conversation topic, but I wanted to go a bit beyond "more heads and outfits please" to try and describe why I think it's failing in broader terms, hence the new topic thread. I think the Character Creator is absolutely the most important part of a BG game. It's the hook. It's the thing we "play with" before playing with anything else. It's also the thing that will bring the player back, for another run, or another 100 hours or maybe another 1000 if it's actually done up proper. Super important, at least to me. So I wanted to give this feedback again, cause it's been quite a while, and I just don't see that much has changed here. I have some thoughts and images I want to add, and mention stuff like Bio, but before going there I just wanted to drop a thread for it, instead of spreading around many topics like I tend to do lol. But please, hop in here, if you got any thoughts, cause I feel like now is definitely the time. Before too long now the game will be out, and it's kinda too late at that point, so just trying to get in some feedback here while there's still a chance it might have an impact.

The character creation system is very poor at the moment, despite the time passed and the tweaks they've made. I'm tempted to back reference my original character creation feedback thread again. And I will: it's Here), though I didn't talk as much about the layout of the different tabs themselves there - I second the bulk of this, obviously.

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...



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



"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.

Great feedback Niara, you clearly put a lot of thought into that.

Black Elk: "What am I, chopped liver?"



The character creation screen could use some rationalization. I was moved to try and make a Fighter/Wizard type character recently and going back and forth between the race-class-and statistics while tuning, was pretty annoying. It also would be nice to have a Pathfinder style spreadsheet showing what you're in for, without cracking open a handbook, not to mention feats. Maybe this is just min-max'er problems

Hehe I probably am though. Or at least I got the chopped part down pat lol

So I managed to get some caps of all the bodies in Char Creation right quick. I defaulted them all to fighter Class, because the Barbarian outfit is so busy and I found it distracting. I just wanted to get everyone in a nice neat line, with the same crops, so we can see how this stuff displays in the Char Creation screen. I reduced the image to 75% so it wouldn't be too massive, but at least you can see the spread and relative scales as they present on first view.

I followed the layout of the Select Race tab, with the defaults at the top and Sub-Race variant default below that. I wish they would display with a generic Fantasy Race tunic or something, since I don't think we should get that armored view until we select a Class, but gotta work with what we're given I guess. Anyhow, here's everyone standing together...



The camera zoom shift for the shorties is kind of annoying, and I still find the background environment distracting here, but it sort of works.

I wanted to really delve in on the "Heads" since that's the first field in the Appearance tab. Or more specifically wanted to focus on the "Faces" and how they are being gated by Race and Sub-Race in that field, sort of unnecessarily. At first I wanted to try to find a way to present them all together like I did in the Heads thread. Just so that would be kind of aesthetically pleasing to me, which for me would be Mombi's glass cabinet of stolen heads. But then I didn't want to make the choices there seem more numerous or various or more impressive than they actually are in the default. So instead you just get this for right now... hehe


Now that may look a bit oddball, with the close crops, and just running the faces all together one into the next, but I think it conveys a general idea. I got tired, so it's not exhaustive. Didn't get around to the males or the monstrous races, and I didn't do the sub-race versions (beyond just repeating the last face to give an idea of what's going on there) but the faces themselves just repeat in Sub-Race, albiet in a different order, so I think it works to give the impression. Everything else is cosmetic nuance, like skin tone or eye color or makeup etc. The defaults seemed important to show though (even I find the eye and makeup choices kinda weird in some cases), since that's the first impression we'll get.

The reality is that they are just using hair or makeup or eye color etc as a way to convey a sub-race distinction within the defaults, but none of that is gated in the way that the basic faces are. Meaning I can make a High-Elf who looks in every way like Lloth-Sworn drow or whatever, provided I go in and mess with the individual fields, but I can't get to a different face set unless I go back and select a different race from the earlier tab.

The game will save cosmetic choices based on the specific selected Race, but if you go to a new Race then it will return the regular defaults there, until you start changing stuff around. Curiously I haven't found a quick and easy way to "clear all" other than closing out of the Char creation screen and relaunching it again, so that's another minor annoyance.

Now I'm all zonked though, so I'll have to think on a bit what I'd like to actually say here, but we can just ruminate on the images for a second I suppose.

The first thing I'd like to see, is a lot more variation in Height/Scale for the models, so the player can actually tell how large these races are relative to each other.

Like for example, are Gith supposed to be taller than the Humans or just more gangly lookin'? You'll notice that only the Male Gith have that distinct phenotype, whereas the females just look the same as all the other medium sized female humanoids. I think I'd be a little weirded out if suddenly Lae'zel was looking all extra gangly, but the way its presents it's hard to tell what going on. Similarly, why not just make the Elves somewhat more diminutive relative to the humans, so we could tell them apart at a glance? Also what's up with the Gnomes? Are they shorter than the Halflings, or it just our camera messing with us? All these issues can be summarized with the question, is the Character creator showing us this stuff at scale, the way it will present in game? And if not, why not? Char creation is the place to establish the metrics on this stuff I would think.

