PCs aren't ugly generally, but most of the NPCs... who ever made them just hit the random button and didn't look at the result.

Bwahahahahaha! She looks like a man!

I doubt people living in a rough medieval society would've had fat, bloated faces.

That is what I found in Skyrim. Gods are most the elves ugly. The Dummer look like neanderthals. People say they miss goblins in Skyrim. I don't, they just started calling themselves Dark Elves is all.

Do a Google image search on "Rembrandt" and take a look at the faces.

1. Strictly speaking, Rembrant did not live in the Middle Ages, but the Dtuch Golden Age and certainly not the time of TES.
2. Those faces are viewed through the eyes of an artist and do not necessarily reflect reality.
3. Not all the faces in his paintings are bloated; http://www.backtoclassics.com/images/pics/rembrandtvanrijn/rembrandtvanrijn_portrait_of_an_old_man_in_red_detail_1.jpg and http://artmight.com/albums/2011-02-07/art-upload-2/r/Rembrandt-Harmenszoon-Van-Rijn/Rembrandt-The-Philosopher.JPG
4. I seriously doubt that a peasant living in Feudal Europe who had probably been through famine, the measles and the Plague by the time he/she is twenty would have the jolly well-fed face of an Oblivion NPC.

Overall, I don’t feel compelled to buy into comparisons between medieval earth and a land that prominently features readily available spellcasting (Edgar's Discount Spells) and stunningly effective free healing at any chapel.

For Lady Mara – Thank you so much for the kind words!

For Killerpenguin - As far as plastic surgery, Buffy is not averse to visiting LA (Lower Anvil) for the occasional ‘nip-tuck’. Now, when it comes to dental hygiene, she’ll be happy to share some detailed tips from Episode 131 of her Journal -

* * *

Digging into my pack I pulled out a small brush and doeskin pouch. An elf's teeth could last a thousand years, but my mother had impressed upon me as a child the importance of not taking them for granted. I hadn't paid much attention until the first time I saw Cosmus the Cheat give me a big grin. From that time on, I was always very conscientious at cleaning my teeth. I had used a small flayed stick from an orange tree, but later came to prefer the bone brushes sold by Nilawen that were equipped with one row of bristles. Daenlin was well aware of my diligence; one day he turned his fletching skill to teaching me how to make my own brush for teeth cleaning - like the one I had just pulled from my pack. The handle was bamboo. One end had been split three times and each slot carefully fitted with boar bristles. The end had then been notched and tightly laced with fine silk thread to hold the bristles in place before they had been carefully trimmed to the same length.

I reached for the doeskin pouch which contained teeth cleaning powder. Fortunately, I had ground up a new batch the evening prior at the guild. The higher quality alchemy equipment that I preferred was quite complex. After having broken several of the fragile devices on the road, I no longer carried them with me. Rather, I relied on using guild facilities. The teeth cleaning powder was a simple recipe that Ardaline had showed me. The most important ingredient was dried iris flowers, well known for their magical teeth cleaning properties. Then salt to aid with cleaning and provide some coarseness. A pinch of glow dust helped with whitening and sparkle. Finally, some dried mint leaves ensured a nice taste and fresh breath.

I rubbed a pinch of the powder over my teeth. After drizzling some water onto my brush, I popped the end of it into my mouth and went to work. While brushing, I pvssyd to my paladin and mare about our plans, "Mmphlgl rgmphlf glgdrmph Kvth."

"I'm quite sure you don't expect me to understand that," replied Acadian.

* * *

If you find that ugly you never have seen Morrowind... now that's ugly

Ps my Dunmer femme looks fine.

And what time, exactly, is TES? I see architecture that looks like the 18th or 19th Century, and clothing styles that range from Medieval to 19th Century. The people are certainly well fed; there's barrels of free food for the taking.

Seriously, I only meant to point out that a lot of Rembrandt's faces share that same blotchy, pasty quality that people often object to in Oblivion.


Bingo. Same with TES. There's a consistency of style in each TES game. A lot of the people don't like the Morrowind faces, but I do. They're not "realistic," but they are internally consistent as to artistic style. Same with Oblivion; the faces are not "realistic." (It's not a movie. )

I happen to dislike the style of the Skyrim faces. That's "ugly" to my taste.


Maybe, but those are not the diseases which exist in Tamriel (and which can be cured by a visit to the chapel.) I would think that lack of soap and sanitation would be a bigger problem for the citizens of Tamriel.

Still, I think it comes back to artistic choices, as you mentioned, and is a matter of taste.

Bethesda has never done well by the NPCs.

The advent of improved graphics in Morrowind brought about a push for realisim but Bethesda seems to equate 'realisim' with 'ugly'. That's why many of the first mods in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim dealt with face and body improvements.

