As BioWare prepared to show me the character creator for Dragon Age: The Veilguard at its offices in Edmonton, Canada, I was expecting something solid—it’s 2024, character creators have come a long way, and Bioware has a rich history of good customization. Despite my expectations, I wasn’t prepared for how tough it actually is in Veilguard. Strong enough, in fact, that BioWare used it to create most of the NPCs in the game, except for the main characters as companions. Hyperbole aside, this is an amazingly rich creation system, and I’m looking forward to seeing player-created near replicas of celebrities and monstrous creations that would feel more at home in a horror game.
But I’m also looking forward to the community’s reaction to the best character creator in the Dragon Age series yet. Inclusivity is at the heart of it, Veilguard game director Corinne Boucher tells me, before letting me guide her through the creation of my own character.
As usual, there are four races to choose from: Elves, Qunari, Humans, and Dwarves. After selecting a Qunari, Busche goes through various presets, explaining the game allows for a more detailed look at each and the ability to choose gender-separated she/her, he/him, and they/them pronouns, choosing different body types, and more. . You can see your character, referred to as the game’s top, in four different light scenes at any time, including the basic purple hue of The Veilguard, 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 back in 2014, I immediately restarted the game after seeing him in the first cutscene; the lighting in the game made my hair color look terrible among other issues I had with my Inquisitor. Veilguard creative director John Eppler says the team is aware of countless stories like the one with Inquisition and its green hero creator, adding that BioWare is working hard to quell that concern at Veilguard.
Head and body presets can be individually selected and customized to your liking with 40 different skin tones that include smooth, rough, youthful and freckled skin tones, skin tones ranging from cool to neutral to warm, undertones to those tones of skin and even melanin slider. Boucher told me that BioWare relied on consultations to authentically represent all people. There’s a slider for vitiligo (where you can adjust its intensity and amount) and sliders for the forehead, eyebrows, cheeks, jaw, chin, larynx, and scalp. You can choose your underwear as well as your nudity, because “this is a mature RPG,” Boucher adds, and use the “Body Morpher” to choose three presets for each corner of a triangle and then move the cursor into it. to transform your body or go for a combination of these presets. It’s impressive technology that I’d like to see adopted in other games.
I could go on: You can adjust your height, shoulder width, chest size, butt size and bulge, hip width, how bloodshot your eyes are, how visible your cataracts are, the color of your sclera, how crooked your nose is, how big is his bridge, the size of his nostrils and the tip of his nose, and there are just as many sliders, if not more, for things like Rook’s mouth and ears. I see that on the ears alone you can adjust the asymmetry, depth, rotation, earlobe size and even add a cauliflower ear to your top. Bouchet says the makeup combines modern style with Dragon Age fantasy with more than 30 options, including eyeliner intensity, color, shimmer, eyeshadow, lip and blush.
Tattoos are just as customizable as the scar and paint options. Tattoos, scars, and paint are very culturally appropriate for some lineages, BioWare tells me, with unique tattoos for elves, for example. You can add tattoos to Rook’s face, body, arms, and legs, and you can adjust things like intensity.
I’m most impressed, however, with the hair options on display; there’s a lot, and as someone with long hair, I’m especially excited about the fun selections I can make. You can finally dye your hair unconventional colors and it’s great. EA’s Frostbite engine uses the Strand system to render each style entirely with physics. “Technology has finally caught up with our ambition,” says Dragon Age series art director Matt Rhodes.
Once we’ve customized all that and chosen our Qunari’s horn type and material (of which there are over 40 options to choose from), it’s time to choose a class from Rogue, Mage and Warrior – read more about Veilguard classes here. Since we created Qunari, we chose Warrior. For the penultimate step of the character creator, at least in the demo BioWare shows me, we choose a faction. From the six options, we choose the pirate theme Lords of Fortune.
“The cannon rises because of competence, not because of a magical McGuffin,” BioWare lead host and Mass Effect executive producer Michael Gamble tells me in contrast to Inquisition’s fate-chosen-you characterization.
“The Tour is here because they choose to be and that speaks to the character we’ve built,” adds Bouchet. “Somebody’s got to stop this, and Rook says, ‘I guess it’s me.’
Ready to begin the rook’s journey, we choose a first and last name and one of four voices from English Masculine, English Feminine, American Masculine, or American Feminine. There’s also a pitch switch for each voice, allowing you to further tweak it to your liking.
Don’t stress too much about locking your characters before starting the game – the Mirror of Transformation, located in Veilguard’s main hub, The Lighthouse, allows you to change your appearance at any time. However, class, lineage, and identity are locked and cannot be changed once you select them in the in-game character creator.
From here we head to Minrathous and you can read more about this famous city in our cover story which is available here.
For more information on the game, including exclusive details, interviews, video features and more, click the Dragon Age: The Veilguard hub button below.
