There’s a reason many players are known to spend hours on a character creation screen before embarking on the actual game. That character is going to persist throughout the entirety of the playthrough, their portrait hanging in the corner: their face visible in every scene of dialogue. It’s great then, that the fast approaching Avowed, Obsidian Entertainment’s latest RPG, has just shown off some screenshots of its own creator in use, and it looks beautifully absurd.

Baldur’s Gate 3, and even Avowed‘s predecessors in the Pillars of Eternity duo, conformed to a relatively safe character creator. Sure, those games do have significantly more options to choose from in terms of race and background, but there is one crucial element that was left out. Making absurdist, immersion-breaking characters is a staple of RPGs. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and it doesn’t have to be, but the option will forever have a dedicated fanbase. For those players who see sliders as a binary option between 0 and 100, Avowed may have the perfect system.

Avowed Character Creation Can Be Bent To Your Will

Fungal Options Are Waiting To Be Bent

A post from Avowed ‘s X has shown off some truly strange looking Envoys, the name for Avowed‘s player character. While character creation may at first appear slightly limited, with players choosing between either elves or humans, the Envoy being a godlike of mysterious origin has created plenty of options for customization. Godlike were a major part of the Pillars games, and while it’s not essential to play the predecessors before Avowed releases, taking a look at previous godlike types is a good indicator for the breadth of options which will likely be available.

(yay) Players will have the option to toggle on/off Godlike Features. Please note that NPCs will still react to your godlike features, if you choose to hide them. If you don’t hide them, go nuts. pic.twitter.com/7gV0hMdrha — Avowed (@AvowedtheGame) January 24, 2025

The Godlike are a race who have been blessed or cursed by one of the various deities that inhabit Eora. Typically, the Godlike can be linked to a particular god via the features they were born with. However, in Avowed, the protagonist is a Godlike who has been blessed by an unknown entity. The only hint of that god’s true nature is in the various features that can be chosen for the Envoy, almost all of which have a distinct fungal aesthetic.

bonus Moss Man Randy by a dev pic.twitter.com/rqVj5XfQO8 — Avowed (@AvowedtheGame) January 23, 2025

Much of the potential customization and bending of character creation, then, has to do with the various ways in which these fungal features can be manipulated. Based on the gallery of images posted on Avowed‘s X account, the spore-like additions come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, and appear to be a part of a sizable collection of options. Fortunately, these options can come together in some delightfully awful results, with mixes of mushrooms, branches, and spores combining in all sorts of strange ways.

No proper character creator would be complete without a multitude of sliders. Thankfully, Avowed is supplementing its host of fungus, mushrooms, and roots, with what appears to be an entirely separate selection of facial sliders and options. In fact, a player could completely ignore the godlike-granted features, and still create a reality-bending character with the more standard facial options.

Absurd Characters Are A Classic Video Game Tradition

Wild Character Creation Never Gets Old

If sliders exist in a character creator, they will be used to their fullest. Creating absurdist characters, for many, is a work of art. It’s a long-lasting tradition of video games, and has occurred across countless genres and franchises. Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, and The Elder Scrolls are all examples in which a truly wacky set of parameters and sliders have been put to good use by the community, with fan creations dotting forums and sent among friends.

Beyond the over-the-top designs, there is a general benefit to having a robust character creation system. Those sliders don’t need to be pushed towards a binary, and when used as intended, can be quite useful in truly customizing a character to a player’s liking. The more robust and flexible a system, the better it is for players of both philosophies. Any balanced multiplayer party should include at least one truly out-there character design infiltrating the ranks of the more mindfully crafted members.

For all the great aspects of a system as varied as Baldurs Gate 3, sometimes, allowing players to create truly awful characters is important. Sure, maybe it’s not important to everyone, but it’s likely that even players who would never create such monstrosities have at least chuckled at a Frankenstein-inspired creation they’ve come across on a social feed, or at the very least some strikingly emphasized rendition of a beloved character.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s Character Creator Is Great In Its Own Right

A New Standard For Character Creators.

This isn’t to say Baldur’s Gate 3‘s character creator is not one of the best around. Beyond simple sliders, BG3 has an abundance of races and subraces to choose from, not just altering the character’s appearance, but also genuinely affecting how that character is perceived in the world. While Avowed has its own immersive background system, it’s difficult to see how the five options could match the breadth of BG3’s numerous race and background specific events and dialogue.

In comparison, Avowed‘s options seem exceedingly limited. This is made more apparent with the previous Pillars of Eternity games in mind, where players had access to races and subraces that now are restricted to NPCs and companions. While Avowed seems to have staggering flexibility within its more limited parameters of spore-like godlike features and the underlying race option, there is clearly something to be said for a more thorough pool of choices.

Of course, both games have strayed away from any level of intense body customization. Not every game needs to go as far as a system like Ark: Survival, and as is the case with BG3, sometimes a more fine-tuned selection of choices may be for the best. However, the insane spore-infested characters coming on the horizon in Avowed will certainly leave some long-lasting impressions. Until then, now is the best time to catch up on the lore of Eora with Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2,free on Xbox Game Pass, and which will be joined by Avowed on February 18.