Dragon’s Dogma 2 is only a few winks away and a free demo of the Character Creator is available, but is it that good? Read on to learn more about the game’s character creator features and what fans have been cooking up with it.
Is the Dragon’s Dogma 2 Character Creator THAT Good?
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is almost here, and while it’s disappointing that there’s no gameplay demo provided to give us a free sample of the game, Capcom gave us the option to create our characters in advance so that it’s straight to gameplay on the 22nd. Even so, why is everyone praising the character creator so much? Let’s take a quick look at what the game’s character customization offers and why people have been raving about it over the past few weeks.
Your Body, Your Rules
Starting off, you can choose between creating your main character, the "Arisen," or your main pawn, your unwavering partner-in-crime. You can choose between the two races of Human and Beastren, where both have 9 base bodies per type, and about 45 head presets to make your life easier. After selecting a head preset, you are given even more options within your chosen head preset so that the time it takes for you to alter each excruciating detail is shortened.
Afterwards, you have full control over your character’s body – from height, weight, musculature, posture, how they walk, and many more. You could argue that the amount of things to alter and change is overkill, as you quite literally have a slider for almost everything. There’s even an option for you to change the character’s teeth, which I definitely haven’t seen in any other RPG game with a character creator. It’s amazing how Capcom was able to capture Director Hideaki Itsuno’s vision of having the ability to alter each minute detail while keeping it simple.
After finishing your character’s overall physical appearance, you can choose between preset voices for your character. Finally, you will be made to assign the vocation that you want to play as. The starting vocations that are offered are the following:
● Fighter – Melee combatant; armed with a sword and shield
● Archer – Ranged combatant; focuses on aiming for weak spots as well as whittling down enemies from afar
● Mage – Magick based class; grants support and offensive spells to bolster your advance
● Thief – Speedy melee fighter; Adept at climbing huge monsters and darting around the battlefield making quick work against the enemies
Does It Affect Combat?
Does your character’s build affect combat at all? There’s still no actual confirmation about the effect of making your character taller, leaner, or heavier, but if they were to keep it the same as the predecessor, then it would affect a number of things. The main aspects your character’s weight class will affect are your overall Stamina regeneration and Encumbrance (Carry Weight). Stamina regeneration and Encumbrance are inversely proportional to each other, and directly influenced by your character’s weight. Meaning that a heavier character will have less stamina regeneration and higher carrying capacity as opposed to a lighter character. In the grand scheme of things, you can just gloss over these details and play your character the way you want, but of course, if you’re metagaming, then you should care about these two statistics.
Having higher Stamina regeneration early in-game means that you can opt to have more skills in combat, as all abilities use Stamina. Having faster Stamina regeneration means that you will be able to perform abilities in quicker succession. On the other hand, having a higher carrying capacity means that you can carry everything you want on your character without worrying too much about inventory management. This also means that you can carry more consumable buffs and healing items than lighter characters.
So How Good Is It?
So the real question is, how good is Dragon’s Dogma 2’s character creator? The short answer is that it's THAT good. From a graphical standpoint, the character creator allows you to make so many more different characters than the past game’s customization options. To prove this, I went ahead and tried to recreate one of the iconic characters from the Dragon Age series Leliana.
I’ll be first to admit that I could’ve done a way better job at making her through the character creator, but I think it’s a solid effort for someone who doesn’t really take too long to create a character.
There ARE some things that I wish that the character creator had, however. One would be to have more choices of colors, as well as be able to put more tattoos and scars. But to be honest, what it has is already more than enough for the common person. I’m not the first to try recreating another character from a different game, as fans are already showcasing just how many options you have when making a character.
YouTuber IamBramer created a character with a similar likeness to Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher series and even made a series of guides where he creates other characters based on fictional and actual people. Characters like Legolas, Aragorn, and Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings series, Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series, and even real people like Henry Cavill, Chuck Norris, and Jack Black.
As seen from IamBramer’s videos, it goes beyond creating a similar character from fiction but also even making the likeness of an actual human being. People were able to create characters that eerily resemble real people, like the Prince of Pop Michael Jackson, and Dune star Timothee Chalamet.
Here are some more examples of other created characters from other fans:
The Dragon’s Dogma development team was able to use the RE Engine to its full extent with the character creator. Making it so that it doesn’t even feel bad that there was no public gameplay demo, mainly because the customization options for your characters is THAT good.
Certain users have even clocked in more than 10 hours already just creating characters, trying to perfect the little details that they want to see visually. This game is going to be one for the ages, as the amount of work that the dev team has done is being showcased even without being able to play the actual game.
I just hope that my gaming rig can handle it when the time comes…
