The Secret World beta: the character creator blows.

Did you pre-order Funcom’s The Secret World? I know I did. Are you playing the beta, this weekend? I’m right there with you.

There are lots of reasons you might have been looking forward to this game: The dark, foreboding atmosphere is reminiscent of a horror story; the three factions – Templars, Dragons and Illuminati – promise an exciting, competitive endgame; and you gotta love that character skills aren’t class restricted – there are no classes. Yeah, there are more than a few reasons to get excited about this game, so you probably tried out the beta and I was right there with you.

My first impression? The character creator blows.

If you played Age of Conan, you’ll recognize it. The sad truth is the character creator in AoC was barely passable at the time, but now, as the basis for The Secret World it’s abysmally horrid. There are very few options for tailoring your character and all of your characters start with one common trait – they’re ugly as sin. The noses are mostly flat or blocky. Everyone has a flat face and a jawline genetically engineered from Jay Leno’s DNA. Males are sorta passable, all of them looking very primitive in a jutting brow-ridge kinda way. But the female characters – well, they’re just guys. They don’t even look like guys with boobs, just guys with narrow waists. If you were hoping for the youthful, beautiful people in The Secret World ads, you’ll be disappointed.

Character creation is important to any game. It’s not critical, but it should be flexible enough so everyone can create their own look and be able to make a halfway decent looking character. You simply can’t do that with TSW’s character creator and that’s going to turn off a lot of people. Too bad, because the story looks interesting, so far.

Below, are screenshots of a male character and a female character.

Yes, that’s a girl. No, not the top one, though I can understand your confusion.