As BioWare prepared to show me Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s character creator at its Edmonton, Canada, offices, I expected something robust: it’s 2024, character creators have come a long way, and BioWare has a rich history of customization. Despite my expectations, I wasn’t prepared for just how robust Veilguard is. Robust enough, in fact, that BioWare uses it to create most of the game’s NPCs, save for major characters like companions. Hyperbole aside, this is an incredibly rich creation system, and I’m looking forward to seeing near-realized replicas of player-made celebrities and monstrous creations that would be more at home in a horror game.
But I’m also looking forward to the community’s reaction to the Dragon Age series’ best character designer yet. At the heart of it all is inclusiveness, Veilguard game director Corinne Busche tells me, before letting me guide her through creating my own character.
As usual, there are four races to choose from: Elves, Qunari, Humans and Dwarves. After selecting the Qunari and Busche pages through various presets, the game explanation allows a more detailed examination of each and the possibility of choosing pronouns with she/her, he/him and them separately from gender, to select different types bodies, and more. . You can see your character, called Rook in the game, in four different lighting scenes at any time, including The Veilguard’s primary purple hue, a bright and sunny tropical day, and a gothic night.
I joke with the team that after spending over an hour creating my Dragon Age: Inquisition character in 2014, I immediately restarted the game after seeing it in the first cutscene; the game’s lighting made my hair color look horrible, among other issues I had with my Inquisitor. Veilguard creative director John Epler says the team is aware of countless stories like Inquisition and its green-hued character creator, adding that BioWare has worked hard to eliminate that concern in Veilguard.
Head and body presets can be individually selected and customized to your taste with 40 different skin tones that include smooth, rough, youthful and freckled skin tones, skin tones ranging from cool to neutral to warm, shades for these skin tones and even a melanin slider. Busche tells me that BioWare relied on consultation to represent all people authentically. There is a Vitiligo slider (where you can adjust the intensity and quantity) and sliders for your forehead, eyebrows, cheeks, jaw, chin, larynx and scalp. You can select your underwear, with some nudity too because “it’s a mature RPG,” Busche adds, and use the “Body Morpher” to select three presets for each corner of a triangle, then move a slider to inside to transform your body or head into a mixture of these presets. It’s an impressive piece of technology that I’d love to see adopted in other games.
I can continue: you can adjust the height, shoulder width, chest size, glute and bulge size, hip width, how bloodshot your eyes are, how visible cataracts are, the color of the sclera, the curvature of your nose, the size of its bridge, the size of the nostrils and tip of the nose, and there are as many, if not more, sliders for things like Rook’s mouth and ears . On the ears alone, I see you can adjust the asymmetry, depth, rotation, earlobe size, and even add a cauliflower ear to your Rook. Busche says the makeup mixes modern styles with Dragon Age whimsy with more than 30 options, including eyeliner intensity, color, glitter, eyeshadow, lip and blush.
Tattoos are just as customizable as the scar and paint options. Tattoos, scars, and paint are very culturally relevant to certain bloodlines, BioWare told me, with unique tattoos for elves, for example. You can add tattoos to Rook’s face, body, arms, and legs, and you can also adjust things like intensity.
However, I’m very impressed with the hairstyle options presented; there are a ton of them, and as someone with long hair, I’m especially excited about the fun selections I can make. You can finally dye your hair non-traditional colors, and it looks gorgeous. EA’s Frostbite engine uses the Strand system to render each style entirely with physics. “The technology has finally caught up with our ambition,” said Matt Rhodes, art director for the Dragon Age series.
After customizing all that and selecting our Qunari’s horn type and material (there are over 40 options to choose from), it’s time to choose a class from the Thief, Mage, and Warrior – find out More about Veilguard classes, click here. Since we created a Qunari, we opted for the Warrior. For the penultimate step of the character creator, at least during the demo BioWare shows me, we select a faction. From the six options, we select the pirate-themed Lords of Fortune.
“Rook rises because of his skills, not because of a magical McGuffin,” BioWare senior manager and Mass Effect executive producer Michael Gamble tells me, contrary to Inquisition’s destiny-chosen-you characterization.
“Rook is there because he chooses to be and that reflects the type of character we’ve built,” adds Busche. “Someone has to stop this, and Rook says, ‘I guess it’s me.’ »
Ready to begin our Rook’s journey, we select a first and last name and one of four voices from the options English male, English female, American male or American female. There is also a pitch shifter for each voice, allowing you to further adjust it to your liking.
Don’t worry too much about locking in your character creations before starting the game – the Mirror of Transformation, found in Veilguard’s main hub, The Lighthouse, allows you to change your physical appearance at any time. However, class, lineage, and identity are locked and cannot be changed once you select them in the game’s character creator.
From there we head to Minrathous, and you can read more about this famous town in our cover story, available here.
For more on the game, including exclusive details, interviews, video features and more, click the Dragon Age: The Veilguard center button below.