I feel this is another one of those things (like the dialogue system rework) that's largely going to come down to opinion. As soon as I booted up character creation and saw that the profile matched the customisation options I'd selected, I was immensely happy. I'm not a huge fan of abstract hand-painted character portraits. As much as I appreciate the time and effort that goes into them, if they don't look like my character, they don't really serve their purpose.
The solution to appease both parties would be have the option to use one of a handful of hand-painted portraits, or to use the existing system (a 3D model that matches your customisation specifications). The issue with this, however, is one of resources, as hand-painting a number of portraits for every race and gender combination, with enough options to reasonably cover the customisation options, would be a reasonably time-consuming task.
Either way, as far as opinion carries, I love the new system.