AION 2’s Character Creation Looks Amazing

AION 2 has been announced recently, and MMORPG fans have a lot to look forward to. If you can look past the fact that it is a Korean MMO, then you might be hyped for its eventual release, especially if you played the original one all those years back. It has a cool looking character creation system, though we do not know much about it at the moment.

They released a short preview of how it works, though, so let us talk about what it showed us and what we can expect in the full release of the game!

AION 2’s Character Creation Looks Amazing

In case you missed it, there have been a few clips of character customization and in-engine cutscenes floating around the web right now, though they are only in Korean, as there does not seem to be any word of a Western release just yet.

NCSoft’s upcoming game, which might feature heavy “pay to win” aspects if we take a cursory glance at their history, is taking a more action-oriented approach this time around. Now that you get to focus closer on your character, it makes sense that they would up their customization game.

The current preview only shows the presets for the female character type specifically. As a Korean MMO, there are no shortage of doll-like looks for this aspect of the game, and there seems to be a ton of premade faces you can choose from.

With the help of a bit of machine translation, it shows that the main customization tabs seem to be mostly tied to the head. We have options such as face, hair, makeup, and “styling”, whatever that implies. The last tab says “form”, which we can only assume is an umbrella term for the rest of the body.

There are a lot of options to personalize your character, though there does seem to be a very limited number of skin tone and hair color options. This may be disappointing to some players, but such restrictions are expected from Korean MMORPGs.

In the face customization tab, there seem to be options to adjust your character’s overall facial structure, eyes, nose, and mouth. Each of these sub tabs have their own varying sliders that let you further tweak individual features, such as eye level and the nose’s position.

There is also a streamlined facial structure screen where you can simply move a knob around to adjust your character’s entire face, including their eye positioning and jawline.

Again, this is all in Korean, and since we only have machine translation to work with, we cannot tell you exactly what the options currently implemented are. For example, some of the options in the nose sub category are being translated into “kohal”, which has no relevant meaning.

Unfortunately, the preview mainly only focused on the presets and facial features. They never go into the hair or body tabs, so we have no idea how deep the customization for those aspects will actually be.

Judging by how Korean MMOs typically design their characters, you can probably expect the lack of muscle definition or mass for both body types. Games like these often base their customization systems on their home country’s standards of beauty, so you will probably notice that all of the presets look like popstars.

Although it looks great right now, it should be noted that deep character customization systems like these have existed in much older titles. In fact, the decade old Black Desert Online has a particularly impressive character creation system for its time that can even match this one.

Until we see more, Black Desert Online will likely still be the leading standard for character creation in Korean MMOs, but Aion 2 is definitely going to be up there.

If we look at slightly different genres, All Points Bulletin’s character creation system offers plenty of opportunities for personalization that has yet to be matched today.

If Aion 2 can allow for similar levels of customization, they will undoubtedly come out on top. Based on the preview stream, we can expect morphing options in the body section too. This is what other people are speculating as well, and they did supposedly mention the possibility of making “chubby” characters, which further reinforces this assumption.

There are also a wide range of classes to choose from, though we know very little about them outside of their names. Right now, there are a bunch of them, but we cannot exactly describe what they are at the moment due to the lack of accurate translations. Expect the following though:

• Warrior – There will be templar and gladiator sub classes, just like in the original. Little is known about them right now, but it is safe to assume that the former will be the main choice for tanks, while the latter is more on DPS.
• Scout – For this class, you can branch out into a ranger or an assassin. These are fairly straightforward, so you should not need any further explanations for them.
• Mage – The spiritmaster and sorcerer are returning in this version of the game too. The only thing to note here is that the former is still going to be a summoner, so if you enjoy creating minions that do the dirty work for you, then this is the ideal choice.
• Priest – Finally, the priest class comes back with the cleric and chanter sub options. Just like in the original, the former is going to be the main healer class, while the latter is geared more towards supporting their allies with buffs and doing a bit of damage as well.

There does not seem to be any gender lock in place for these classes, since the actual customization screen does feature two different body types. So, if you see the previews for classes, just know that they are merely presets to showcase what they look like with their gear on.

As far as we can tell, you have complete freedom to make a big and burly cleric or a templar with noodles for arms. Nothing in the game will stop you from doing that.

What we have with this version is definitely a huge step up from the original, which had very limited customization options. Now, you can likely spend an entire day messing around with the sliders as you create your first character.

That is pretty much all we know so far about the game’s customization options. It is safe to say that it will be somewhat deep, though we have no confirmation as to exactly how in-depth it will be yet since they only briefly showcased the first few tabs.

If you want to learn more about the game, check out our handy guide on what classes to expect at AION 2’s launch version. We briefly covered those choices here, but you can learn a little more about each possible option and whether or not they are still “sub classes” in that post.