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The Guide presents all the character creation details in Starfield and explains the backgrounds to help you design the perfect protagonist.
Starfield Character Creation Explained
Starfield Character Creation offers freedom and impressive character customization options. This feature is significantly improved in comparison to their previous titles. Developers used advanced technology to scan and analyze many real human faces from different age groups and ethnicities to create realistic muscle movements and skin and hair textures. Some of the features haven’t appeared before in any Bethesda games.
It’s an Epic Role-playing game where you get to be who you want and go where you want.
Todd Howard, Xbox & Bethesda Showcase 2022
Various alien races, droids, and robots were shown in a glimpse of gameplay during Starfierd Direct, but as far as we know, character customization will only focus on humans. Just looking at the game footage above, we can tell how creative players can be in creating their perfect protagonist. This also means we can expect variety in NPC’s appearance, offering a better game experience.
Starfield’s character creation system offers multiple options to create diverse and unique characters: biometric ID, body shape, walk style, various face creation options, jewelry, background, and traits. All options you can customize include:
- Biometric ID – Personel Record
- Body Weight and Muscularity
- Body Shape
- Walk Stylke
- Skin Tone
- Dermaestetic – Skin Detail
- Complexion Blemishes
- Complexion Color Temperature
- Scars
- Facial Forms 1
- Head Shape
- Chin
- Jaw
- Neck
- Nose
- Eye
- Month
- Ears
- Cheeks
- Hair Style
- Hair Color
- Facial Hair
- Facial Hair Color
- Eyes
- Eye Color
- Teeth
- Jewelry
- Jewelry Color
- Background
- Traits
Biometric ID
This is the pre-set menu. You can choose one of the base models and customize it further in the next character creator tab. You can also keep one of the loadouts. Each model has a personal record number, so far, it looks like we can select at least one of 43 pre-sets. Biometrics can be changed later in the game by visiting the genetics facility. We don’t know whether these facilities are going to be available on your own ship or across all civilized Starfield planets.
Body
In the body tab, players can select from three options to customise their character’s body. First, we have the two body types, feminine and masculine, and the body settings that can be adjusted using the circular grid with three extremum areas: muscular, thin, and heavy. By changing the balance on the grid with the dot’s position, you can define your character’s musculature, weight, and body structure. As of now, we don’t know if these presets will influence the gameplay.
Next, we have a very interesting setting, the walking style, which lets you pick your character’s walking animation between feminine and masculine styles. It’s not a big selection of options. However, it’s the first time we will be given the “walk style’ option in the Bethesda game. The last slider allows choosing the skin tone.
Face
A character’s facial attributes can be adjusted in the Face tab. It’s probably Bethesda’s most flexible and advanced character customization menu ever created. We can change the head’s shape and sculpt it with another cross grid to make it square, thin, wide, or round.
Next, we have various sliders with different face adjustments for the nose, eyes, chin or even neck. This section is pretty standard until we dip dive into skin settings. Developers ensured that every character would look unique with various scars, complexion color, temperature or skin details called the dermaestetic. It’ll allow you to create more realistic, alive-looking characters with unique birthmarks and battle trophies on the face.
One of the new features is also jewelry and teeth options, which every character creation enthusiast like me will appreciate. The amount of settings in this section also opens multiple possibilities for mods and addons. One of Bethesda’s games’ biggest strengths is obviously its talented modding community.
Character Backgrounds
Another Bethesda strength is storytelling. Next, we have the character’s background, which can be explained as a “starting class”. You can choose your character’s origin story from 21 available in total. This setting will determine your three starting skills and how the game environment and NPC characters will react and interact with your character. As we know from previous Bethesda titles, what skills and which path you decide next is completely up to you and with no limitations.
Not every NPC’s reaction to your character’s origin can be positive. Some may accuse you of murder because they learn you are a Gangster, or they simply don’t like your chef’s cuisine. While the gameplay reveals, we could see a protagonist with a Diplomat background talking with an NPC character, who comments:
…says here you spend some time as a diplomat. …having a way with words might prove useful.
Starfield Gameplay
There are 21 character’s backgrounds in Starfield:
- Beast Hunter
- Bouncer
- Bounty Hunter
- Combat Medic
- Cyber Runner
- Cyberneticist
- Diplomat
- Explorer
- File Not Found
- Gangster
- Homesteader
- Industrialist
- Long Hauler
- Pilgrim
- Professor
- Ronin
- Sculptor
- Sculptor
- Soldier
- Space Scoundrel
- Xenobiologist
- Chef
Traits
Lastly, players can select up to three attributes from a wide list of Traits to further shape their characters. Each provides unique advantages and disadvantages, and thus, traits are optional. However, some traits cannot be combined with others. For example, having Traits like “Introvert” can’t be combined with the “Extrovert” trait.
For example, with the “Kid Stuff” trait, your character can visit their living parents, and 2% of all the money players earn will be deducted and sent to the parents. This opens possible dialogue options, maybe special quests or events in-game.
List of Traits
Here is the full list of all 17 Starfield traits. We discuss them in detail in the traits guide.
- Alien DNA
- Dream Home
- Empath
- Extrovert
- Freestar Collective Settler
- Hero Worshipped
- Introvert
- Kid Stuff
- Neon Street Rat
- Raised Enlightened
- Raised Universal
- Serpent’s Embrace
- Spaced
- Taskmaster
- Terra Firma
- United Colonies Native
- Wanted
Replayability & Starfield’s Future
That’s everything we know about the character creation in Starfield revealed so far. This opens many questions about Starfield gameplay and gives us a glimpse of how complex and engaging the new Bethesda game will be. Just like in their previous games, the character creation options, protagonist background and unique traits will increase Starfield’s replayability, allowing us to spend countless hours in one more extremely engaging and captivating world.
It reminds me of Skyrim and NPC’s reactions to my protagonist after I killed my first dragon. I could feel like the hero, hearing the cheers of happiness of the guards who fought at my side and the excited villagers’ whispers on my way to the hold. Imagine if your character’s origin or trait would create a completely different NPC’s reaction…
Looking for more about Starfield?
- Starfield: 10 Things You Must Know!
- Character Creation Explained
- Can You Run Starfield? – System Requirements
- Comprehensive Starfield Guides
Thank you for reading Starfield Backgrounds Guide! We’ll do more deep dives into Starfield and cover the game. Additionally, you can also watch Deltia streaming the game on Twitch.
Starfield’s release date is set for September 6, 2023!
