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Everybody that is familiar with me understands I take avatar design in RPGs incredibly seriously. It’s not talking about maximizing perks, but rather creating my hero's physical appearance with painstaking care. I love games that allow me to truly personalize my hero via fine touches like makeup, ink, hair highlights, and even finger detailing. Frequently, I spend over three or four hours in the editor, painstakingly crafting my dream digital representation. The catch is: Once I leave the editor, I typically can't get back in.

The Annoying Moment

No doubt everyone's experienced it at least once. You spend what feels like forever creating your character, and after countless exhausting adjusting, they look flawless. However, when you exit character creation and finally see what your character looks like during gameplay, you discover something awful: It’s not quite perfect. Perhaps their nose doesn't fit their face, or you decide you really should have gone with a different hairstyle, or you notice that although they look fine from the front, their side view looks comical. No matter the issue, there's only one answer: Re-enter the editor and correct your character's face. Sadly most RPGs don’t permit you re-enter character creation, for reasons that escape me to this day.

Initial effort at creating V resulted in a character with an impressive manicure, but a lackluster face.

Personal Experiences

Initially it happened to me, I was a few hours into Dragon Age: Inquisition, and finally caught a glimpse of my generally good-looking Inquisitor's profile. Her nose looked fine from the front, but from the side, it was hilariously off. I played a few more hours before I gave up and began again the game so I could remake my Inquisitor. It happened again when I played The Outer Worlds, though I thankfully caught it early enough that I only lost a few hours of gameplay. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Cyberpunk 2077 — I was so immersed with the game that I didn't notice how awful my V looked until I started playing around in Photo Mode. I was unhappy with her appearance. I lost roughly 15 hours of gameplay restarting the game to correct poor V's face.

The Simple Solution

An easy fix to this problem (other than attempting to just grin and bear it): Let players to re-enter character creation to change their appearance. Several RPGs include this feature, but most of them don't include it at release, which I find utterly baffling. Baldur's Gate 3 initially launched with no way to adjust your character's appearance, but fortunately added the editor feature shortly after the game's launch. Although I liked my Tav's starting appearance, I later decided I wanted to modify her physical look to reflect her psychological change as the Illithid parasite in her head grew more powerful.

If you launch an RPG that doesn’t allow re-entry to character creation, the bare minimum is follow Larian's lead and make including a Magic Mirror your first post-launch priority.

Recent Examples

When I first picked up Avowed, I was interested in the various branches, flowers, and mushrooms I could choose to have on my character's face. But these distinctive Godlike features were a little intense for my tastes, and I didn't really understand why they were an option to begin with. So I went with the discreet Godlike facial feature the game had to offer, and began exploring The Living Lands. But much later, around the time I reached the game's halfway point, I'd learned enough lore to understand why those wild plants and fungi were available in the character creator. Now that these wild customization options clicked for me, I wanted to modify my character's face. Unfortunately, re-entering character creation was not an option, something I (and others) found absolutely confusing in a game where the player's appearance is directly tied to the main quest. Avowed's plans indicates that the developers has plans to add an character-editing feature to the game sometime this Fall, but the question remains: Why wasn't it there at launch?

That feel when you realize you're stuck with a boring, fungi-free face.

Good Cases

I must acknowledge the good: As much as I disliked Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I deeply appreciated the fact that it launched with the ability to change my Rook's look already included in the game. My first Rook looked like a half-melted Bratz doll, and it took several attempts to get her looking right. If her bedroom in The Lighthouse hadn't come equipped with a mirror I could use to change her looks, I'd have probably just stopped playing the game without finishing it.

Final Thoughts

It could be said that it doesn't matter what your character looks like in a video game, and they're free to have that opinion. I just find that RPGs are more fun when I can design my character exactly as I imagine them in my head, and sometimes that takes a few tries.

I know that game development is a challenging, often-unpredictable process, and that some content will always end up on the chopping block. I just find it perplexing — and frankly, frustrating — that even now, in The Year of Our Lord 2025, I'm so frequently finding myself unable to access the editor, desperately gripping the bars of its cage and internally shouting, "LET ME IN!"