Testing the Limits of Mass Effect Andromeda's Character Creator

I'll see what I can do when I get my hands on it, but I really can't help but be disappointed.

That being said, I know better than to expect great things from huge dev studios nowadays. All the best character creation tools are coming from either Asian MMOs or from a handful of outliers like Saints Row and Champions Online. Bethesda and Bioware are very consistent when it comes to half-assing this part of the game.

I'll just do my best with what's there and try to wear a helmet (and some good armor) most of the time.
 
looks amazing. better presets than dai by a long shot. hair looks decent this time too. massive upgrade from the previous games. cant wait to tinker around with the settings myself. goty right here folks.
 
I'll see what I can do when I get my hands on it, but I really can't help but be disappointed.

That being said, I know better than to expect great things from huge dev studios nowadays. All the best character creation tools are coming from either Asian MMOs or from a handful of outliers like Saints Row and Champions Online. Bethesda and Bioware are very consistent when it comes to half-assing this part of the game.

I'll just do my best with what's there and try to wear a helmet (and some good armor) most of the time.

Champions Online has great body customs but they lose all their good will with the abysmal face options.

Also helmets seem to be forced off during any conversation.
 
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Yep.

What's the fluid bursting from his shoulder?
 
Not very good character customisation for a AAA 2017 game. Absolutely no body adjustment, such as muscle, height or limb size? No voice pitch changing? Or am I missing something here?
voice pitching would be awful. Have you ever played a game where that was an option?
 

The female hair options are really disappointing. But then again, Bioware couldn't figure it out in DA:I either, so they just made the only black female party member bald and gave the black NPCs headdresses.

They are *really* struggling with creating hair with their version of Frostbite.
 
voice pitching would be awful. Have you ever played a game where that was an option?

The Saints Row and Soul Calibur series to name a couple, and both series are well-known for their robust character creators.

Edit: As mentioned by Lime, Dragon's Dogma, another game with a better character creator than any Bioware game.
 
Wish other main female presets were as good as this one (a side character you can wake)

Unless I'm misunderstanding the bolded, that's not a side character, that's a custom Sara Ryder.

edit: Whoops, didn't see how old that was. That'll teach me to not refresh, lol.
 
I always make an African American woman as my RPG character. It has been the same character in most of the rpgs I play.
Same character, same hair style, same name (Èoleone). She has been through FO4, Dragon age, the division, skyrim, and now ME:A.

So I am happy the customization will allow me to create her in this game. I can't wait!
 
A bit disappointed. Unless I missed it, there's no way to change the actual shape of the nose (like adding bumps, or making it a hooked nose, changing nostril size/width independentl of nose size/width, etc.), no way to change the shape of the eyes or eyebrows and from what I saw, there didn't seem to be a lot of beard or hairstyle options.
 
A bit disappointed. Unless I missed it, there's no way to change the actual shape of the nose (like adding bumps, or making it a hooked nose, changing nostril size/width independentl of nose size/width, etc.), no way to change the shape of the eyes or eyebrows and from what I saw, there didn't seem to be a lot of beard or hairstyle options.

This feels worse than DAI, let alone non Bioware games...

At least the music is fantastic!
 
This feels worse than DAI, let alone non Bioware games...

I don't play a lot of non-Bioware games that have a character creator but yeah, definitely feels like a step back from DAI in quite a few areas. It's also strange that they've got separate male and female hairstyle libraries. Can't think of any technical reasons for that and it would've been nice to be able to use all hairstyles on all characters, no matter their gender. (On that note, they should've also added the option to give female Ryders facial hair. I doubt that's something a lot of people will want to do but options are always nice and I can't imagine it would've been difficult to implement so it not being an option just feels like an artificial limitation.)

EDIT: Just saw this on YouTube (don't know if it's already been mentioned):
SPECIAL NOTE: Bioware is planning on adding more options post-release in a patch. The number of additions, however, has not been confirmed.
The uploader of this video posted it in the comments. On the one hand, it's a relief but on the other hand, I also hate knowing that I'll start playing the game with a character I could've customised further if I had waited for that patch (and of course, we don't know when that patch is going to drop). Unless the patch will allow us to go back into the character creator, make adjustments to our existing Ryder and then resume our playthrough with those changes made.
 
Honestly I'm super sad that in the span of 5 years in a multi-million project like this, with hundreds of people involved, Bioware only managed to make 10 different hair options per gender and only 1 black female hair option out of these 10. For a developer to pride themselves of being progressive, this is particularly disappointing.
 
Now this is a leading man.

I was wrong about the CC, looks like you can get some good looking characters.

Wait is that photoshop or did you managed to recreate default Ryder?

It's one of the Property Brothers

Haha, love the feedback. Made me laugh out loud.

I don't actually like the Character Creator, though. I mean, I'm very happy with how my guy turned out, but the lack of some really obvious options is killer. You can't change brow type or brow color (like, what? Can't even match it to your hair color, or go with a different, contrasting color). And the skin color slider seems to have a different range depending on the ethnicity of the preset you start with (not inherently a bad thing, but games usually give you the whole range to work with).
 
I really dislike the facial hair-options in this game.

Goddamnit. I wanted the Ryder-like scruff in for custom characters damnit. Since it's the closes to my own.

:(
 
Wish other main female presets were as good as this one (a side character you can wake)


As usual on PC, mods will really help.

That's not a side character, that's Fem Ryder.
I recognise the same cutscene and animation from one of the recent trailers with default Fem Ryder doing the same stuff.
 
So to confirm what we assumed, if you pick the right colors, the output can be fairly decent. Their shaders do NOT mesh well with some colors (like too dark or too light), and since they let you pick anything, it's a problem.

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Will take a lot of experimentation to find the best skin, hair and eye colors, but there's definitely hope.

Also this game's animations and rendering in terms of characters, is far below the standards set by other games, so when I say good, I mean within the game's average quality. I also don't think it's a deal breaker as apparently the writing and game itself are pretty decent, and we are lacking space operas goodness among all those fantasy RPG :D . Seems good enough.

That hair looks like a helmet.
 
That white haired asian FemRyder looks and animates good better than default even I might say. DadRyder looks quite good as well considering he is based off whatever you pick for your player character.
 
So you would rather your hero look, not heroic and by the description here, "Rather Dumpy?" Ok then, have I got a hero for you!

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I'd much rather play a game where the dumpy hero goes on a quest to find some element zero condoms that he uses for his biotic dong.

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