I somehow doubt there's going to be another hour-long tutorial.

Are you serious? You do realize that this is a game you're talking about and magicka is not real?

Well yes,it does make sense through magic (Alteration),but I just feel like it is not worth implementing in a game such as Skyrim (all of TES for that matter). Create a character at the beggining of the game and alter the details such as hair and beard later if you like. But changin your whole appearance all together every now and then seems a bit..too much.

Well, it was in Oblivion, where player had to do that long(ish) tutorial dungeon. Or start from the prison exit and do all those quests again for the Mages Guild to get to the spell makign altar. Such things.

Some people don't have hours to play the same things over again to get to play the rest of the game with the character that looks like what they want it to look like.

Some of us actually spend an hour tweaking those sliders, even if we have a save at the end of the tutorial. It would be nice to make my character's nose a little bit larger without going through the whole face-creation process all over again.

Surely after an hour you'd have the nose right. Surely.

Thats what already happens in Oblivion.
I'm not really for or against it, won't bother me if its in or out, so if enough people want then why not I'm sure it can be implemented and explained sensibly. I just don't get wanting to change you face once you've actually been playing for a while. I'm not having ago or trying to be higher than thou, just not something that I would choose to do, its obvious that a lot of people do want it so I don't see why it shouldn't be considered.

Im talking about an hour to make my face, not to go through the tutorial.


Not without proper lighting. A lot of people, like me are anol about getting it just right. I make like a dozen or so characters in each ES game and it takes me a long time to come up with their back-story, class, etc. It all falls flat if my in game representation falls short of my expectations.


I was referring to cosmetic surgery being around for thousands of years.


No, your still in that dark dungeon. Im talking about once you actually leave the sewer. Take a few steps and get the prompt.

I am glad I usualy make only one proper character, makes my life much simpler.

There is no indication that Skyrim's character creation screen will have poor lighting. Zero. Even in Oblivion it wasn't that bad: Quicksave at the sewer exit, exit sewers, check result in the daylight. If unhappy, quickload. Ta-da!

That still entails going back and forth until you get it right in one shot. Just save the prompt until after you leave the sewer, dungeon etc.

There we go. Problem solved with lore intact.

Maybe there could be a Makeover mage like is Runescape.

A barber is realistic but plastic surgery did not exist back then and I would like the player's choice of race to be an important decision

I'm awarding you the 2011 Logic Medal Of The Year.

Mod idea: The butcher for a face/off, and the woodsman for a haircut.

Cosmetic surgery has been around since before Hippocrates. Even if you try to say Oblivion took place in a Roman type era, it would still predate it. Assuming you could gauge and compare a fictional civilizations development with a real ones.

Let me put something into context:

A noob purchases Skyrim and chooses the Orc race because he likes the look of it. Being a lover of stealth games, he chooses to level skills like marksman and sneak.

Fast-forward thirty hours of gameplay. The noob is now level twenty and decides his character would fit the persona better as an Argonian. Why shouldn't he then be able to change his character? Saving before you left the sewers was fine if you had played the game for a little while and then decided to change your character, but what if you're mid-game and want to have this option extended to you?

Sontaire Sleeps Alone pitches it perfectly. Have an NPC who has no relevance to quests or story, who can be visited allowing the player to change his physical appearance. This way, it's not going to break immersion for the more nerdy players, who can choose to ignore this NPC and keep their character as they wish.

Instead of criticising my idea because it "breaks the lore", which it doesn't, shouldn't people be considering satisfying the majority of players who will pick up Skyrim as a first-time RPG and decide to change their character after they've made substantial progress throughout the game?

Regardless of the history facts I just don't see it necessary in a game like Skyrim. Something like Todd Howard with spears.

"Cosmetic surgery" in the ancient era was incredibly crude. To suggest a face being completely re-modelled would be possible with Tamriel's level of technology is really pushing it. Sleign already discussed the manner in which adjusting faces magically does not fit the lore. I do not see cosmetic surgery fitting in the "gritty, low fantasy" gameworld Bethesda are working towards. Your arguments regarding its necessity centre primarily around issues with Oblivion, which are in no way guaranteed to be repeated in Skyrim.

Did I miss anything?

EDIT: @Flavonator -- whaaaaaaat? What the hell ever happened to "meaningful character choices"?

I've read up to this point, through all the debating and logic. And I will throw in my 2 cents, hopefully they will make sense.

Now, we all know we MAY tire of our characters after playing for 100 hours. I haven't, but others might. So, it would be nice to have the ability to alter your appearance within the confines of your race. Beyond that is just silly. Even with a plastic surgeon, I can't have him turn my imperial into an argonian, or vise versa. Hair changing makes plenty of sense, it would add to the immersion. Not just on our character, but npcs aswell.

Here are a couple of ideas to help with this subject:

1. Enchanted amulets; they turn you into the race (without racial benefits) when it's worn. Not too far fetched, but still out there.

2. Masks; think Halloween.

3. Put on a helmet. JK

Alright, now that I've got my rambling out of the way let's use logic. First off, this is TES, a universe built on heroes and gods. Just because you feel like you want to change your appearance, doesn't mean you should in the middle of the story. That's right, this isn't just a game. It's a story. (Quick example from Oblivion; I am the Hero of Kvatch, but I'm tired of being a guy so I change my six. I decide to continue with the story, who the hell would know who I am? Nobody. I just changed entirely. Story over.) See how that doesn't work? Good. On top of everything, this is Skyrim. The land of the Nords. This isn't the Imperial City where romanistic ideas are spilling over every orifice. Skyrim is a land built on traditions handed down through the generations. Regardless of Imperials showing up and taking everything over. Plastic surgeory, or even that type of magic, wouldn't go well in that land. And to counter-act a potential argument, yes, Bloodmoon did have shapeshifting, because of a Daedric Prince.

This is probably really jumbled up, so I apologize if it is. It's 6am after all. :sleep2:

I don't think it's a good idea to have shops that allow such deep changes as gender or race shifting.

What would be nice, however, would be to introduce a school of magic specialized in metamorphosis. I read somewhere, though I can't remember where I read this, that one hypothesis to explain dragon's disappearance is that they are able to shapeshift. They thus continued to live in Tamriel, alongside Men and Mers... In my opinion, this hypothesis is likely to be falsified in Skyrim. However, metamorphosis has been mentioned in TES lore (think to Jagar Tharn!)...

The possibility of changing one's appearance or even intrinsic properties, even if it's temporary, would raise great possibilities, especially in the realm of infiltration (who said "Dark Brotherhood"?). This could also be applied to things (changing stone into gold for a few minutes to swindle somebody is just an example), and a spell of shapeshift detection would be make the whole thing even more complex and deeper! Some mages, especially members of some underground factions, could be able to offer shapeshift as a service, but it should be in my opinion very onerous.

To be honest, I don't think metamorphosis will be included into Skyrim. But we can still hope it for expansions, or for TES VI...

Ive always thought Illusion should have done what you described above in a way. Hide appearance. It would be cheaper than invisibility but would be a cat-and-mouse game with different factions you could "morph into", but it would be an illusion. not exactly shape-shifting, just disguising. It would add role-play depth and add a magical way to interact with cut off factions. Alteration could have 'true' shape-shift though. Obviously a wish for ES VI.

I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to change our hairstyles/facial hair at a barber's. Anything else would be wrong.

Voted yes and no as pretty much everyone did. But they can do it FONV style. You get to change hair thingies (but should also be places to do/remove tattoos and scars if implemented). FONV solved the light issue well enough, in that you get a second chance to fix everything when you leave the tutorial area (which should be outside). After that, you're set in stone.