I’ve gotten back into playing Baldur’s Gate 3 lately and found myself having difficulty clearing that infamous first opponent: the Character Creator. After several restarts through the intro I fell into a character concept and design I really enjoyed, and have begun progressing through the game at a reasonable pace.
Getting past the character creation screen should not have taken me as long as it did because I make very, very plain characters. Something like a “John Baldursgate.”
For those who don’t know what that is, I’ll summarize: the Baldur’s Gate 3 character creator is quite robust in the choices it gives you, allowing for an impressive amount of customization. Your imagination can truly run wild. But, in the early days of the game’s release, data showed that most popular creation choices were ones that created a plain, white dude. The nickname for this type of character became “John Baldursgate.”
I’m not going to spend time defending the concept of the plain white dude as the default hero in a fantasy setting. Even I, who trend toward character designs that are plain, find that boring. But I do trend towards plain characters unadorned with tattoos, crazy hair colors, or even facial scars. My characters eyes are the same color. So while I don’t create “the plain white dude” any more, I do create “plain” people.
And honestly, in modern fantasy, I feel that stands out more.
The party members you gather into your party are all wonderful weirdos, and many of the supporting characters in the game have equally outlandish designs. To be the one “normal” looking character is, in my opinion, the very thing that makes them stand out. In a world full of facial scars, neck tattoos, wild piercings, and different-colored eyes, the person who looks like they wandered out of the peasantry and into a wild adventure is the one I gravitate towards.
One of the best modern examples of this, outside of a video game’s character creator, is Laios from Delicious In Dungeon. He may be the boring-looking “plain white dude” but he is, far and away, the most interesting weirdo in that cast of weirdos.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my own unassuming character has to help their interdimensional green-skinned alien girlfriend through her crisis of faith.