Why is that? Perhaps Bethesda's art director has no concept of beauty and has never watched a Miss Universe pagent or Bethesda's thought is it's easier to kill an ugly NPC than a beautiful one.

Equally however Miss Universe participants are not necessarily shining examples of beauty...
I think there is a good enough mix and with the odd sprinkling of mod magic their fine.

All your points are perfectly valid but so is mine; Oblivion faces are not realistic, and Skyrim faces bear more semblance to real life.

Or maybe, you know, Miss Universe pagent participants, look, I don't know boring and plastic-y? If Beth were to make everyone look like "Miss Universe" I would honestly not be able to take the game seriously, why? Because I prefer Diversity than the same boring look. Heck look at all the characters we, as users have made, Jericho, Lady Saga, Buffy, Etta, Snape, Lothran, Baa, Savlian,Skarsgard *takes a deep breath* sorry if I forgot anyone, but those characters don't look near "Miss Universe" why? Because they are way more Beautiful or Handsome than the Miss Universe contestants can only hope to achieve!

I never found the NPC's of Oblivion ugly, not even close!

/end rant about peoples unrealistic expectations of beauty.

We'll have to "agree to disagree," then. I don't play Skyrim, but I've seen lots of screenshots. The Mer races tend to be far too angular and pointy-chinned to look "realistic" to my eye. Argonians have gone so far "dynosaur" that it's hard to equate them with the same race as in previous games. Female Orcs hardly look like Orcs at all. And all the faces look grumpy to me. I like the fact that you can do things with facial hair and tattoos, but I don't see Skyrim's faces as being any less "ugly" than in previous games.

Still prettier than females in Skyrim it seems.

Yeah they all kinda look mentally challenged or like pedophiles. I suppose you should play in the dark, most of them look kinda ok if you don't see their complexion.

You haven't seen enough Skyrim ladies then. Just kidding, it's all preference.

I just meant humans. I am disappointing by the Elves too however, (in all TES games). I was hoping to make a Galadhrim archer and I got...well I got something totally different. On the other hand, I don't know why but I think they did an outstanding job with the orcs in Skyrim. Anyway it's been nice debating with you, good day.

I've played three Elder Scrolls games so far. And I think the worst-looking faces were in Morrowind, by far. Morrowind had one (1) Breton female face that I thought looked halfway decent. The rest of the faces looked pretty darn terrible.

I thought most Oblivion's faces looked grotesque rather than strictly ugly. Too many of them, I felt, had a bloated, encephalitic appearance. Eyes and mouths in particular were way too large. Elves looked far too human for my taste. But, notwithstanding all of this, I felt a few NPCs looked pretty decent actually. Overall, I would rate Oblivion as a step up from Morrowind (it could hardly have gone down).

Skyrim, as a few have mentioned, has its own problems. Breton females in Skyrim have worry lines on their foreheads that are so deep they are practically disfiguring. But I like that Skyrim has returned Dark Elves to the slightly more alien appearance they had in Morrowind. Nord females, in my opinion, have the best faces Bethesda have ever created.

Any character generation system is going to introduce new problems even as it solves old problems. I don't expect perfection in my lifetime. But overall, I think Skyrim is yet another step up in quality over the previous two games.

I like beautiful. Go to the tutorial character generation and play with the sliders for an hour or two. You can generate some great characters there. Or better yet, go to the CS and dial in some numbers to create even more. From what I’ve seen of Skyrim, now that’s really uggle!

Remember when Rhedd came out with his head pack? They not only looked better but used less polys. That meant you could get a little boost from using it if you had a crappy machine to run Morrowind like I had then.

Boy, I sure do! Those heads were one of the most exciting things that had ever happened in Elder Scrolls modding up that time. It's hard to believe how innovative Rhedd and Allie's work was. That was a really major development. And not just heads but some really wonderful hairstyles (I was particularly fond of the Wood Elf hair). By the way, Allerleirauh can still be found here in the Skyrim Cheats, Hints and Spoilers forum.

I agree with this. I spend on average about an hour and a half creating a face. You can get some good stuff if you play with it long enough. My characters don't actually "play to win" or anything like that. We are living in the world, which means that my characters, at least in the past three years have been very long-term characters; if I'm going to be playing that long, they better look good to me.
My former mercenary had a thing for Mirisa. She's hot. And that soft voice.... Ahem, but I digress.

I say that it is hard to make your character look the way you want it to because of the camera used in creation. You will find that your character looks very different when you finally see them in the game. Sims 3 also has this problem, but to a lesser degree.

This is true. The lighting in the starting cell is not the best, and it's even worse at the end of the tutorial dungeon, where you can re-edit. I use an alternate start mod that has an outdoor location, and lets me reopen the face editor and move around into different light, with different sun angles. It makes a world of difference, even though it's the exact same editor.