BioWare was suspiciously coy when asked whether it was considering releasing a standalone character creator for Dragon Age: The Veilguard before the game’s full release on 31st October.
When asked at a preview event whether it was under consideration, the game’s co-director Corinne Busche replied, “It’s a much requested feature; we’re TBD on that but it would be pretty stinking cool.” The question itself was asked by Outside Xbox’s charming Andy Farrant.
I was at that preview event and I played the new Dragon Age game all day, and you can read whether I think The Veilguard is any good, and what I learnt talking to BioWare about it, elsewhere on the site.
The character creator itself is fabulous, by the way. BioWare games have always pushed the level of customisation available and The Veilguard is no exception. You can sculpt body size and structure as well as face size and structure, and even determine bulge size, or your melanin level, or whether your character has cataracts – in one or both eyes. The hair is also a standout feature of the new game. It flows believably and looks less like someone stuck some hair-shaped cardboard to your head and more like, well, actual hair.
You can choose between four races as in other Dragon Age games – human, elf, qunari and dwarf – and when asked about player choice in this regard, and how BioWare will encourage people to play as all of those races, Busche revealed a telling statistical tidbit.
“So here’s a little fun fact for you,” she said. “In Dragon Age Inquisition, only five percent of players ever played a dwarf. What we see in our player testing these days [in The Veilguard] is we’re up to 12 percent, so we’ll take it.” (For what it’s worth, I created a dwarf, so I’ve probably edged those numbers up a bit.) “What that tells me is the more options you give players to embody the character they want to be, the more engaged they’re going to be. We know our players love that. They’re hungry for it.
“One of the things I might also add,” she added, “is that of our three core design pillars, ‘be who you want to be’ was the first – that was the starting point. We wanted everyone to feel like they belong in this game, to the best of our ability; that you could relate to the characters, the options. So that meant Sclera colour, it meant cataracts, it meant vitiligo, freckles, respectful skin tones that react to light properly.”
Should BioWare go ahead and release a standalone character creator before the game comes out, you’ll have plenty of time to play around with it.