The dilemma of NPC beauty

[Nord85]

Lately I had an urge to return to playing Skyrim, and this time I wanted to try out some new looks for the NPCs. So far I have been using Inhabitants of Skyrim and Less Harsh Elves, which do wonders for refining the looks of the Skyrim NPCs. But there were still a few things that needed a touch-up. Namely, I wanted the female Elves to be just that tiniest bit prettier, and to finally be able to make an Altmer character without those horrible mouth-area wrinkles.

So, off to Nexus I went to search for a fix. But then a problem was uncovered: 99% of the mods made everyone absolutely gorgeous. Especially mods like Coverwomen and Actually Attractive Elves completely remade the original aesthetics, so that i.e. in the latter the Altmer actually looked like super-charged Tolkien Elves. Perfectly smooth peach-coloured skin, eyes with a bit exotic but still attractively human shape and so on. Even the Dunmer were recognizable as such only by having a hint of lila or rich blue in their skin tone.

And I found that completely ridiculous, to be honest.

I mean, how could I suspend my disbelief in being this rugged, cold land with Viking-like denizens if everyone looked like they were ripped out of the Vogue center pages? I live in a sub-arctic country myself and I can tell you no one's skin is silky smooth and and even-coloured in the cold season without heavy aid from modern cosmetics. This perfectness I saw was just jarring.

Besides, I'm a fan of the Bethesda Elf aesthetics design philosophy, it just needed a little tweak IMO, and these mods threw it wholly out of the window. The same goes for other races' looks, too. The base is good and only needs a bit fine-tuning and balancing.

In general, I'm a fan of relative realism in this respect. That is, imperfections are a good thing both in IRL and ín games. They make people look memorable, personalize them so to speak, whereas perfect facial bone structures and silky skin make people look classically beautiful, but also don't really stick to mind in their generic-ness. Or so it's to me, anyway.

So it is a bit surprising to see that so many people apparently think they need perfect beauty in their games. I wonder if this is because of the young age of most (?) players of these type of games. Most juvenile fantasies, after all, circle around unattainable things like perfect beauty, unbeatable mastery and so on. (And don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, so I don't mean the word ”juvenile” as derogatory.)

Thus, maybe a more balanced and rugged aesthetic line designed by adults doesn't appeal to many younger players, whereas that was one of the big advantages of Skyrim to me. I mean, if everyone is superbly handsome or beautiful, no one really is. But if most NPCs look average, the good-looking ones really stand out as the rarities they are. Sort of like a rose amidst thistles or an oak in the middle of a copse of alders.

The funniest thing was that this over-beautifying extended even to child looks. I tried a few child overhauls, because after making the adults looking just right i couldn't stand the potato-head kids. But almost all of the available mods made the kids look like child models. One even had conspicuous makeup for the girls! After a long search I finally found something that was still a bit over-idealized, but just enough inside the bounds of realism. And even that needed a patch for making the skin less like a cosmetics ad.

Fortunately my search had a happy end. After some hours I finally stumbled upon Women of Skyrim, which was just the thing. It just tweaks the normalmaps slightly and otherwise leaves the vanilla aesthetic intact. Just the thing I needed, since it only removed the slight manliness that jarred me, plus smoothed the Altmer mouth-wrinkles a lot. I might try and find a similar slight tweak for the men, but for the time they are fine enough. But still, it was strange that such a thing was so hard to find, even though I'd think that kind of subtle modification would be the most obvious route to go instead of wholly changing the design philosophy. So, I got to thinking about the whole thing and this post was born. But well, maybe I'm just being my usual over-thinking, over-picky self.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you prefer perfect beauty in Skyrim NPCs, the vanilla looks or something in between, and most importantly, why? Should the NPC looks mirror the setting, or serve as a contrast?

And for the record, I'm not disparaging the mods I mentioned nor their ilk. I actually do admire the dedication of their creators and the results are often fantastic-looking indeed. In some other, aesthetically and settings-wise more idealized game I might use one myself. I only wonder their popularity in this specific game.

(BTW, I'm putting this here instead of the mod section, because this touches the theme of NPC looks in more general ways than just mods.)

