How Elden Ring Character creator fails Black players

In Elden Ring you can create the God of War Kratos, have a wholesome beard, be non binary, or even make a monstrosity, however if you want to give your Black character a locs or fade hairstyle , you're out of luck.

The game has done well with skin tone inclusion and natural looking skin, allowing players to choose any color imaginable, from the realistic to the fantastical, for their skin tone. Unlike previous FromSoftware games which had a reputation for only producing unnatural skin tones and textures. 

In contrast, the hair choices for Black people are practically non-existent, despite there being a total of 27 hairstyles in the game.

In games with character creation, the hair choices for Black people are usually still just an afro, cornrows, or dreads, yet Elden Ring takes it down a notch even further. 

The only choice players have is to either pick straight hair, a buzz haircut, go bald or choose number 14, which is best described as a short unkempt afro.

Elden Ring received rave reviews from the critics, however the game immediately loses points due to it's non-inclusive character creator.

 the game immediately loses points due to it's non-inclusive character creator.

This isn't the first time fans have complained about the lack of diverse hair options in FromSoftware games, because their previous games, Bloodbourne and Dark Souls 3 also excluded Black hair options. 

To make matters worse, the game doesn't have a single preset face for Black players to start off as a base. This alongside the lack of hair options, makes it pretty clear what type of character the developers wants you to roleplay as.

Why is this such a big deal? Well put it this way, many people want to create characters that look like themselves, and hairstyles are a major part of achieving that look.



Excluding inclusive hairstyles is definitely a big deal,  because it sends a clear message of who you consider to be a priority in your game, and of course who you haven't thought off at all.

Imagine if the game only had afro hairstyles, and no straight hair options, a lot of people would complain right?

A triple a video game released in 2022 with a robust character creator shouldn't have this issue, yet once again here we are, and some players are rightfully disappointed.

Other Japanese video games such as Monster Hunter Rise and Animal crossing were also lacking diverse hairstyles at one point, however these developers added inclusive hairstyles to their games, following feedback from players to increase the diversity in the character creator.

To solve this issue, like the games mentioned above, they could add more inclusive hairstyles in a future patch, which would solve the problem altogether, but regardless if they do, there's no denying that these hair options should've have been available in the base game.