Starfield has a 'highly detailed' character creator so of course I'll be fighting for my life not to wind up ugly

Starfield character creation - a woman with buzzed hair and hoop earrings on a teal background

(Image credit: Bethesda)

As is RPG tradition, my time with Starfield is destined to start with no fewer than 60 minutes of character creation time as I carefully consider cheekbones and RPG traits. I've got no doubt that Starfield's character creator will let me toil away perfecting those details. During its Starfield Direct presentation, Bethesda explained how it overhauled character creation by 3D scanning "a wide range of faces from different age groups and ethnicities" as data for a highly customizable system.

We got a look at how character creation actually starts, with a very classically Bethesda setup of some other character helpfully explaining who you are and offering you a conveniently in-world item (your Argos Extractors employee data) to determine your face and stats.

You'll pick from a lineup of 40 presets, Bethesda says, which are indeed a variety of skin colors, ages, and builds. There's the usual basics of hair, skin, scars, facial hair, some more detail like walk cycle, and so on. Oh, and you can have a septum piercing—nice. In just a very quick shot though you can spot greater detail in scaling features, overbite/underbite, and whatever "shape blends" are. So yes, you'll be able to really sink your teeth into the exact shape of your jaw in Starfield.

Starfield character creation - a man with dark hair and short facial hair beside an interface allowing jaw shape — (Image credit: Bethesda)

No matter how deep and detailed a character creator is though, there's still totally a chance that I'll get jumpscared by my own face once I step out into the world. Because even Bethesda's best character creator so far is definitely going to be capable of spitting out unattractive faces. Although some of the initial hairstyles in the presets look nice and soft head-on, but the ones that get cycled through after still have that eternal Bethesda quality of weird sharpness when vewied against a background. Be careful which you choose or that may be the feature that sends you packing right back to the start screen. I do wonder why they chose a character with facial hair to spotlight character creation with, given how notoriously uncanny it always looks.

Maybe the best news about character creation from today's presentation was that Bethesda used the same generation tools to create all its NPCs. "Any character you see almost always is a character you could make yourself," Bethesda says. So I won't be subjected to the injustice of meeting someone with a much cooler hairstyle than those that were available to me, presumably. Even that one guy.

Bethesda shared a lot more about every part of Starfield during its presentation today. You can watch the full Starfield Direct on YouTube.

Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She accepted her role as Associate Editor in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.