Why Great Character Creators Need Room for Imperfection

Character creators are often treated as a pleasant pre-game ritual: pick a hairstyle, nudge a cheekbone slider, choose an outfit, then head off to save a kingdom, survive an apocalypse or make a complicated dialogue choice. But for games that repeatedly put a player-created character on screen, those early menus do far more than set a cosmetic baseline. They establish who the game believes is worth seeing.

That is the central idea in a new discussion on character creation and representation, which points to Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Lost Records: Bloom and Rage as useful examples in a wider conversation about how games depict people. The argument is simple but demanding: the best creators should not only enable conventionally attractive fantasy versions of players. They should also make room for features people may feel vulnerable about, including the kinds of details games have historically softened, omitted or treated as undesirable.

That doesn’t mean every game needs a massive suite of facial sliders, nor that realism is automatically better than stylization. It means a creator should give players a credible chance to make someone who feels recognizably human—whether that person resembles them, someone they know, or simply exists outside the narrow default of eternal youth and immaculate beauty.

The difference between customization and representation

These terms are related, but they are not interchangeable.

Customization is the range of choices a game offers. That can include face shape, body type, skin tone, hair, clothing, voice, pronouns, makeup and more. A game can have a long list of options and still feel limiting if those options all orbit one idealized kind of person.

Representation is broader: it concerns whether people with different appearances and lived experiences can plausibly see themselves in the game’s world. A creator becomes representative not simply by counting sliders, but by treating variation as normal rather than as an exception hidden behind an exaggerated setting.

This distinction matters because a technically elaborate editor can still lead players toward a single polished outcome. If every available face is smooth, young, symmetrical and built around the same beauty standard, the player has choice without much breadth. Conversely, a smaller toolset can feel considered when it offers meaningful variation in the traits it does include and presents them without judgment.

The discussion’s emphasis on allowing the “ugly parts in” is deliberately provocative, but its point is not that ordinary features are ugly. It is that many players are taught to regard parts of themselves that way: aging, perceived asymmetry, marks, texture or other visible traits can become sources of self-consciousness. Games have an unusual opportunity to counter that pressure. They can let a player see such features attached to a capable protagonist who is not reduced to them.

Why the camera makes the creator matter more

A character creator carries different weight depending on how a game frames its protagonist. In a first-person game, a carefully made face may rarely appear. In a third-person adventure, cinematic role-playing game or dialogue-heavy narrative, the player may watch that character react, speak and occupy the center of scenes for dozens of hours.

That repeated visibility is why a weak creator can damage the experience even when the rest of a game is strong. Players are not merely selecting a menu avatar; they are selecting the face that will sit in every close-up, every conversation and every emotional moment. If the system does not offer an adequate way to make a character they connect with, the mismatch can persist throughout the game.

There is also a practical design implication here. Developers should judge creators in the same contexts players will actually encounter: under the game’s lighting, during animation, at dialogue distance, in combat gear and in cutscenes. A face that looks flexible in a neutral editor can become oddly uniform once its expressions, camera angles and wardrobe take over. Character creation is not finished when the player presses confirm; it has to survive the full presentation of the game.

Imperfection is not a novelty setting

The most valuable idea in this conversation is that visible difference should not be handled as a gimmick. A scar, an older face, a nonstandard body shape or any other trait should not exist solely as shorthand for a tragic backstory, villainy or comic relief. Nor should a player have to assemble a face from a stack of caricatured extremes to find something familiar.

Instead, thoughtful options are integrated into the same ordinary process as choosing a jawline or haircut. They are there because people look different. That may sound modest, but it changes the emotional message of a system. Rather than asking players to make a deliberately “flawed” character, it lets them make a person.

This is especially important when games are commonly described as escapism. Escapism does not have to mean escaping one’s own age, body or face. For some players, fantasy is most powerful when it permits them to bring those things along—when the heroic knight, adventurer or detective can resemble a person they recognize rather than a beauty filter with a sword.

There is no contradiction between aspirational design and broader representation. Players can still choose extravagant hair, dramatic outfits and sculpted features. The better standard is not to remove glamour; it is to avoid making glamour the only route to a protagonist who looks complete, competent or worthy of the camera.

What games can learn from the examples under discussion

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is raised as part of the conversation because its character creator is a useful reference point for players who want extensive control over a protagonist’s appearance. Its inclusion illustrates why depth remains appealing: granular tools can help players reach an appearance that prebuilt presets may not accommodate.

But depth has costs and limitations. More controls can create a steeper, more intimidating interface, especially for players who do not want to spend a long time adjusting minute details. Plenty of people want to begin playing quickly. A well-designed system therefore needs both breadth and usability: strong, varied presets for a fast start, with deeper adjustments available for anyone who wants them.

Lost Records: Bloom and Rage enters the conversation from the related angle of character representation. Not every meaningful step forward comes from a huge player editor. Games also communicate whose stories matter through authored characters—the people placed at the center of the narrative, the way they are presented and the everyday specificity they are allowed to have.

That distinction is worth protecting. Player creation and authored representation can reinforce one another, but one cannot fully substitute for the other. An expansive editor is welcome, yet it does not eliminate the need for games to feature varied characters by default. Likewise, an authored cast can broaden what players see without offering the personal agency of building one’s own avatar.

A practical checklist for a more human creator

No single list can capture every person, and no game can include every possible option. Still, the principle of respectful breadth can guide decisions more effectively than an endless chase for raw menu quantity.

Start with varied presets. Presets are not just shortcuts. They are the first signal of who the game expects players might want to be.
Let choices combine naturally. Features should not feel locked to one narrow archetype. A player should be able to make coherent characters without fighting the system.
Check how traits behave in motion. Facial animation, lighting and cinematic framing should preserve the individuality established in the editor.
Avoid moral coding. Options associated with age, texture, size or visible difference should not silently imply weakness, menace or comedy.
Offer speed as well as control. A creator should respect players who want five minutes of setup and those who want much more.
Think beyond the face. Clothing, hair, body presentation and the game’s spoken and written language all affect whether a player feels accommodated.

These are design principles, not a formula. A stylized game may approach them differently from a grounded role-playing game, and genre creates real constraints. What matters is intentionality: whether the limitations of a system feel like an artistic choice or an unexamined assumption about what a protagonist ought to look like.

The larger industry question

Character creators may appear to be a narrow interface feature, but they sit where art direction, technology, writing, animation and player identity all meet. Decisions about presets and sliders influence casting, rigging, clothing, cutscene work and accessibility of the menu itself. That makes this an industry concern, not a trivial request for more cosmetics.

It also benefits from a wider range of perspectives in development. Debates over what feels normal, attractive, plausible or important are never purely technical. They are creative decisions shaped by the people making the game and the people invited to test it. Broader conversations about conditions and voices within studios, including the concerns reflected in ongoing discussion of how game studios can fracture internally, underline why player-facing inclusivity cannot be separated entirely from who gets heard during production.

That is analysis rather than a claim that any individual project has solved the issue. The supplied discussion identifies progress, but it also stresses that there is still more to improve if games are to reflect the breadth of humankind. The sensible response is not to crown one creator as universally definitive. It is to ask better questions whenever a game asks players, “Who do you want to be?”

A great answer gives room for fantasy, invention and beauty. An even better one recognizes that people do not need to be scrubbed clean of every insecurity or sign of life before they are allowed to become the hero.