Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s character creator is the most robust BioWare’s ever put in one of its RPGs. We saw a glimpse of it at Summer Game Fest and can confirm Mass Effect and Dragon Ages of old have nothing on what’s coming. But the options for how you customize your character aren’t nearly as exciting as one big change between Inquisition and The Veilguard: they’re fixing the terrible lighting that plagued the 2014 RPG’s character creator.
A quick Google search for Dragon Age: Inquisition’s character creator will show you decade-old Reddit threads complaining about the too-dark, green-hued lighting players were given to customize their Inquisitors before they went off to save Thedas. Sure, it probably felt very appropriate for the dark setting of the opening hour, but it was all too common for players to like how their character looked in the character creator only to hate how they looked in other lighting. I love my Inquisitor, but it took me some time to adjust to how he appeared once he was out in the world. BioWare has heard this criticism loud and clear for The Veilguard.
In an interview with Game Informer, creative director John Epler confirmed that the character creator will let you see your Veilguard character in four different lightings before you confirm their look. Three of these include “The Veilguard’s keynote purple hue, a bright and sunny tropical day, and a gothic night.”
It’s a small but significant change in a character creator that’s already offering more options than its predecessor. Players will be able to create a human, elf, dwarf, or qunari character, choose between she/her, he/him, or they/them pronouns, as well as define their character’s origin by picking one of six factions they might belong to.
According to Game Informer, there are sliders for nearly every part of your character’s face, including “forehead, brow, cheeks, jaw, chin, larynx, and scalp.” But the face isn’t the only thing you can change. Protagonist Rook’s body can be altered in some significant ways, as well. Including, “height, shoulder width, chest size, glute and bulge size, hip width, how bloodshot your eyes are, how visible cataracts are, the sclera color, how crooked your nose is, how big its bridge is, the size of nostrils and the nose tip.”
This level of customization extends to Rook’s mouth and ears, as well as makeup options, underwear options, tattoos, scars, and paint (with race-specific ones for elves). Art director Matt Rhodes says the Veilguard team has made great strides on hairstyles, Black hair especially, thanks to EA’s Frostbite engine, which renders all available hairstyles with realistic physics. Looks are only part of Rook’s customization, as you’ll also be able to customize their voice similar to Inquisition, which includes one two masculine and feminine options, with one being English and the other being American.
Overall, The Veilguard’s character customization looks to be a marked improvement over any that BioWare has previously offered us. Unfortunately, BioWare denied Game Informer any usable images or footage for it. We’ll just have to wait to see if the studio shows it off in the coming months before The Veilguard comes to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S in the fall.
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