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Everybody that is familiar with me understands I take avatar design in RPGs very, very seriously. I'm not referring to perfecting stats, I'm talking about creating my player-character's physical appearance with painstaking detail. I greatly appreciate games that enable me to really bring my character to life via small details like eyeliner, ink, hair highlights, and even nail art. Frequently, I spend more than three or four hours in the customization screen, carefully sculpting my dream in-game avatar. There's only one problem: Once I leave customization, I typically can't get back in.

The Frustrating Moment

No doubt many players have been there at least once. You spend what seems like an eternity designing your character, and after lots of time-consuming tweaking, they look perfect. However, when you make it out of the editor and finally get a look at what your character looks like in the world, you discover something unfortunate: It’s not quite perfect. Perhaps their facial structure doesn't fit their face, or you decide you wish you had gone with a another hair style, or you notice that although they look acceptable from the front, their side profile looks ridiculous. Regardless of the issue, there's only one answer: Go back into character creation and fix your character's face. Unfortunately most RPGs won't allow you re-enter character creation, for reasons that I don’t understand to this day.

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

Personal Experiences

The first time 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 side profile. Her nose looked normal from the front, but from the side, it was hilariously off. I played a few more hours before I gave up and restarted the game so I could re-build my Inquisitor. The same issue arose 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 enthralled with the game that I didn't notice how bad my V looked until I started using Photo Mode. I couldn't live with her appearance. I lost roughly 15 hours of gameplay beginning again the game to fix poor V's face.

The Clear Fix

There's a pretty simple fix to this problem (aside from attempting to just grin and bear it): Allow players to return to the editor to change their appearance. Several RPGs offer this feature, but most of them don't launch with it, which I find utterly confusing. Baldur's Gate 3 initially launched with no way to adjust your character's appearance, but thankfully added the appearance changer shortly after the game's launch. Although I liked my Tav's starting appearance, I later decided I wanted to change up her physical look to show 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 the editor, the least you can do is follow Larian's lead and make including a character editor your first post-launch priority.

Current Cases

When I first picked up Avowed, I was interested in the various branches, flowers, and mushrooms I could choose to have growing out of my character's face. But these distinctive Godlike features were a little overwhelming for my tastes, and I didn't really understand why they were an choice to begin with. So I went with the discreet Godlike facial feature the game had to offer, and began exploring The Living Lands. But hours and hours later, around the time I reached the game's midpoint, I'd absorbed enough lore to understand why those crazy-looking plants and fungi were available in the character creator. Now that these extreme customization options clicked for me, I wanted to modify my character's face. Unfortunately, returning to the editor was not an option, something I (and others) found totally baffling in a game where the player's appearance is relevant to the main quest. Avowed's roadmap shows 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 sensation when you realize you're stuck having a boring, fungi-free face.

Positive Cases

I must acknowledge the good: As much as I wasn’t fond of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I was very grateful for the fact that it launched with the ability to change my Rook's look already baked into the game. My initial 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 Reflections

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 enjoyable when I can create my character exactly as I imagine them in my head, and sometimes that takes a few tries.

I understand that game development is a challenging, uncertain process, and that some content will always end up on the cutting-room floor. I just find it perplexing — and frankly, frustrating — that even now, in The Year of Our Lord 2025, I'm so frequently finding myself locked out of character creation, desperately gripping the bars of its cage and internally shouting, "LET ME IN!"