The Mass Effect 3 Character Import Glitch

Dear Reader,

“Mass Effect 3” has been out for precious few hours, but already Xbox 360 gamers around the globe are screaming bloody murder when they go to import their ME1/ME2 Shepard, and he/she looks nothing like himself/herself. There isn’t much solid information on this glitch yet, but some are arguing it only happens when you import a Shepard who has been in both ME1 and ME2.

I myself ran head-first into this glitch, and to say I’m disappointed doesn’t even come close to expressing my frustration. I was really excited to carry my avatar all the way to the finish of this franchise, and now I can’t help but feel that excitement die off a little.

Still, there is something about this glitch I’m not seeing anyone else report: it seems confined mostly to the character creation (CC) screen. Once the actual game loads, the avatar who appears is actually much closer to my original design than he first appeared. Here, I’ll show you after the jump:

Here is Dexter Shepard, in ME2…

And here’s Dexter Shepard, according to the CC Importer in ME3…

Obviously way off, right? I mean who the hell IS that? I spent fruitless hours trying to fix him, but when the game loaded, he always looked…bizarre. So I tried an experiment: I left the import untouched (except for shaving his head, lightening his skin tone, and giving him green eyes), and jumped into the game..

Here’s Dexter Shepard in ME3 Itself, Unchanged from the CC Screen…

Isn’t that weird? Despite how wrong he looks in the CC screen, in-game he’s pretty close. Check the side-by-side:

Now that’s obviously not exact, but it’s much closer than the CC version, and again, I made no structural changes of any kind; just hair, eyes, skin tone.

Anyone else having this happen?

_AA

i want to kill everybody in the world