Elden Ring’s character creator fails Black players

theverge.com:

Most of you playing Elden Ring are probably knee-deep in the Lands Between, getting your shit rocked by that asshole on the horse, but my mind hasn’t left the game’s first menus. Though the many classes present a paralyzing wealth of options, it’s not the question of what class to play that has me stuck. It’s the character creator. I’m stymied by the bizarrely incongruous system that allows for an unprecedented level of control of every minute detail of facial feature but only has one kinky hair option.

I didn’t expect much from Elden Ring’s character creator. FromSoftware games have a bit of a reputation for being kinda bad at character creation, especially regarding skin. In Bloodborne, skin colors and textures were distinctly unnatural-looking. My character was this orangey-looking mess of a human, and there were precisely zero kinky hair options.

Elden Ring is a decided step up. Skin colors and face shading look natural. I tinkered with it for a good hour, setting my sliders just right to make an avatar that I think looks as much like me as I can get.

For the first time in a FromSoftware game, I can make a character who looks like a real human instead of the near approximation of one. Elden Ring’s character creator is also, technically, a step up because instead of having no kinky hair options like in Bloodborne, they have one — an afro — and an ugly one at that.

There will likely be the temptation to think this omission doesn’t matter for any number of reasons. But the Elden Ring subreddit already has multiple threads of players showing off their creations, excited by how good or funny they look, fully aware that all that hard work is going to get covered by a helmet. There are also Soulsborne communities