Summary
When we leftour hour-long previewofDragon Age: The VeilguardatSummer Game Fest, my colleague Eric Switzer turned to me and asked “why did they spend so long on the character creator, is it that big a deal?”. I just laughed. The dev spent 15 minutes building their Rook, and if they’d spent the whole hour it still wouldn’t have been enough. I’m surprised atBioWare’schoice not to show it off as part of its gameplay showcase, but from what I’ve seen it might be the new peak of character creators in gaming.
This is a title thatDragon Agehas held before. In 2014 whenInquisitiondropped, it featured a level of detail that made it the best in the world. Though some technical advances have seen others surpass it since, BioWare has what it takes to rule the world. From the character creator at least, The Veilguard might pull it back to the top.
Note: While we saw pretty much everything else, the Inquisitor/previous decisions part of the creator was not shown off at Summer Game Fest.
First, the technical side of things. BioWare was keen to highlight the hair strand technology that looked very similar to that seen inFIFAandEA FC, also made under EA’s roof. Though we didn’t dwell in too many of the fine tuning sliders that allowed for microscopic adjustments of nose angles, it was clear that a lot of options exist to get the smallest possible body parts exactly right.
Speaking of smallest possible body parts: your penis (I raise my eyebrows and gnash on my cigar). I take considerable issue withCyberpunk 2077being labelled the world’s first trans character creator, for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s not. Many character creators prior to it allowed for pronoun choice, while it’s my firm belief that my character is trans simply by virtue of me saying so. My FemShep? Trans. My Hawke? Trans. My De Sardet? Trans. My Lambo? Blue.
But I understand what people mean when they talk about Cyberpunk 2077’s trans character creator. As with most discussions with trans people, it is reduced entirely to the genitals. Cyberpunk 2077 let you customise your penis (or, to a much lesser extent, your vagina), and did not limit the body types these organs could be attached to. Undoubtedly, this is highly progressive and I’d rather it was there than wasn’t. For a game as huge as Cyberpunk 2077 to let you be trans marks a major milestone.
Unfortunately, it’s a milestone that’s as much a millstone. It pigeonholes this depiction of transness as genitals alone, in a highly sexualised world that was most famously characterised by a female supermodel with a giant veiny bulge at her crotch asking you to Mix It Up while selling energy drinks. It encourages fetishisation, not to mention that subsequent sex scenes will ignore your genital choice - Judy’s scene, for female players only, heavily implies you have a vagina while Panam’s, for male players only, depicts a jackhammering suitable only for the bepenised amongst us.
Cyberpunk 2077 is three steps forward, two steps back, but when all the maths is done, that’s still a step forward. In isolation, that’s a positive. However, over the years it has been deified (often by cis people looking for any reason to keep the Night City flames burning) as the most progressive character creator there ever was or ever will be, when really it’s just a standard (and slightly restrictive) character creator that lets you make a girl with a penis.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard embraces the trans experience a lot more openly. While we didn’t see the impact of this in game, I imagine this will be handled more gracefully than Cyberpunk 2077. There’s no specific genital customisation to be oversold asCDPRdid but, much likeSaints Row, there is an option for bulge customisation to reflect whoever you want your Rook to be. It features pronoun choice, gender identity, body type, and voice as four distinct options, and while we didn’t see them in the game, there looked to be more than male/female/non-binary or he/she/they in the creator too. For voices, there are four options, two masc and two femme, with American and British accents.
But there’s more to the character creator than the trans aspect. For the first time in BioWare history, it comes with fully customisable body appearance, no longer choosing between just two options per sex. Height is customised on a slider (presumably with limits, so the tallest dwarf is shorter than the tallest qunari), while size operates on a triangle (also seen in Saints Row) that moves between fat, slim, and muscular however you wish.
To best see what your Rook looks like, you can see them in the old rags they start the game in, some typical mid-game armour, and some level 50 gear, appropriate to each class. You can also change the lighting between four different settings, from clean to bright to dim to sunset, to verify they always look in tiptop shape. Those of us who remember the green tint of Inquisition’s in-Fade character creator will be grateful for this.
There’s also the backstory. Though we couldn’t see the choices behind events of Inquisition (or even a tab where they might live), we were still able to choose our background. And by ‘choose’, I mean ‘the dev picked the same one for everyone at Summer Game Fest’, but still, we could see what they were.
Note: These choices had a Tarot motif, which may hint at a deeper connection to Inquisition than just continuing Solas' story.
The background (one of five) of our Rook was as a Shadow Dragon, a rebel sect within Tevinter who speak out against the city’s slavery policy. All of the backgrounds delve into different areas of Tevinter culture, with BioWare keen to make the game feel different than the three Ferelden games. Even in the 35 minutes or so that we saw of the prologue, this background was referenced by both Varric and Neve, which suggests it will have a major impact on the narrative.
I considered Dragon Age: Inquisition to be the best character creator ever made when it launched a decade ago, and it’s still the watermark I judge others against. Though it has been surpassed in technological abilities since, it is still one of the most in-depth and creative tools RPGs have ever seen. In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it has found a worthy successor.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
WHERE TO PLAY
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the long-awaited fourth game in the fantasy RPG series from BioWare formerly known as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. A direct sequel to Inquisition, it focuses on red lyrium and Solas, the aforementioned Dread Wolf.
