Larian Studios Forums Divinity General Discussion While Respecting Diversity, Enhance Character Model Aesthetics and Body Customization Depth in game

### Suggestion: While Respecting Diversity, Enhance Character Model Aesthetics and Body Customization Depth in *Divinity*

Dear Larian Studios developers and fellow Divinity series players,

The recent *Divinity* trailer has me very excited about the game's art style. Larian has always prioritized character diversity and inclusivity, which is truly commendable. At the same time, I hope that—while fully respecting diversity—we can further improve the overall aesthetic appeal of character models, allowing more players to experience visual pleasure and deeper immersion.

#### Core Suggestion: Pursue More Refined Appearances and Body Designs Aligned with Mainstream Aesthetics
- **Default Model Optimization**: While preserving racial characteristics and diversity, make the default appearances and bodies of major companions, romanceable characters, and key NPCs more attractive. Examples include:
- More refined facial proportions and expressive, charming facial features.
- Body types that better align with mainstream aesthetic preferences (e.g., more pronounced waist-to-hip ratios, balanced muscle lines, etc.).
- Clothing and armor designs that, beyond practicality, appropriately accentuate character appeal.

- **Advanced Body Customization System**: Give players greater freedom to shape their ideal character appearances:
- Independent sliders for adjusting the size and proportions of key areas such as breasts, hips, waist, and muscle mass.
- Optional detailed genital customization (size, shape, etc.), with the choice to display them only in relevant scenes.
- Multiple preset body templates (ranging from slender to curvaceous, petite to muscular) for quick selection, while retaining fine-grained slider adjustments.

These customization options can integrate seamlessly with the existing character creation system and support saving multiple presets, greatly enhancing player attachment and replay motivation.

#### Balancing Diversity and Aesthetics
- Diversity must never be sacrificed: Retain the wide range of skin tones, body types, ages, and facial features already available.
- Aesthetic improvements should focus only on “default presentations” and popular preferences, without forcing all characters into a single standard.
- All customization features can be toggled on/off, ensuring respect for different players’ comfort levels and preferences.

#### Rating and Implementation Suggestions
- Genital customization options can be placed in an optional “adult appearance pack” or separate DLC, remaining compatible with the base game to avoid impacting the main title’s rating.
- Draw inspiration from the mature yet elegant approaches in games like *Cyberpunk 2077* and the *Dragon Age* series.

Larian team, your expertise in character design is undeniable—BG3’s characters are already outstanding. If you can refine visual appeal and customization depth while maintaining inclusivity, *Divinity* will surely become the perfect fantasy world in even more players’ hearts!

Everyone is welcome to discuss rationally:
- What aesthetic aspects of character models do you think need the most improvement?
- How much depth are you hoping for in body and genital customization?
- How can we better balance diversity with mainstream aesthetics?

Looking forward to your thoughts—let’s make *Divinity* even more beautiful together!

#LarianStudios #Divinity #BaldursGate3 #CRPG #CharacterCreation

One big problem with making the body mesh customizable (changing size and shape) is that it can interfere with clothing/armor and with cutscenes (causing clipping issues, etc.). Some body changes can also cause issues with how the mesh is rigged, causing weird visual errors during animation.

Slider-based customization of meshes can be a huge development cost, which is worthwhile for certain genres (like The Sims, where there are hundreds of procedurally generated characters, there's genetic inheritance, and customization is the whole focus of the game), but probably much less so for a turn-based isometric RPG.

I think this might be best achieved by offering great mod support (which I'm sure Larian plans to do, but the more the better), since it's a lot easier to tolerate visual bugs when it's just a mod rather than part of the base game, and it would mean anyone could make mods to perfectly suit their own tastes.

BG3 lacked in diversity. i dont mean like no POC and shit i mean the faces for each race type was like what? 6? it was lame. i wanted 20 at least

I would say that there needs to be a healthy balance. I think it's fine for some 'niche' options to exist, though they should not come at the expense of more traditional standards of beauty. Or even more average looking individuals.

