Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game all about freedom, embracing the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons by letting players approach every situation however they like, even reveling in failure at times. With all that freedom, however, there’s one aspect of Baldur’s Gate 3 that feels surprisingly lacking — customizing your character’s look.
While there is an exhaustively detailed character creator, the game currently lacks any way to alter your appearance after creation, and it’s something that will hopefully be addressed as soon as possible.
It’s baffling that Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t have more character customization options, as it’s pretty much par for the course in an RPG of this scale, that encourages this level of freedom. It’s especially strange as the game makes sure to give players options for changing their class and character builds.
By finding an ancient mummified wizard named Withers, players can alter their class at any time for a fee of 100 gold, but there’s no such option for changing things like your hairstyle, tattoos, facial features, and more. At the same time Larian's previous games, Divinity: Original Sin 2, did give players the option to change their appearances at will using a magic mirror after Act I.
The idea of “role-playing” is integral to every facet of Baldur’s Gate 3, especially as your character and companions only have days to live, due to the Mindflayer tadpole infesting your brains. In a lot of ways this pressures your party to embrace life like never before, pursue romances while they still can, find answers to longstanding questions, or seek revenge on those that have harmed them.
It’s a complex situation that shows a group of characters changing wildly over a short period of time and within that thematic context it makes sense your character might want to alter their appearance as events change.
You can drastically change the look and feel of your characters with armor and equipment, some of which is entirely cosmetic, but even then there are some elements lacking. It’d be great to have some kind of glamour system that lets you completely customize the look of your characters, regardless of the equipment you have on. Right now everyone ends up looking like a fashion disaster, put together with pieces that have the best stats, regardless of how well they coordinate.
Freedom is so essential to making Baldur’s Gate 3 what it is, and Lariian studios go so much right in terms of translating that D&D experience to a video game format. It truly feels like a massive oversight to not have more customization options present in the full release, especially considering that the game was in Early Access for years.
Larian Studios has already done a fantastic job of post-launch support in just the first week, releasing two big hotfixes and planning more. It’s clear the studio is absolutely committed to improving an already incredible experience, so it seems more a matter of when rather than if, for more complex character customization.
