Summary
Obsidian Entertainmenthas bucked a trend we’ve seen in recent triple-A role-playing game releases: the ability to change your character’s appearance after you exit the character creator. In fairness to Obsidian,Avoweddoes explicitly warn you that there’s no changing your character as you’re about to exit the character creator, so you can’t say you weren’t informed.
However, sometimes your tastes change, or perhaps you aren’t happy with how your character looks in alternate lighting. This topic was raised in aReddit thread from ArtificialInelegance, who admits they became so fixated on their character’s appearance that they restarted Avowed after 25 hours rather than powering through with a character they weren’t happy with.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…
While that’s certainly an extreme response to your “godlike bits” not being “godlike enough”, I can sympathise with being unhappy with a custom character’s appearance. During my first stint in Grand Theft Auto Online in 2013, I made a character that looked half-decent in the poorly-lit character creator, but upon entering the sun-dappled streets of Los Santos, his unsightly visage was revealed. This is actually also a problem in Avowed, where the character creator’s lighting doesn’t necessarily account for all the lighting variations your character will experience throughout the game.
The top commenter on the thread,Felix_Likes_Tofu, has raised a salient point regarding the roleplaying dynamics of Avowed. They wrote, “When I play games like these, I sort of like the appearance of my character to reflect my journey. Just reached the main city? TIme for a haircut. Learned some magic? Time for a moustache. Spent two weeks in the forest? Longer hair and a fuller beard! Ventured deep into a spider pit? Let’s shave everything off again.”
Avowed doesn’t currently have any means of changing your character’s appearance outside of clothing. There aren’t even lore-friendly ways of adjusting your character cosmetically, such as through haircuts or makeup.
Luckily, Obsidian continues to patch Avowed. A mid-playthrough means of changing your character’s appearance is likely a doable request for the studio. It’s probably something that wasn’t considered a priority pre-launch, but could certainly be added to the game in the coming patches. Considering I covered my entire face with some tree bark, this isn’t something that’s troubled me personally.