In certain games, for example, immersion is very much ruined due to the uncanny valley effect of NPC design. Starfield is an excellent example, I'd say, due to how bizarre and ugly many of the generic NPC's walking around happen to be. Quite honestly, as a personal preference, I simply want to immerse myself in a cool fantasy world. I enjoy the classics. Tall, handsome men clad in shining armour as knights and city guards. Ruggedly handsome men in more worn, dirty armour as wandering mercenaries. Men and women prowling the streets with hoods to obscure their features and tight leather. I could list all sorts of timeless, popular character tropes but I would be here all evening!

On the other hand, I'm not hugely interested in having my character step into a town and every other NPC is designed to be exceedingly ugly, fat and with the demographic makeup of a modern day big city. Each to their own, I guess, though it simply is not to my personal tastes.

I also think that whilst it can certainly be fun to make crazy and strange looking characters in an expansive character creation, the novelty wears off rather quickly and those who do it tend to be streamers seeking to entertain their audience...whilst also showing little regard for immersion themselves.

I just wanted better muscular bodies, and GLUTES for men!

I'm tired of men with very skinny or " V " shaped bodies lacking thighs/glutes.

Men also have thick thighs, big glutes, big chest, bulge. Big attributes are not exclusive to women. 😒

I hope they will not go too much into slider-based techniques. I have the feeling that faces with sliders tend to look similar on a broader scale and bodies cannot be defined enough. When I compare for example Starfield (meh) with Dragon's Dogma 2 (also meh, but not for character creation) I really know what I would choose. Keep the faces and bodies pre-defined, just offer a lot more options. I was lucky and had 3 faces in BG 3 I really liked, but generally we need more faces and more body shapes per race.

I would like to see more of that as well!

It struck me as quite bizarre that Karlach was given such an exaggerated muscular physique in Baldur's Gate 3 but both Astarion and Gale had the size of their muscles lessened in one of the post launch patches.

I would enjoy a healthy balance and more men who are tall, masculine, muscular and - perhaps most importantly - also possessed of attractive facial features. Something along the lines of Henry Cavill. He is a very tall and muscular man, yet he is still very traditionally handsome. To further show off a male character's facial features, such as a strong jaw, he should also be clean shaven or given stubble.Too often a lot of male characters with bulky physiques are given average or outright ugly faces.

I have no interest in "mainstream aesthetics" for the companions or other NPCs. There's more than enough obnoxiously attractive characters in nearly every other game (Stellar Blade, Tides of Annihilation, shit, all the characters in Clair Obscur: E33 were ridiculously attractive as well...the list goes on), I believe Larian should stick to whatever they want to do without overbearing influence from the peanut gallery/general gaming community.
(I've obviously had my fill of gooners in Monster Hunter and Dragons Dogma 2, etc.)

It feels kinda like telling Leonardo da Vinci you'd prefer he give Mona Lisa a makeover because YOU didn't like her "aesthetic".

If it was such an issue with BG3 then there wouldn't be so many players enjoying the game and spending, literally, thousands of hours...

I'm looking forward to the "fantasy world" Larian makes for themselves, and us. Seeing their genuine creative design for how they want the characters and companions to look in the world they make is part of the joy and experience. Especially because of how consistently they speak about making games that they, themselves, want to play/enjoy.

If you want to paint over that with your specific preference of overly attractive aesthetics I really feel that's what mods are for, I'm sure there will be ample available. However, I hope whatever changes are added to the character creator allow you to fulfill your dream of being obscenely attractive hero (or villain) of your own adventure.

That said. I'm fairly certain there will be plenty of beautiful/handsome/attractive companions in Divinity. For DOS2 the character design for Lohse was gorgeous, Sebille was delectable, Fane's glowing green eyes and immaculately chiseled jawline were exquisite and I'm sure he would look just like Henry Cavill... if he had skin, and Ifan was... basically Aragorn with more beard?