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

Yeah it was just a quick shop I did in GIMP. I wanted to try and strike a kind of compromise between the two versions, something that might be acceptable. The proportions in that image are actually quite a bit different than just scaling the Human frame by 1:2. If you're curious what that would look like, here is the same image with a human gal standing next to them rescaled to the same height (Human model is on the left, the current BG3 Halfling model is in the middle, and my Halfling is on the right)...



You can see there's a fair bit of difference there between the figure on the left (rescaled Human frame) and the one on the right, where I did the hack and slide hehe.

I grew up on the Hobbit cartoon myself, and I do think DiTerlizzi style Halflings have a certain charm to them. But when it's pushed too far in the extremes, they're just a bit too cartoonish to me, at least for a game with this kind of art direction. The bobble headers just don't seem like very realistic creatures, and they're too close to how Gnomes are being visualized. So I wanted to show something a little different there, but which would still probably be pretty recognizable as a Halfling. Something like that would satisfy, least for me.

I think the more important thing is just that it be relatively easy to tell the difference between a Halfling and a Gnome at a glance. Some might say, "well how much can a 5% rescale actually get you?" but 5% gets can get us quite a lot I think. People are pretty discerning, and our eyes quicker at evaluating this stuff than we'd probably be likely to credit. We also tend to over-estimate differences in scale. We probably think 5% is more like 10% or 15% if we had to guess, but then you go in and scale and realize how a little goes a very long way with this stuff.

Here I posted this in the Elves thread in General, but might as well stick it here I guess. I'm not sure where it comes from, I've seen a few similar side-by-sides floating around. The exact phenotypes/heights there aren't necessarily what I'm after for BG3 but it conveys how scale can be used with more nuance. That one shows a kind of standard range for height, but I'd try to give it a bit more differentiation than that even. Just going on the idea that if we can make it easy to tell the difference by scale alone, that makes everything else a lot easier. We don't need to have the faces being all gated in the same way, if the frame alone can convey the distinction between the fantasy races.



Here's an example of the principle put into practice for Elves. The Elf below is rescaled at 95% relative to the Human who she is standing alongside. Again, pretty good bang for the buck on a 5% rescale I think.



In the BG1/2 games the Elf avatars were notably smaller and more lithe than the Humans. With the shorty Races there it was easier to confuse, since Dwarves Halflings and Gnomes all had pretty similar sprites. Basically they had to use stuff like facial hair for Dwarves and Gnomes and big old floppy feet for Halflings to get the differences across. But in BG3 our models are much larger than the ones from BG1/2, so I think we've got room now to play with scale a bit more.

Here's another crude example with a Halfling an Elf and a Human all presented at the suggested scale in a Char Creation scene...



The difference between the Elf frame and the Human frame is pretty subtle, but still noticeable. Even with the flapper hairdo covering her ears, we can still pick out the Elf from the Human on account of her just being slightly smaller. I'm sure they could push it a bit further than that even, but I was just trying to get an impression going.