Elder Scrolls Online – Character Creation

Character creation, it’s one of those areas of a RPG game that people believe it is focused mainly for Role-players. I recently wrote an article talking about how we as MMO Gamers put part of ourselves into the games we play (It’s Just a Game). In the previous Elder Scrolls single player games you were given plenty of customizable options to make your character look the way you want it to. In MMO history you rarely got the options to truly customize your character, you had the typical Male, Female, Race, Body Type, Skin Colour, all of which did not have very many options. Elder Scrolls Online is our chance as MMO gamers to have that plethora of customization options, and trust me there is a plethora of them.

Before I go into detail about what options will be available and how the screen looks, I want to make it perfectly clear that all the information provided was as of the PAX East Release, and everything is subject to change. Nothing is ever written in stone when it comes pre-beta or beta for that matter.

With that let’s get into the nitty gritty.

Firstly, your character will have 2 names, a first and last. I named my Character, Garbrac Pax, you must have a last name in order to complete the character creation. The names must be a minimum of 3 characters in length. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, with the game being Mega Server I can see why Zenimax is requiring the last name, but I can also see people becoming upset with this requirement. Some role players like the idea of last names, gives them options for building the history of the character, but some people don’t feel a last name is necessary.

Once you name your triumphant hero and have picked your faction and race, and your base class, you can click on the body tab at the top of the screen. In this tab is where all the magic happens, turning your standard hero into your own personal Tamriel Guardian. I will list the features off in bullet form, before I do that I’ll let you know, there are roughly 16 different options for each slider, and 20 different skin colours to choose from.

The first option was Body Type, this option was an interesting one. It isn’t your typical slider, it is a triangle, with a dot that you are able to move around within the triangle in order to find the perfect transition between the 3 options, Muscular at the top, Thin at the bottom right and Large at the bottom left. One of the key things I noticed when playing around with the Body Type, is the armour adjusts and changes to fit the body you choose. The thing that stood out the most was when you pick Large body type your belt buckle becomes smaller than if you were to pick thin, to keep thing in proper proportion.

Below the triangle is where all the sliders come in, I’m going to list it bullet form, remember each option has roughly 16 different stops on the slider.

Those are all the options, just for the body, so now let’s take a look at the face options.

Same with the body Type Triangle they had one for the Face Type, Heroic at the top, Angular at the bottom right, and Soft at the bottom left. Heroic will be more war beaten, slight scars, Angular is the pretty boy, and Soft is the baby face. Remember this is a triangle similar to the body type so there is many different blends you can create. So don’t fret you’ll be able to create that perfect looking face.

After the face triangle, you scroll down into the slider options.

Wow, that is a lot of detail you can put into your character. You’re going to be hard pressed to find someone that looks exactly like you.

The weirdest option for me, hand thickness, I don’t know if I ever thought about my hands being too thick or not thick enough. I thoroughly love the idea of the age slider in the face options. This slider will take your character from a young man, to a wrinkled old man, I am sure all the role players are looking forward to this option as well. I am far from a role player, but like I said in my article (It’s Just a Game) we make our characters a reflection of ourselves, in one way or another, either our ideal look-a-like, or our ideal woman/man. And with all these options I don’t think anyone will say that can’t create that perfect avatar.

What are your thoughts on the character creation, to many options? Not enough? Which feature are you looking forward to playing with the most?