*regardless of the way this may seem, this is intended to be a serious opinion.

Why are all elder scrolls female characters... so ugly?? I most proudly have 3 packages of elder scrolls games on my bookshelf now, and I just can't seem to stop wonder about this!
Alright, I understand not all women are BEAUTEYPHAL, if you just go out on the street and observe... but I feel that this has gone to an extent where one could most possibly say that
Bethesda is overlooking the marvels of female beauty. Being one of the most talented studio of game production in the world, I would certainly not make the mistake of thinking that
the staff is incapable of creating a fine example of... THAT.

I do not, for a moment, think that elder scrolls should become like one of those asian rpg games, where characters are portrayed in an almost Japanese-Anime-Like style.
Not that I particularly dislike that kind of style, but obviously, TES series has its own way of doing things. I understand it is much harder to make a good looking "realistic-style
3d character", but what can I say...? I know Bethesda can do better.

For Oblivion, there has been some modders that made some decent looking female models and custom races, but they simply did not fit into the world because
1. the textures did not match with everything else
2. the meshes did not match. ex) head mesh and it's size, or placement messed up the balance of the size and placement of the entire body structure.

The only real solution to this is to have the studio do this in the first place you know?
Please give me some kind of an answer.... Please lol

Really.....

I disagree with you. The woman are way better than the men running around Skyrim.

I've found the female NPCs in Skyrim to be surprisingly easy on the eye, Nords in particular. Far more so than Oblivion's.

I don't think the women of Skyrim are all ugly. In fact I've seen at least a couple that I thought were quite attractive.

Not all are ugly but like they said, "This is the land of Skyrim where the women are big, burly and have beards".

Negus thinks his people are beautiful. The Nord people are beautiful as well. They look better than ever before.

I thought I looked not bad in OB (see avatar) - hopefully if Amazon ever deliver Skyrim I won't look too bad in that too.

I'm not trolling or anything, I really think *most* not all women in Skyrim look like old ladies.

I had a hypothesis that this may be because I'm on lowest settings, and the borky shadows in that state give women the illusion of having more wrinkles than they actually do, which is very true.

I have no way of testing this; however, because my computer doesn't do too well with anything higher than the low medium.

Look it up on Youtube?

As for beauty of the characters I dont like the artwork for the NPCs and the types of characters you can create in the character creator. I dont like also that you cant do a RANDOM role in the character creator. Its going to take mods to make the characters in this game more attractive.

Its good that all females in skyrim arent some 18y old anime chicks like in every other game. Most women i have seen in skyrim are actually pretty.

I did find the youngest option for females, at least Bretons, had quite copious amounts of forehead wrinkles and other facial wrinkles.

-

Honestly, they always do this, they want the people in their world to look like they live in a hard world. It's not how I want my characters to look, mind you, but that's why there are mods. In fact the very fact that there are always so many mods that 'rectify character appearance' should readily tell anyone something about what the general population thinks of any of the TES character graphics where 'beauty' is concerned.

I gotta be honest... The women of Skyrim aren't supermodels or anything, however they are believably handsome for women who don't have access to modern day beauty products and whatnot. I mean, you seriously can't expect them all to look gorgeous can you? Living in Skyrim is rough, and the people are tough and resilient and aren't as concerned with vanity as we are.

Also, just as an aside, the Bethesda Forums spellchecker considers the word Skyrim to be mispelled... Curious!

In the land of Skyrim you have to work hard in horrible weather. That hurts your feminine side.

But Aela the Huntress looks pretty good to me. Given all the circumstances ofcourse.

Better shadows & lighting do not make them look less old. I think the higher-res textures of the skin can make them look "bumpy" or older, and not just in Skyrim. Metro 2033 was particularly bad...they all had this rubbery, over-tessellated skin, heh.
I think the females in Skyrim look "old" too. Not like grandmas, but middle-age. They're not, imo, really ugly or anything, you just can't make them look very young. There's no age slider, and the dark elf female, for instance, has lines/bags under her eyes that you can't get rid of. The Breton, while much "prettier" overall, still has forehead crinkles/shadows I can't make go away. No one looks under 35-45 years old to me...well, except for the kitty-kats & lizards.

I don't normally care, and at first I didn't think too much of it since I don't stare at "my own" face that much in the game. But the more I play, the more it's starting to bug me that I can't create faces with more variety. Same ol' same ol.

I do think that some of the female npcs do look kinda old but none are really ugly.
"M'aiq has heard the people of Skyrim are better looking than the ones in Cyrodiil. He has no opinion on the matter. All people are beautiful to him."

M'aiq is a liar, though.

Yeah, I set M'aiq on fire for acting as Bethesda's self referential stand in.

Female faces are a large improvement over Oblivion although they are still not as pretty as some raider chicks in Fallout 3.

Im actually quite happy with how most of the females look. Especially Aela and my loyal Lydia!

Aela the Huntress, Camilla Valerius, Ysolda, Lydia and Irileth are pretty good looking.

Overall, I think people are much better looking than in Oblivion, and that's all that matters.