Is this where I file character creation complaints?

[ZedClampet]

So this has happened to me twice recently. I'm starting an RPG and I'm in the character creation screen. (The games had a different number of options, so to better explain, I'm going to just pick reasonable numbers.) So when creating the character model that's going to be running around on the screen, I had a choice of 5 premade faces. I picked the one that was most appealing to me and went to the next selection. So now I have to pick the character portrait, the image for my character that will show up on the side or bottom of the screen at all times and show various status effects; for instance, when it's his turn, it may glow, or if his health is low, it may turn red, etc. There are 10 different character portraits to choose from, BUT none of them look like the face that I picked for my character. If you have five premade faces for your characters, how hard is it to create a character portrait for each one? It was like the character models and the portrait faces were from two different games.

 

[Mazer]

Model/Portrait mismatch is a peeve of mine too, the Godlike from Pillars of Eternity are an example that springs to mind, most have the portraits have no equivalent head model, and when your characters primary identifying feature is a massive glowing blue spine coming out of their head that's pretty noticeable.

I'd also like to throw in a complaint about misleading lighting on the creation screen hiding details of the character. In Dragon Age Inquisition you create your character while they're standing in a hellish, otherworldly firescape, which is very dramatic and all but makes it tough to notice that the presets all seem to have lip gloss turned way up by default. If I forget to lower that slider before starting the game, it's not until Cassandra and Leilana are interrogating my PC that I realise they left the house that morning with pink strawberry lipsmacker liberally applied to their gob, then it's back to character creation and inevitably second guessing my entire class choice.

 

[Colif]

its just lazy, why go through process of making a character if the ingame graphic on avatars don't even match it.

Its no biggy to me but if you going to do something, do it right... first time. Maybe? Or were you too busy making sure the ingame shop worked perfectly or if there are enough NFT readyt for launch day... game play and making graphics consistent? whats that got to do with profit?

 

[Zloth]

Not having your character really match a portrait is a long, long standing issue. Not having one to match a pre-set, though?? That's below and behind. Even if they had to buy the portraits from some third party, they could have made some pre-sets that sorta matched.

Making dynamic portraits have shown up from time to time. I remember one game used the 3D model and let you set the lighting and camera angle, but I can't remember which game that was. IMHO, it worked FAR better than games that have you pick from a set list of portraits.

 

[Withywarlock]

I remember one game used the 3D model and let you set the lighting and camera angle, but I can't remember which game that was. IMHO, it worked FAR better than games that have you pick from a set list of portraits.

I'd hazard a guess and say you're referring to Dragon Age: Origins. I'd chosen a pregenerated character idea immediately because they looked so good with the portrait settings.