An option all games should support. [rant]

This has happened to me in almost every game

that allows you to custom build a character. Specifically, a custom character in which you're allowed to alter the details of your facial structure.

In most games, you get to choose out of a set of pre-generated faces and bodies, or select a character or whatever and I never have an issue with those games. I pick the character I want to play as, and don't give it any more thought. In games that do give you full control over your appearance such as Fallout, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Oblivion, and most recently Skyrim and Saints Row the Third, I really delve into this stuff. If I plan to play a game as myself, with my name, and making the decisions I would make in the presented situations, I tend to try to recreate my own face in the game as best as possible. Usually to somewhat sad results. I'll play the game with my newly generated me, and typically, a few hours in, I'll find a glaring flaw. Something that just doesn't look right. Sometimes it's the game's fault in the way it causes the face to move, and other times it's my own fault for making my cheeks too hollow, or my chin too short, or whatever.

The option that doesn't exist. . .

For some awful reason beyond my mere consumer comprehension, these games will not allow you to change your face. When you are allowed to change aspects of your appearance, it's usually just your hair, or tattoos or something along those lines, but almost never your face. I have no idea what would cause a developer to not allow this as I don't think it really has any impact on the game other than allowing the player to have a better experience. In the case of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, I have literally played the game for a few hours, then during a cutscene, noticed something that is just wrong, and from then out, can not unsee it. Every time my character appears on screen, I see this flaw and only this flaw and it drives me mad. Sometimes I can just live with it and press on (which was the case in the Fallout games) but in other cases, the character is front and center in almost all scenes and I have to resort to restarting the game from scratch.

If only it were my own fault

If this were a fault of just my shitty ability to make a character, then this complaint would just go into the pile of "shitty things people complain about because everyone loves complaining" but I feel that I have a slightly better position to lob this out there because of some general character creation system flaws. Specifically, when you're making your face, games tend to only show it to you from a straight on angle. Sure, most times, they'll let you rotate the head 360 degrees and from a head on angle (pun?) it looks just fine. Problem is, the game will throw all kinds of angles at you with all kinds of lighting and it's in these non direct angles that the flaws are noticed. Things look just fine until you're looking at the face from an off angle and below, or from above. Sometimes you can't tell that a cheek is too far out or not out enough until you're standing under a light. . . Sometimes your lips look perfect, until the character opens his/her mouth to speak and then just. . . balls. Your lips are totally jacked. Oh, and some games outright make it difficult to see what you're doing with either crappy lighting, limited angles or some unholy mixture of everything. Just give us more angles to examine our character, maybe a few different lights and a toggle to make the thing's mouth move as if it's talking. Then I only have myself to blame for my monstrosity.

Why? Why not let me change?

My biggest gripe with all this is just that almost all games refuse to allow you to change your appearance after you've created your character at the very start of the game. You're locked in for what might end up being 50 to 100 hours using something you thought you wanted at the very start of the game. But why? It just doesn't make any sense. Why not allow the player to alter their appearance? It doesn't have any effect on the game. I recently started playing Saints Row the Third and had this problem arise where in game, the face looked funny and it was driving me nuts. Luckily, you can go to a plastic surgeon and get it all fixed for a small fee. Speaking of small fee. . . I guess you can also change your appearance in Dragon Age 2 if you either purchased the game new, or buy it's DLC. Fuck that game. On the flipside, I'm really enjoying and loving the hell out of Saints Row. Unexpectedly delightful. And you can (and I have) change your damn character's appearance down to the sex and voice at any point in the game. Kudos.

[/rant]