[Tingz0r]

I'm in the same little boat as you. I prefer a game-specific lore-friendly aesthetic, and I'm disturbed and annoyed by how often that tag is misused on NexusMods.

I understand why people like more glamorous looks, and I understand that I won't be able to change their minds about it just like how no one will ever change how I feel about it. But like you said, when 99% of mods are vastly exaggerated depictions of beauty that expressly defy the original design of the game...it disappoints me, to say the least. I have the same problem with things like anime, My Little Pony, and [&@%!] sex. It's your own business if you like it, but I don't need to see it, hear about it, or have it permeate every last inch of media.

[Dark Spark]

I take a middle road approach. I haven't used any third party mods, but I have used the console and Creation Kit to re-adjust particular NPCs who were obviously neglected in their original creation process.

To give you an idea of what we're fighting, here's one of my works beside one of theirs...

Hidden:

Just look at that. The stock NPC to the right was basically slapped together at random with only a cursory regard to proportion and form. The eyes are too high and no effort was taken for coloration or texture, which is especially upsetting given that Varnius was given a 'young' man's voice. Bethesda is infamous for mashing the "Select Random" button to drop as many NPCs on the assembly line as they can manage. In regards to the face, I've been giving follower NPCs the second pass they definitely did not get from Bethesda.

As to other aspects, I'm guilty of a little dramatic license. The denizens of the Ragged Flagon? I took Vex, Delvin and Tonillia out of their Guild Master outfits and put them into civilian clothes so as to maintain some sort of cover should uninvited guests drop by. I also made Vex a Wood Elf the moment I realized that her original look was nothing more than a clone of Lydia but with white hair.

Hidden:

One fun tweak I did was to copy Jarl Balgruuf's features onto Heimskr, minus the facial hair, to suggest a "Prince and the Pauper" scenario to give one more reason why the Jarl tolerates him so.

[Imbalance]

Meh. People are ugly. It's what's on the inside that counts. Video game characters get a pass since they're only ones and zeroes.

[Nord85]

I understand why people like more glamorous looks, and I understand that I won't be able to change their minds about it just like how no one will ever change how I feel about it. But like you said, when 99% of mods are vastly exaggerated depictions of beauty that expressly defy the original design of the game...it disappoints me, to say the least. I have the same problem with things like anime, My Little Pony, and [&@%!] sex. It's your own business if you like it, but I don't need to see it, hear about it, or have it permeate every last inch of media.

That's certainly true. For instance, even I, who have never had any interest in anime, can recognize many characters just by constant exposure. Now, I even think this mod issue is a part of a bigger cultural problem. Popular culture globalizes and gets more homogenous and permeated by American aspects more and more. At the same time it has to appeal to ever wider audiences. So it gets ever more visual, and as the audience gets used to images, it strives ever more towards extremes. This can be seen in everything from [&@%!] to modeling world to mainstream movies.

So, normal people or "ordinary" prettiness doesn't have any impact any more for many people. Thus, the emphasis for ever more perfect appearance, be it a fashion model or a computer game NPC. It's certainly annoying. No wonder I "consume" (even though I don't like that word in this context) more classical and less modern culture the more years pass.

I take a middle road approach. I haven't used any third party mods, but I have used the console and Creation Kit to re-adjust particular NPCs who were obviously neglected in their original creation process.

I like your approach a lot. Unique NPCs handtailored exactly to your taste, what's not to like? Especially the changes to Thieves Guild people are intriguing. I'd do it too, but don't have the patience, really.

And you're right about the flaws in Bethesda's NPC creation procedure. This time, at least, they all look more or less like human right out of the gate unlike in Oblivion. And this lack of polish is exactly why I needed mods. Inhabitants of Skyrim is along the same lines as your style, so I use it. Better proportions and things like that, but the NPCs still have their basic look.

And to illustrate, what aesthetics I've been talking about, here are some comparisons. In all pictures, vanilla is left, what appears now in my game is centre (with Inhabitants of Skyrim, Women of Skyrim, Less Harsh Elves and Final Younger Characters male only edition) and rightmost is an over-beautified version.

