If the Fallout TV series was your introduction to the franchise, it’s natural to want to jump into the Fallout games, and Fallout 4 makes for a natural starting point. While you may be familiar with their shared, unforgiving Wasteland, you might not be as savvy with the game’s first possible encounter with danger — the character creation screen.
How to fix the Fallout 4 character creation bug
Even though Fallout 4 was released nearly 10 years ago, it’s still possible for the game to get stuck in the character creation screen, forcing players to stare at the base character model forever. It’s a pain, but you can fix it, kind of.
Bypass Fallout 4 character creation bug
You can restart the game, but that may not fix things. Unfortunately a restart might actually result in the bug happening again as you begin a new game.
Instead, try pausing, unpausing the game, and wait a bit. If nothing happens once, try repeating the process. This will likely trigger the male and female characters to say their scripted lines, which in turn prompts the appearance of the character creator HUD. Once the HUD pops up, you’re out of the woods — and on the Wasteland. Congrats!(?)
Mirror bug variations in Fallout 4
Reddit and Steam users have complained about a version of the “stuck during character creation” where they don’t even get to begin creating their character, as the only thing they see is the blank mirror. Pausing and unpausing here might not fix anything, but this bug is rarer, so simply restarting the game might do the trick. If it persists, consider performing a file verification.
You can now play Fallout 4 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. You can watch the Fallout TV series on Amazon Prime.
