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But there are for genitals.
Like many games in the genre, Baldur's Gate 3 allows you to customize your character, however, its character creator is far from being the most extensive. Surprisingly, there are no face sliders – a very common feature nowadays – and you're stuck with applying presets to your hero's features.
The game's lead character artist Alena Dubrovina explained why there is no such thing and talked about how the character creator can help players express their identity in unexpected ways.
“We never make a character creator [...] specifically for the players, even though we sort of do,” Dubrovina told Kotaku. “First of all, when the production starts, we make it for us. Because we knew that the game was gonna be huge. We knew that there’s gonna be too many characters and we knew we need to customize everyone and be prepared for Dragonborns or similar creatures like that. […] So we kind of know that if a design is requested and there’s gonna be — like in a year — 100 [characters] throughout the game, it’s our job to kind of be prepared to make sure that all of those imps or at least some of those imps look unique.”
She then added that in her experience most fine-tuned characters that players spend hours making look very similar in the end. "So we wanted to avoid that. And if we would make sliders, we needed to make it into something that would be truly unique and wouldn’t look the same."
There are 11 races in the game, and Larian is not planning to change this any time soon. The studio tried to stick to the Dungeons & Dragons lore, and this was reflected in the character creator: for example, Elves can't have beards, and horn customization for Tieflings or Dragonborns affects a pattern on their scales. But you can still stray from the canon to some extent as did Larian when it removed moral alignment, allowing for varied roleplaying.
The team took the task of inclusion very seriously. They talked to consultants and animators to create Black hairstyles, for instance. Their approach to gender is also different from that of many other companies. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can choose between four different body types, which are not assigned to a specific gender. Moreover, there is an option to pick your character’s genitals: there are several variants here.
"You can choose between a penis or a vagina, as well as pubic hair options, though given the Dragonborn’s reptilian nature, theirs will look slightly different," said Kotaku.
And the ability to choose is not there just for fun: it will apparently appear in the game itself. Dubrovina said this choice is not connected to sex scenes but rather to players' expression of themselves. Larian decided to make underwear a piece of equipment you can customize and wear, and this is part of character customization.
“The question arose, ‘what happens when you take it off?’” she said. “At first we were like, ‘you know, maybe nothing’s gonna happen. Maybe we’re gonna have another underwear mesh under it. Who cares? But then I started thinking about it, talking about it, and we realized that for some players, it’s just another way to represent their identity.”
But if you don't want to spend time working on your character's privates, there is an option to hide anything you don't want to see. Still, it's nice knowing Larian cares about such details.
“BG is very focused on your identity and the ultimate fantasy where you can be whoever, whatever you wanna be,” she said. “And we wanted to have this represented. We believe that visual [character creation options create] a positive player experience. I noticed it with myself when I playgames or when I pick which game to buy, right? I’m looking at the characters and I wanna look pretty. I wanna look fun.”
You can start practicing making your perfect hero now so you can repeat it when BG3 comes out on August 3 for PC and September 6 for PS5 as it's impossible to transfer your Early Access data to the full game.
Find out more about the game's options here and don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Threads, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
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