First the Altmer. Left is one of the female presets, which is rather horrid IMO. So, centre is a quick modification of my current character (the original is Half-Nord as her bacstory and has human colouration, so I just restored elven skin and hair hue). Much prettier, true, but retains the basic characteristics of TES Altmer look, especially hints of that gauntness and hardness. The Altmer NPCs in my game are somewhere between this and vanilla. Right, a picture of an Actually Attractive Elves version of Altmer. You can see why I wrote "super-charged Tolkien Elves".

Spoiler:

Then Hulda. The polished version on the right is just off, somehow, she doesn't really look like an innkeeper in a place like Skyrim. In fact, she could belong to a fairy tale or Disney movie. So, the centre one is pretty much ideal for me. Not so flabby and manly as vanilla, but clearly a quite mature woman you can well imagine running a tavern.

Spoiler:

I could take some male examples, too, but those are less extreme. Mostly they retain much of the existing look but polish and tweak to ridiculous male-model proportions complete with mascara. The women mods, however, often just throw the look wholly out. Just look this "Uthgerd" on the right. I can't really imagine the character's voice, personality or lines with that face.

Spoiler:

Meh. People are ugly. It's what's on the inside that counts. Video game characters get a pass since they're only ones and zeroes.

Actually I disagree a bit. People aren't so much ugly as that we nowadays are told that only very rare, extreme beauty counts. Just look pictures of women who were famous beauties in the 19th century, for instance, before modern makeup and Photoshop, or the beauties of 1920s to 1950s. Most of them wouldn't succeed in today's modeling business, but in a time less bombarded with highly polished and modified images were found very attractive. But yes, most of us are average or below lookswise. So, I personally like when not everyone is gorgeous in RPGs, since it adds believability (even though a bit higher average in looks doesn't hurt). And yes, this isn't a huge problem. I just like to analyze even small things.

[ciberzombie]

Nah, i like vanila look, because it was made that way. I even like Morrowind vanila look since it was created like that. I even didn't yet installed High resolution texture pack. And i think that texture overhauls is like amateurs painting over piece of art created by master. I hold that most games are art, some are doodles , some are art, and some are masterpiece, just like books, movies, songs, etc

[Nord85]

Nah, i like vanila look, because it was made that way. I even like Morrowind vanila look since it was created like that. I even didn't yet installed High resolution texture pack. And i think that texture overhauls is like amateurs painting over piece of art created by master. I hold that most games are art, some are doodles , some are art, and some are masterpiece, just like books, movies, songs, etc

That's an interesting take, certainly. I also think that games can be art, but differently from how you envision it. For me, games like Skyrim are like improvised movies (or maybe even Wagnerian "total artworks" of sorts) where the player is the director and is only given a setting, actors and an outline of a script. That gives the player power to alter script and actors to a great degree even by normal gameplay. For instance, with save and load function, the player-director can either finalize "takes" or remake them, or he can ignore some storylines entirely. And as Dark Spark remarked, Bethesda is known for leaving some things like NPC appearance slipshod in their games. So by modding the NPCs it's like the player-director is telling his actors to clean up and get some make up. That's what I do, others change the cast entirely, so to speak.

Or to use the painting analogy: Bethesda has made a very good sketch, to the point where it only needs some finishing strokes of the brush. You can admire it as it is, or add those finishing touches as you see fit. That's modding. Or you can scrape parts of the paint out and paint your own thing in its stead (total overhauls and most extreme NPC replacers). And because that is uniquely for your own use and thus doesn't destroy the original for others, why not do it? So my only limit is to retain the basic "spirit" of the original, because I do respect the intentions of the creators of the game. If I didn't, I wouldn't be playing at all and would find another "canvas".

[Imbalance]

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."
Leonardo da Vinci

[storminmay]

I really, really appreciate this post and thread. It really is weird to me how many mods are out there (and how many players insist on everyone and their mom using them) just to "pretty" up the game. Landscapes? Yup, I totally get it. But the fact that there are mods to make even the kids look "prettier" is especially weird.

