Yeah, DA1&2 did very well with allowing the player to create a simple portrait of whatever you made, I loved that--it made sure your character matched the style of the others and seemed to fit into the game seamlessly. BG1&2 didn't really have unique portraits, but I have slight art nerd tendencies, so I always went and found something off a search engine that I loved and maybe edited it to have the coloring I wanted. That was great in ways, but a bit jarring as the PC looked out of place in terms of portrait style.
I suppose they could do that in BG3. I wouldn't mind, but it's not necessary to me as long as I can make something that isn't cookie-cutter. It doesn't need to be full-on sliders for body parts and every detail of the face, but I can't imagine it costing that much development time or work to give us some version of the same tools they must be using to create the heads of NPCs. Especially not when it means so much to a lot of players--not everyone, but those ones will just select a preset, it's not like more options will do any harm. If they're making GM tools, won't GMs want and need that sort of tool to make their own NPCs anyway? A sea of identical faces isn't exactly immersive.
At the very least, I would want to see brows, eyes, noses, and lips each have their own different choice sections rather than all being lumped into "face." You can have so many more different combinations that way.
A couple of
relevant quotes:
You will be able to select a face type, hairdo, facial hair, skin color. I cannot give numbers or details, because it’s still a work in progress, but there won’t be sliders.
We have more diversity in creation than in any other game we’ve done before. You’ll be able to mix and match a wide variety of defaults, to create something unique.
I admit, if there's something appealing about all of the default presets, I will mind less than otherwise, but the
"face type" bit makes me nowhere near as happy as "work in progress," "more diversity", "mix and match a wide variety," and "create something unique" parts.
I guess we'll have to wait and see. If there were, say, a
hundred faces for each gender to choose from instead of the ten to twenty I'd expect, and each looked a bit different depending on whether it was on a dwarven facial structure or an elven one, I'd be a lot more okay with this system than otherwise. I just don't like being limited to a small pool where I keep finding something I almost like, but then I hate the nose or the eyes aren't the right color or the eyebrows are weird and thready or it doesn't look the right age that I envisioned... character creation at its best is self-expression, and that can't happen if no options suit your vision for the character at least reasonably well.
On a similar note, it would be kind of amazing if characters commented on features they saw, I've never seen that done before. I don't expect it, but that would be pretty amazing if selections were grouped into families like "red" and "purple" and then your love interest or another character commented on your eye color. I know, not likely, I'm just putting it out there. Someone will surely do it someday.