Great Character Creators Should Make Room for Imperfection, Not Just Idealized Heroes

Character creators are often treated as a familiar pre-game ritual: adjust a few sliders, choose a hairstyle, settle on an outfit, and begin the adventure. But for many players, those first few minutes carry much more weight than a menu normally gets credit for. The face, body, voice, and style assembled there can determine whether a protagonist feels like an extension of the player, an intentional role-playing performance, or a stranger who never quite fits the story.

That question is at the center of a newly released podcast conversation featuring Heather Wald and Rosalie Newcombe, alongside a fellow host, examining what separates a merely competent character creator from a genuinely meaningful one. The discussion ranges from recent examples including Dragon's Dogma 2 to the representation seen in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, while considering an issue that can be easy to overlook amid discussions of polygon counts and hairstyle catalogs: whether games allow people to make characters who look imperfect, ordinary, distinctive, older, disabled, scarred, asymmetrical, or otherwise outside a narrow idea of conventional beauty.

The central argument is simple but significant. A character creator does not become inclusive just because it offers a large number of options. It needs to give players room for the features they may feel self-conscious about in real life, rather than quietly filtering every face and body through the same youthful, polished, aspirational template.

Representation is more than a long list of sliders

Modern games have steadily improved the technical side of character creation. Players can now frequently alter facial proportions, skin tones, body types, hair textures, makeup, scars, clothing, and voices with an amount of detail that would have been remarkable only a few hardware generations ago. Yet technical flexibility does not automatically guarantee human variety.

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A menu can contain dozens of presets and still produce heroes who seem to belong to the same beauty campaign. If every wrinkle is subtle, every body shape is limited, every facial mark is decorative, and every unusual feature is presented as an exaggerated novelty, players are being guided toward a very particular kind of person. The result can feel less like self-expression and more like selecting the acceptable boundaries of a digital fashion model.

That distinction matters most in games that repeatedly foreground the player character. In dialogue-heavy role-playing games, cinematic adventures, and games with frequent close-up cutscenes, a custom avatar is not only seen from behind during exploration. Their face occupies the screen during emotional scenes. They react to companions, confront villains, grieve losses, laugh at jokes, and inhabit every major dramatic moment. If players cannot build someone who feels convincing to them, the emotional distance can persist throughout the entire experience.

The podcast's conversation frames this as more than an aesthetic concern. Video games can provide a rare form of reflection, allowing players to see traits, identities, and experiences that are not always widely represented elsewhere in popular entertainment. When those possibilities are absent, the implication may be that only an idealized version of a person is worthy of being centered in an epic fantasy, a romance, a mystery, or a survival story.

Why the "ugly parts" are part of a better toolset

The phrase at the heart of the discussion is not about making characters unattractive for its own sake. It is about allowing the full range of human appearance into the creative process. A strong creator should make space for the things people are taught to conceal: pronounced noses, uneven features, birthmarks, acne, aging, missing teeth, larger bodies, thinner bodies, scars with context, and the subtle visual details that prevent a person from looking manufactured.

There is also a difference between adding an option and treating it with care. A scar, for example, should not necessarily be a shorthand for villainy, toughness, or tragedy. It can simply be part of someone's face. Likewise, aging should not be limited to a handful of deliberately comic "elderly" presets. Players should be able to make adults who look like adults, with lines, texture, and variation that do not erase personality.

Games have long relied on fantasy to offer transformation. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Plenty of players want to create a glamorous warrior, a beautiful mage, a larger-than-life space captain, or a completely invented figure unlike themselves. The key is that fantasy works best when it is a choice rather than the only acceptable route. Someone should be able to craft an idealized hero if they wish, but another player should have equal support when making a character that resembles them, their family, their friends, or the kinds of people rarely permitted to be protagonists.

This is particularly relevant to conversations around mental health and body image. While no single character creator can resolve broader cultural pressures around appearance, games do contribute to what audiences repeatedly see framed as heroic, romantic, capable, or important. A system that only rewards perfection can reinforce the idea that people must be smoothed, slimmed, de-aged, and standardized before they can take up space in a story.

What recent games show

Dragon's Dogma 2 stands out in the discussion as a high-profile recent example of a game whose creator inspired extensive player experimentation. Its character tools became a notable part of the conversation around the game, with players attempting to build grounded individuals as well as fantastical figures. The enthusiasm around the system demonstrated the appeal of granular control, especially when players have enough room to move beyond familiar heroic presets.

Granularity alone is not the entire answer, however. An intimidating collection of sliders can be difficult to use, and it can leave players struggling to achieve a natural result without spending hours learning how separate values interact. The ideal system balances depth with accessibility. Good presets, clear categories, useful randomization, saved looks, and responsive lighting can make a creator welcoming to players who want to start quickly, while advanced options serve those who want to refine every last detail.

Lost Records: Bloom & Rage enters the broader conversation from a different direction. Rather than asking players to construct a face from scratch, its character representation is part of the game's authored cast and narrative design. That distinction is important. Inclusive representation is not solely the responsibility of character-creation menus. Games also need memorable written characters who vary in age, body, style, background, and personality, and who are allowed to be central without their appearance becoming the whole point of their existence.

Together, these approaches suggest that there is no single route to better representation. A detailed avatar builder can offer personal agency. A carefully written fixed cast can provide deliberate, nuanced visibility. The strongest industry-wide progress will come from pursuing both, rather than treating one as a replacement for the other.

The practical details developers still need to solve

Building a broad character creator is difficult work. Every added body type can affect armor fitting, animation, camera framing, romance scenes, clipping, facial performance, and the workload required for cinematic sequences. More hair options need to work under helmets and in motion. More facial structures need to animate convincingly. Clothing needs to look intentional rather than stretched across one base model.

Those challenges are real, but they also show why character creation should be considered early rather than being treated as a final customization layer. If a game's systems and cutscenes are designed around only one narrow body and face from the beginning, adding range later becomes more expensive and more visibly compromised. When diversity is part of the foundation, the world can be built to accommodate it.

Accessibility also deserves a place in the design conversation. Players should be able to preview features under useful lighting, rotate the character easily, compare changes, and understand terminology without specialized knowledge. Options should not be hidden behind jokes or framed with insulting labels. Pronoun and voice selections, where included, should be handled thoughtfully and independently where the game's narrative allows. Above all, a creator should avoid turning identity into a gimmick.

A character creator is a promise about who belongs

Players may spend an evening crafting a face only to cover it with a helmet minutes later, but that does not make the process meaningless. The act of choosing features is a form of authorship. It tells players that the game is prepared to recognize their idea of a hero, whether that hero is glamorous, weathered, soft-spoken, broad-shouldered, scarred, middle-aged, heavily stylized, or strikingly ordinary.

That is why the conversation around character creators continues to matter. The best systems are not defined only by whether they can recreate a celebrity or produce a highly detailed fantasy creature. They are defined by whether their range feels respectful, whether their options feel intentional, and whether players can make a person rather than a polished product.

As games continue to place custom protagonists at the center of cinematic and social experiences, expectations will keep rising. Players are not simply asking for more sliders. They are asking for a wider understanding of what a lead character can look like. Letting imperfection into the menu is not a downgrade from escapism. It is a way of making more kinds of players feel that the adventure was built with room for them.