Pretty, Oh So Pretty

We have known for a while now that physical character customization would be debuted at Gamescom 2011. What we didn’t know was the exact extent of what would be customizable.

Here’s what we know so far:

• ArenaNet is taking advantage of the experience gained from Aion and using their character customization as a base.
• Guild Wars 2’s customization will not be as extensive as Aion’s. (no insane proportions)
• Each race will have specific options, like asura ears, charr horns, norn tattoos, etc.
• Three body types to choose from, stocky, muscular, and slim. I speculate that we will be able to blend between these three extremes for something even more fine-tuned.
• Preset hairstyles to choose from.
• Preset faces to choose from, but the faces have additional customization sliders. (human noses have 5 sliders!)

So, I want to make a quick note about those nose sliders. Noses have always been where a character customization system makes it or breaks it for me. (well, that and female breasts. It’s easy to make them nice and voluptuous, but then having a system that can scale down to a petite A-cup and still look nice is something special) But noses. If my characters have humanish faces, (human, norn, sylvari) I like to give my characters sharp, almost hawklike features. Inevitably this leads to what most would call a freakishly big nose, something in the Indian or Roman style. Here, I even drew a sketch!

Also, my favorite haircut. Somehow though all beauticians except for one seem incapable of cutting my hair this way.

Even without my own preferences for character noses, there are other difficulties. Noses are far more than large/small, wide/narrow. Just look at chinese noses and roman noses and british noses and black african noses. There are so many wildly different shapes that it’s the rare slider system that’s able to accommodate a truly wide array of racial diversity.

I have faith in the ArenaNet art team though, so I look forward to seeing what can be accomplished with the system they have devised.

Stay tuned folks!  I’ll have Gamescom feature posts detailing more about the character customization options.

2011

08/17

CATEGORY

GW2 Speculation

TAGS

Artwork
Character Customization
Guild Wars 2

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