ME 3: Creating a character

Why is it so hard to pick your character's appearance? I always need about one hour to get it working, and sometimes even then I'm not satisfied and delete my character after all. Same for Mass Effect 3. My imported Mass Effect 2 character looked horrible in Mass Effect 3, so I really had to change some things around. Luckily there were new hairstyles to help me. Hairstyles! One of the things that really makes or breaks a character for me.

I never was really fond of my old hairstyle, but it was the best I could find at the time. There were even some long hairstyle mods for Mass Effect 3, which I enthusiastically imported. They really changed my character's look too much though - it made her look too cute. Shepard of course isn't cute, she is badass and sturdy. It would be nice to let her look at least a bit beautiful though - after all, you do have to look at her all the time. The following three looks were the options the character creation panel could come up with:

This one is basically my old hairstyle in Mass Effect 1 and 2. I never have been fond of it, though, and it looks a bit old fashioned.

Another option, perhaps a bit more ladylike. It reminds me of Dr. Chakwas. I guess it looks great on the doctor, but I'm not so sure about myself.

This was the last hairstyle  I found fitting. It looks more cool than the previous ones. I think I'll stick with this one for now. I'm still not totally satisfied with her general appearance, though. What do you think?

One thing about Mass Effect is that the characters in the game actually look a lot better than on the creation panel. This is a good thing, as I otherwise probably would have run off in despair. An example of my current character ("option 3") to the right. Looks a lot better, right? I might be able to live with this, if I can get used to her. 

I honestly don't understand myself why I care so much about game appearances. In real life, I usually don't even look in the mirror. If I travel by public transport, more often than not I'm combing my hair in the bus because I just plain forgot to do it in the morning. And that's not because I have this hair that doesn't need care - on the contrary, I have this really long hair that I'll never get apart if I skip combing it. I guess I'm just illogical, as Mr. Spock would say.

After spending far too much time at the character panel, I got to play (well, I got my boyfriend to play for me). It started amazingly scary with Earth getting attacked by a lot of Reapers, whoa! It made the "I told you so, do you now finally believe me?" feeling a lot less fun. Okay, I might have anticipated on the Reapers not being much fun. Earth was looking pretty bad, what a horror! Had I really not been doing anything at all in these past six months to prepare us for this? We knew they were on their way and that I was only able to slow them down by blowing up that Mass relay. I guess not, I had been grounded all the time to keep those Batarians happy. A few things really shone in the tutorial, while I was escaping Earth (you'd almost think I'm a coward!):

• Biotics now look really cool!  I'm not really sure what they changed, but each time I cast a power, it looks great, much more realistic than before.
• Movement is very dynamic. Sliding over crates, jumping over gaps... all just made everything much more realistic.
• The whole thing feels like as if you're in a movie. Debris falls just before your feet, a building collapses as you run past it. There are much more cutscenes when things are happening. I'm not sure if it will stay like this, but Mass Effect 3 makes a much more realistic experience than the previous games.
• I think I used the word "realistic" a bit too much in the past sentences! I think you get the idea now!

I guess I'll just have to play further to see what happens. The whole story is pretty scary, though! Hopefully I'll get used to my new character appearance soon as well.