So after spending a lot of time playing FO3, I kind of wonder why don't we have the option to make characters with blue or green or pink hair (ignoring mods obviously)?

Magic is kind of skyrim's technology, and thinking about all of the stupid things we do with technology in the modern world, wouldn't you think people would use magic for equally petty things? I'd imagine there'd be potions and Alteration magic for all manner of things, such as hair and eye color, body type, etc.

There are potions laying around everywhere in skyrim, and plenty of magic practioners, its pretty logical this would happen.

If there was a well developed faction system, having Illusion spells that disguise clothing (like dark brotherhood gear) or appear as another race (maybe to get into an orc stronghold) would add another layer to gameplay.

The lack of an R/G/B/ wheel pissed me off. Hell, the removal of a lot of stuff from Oblivion ticked me off. Yeah, it gave the potential for ugly characters, but it was very in depth!

I WANT CUSTOMIZED HAIR COLOR, NOT PRESETS!!! GRRRRR

Concur, especially when half the colours available are kind of icky. I usually end up with one of three colours (Dunmer+red hair, Nord+strawberry blonde, everyone else+black hair).

It was probably a forced decision by Bethesda to control the desired output of their NPC's so they all looked attractive and normal to a degree. This output was probably then baked into the character generation after the NPC's were made.

Thank god for mods like Race Menu.

If the red was a dark like cherry red, I'd do it with a dunmer, but its more of an orange-red, so I usually go black hair with my dunmer, white or blonde with altmer, and black with just about everyone else.

That is one of the few things I liked in oblivion. Making characters look weird as [censored] lol.

Meh, I don't mind. I don't want Skyrim looking like an anime.

If they restricted the weird eyecolors and haircolors to the player character only, then I wouldn't care, since it wouldn't effect me. But if there were npcs with purple hair and junk, then... no.

I dunno, I like cherry red, but I think the slightly dingy red suits a Dunmer well, somehow, along with the skin which is almost blue, but just shy of it.

Skyrim uses preset tints instead of custom color selection for character creation; one can still select custom RGB values for NPC skin tones.

I presume this was done to reign in the crazy that Oblivion's charactergen begat. Recall that Morrowind was worse in this regard... I used to play a game to find the NPC who looked exactly like my character...

I wouldn't want to NPCs to have wild hair colors or eye colors, unless maybe they were like a named/boss enemy or something. But I'd like to be able to customize my character fully.

I could totally see Wylandriah having mauve locks under her hood

If there were girls with coloured hair, war-paint, and wacky contact lenses in the game I'd never need real life for anything ever again. Except maybe food. But I hear horker soup is delicious.

This thread is reminding me, I'm long overdue to re-green my hair, GAH.

I'd be okay with that. The more choices the better, especially for console players. I think they kind of dropped the ball when they added the face-changer in Dawnguard. They could have added some more features, like hair color and new styles to choose from while they were at it.

edit: Player character only

If I'm remembering correctly, there are about... twenty hair colors available (less for Khajiit and Argonians, though every other race shares the same hair color list), all rather subdued but they run the gamut of natural hair colors; there are also a good number of eye colors to choose from, once again natural colors (though including options such as bloodshot versions, blind eyes, and oddly a set of fully-black "demon" eyes). Combined with the skin tone selections, you do get quite a lot of customization, and more with the weight slider, though you are restricted to designs which "fit" the setting -- I believe someone somewhere mentioned that it's almost impossible to get the extremes available with Oblivion's character generation, and that's both a good and bad thing. On one hand, there's less customization available, but on the other, it's much easier to get a character face one is happy with.

I feel like this is a step in the right direction, because preset head parts allow for visual distinctions between races and for general aesthetics -- the unique heads of Morrowind without the restriction, basically -- and they seemed to be testing the waters somewhat with the weight slider, so I've no doubt we'll see even more customization in the next game. I also feel like one ought to be careful what one wishes for -- folks complained that Oblivion's character generation made for extremely silly faces, so they dialed it back to more "boring" faces to compensate.

Oh, yes, and eyes are separate meshes with different texture sets applied, so you'll prolly never see dynamic eye colors on those...

I'm partial color blind so I'm fine with the way it is.

I agree, i for one want red eyes and blue hair. But that's why i keep buying these games for PC. Don't like, mod it, and then http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=239370678

The more customisation options the better. I usually don't give my characters crazy hair colours, but I would like the option to tweak the colours a bit. With the eyes, I like to give them quite vibrant eye colours, and there weren't many of them in vanilla Skyrim.

If I had the money to afford a PC that could run this game properly + mods, I would. I like the idea of an RGB wheel. I really don't actually like any of the hair colors available. I don't like the fact that you can't make a woman with long, flowing, loose hair... And about 90% of the noses are just hideous even after tweaking. It's possible to program a game with presets, then give the player a unique customization tool. I've seen it done before. Even Oblivion gave you more tweaking than Skyrim.

That being said, I have made quite the gorgeous redguard on the 360. Bronze skin and golden hair, fine-boned features and quite the body... I'm a female in rl, I have a bf, but even I looked at her and went.... "Damn...." Unfortunately all of my characters kind of look the same because I don't want them to look ugly and Skyrim's customization options just aren't as good as some of the other games out there. Although if you make a dark-skinned orc with red eyes, skull face paint, black mutton chops, and stick him in dragonbone armor, he looks like some undead knight come back from the bowels of Hell. It's very badass. !!!!

I really don't want the average modder's sense of aesthetics in the game. Since I'm assuming a lot of NPCs are randomly generated. You already get some freakadeak combinations, like the fletcher in Solitude.

This ain't anime.

Because even if it's fantasy that's not an excuse to make over the top weird looking characters that not only defy lore but also look terrible.

All NPCs are hand-created, although this doesn't mean that Bethesda hasn't cut corners in a few places -- quite a few mook enemies have the same face, and there are a few named NPCs with non-unique faces (ex. Erikur, who has the same face as a default male Nord). I get the impression that Bethesda makes a bunch of NPCs and then decides what they'll do in the world.

Cuz this isnt anime Closest thing I could see is a carrot top like Ichigo Kurosaki. But no pinks or greens, thats overboard.

Though, with a little green, I could make Spike...no, no, too weird..

Skyrim's CC is way better than Oblivion's. I can make characters looks exactly how I want them too, and there's limitless possibilities.