The Veilguard Promises Inclusive Character Creation

Highlights

Dragon Age’s character creator has faced criticism for lacking diverse skin tones and ethnic hair options.
Players have resorted to mods to fix the game’s limitations, but technical constraints have hindered progress.
Bioware’s promise for a more inclusive character creator sets a new standard in the industry for diversity and representation.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard game director, Corianne Busche, assures fans that this time around, Bioware will “make good” with a character creator that will feature more skin tones and inclusive customization.

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In her interview with Edge Magazine, Busche admitted that Dragon Age’s character creator, though expansive in its own right, “has traditionally not done skin tones well.”

For years, players have had to settle for fan-made mods that fix issues with darker-skinned characters, as the base game models weren’t realistic.

To Bioware’s credit, Dragon Age: Inquisition had relatively more options than its predecessors, but darker skin tones were still dwarfed by white ones.

Ethnic hair has also been largely absent from many Dragon Age games’ character creators. Despite the developers’ admirable attempt, discussion under Reddit user BloxkRunnah’s post proves that the few options available aren’t enough.

Modders have tried to fix this, too, but to no avail, as technical limitations prohibit them from changing too much.

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Inclusive Character Creation Design Is Not The Norm

Dragon Age Inquisition Character Creator

Bioware is not alone in facing criticism for not including meaningful customization options for people of color. Rather, it’s been an industry-wide problem for many years.

It’s such a common issue that creators like RDCworld1, among others, have satirized it in comedy sketches.

Character customization is such an integral part of the gaming experience that many players spend hours upon hours fiddling around with menus to create their characters.

It’s fair to say that RPGs with great character creators have playtimes inflated by tens of hours, even with outdated graphics.

Developers need to understand that, given the chance, players will ignore the devil’s horns, angel wings, and lion tails and instead create themselves. After all, Who wouldn’t want to see themselves slaying a dragon or firing off a spell?

Busche and Bioware’s promise has the potential to set a new, better standard for the industry where the responsibility of inclusivity doesn’t fall on gamers via mods after the developers call it a day.