[Nord85]

I really, really appreciate this post and thread. It really is weird to me how many mods are out there (and how many players insist on everyone and their mom using them) just to "pretty" up the game. Landscapes? Yup, I totally get it. But the fact that there are mods to make even the kids look "prettier" is especially weird.

Yeah, some child mods actually made me laugh in their unreality. I mean, kids have such a small role (even the adoption is just flavour) that it's strange why also they should be beauty contestant- level in looks. I searched for one just to have children with individual looks, because the vanilla clones are a bit off-putting. But only one was "plain" enough, and even that only just.

In my opinion, in Oblivion even extremely NPC-prettifying mods are a lot more suitable, since the setting is a lot more culturally refined and fairy-tale like in general. But in Skyrim, where every man-made structure is to some degree homely, a bit dingy or even in ruins, and where even the magnificent landscape is wild and rough, it's a bit too much. Makeup and perfect facial structures just don't seem to belong. It's about artistic balance, really, the parts must fit each other stylistically to become a believable whole.

[Cassandra]

I don't mod at all (I play Skyrim on PS3), but I think that I'd stay with vanilla NPCs even if I did. Maybe it's just because I'm used to them, or something. But almost every mod I've seen just looks weird; the NPCs don't look like they belong in Skyrim. Yah, vanilla NPCs may look disproportionate and ugly, but I don't mind, it's the way the game is. And I haven't seen much that I'd like better.

Dark Spark's NPCs look really good, though! If I were able to do that/played Skyrim enough for it to be worthwhile, I'd probably want to do something like that.

[Imbalance]

I haven't modded since Commodore 64, but I do admit that my only reason for doing so was the novelty of having the ability. I think the biggest draw for modders to a game like Skyrim is its popularity, followed by its scope and accessibility. A lot more people can see what you've done. It's all subjective, though, and definitely not everyone's cup of tea. Would Super Mario Bros. 2 have been the same game if someone had modded Luigi to have cut abs and Fabio hair or given the princess a huge rack? Pretty sure there would have been significant outrage, even in those halcyon days before the Internet made raging cool.

[OnikaraStar]

I was recently looking for a mod to make the characters look a little better too. I found a nice one, but even on the high end of the scale, it makes my Dunmer’s skin color too pale. She’s supposed to be a darker grey! I like the way she looks with this mod otherwise. Maybe I’ll try a different version of this mod.

[AutismFanaticism]

The only thing I absolutely can't stand about vanilla Skyrim characters is their feet. I mean, just look at your character barefoot: it's like Beth didn't even try to finish fleshing out playable-race feet! Now, Oblivion had some nice feet, but characters could still have been better IMO. In fact, the only reason I look for body mods for Skyrim is because the vanilla feet are just so... unfinished, really; otherwise, I love Skyrim's vanilla aesthetic, it does capture the ruggedness of the peoples living in a stereotypical Viking land. One thing Skyrim sorely needs is mods to make females flat-chested/flack, as I think women look the most beautiful without visible cleavage (or at least realistic-sized-and-shaped breasts, not looking like a Hooter's waitress). This is due to personal history, though: my first love was a woman who remained extremely flack throughout her teenage years (I met her in elementary; the school I went to has preschool, kindergarten, and all twelve grades in one not-very-big building), so, in my mind, she's the picture of female beauty.

[Epona]

I'd suggest looking into "lore friendly" beauty mods. There is a few out there that attempt to preserve a more rugged look.
Personally I'm 100% a fan of the Ethereal Elven Overhaul as far as elves are concerned, though. I'm okay with some beauty mods, but I don't want EVERYONE to look like they're glammed up for a photo-shoot.

Unfortunately I haven't really found any good beauty mods for male characters, though :/ Which is unfortunate because I see far more attractive women compared to men in vanilla as it is.

[Badger16]

If I'm not mistaken, this was an issue encountered by the creators of the first computer-generated animated movies : the skins they created were too smooth, too perfect, almost more than moe anime characters, and they ended up having to add manually blackheads, freckles and wrinkles there and there to make something remotely realistic!

So, I think that the ones behind the beauty mods encountered this exact issue, they created something quickly, and didn't notice/understand they had to make their characters look like they went through at least several decades of real life.