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

Makes sense to me! hehe

October is cool, and here already I guess. My hope as always is that the next patch gets us a more House of Humor style spread with new costume threads and face masks and body suits within the Char Creator. I think for as fun as Halloween is, the Saturnalia is more important though, cause if you head into Dec winter breaks and high holidays and a new year without something to chew on that's tough. I catered for 20 years, and the one thing you can count on is that nobody really parties at the end of January, and Feb is totally deadsville. You gotta hit in Nov/Dec for end of the year celebrations. So I hope they do!

I think it will be fun when this game gets to the point where someone could remake a BG1 or BG2 within the BG3 engine. You know like maybe using the old sounds, but revamping the visuals and trying to do something more in line with the newer rules and dynamics. That seems like a thing that might be doable cause the old CDs still got that winning audio haha, and maybe after a few years in the kitchen the controls and party size UI stuff will be dialed to the point where it's feasible.

A fun challenge for the Char Creator/Models would be to redo all the BG portraits but in Avatar. So basically a BG3 version of this... but where they all actually fit the part and sort of look like that. Especially the gestural stuff - you know the Yoshimo fist pump, or the classic Edwin wizard hands etc. The BG1 portraits especially had some fun stuff going on with that, Dynaheir looking like a boss and Jaheira ready to kick ass with her quarterstaff. Eldoth's smirk, Faldorn's claws, I mean they all got at least something going on.





The BG2 portraits are solid as well for that too, the gestural stuff I mean, or at least everyone has a head tilt or some kind of expressive quality to their mug going on. What distinguishes a portrait from a mannequin is that sort of stuff. I'd like to see a Char Creator that is more emotive in that way, so it could get us closer to the essence of portraiture. The variety not just in terms of the glances or the outfits, or equipment, but also the lighting and just the colors. The two portrait sets are rather distinct going from BG1 to BG2 and I think some are stronger than others, but when you see them together you can get a sense for what gives a Character portrait 'character' on the quick read.

ps. here's something fun. So one thing I used to enjoy puzzling out was a way to make the two portrait sets (BG1 and BG2) look more uniform. The first thing I notice when comparing the two sets is that the BG1 portraits are all very saturated, like the vibrancy is almost off the charts, and they're generally darker with pretty high contrast. The BG2 portraits also fairly saturated, but also much lighter, and for some reason that kinkade purple/yellow is everywhere with the BG2 portraits lol. I mean beyond the execution of the paintings themselves and just into the overall levels and color palette. I did some experiments with Edwin, putting the Edwins I found side by side...

The middle Edwin (third from the left) is the standard BG1 Edwin portrait, the Edwin on the far right is basically the standard BG2 Edwin portrait but with the vibrancy juiced slightly. The Edwins on the far left have the saturation knocked way back by about 15 percent and that just about almost works I think. The Edwins between the BG1 and BG2, first has the BG2 face just pasted onto the BG1 background. Still super high saturation but rebalancing the Cyans/Magentas so that the reds would appear a bit more crimson and the golds a bit more golden I guess, prob just to get more Red in there - or then you got the second BG2 face pasted onto the BG1 robes version lol. I think that also almost works too. For Edwins at least you see a lot, because that robed look is easier to mess with in mirror image, though it would have been nice if we could control the lighting to get something even a little darker or more in shadow for the BG2s a bit more like the BG1. There's a bunch like that floating around in minor variations. Anyhow just to show how even the two pretty different styles could have been made a little more cohesive with that sort of stuff alone.



For Viconia, I see more tweaks to hue, especially in the BG2 comps like pushing from yellow to green or blowing out the levels or darkening the tone and things of that sort. Probably along the same lines as blue Edwin lol. Sometimes you see her with red eyes and things of that sort. The purple green Viconia variants are kinda cool though. Maybe to capture the ankheg plate vibes from BG1 I guess? Again knocking back the saturation for the defaults on either portrait gets you like halfway there, but the visualization and art style there is pretty different. The BG1 portrait is more dynamic I'd say, even with some of the oddball foreshortening, whereas BG2 is more demure and kinda bland that way, but I think the BG2 ended up more iconic in her case. Still gives a sense of the desire for more color variety there. Recolors were I think the most common and you saw a lot of those.



Overall when comparing the sets you can see that the BG2 portraits tilted pretty heavily towards yellows and pinks and lavender purples, all pastels really, and you don't get the nice deep blues or deep greens cause those are more muted and washed out there in BG2. The BG2 crops were also a bit closer, tighter in on the face, than the BG1s, which is another reason they didn't play all that well with each other. On the whole I always preferred the BG1 looks myself. Also just the fact that there were more of them I guess, with more variety and range. A lot of the BG2 characters were wearing that 'too cool for school face', or like pursed lips with steely glares, whereas the BG1s just had a lot more expression going on. Part of this was probably owing to the painting style I'm sure, or how they were rotoscoped and the detailing of the cartoons, but still, you can almost get the two sets to play nicely together just with some elbow grease on the levels. One of the popular things I recall seeing a lot for custom Portraits early on, was just a major color change for a BG1 portrait, so keeping the same face but with a different colored robe. (Blue Edwin basically lol) But you saw a lot of stuff like that.

That's why I think lighting and color would be a good way to distinguish one character avatar from another in BG3. In BG1/2 these portraits were all meant to display pretty small in the actual game, but even at a tiny scale you could still get a nice color sweep for a party comp and some flare in the individual facial expressions that still read at that size, which was nice. BG3 should try to do more of that within the Char creator, and give players some tools to manipulate the model, pose it and emote it, and then dress it up to suit their taste. That would be legit!

pps. lol