Opinions on Icewind Dale's portrait choices

I'm just wondering--does everyone else feel that though the choices for character portraits in IWD are fine, they are also quite limited? (esp. female characters--do ALL female adventurers look like models, and are they ALL well-endowed?) I was hoping there would be some improvements over Baldur's Gate, and though the artwork is nicely done, I was hoping for more racial variations (i.e. do ALL the humans on Faerun HAVE to be Caucasian?? Are we aiming for a particular audience, here?). I know I'm gonna catch heat for this, but hey, I can ask, can't I? (I'm just like my thief--doesn't listen, doesn't look--just walks in, and brings back with him 5 or 6 angry trolls).

Actually one of the females is an Asian half-elf--the thief with the whip. I think a problem is more there are no females with bows, no males bigger than gnomes who look like clerics. I wonder if the artist used just one model because the females do look a lot alike.

I'm surprised there aren't a lot more choices. I would have thought this art was relatively quick to do. Maybe not.

There is a good article this week at Gamasutra about character design. It will partially answer some of your questions. You should be a little careful about believing everything there, though. It's written by one of the people who did Tomb Raider, so it's not necessarily without bias. Regardless, it's a good exposition of a philosophy of character design.

I agree completely that these portraits are totally biased! I mean isn't this game based on imaginative role-playing? Which basically is limited to playing attractive, very buxom, Caucasion women or grim/handsome, mostly caucasion men? That doesn't sound exactly imaginative to me. I know, I know, you can go to the internet and download blah, blah, blah... I just wonder how the artists are going to deal with the problem in BGII. I mean how do you really go about creating a portrait of "beautiful" half-orc?

Agreed, the portrait choices in this game were extremely limited... at least, the default choices were. I myself found a link to where hundred's of portraits are stored (they were made for BG, but work in IWD) and got some other ones, but even then the portraits tended to feature model-quality waifish women, and caucasion, big strong & handsome guys.

I don't know why Black Isle doesn't release more pictures, especially since there is at least one more game (and possibly more) which will be using the same engine... it goes a long way towards game enjoyment for a player to be able to visualize their characters just the way they want to.

Thanks for responding, all of you. Well, I suppose such limitations are unavoidable in a computer-based RPG (just as there are limitations over other aspects of the game, as opposed to real AD&D, which has practically no limitations except the imaginations of its players and DM). There will always be someone left out--though this is hardly an excuse for continually excluding so many people by making one variety the "default" choice (Is Causasian and beautiful the default choice?). Sure, we can download other portraits, but why should us "others" be forced to go out of our way ALL the time. Work with us a bit, here. My warrior, who is African American, needs a face, please, and he's gettin' angry (with 18/00 strength, I wouldn't test his patience, either).

BTW, look closely, the bard with drums (I guess it could be a shaman) is black.

OK, there is indeed a bard who isn't Caucasian--I forgot about that. Too bad I never use bards.

I think the portraits are great. My only complaint is there aren't enough of them!

True, I can download others but they don't have the same 'flavor' as the ones already supplied and then they look somehow out of place when mixed with the originals.

The problem is that Jason Manley (the artist who did the portraits) only has so much time (I can't remember if it was two weeks per portrait or two portraits per week, sorry) but basically, it costs money to make a portrait (particularly a good one) and unfortunately Black Isle and Bioware and Interplay have other projects.

Certainly if I had to make 32 portraits, I would have made some different ones but if you asked 10,000 people what 32 portraits they wanted, I'm sure you would get 10,000 different opinions. No way you can satisfy everyone.

Even though I would prefer a female Elven ranger with a bow or a male human cleric with a mace, I am way more than satisfied with the defaults. I love these portraits. As I said before, I only wish there were more!