Character creator failures in Splatoon 3, Elden Ring, and more

After I started up, Elden RingOr Disney Dreamlight ValleyFor the first time I felt a tightness in my chest. That’s because these games start with a character creator menu, which overwhelmed and stressed me out. Many people find that opening a game and seeing a variety of customization options for their characters, such as hair style and body type, is an important and significant aspect of playing. It’s like the best parts of dress-up, except it’s way easier to play and experiment with looks. But for me, it’s just stressful, and if I’m being honest, I think I suck at it.

My role is not that of a game designer. I don’t design characters. My taste is not good. In this regard, I am not creative. Although I can dress myself up like a normal person, it is difficult to imagine what will look great on my fantasy characters. We don’t say this out loud often, but it’s actually really hard to design a cool-looking character. I believe that the best gamers are those who can create characters.

I feel like I’m floating on a wave of customisation when designing characters, even without personal inspiration. Overthinking every aspect of the many options can cause me to become overwhelmed. There’s a possibility that I might be able to move my eyes up to an incomprehensible distance. I don’t know if it’s better to layer on tattoos, scars, and cool-colored hair, or keep it simple. Of course, tons of games will allow you to equip your character with cooler gear over time, but I’ve never quite mastered the art of designing a cool character. So, here, I’ve decided to round up some of my recently designed characters and roast them for the Polygon readership.

Final Fantasy 14

Square Enix via Polygon

This design is giving “Zora from The Legend of Zelda except make it bland and boring.” Out of all the character creator tools, I was absolutely blown away by the one in Final Fantasy 14I was enamored with all the choices of hair colors and races available. It was a great deal of fun, but it resulted in one of the worst designs I have ever made. Her design seemed fine at first, but I regret my decision after about 10-ish hours of play. She seemed lifeless to me and I just wanted to be a cat lady. Yes, you could put on the most recent glamour but it would make me happier if I had a new character to paint.

Splatoon 3.

Image: Nintendo via Polygon

It is difficult to create a bad character when you are one of the best character designers. Splatoon proves this to be true. The character designs and outfits are solid no matter what, so I’m grateful for that. My Octoling I don’t think is ugly. However, I spent a lot time debating whether these Neo sunglasses, paired with a thrift sweater, are high fashion or bad. I’m leaning toward bad.

Tower of Fantasy

Image: Hotta Studio via Polygon

Tower of FantasyPerhaps it was overshadowed. Genshin Impact, but that didn’t stop me from agonizing over making a character in it. Again, there was a lot of flexibility, such as color schemes for costumes, accents on robotic legs and many other options. Here is my landing page. I like her more than other characters I’ve made in the past, because the anime style looks great. However, there were a couple of things I didn’t like about my design. Mainly I was worried that the cat-ears-and-eye-patch combination was a bit much, and that the brown color I chose for the roots of her hair is too brassy. It was too matchy. But that’s okay!

Disney Dreamlight Valley

Gameloft via Polygon

It was actually pretty easy to do. Easy makeup, I liked my curly hair style. (Although this does just look like a version of me that is too lazy to let my hair down, I do think it’s cute.) I think a lot of my early anxiety with character design possibly stemmed from the age-old “will they have a hairstyle that looks like mine,” and so it’s nice to see actually curly hair options here. This design is a bit too yassified for being 10 years younger than me. I don’t wear any skinny jeans anymore.

Elden Ring

Image via Polygon: FromSoftware

I truly don’t know with this one. I named her “Miss Thing” because I thought it was funny. I think it’s an appropriately disastrous name for an appropriately ugly character. Elden Ring is particularly difficult because it’s set in a dark, maidenless world and it’s not really suitable for making cute characters. It was my thought that giving her long, white hair would make it look more anime like. But the grungy combination of her dark armor and her black hair made her seem even less cartoon-like.