The worst thing about Dragon Age: Inquisition's character creator is that it was very easy to make your Inquisitor accidentally hideous. Dragon Age: The Veilguard has fixed that issue, partly by giving us beautiful hair, but also by giving us lighting options—finally!
I got to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard during a preview event this month and came away thinking that this is the BioWare comeback fans were waiting for. But my first order of business was designing my main character, Rook. Because it knows how RPG players can be, BioWare cautioned us during that preview to spend only about 30 minutes in character creation so that we'd have time to actually try the rest of the game. It was necessary advice, because I could have easily spent much longer fiddling with all of its extremely detailed settings.
Dragon Age: Inquisition's character creation notably took place in a gassy green void, which is the exact opposite of golden hour lighting. So it was quite easy to make a character who looked great in green and looked horrendous as soon as you actually started playing the game. Making matters worse, there wasn't initially a way to change your appearance after starting the game.
In The Veilguard, thank goodness, there are four, four different lighting options. There's a sunny blue sky, two different dark cloudy nights, and a gassy purple void—in case you didn't listen to a damn thing I just said about Inquisition.
Though I will say I wish there were a little more variety in the choices. It's sunny day, purple void, or for some reason, two different kinds of night. We probably could have done with 'candlelit tavern' or 'deep in the forest' as choices here but at least there are choices, which is an improvement.
Equally important is that even if you do mess up, you'll have the opportunity to fix your face as soon as you finish the prologue—which took me about an hour. Right when you wake up in your base of operations, The Lighthouse, there's a "mirror of transformation" to go back and edit your character. This time we won't be stuck waiting a year for a free DLC to add that feature.
There are a lot of other granular options in The Veilguard's character creator like, of all things, asymmetrical ear editing. That's a thing I never would have anticipated. Here are a bunch of other options that you can use in Veilguard's character editor:
- Vitiligo
- Melanin slider
- Undergarment style
- Glute size
- "Bulge size"
- Hooded eye slider
- Heterochromia
- Bloodshot eye slider
- Cataract slider
- Cauliflower ear
- Ear asymmetry
- Horn material for qunari
- Tattoo intensity slider per limb
- Faction-specific casual clothes