+ Kazzilion Bazzilions. :3
We really, and i mean REALLY need this feature.

---

Fun fact ...

I have 872 Hours played ... created around 20-25 characters ...
And yet i never-ever, not even once bothered to read either of this:

So ... in the light of that, i cant help the feeling like this:

Will share the same fate. :-/
So im not quite sure if its necesary ... i mean it nice talking, it helps you establish what is going on right now ... but i believe that most people would be like "long paragraph ... lets skip it".

You might be right, but personally I think it's worth including because if the game is meant to appeal to folks who aren't familiar with D&D or even with crpgs in general, then it's still important context to have for those who are new to the game and actually need guidance. Plus this is a crpg, a genre that's a bit notrious for long paragraphs of text, no sense shying away from it.

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.

Lol, not meant as a slight. Black Elk is performing a tour de force as well.

Hehe just a little sleep deprivation and like way too much time on the hands this weekend

So I felt bad, cause I bagged pretty hard on the Bard outfit when it dropped, but I will definitely say that the collar here is pretty magnificent! If I could but recolor the threads to my taste to tamp down the patterning it'd be bard for me all day/night!

Well anyhow, here are all the eye makeup options...




Beyond the general skintone palette this and face tattoos are what we've got to work with. The fade slider is pretty cool though. It allows us to create some simple complexion effects if we dial the opacity back. But since it's set to 100% on the default that's where we'll go here. Again, when the field is activated it will display a different tattoo or makeup pattern first depending on the subrace selection, so most of the variety we get initially comes from that. High Elves get the birds so we just flew with that one.

There are 16 basic patterns for the eye makeup. Some pretty similar, a couple fairly striking, dialing down the opacity has a way of making one just sort of blend into the next. I think the dilemma on this one is how much is needed for the quick read at the smaller scale of actual gameplay and that view, vs what we see displayed in dialog cutscenes and such. My feeling is that the more striking patterns look better (or at least noticeable) at the gameplay scale sort of zoomed out, but in dialog it looks like they sort of went overboard. I'd guess most would probably push the opacity down to 80 or something, just so it's not blocky, but whatever. It's super late/early though so we'll just let it ride lol. I'll try to use more of the male blue steel models tomorrow, but this'll have to do for the moment hehe. Night!


ps. Here's one more. This is the regular Halfling standing next to one I just threw together...



I shrank her head to 95% of the usual scale. Then I shortened her forearms and lengthened her legs. Then I shrank the whole figure again by 95% so they would be at the same height. Bit of hackjob there, a little blur from the rescale, but gives a sense of the proportions. I would prefer my Halflings to look more like that.

Also before I forget, I think we need 4 phenotypes for the larger humanoids. I suspect that the Gith Male shows us what a Skinny build will look like, and Halsin shows us what the Muscular build will likely be, and we know the standard, but we're still missing a phenotype that's just sorta thick you know. Nothing too ridiculous, I mean just a little more portly than the regular phenotype, with some more curve. I think with those 4 most would be pretty happy and able to carry their Char concepts across the finish line here. I'd still also like more variation in height from Race to Race, so it's easier to tell the difference just by the scale alone on a quick glance.

Sory, if you answered that ...
But this is some impressive change ... is that a mod, or "just" photoshop?

Either way, SO much better.

That is a vast improvement.

Aren't halfling supposed to have a disproportionately large head though? This is an official depiction. The photoshop turns them from an original race to a scaled down human.

It, again, all depends on the artist. The Forgotten Realms halflings are described as:

Halflings were small in comparison with the members of most other races, standing somewhere from 2′8″‒3′4″ (81‒100 cm) tall and weighing on average between 30‒35 lb (14‒16 kg).[8] In many ways, halflings resembled small humans and usually had the same proportions as the typical human adult. Most halflings had dark hair and eyes,[2] regardless of their skin complexion which, although commonly ruddy in hue[16] had a similar range to humans.

I guess Wizards of the Coast want to uniformize the look of the races by giving strict guidelines to Larian.

You know, to be fair, we should see Stout Halflings with more BG3 proportions and Lightfoots should be more like smaller humans. Something like that.

I'm all for that, as long as I can distinguish a small human from a tall halfling. :P

The issue with hafling is DnD has had 2 version of them. The first the tiny ones with big heads in 2nd and now 5th edition.. and then there was the 3rd and 4th edition halflings wich looked alot more slender and better proportioned.