Overview
The New Vegas character creator is confusing, and it’s somewhat difficult to make a dude to play as. All of the categories by which you can change your characters face have been noted with what changes they make, and if it is worth it to use them in the first place.
Foreword
This is my first guide. I did my research, but I haven’t written anything like this before.
I am working on a guide to making female characters, but they are notoriously harder to work with in this game’s face making mechanic. It may never be released, but I hope to write it sometime in the near future.
What Affects What
Never, under any circumstances, should you EVER use the brow editor. It will immediately ruin your character and you will have to restart from a preset to fix it.
Starting from the top:
General
- Heavy/Light affects the eye, mouth, and nose shape. Heavier faces pull in facial features while widening the head, while lighter faces will push out the facial features and narrow the head.
- Thin/Wide affects the eye, mouth, and nose shape. Does not have the same effect as heavy/light, but still determines whether or not your character’s head looks like a pumpkin or not.
Forehead
- Small/Large will affect the brow and eye, typically to an extreme. I prefer to leave it where it is, praying to God that I never feel the need to make a Waluigi character.
- Tall/Short affects the brow and eye, although it makes it look much weirder.
- Tilt Forward/Back affects the brow and eye, and pushes the whole mid-brow section either down or pulls it up. Not recommended for use.
Eyes
- Down/Up affects the brow and eye, and most settings on to either extremes look fairly normal.
- Small/Large mostly affects the cheekbones and eye shape- too small or too large and both will look strange.
- Together/Apart is supposed to act as an eye distance slider, but actually makes your eyes/brows longer or shorter.
Nose
- Nostril Tilt affects the direction by which the nose is tilted, but also shortens or lengthens the top of the head, weirdly enough. Barely noticeable, don’t even think about it during character creation.
- Nostril Wide/Thin affects the size of the nostrils, but also makes the tip of the lip bigger or smaller.
- Sellion Height either pulls down or pushes up the space in between eyebrows. Can make your character look weird.
- Short/Long effects eye shape, and also makes the tip of the top lip bigger or smaller, similar but not identical to nostril tilt. Useful for making doing a hagraven run. (If you have a high enough guns stat, you can cast “Shoot them in the face” and shoot them in the face, very useful to finish the game.)
Mouth
- Large/Small Is directly tied to bite. Affects tip of the lip slightly, but mostly goes where bite moves.
- Underbite/Overbite is so annoying in this game, and I hate it with all of my heart. The mouth overall is just an annoying part to get, due to the chin and jaw also affecting it. I don’t use it, but feel free to if you find you can get good with the creator. Absolutely necessary if you are roleplaying as Beaker from the Muppet Show, because lets be real, who hasn’t?
SandyCheeks
- Low/High shows off your Wasteland Grit™ if you set it highest. If you want to look like the star of an action movie where a buff ex-wrestler hangs from a helicopter in the sky- with one hand- after escaping a disaster or terrorist attack in LA, this is for you. Oh, yeah, if you max it out, you’ll spawn with Old Spice in your inventory. (Really just makes you squint cool.)
- Shallow/Pronounced affects quite literally everything. This can be utilized to make a horrific beast of a man if you use it right.
- Concave/Convex mostly deals with head shape, making you look like a puffer fish depending on how you play your cards. (The ones you don’t know how to play Caravan, with? Ringing any bells, cowboy?)
Jaw
- Wide/Thin is like a second Thin/Wide in General.
- Slope is a second Heavy/Light, focusing instead on the neck and mouth.
- Concave/Convex lets you make either a High Elf character or a German with a godly chin.
Chin
- Forward/Backward affects the mouth primarily.
- Broad/Narrow works with the slope and the lip angle.
- Shallow/Deep takes your dude and makes him looks like a Wood Elf Alien man with a pointy chin.
- And finally, Tall/Short majorly affects the mouth angling.
Note that the forehead may clip with certain hairstyles depending on your graphics settings.