Well this is certainly a bummer.

Xbox ME3 sees my save and has all my previous decisions correct, but my "Imported Face" isn't my Shepard at all! It's straight up the same character model as the default. It's not a huge issue, but it kind of breaks the immersion right off the bat as I've put almost a hundred hours on that mug to lose it now. I can't imagine that voice coming out of anyone but my old, gruff, battered and beaten Shepard.

Anyone else having this problem?

edit: After digging into the issue, it's apparently a problem anyone who played a character in ME1, imported to ME2 and then imported to ME3 will have. ME1 characters don't have "character codes" which were created for ME2. Here's a work around:

http://fuckyeah-masseffect.tumblr.com/post/18171019818/importing-your-me1-sheps-face-into-me3

Really I mean come on?

@big_jon: What bothers me is the fact that it says "Hey, here's your dude from your save." But it's not. Is it really so strange to wonder if that's not a little messed up?

Yeah, it sucks, but there are like three threads about this already, you might find help in one of those.

So people have been talking about this for a few days now but I guess this pretty much confirms it 
 
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/323/index/9513640/1

Ah, didn't scroll down far enough..

BioWare literally fucked up Job #1.

In a series about choices mattering across multiple games, job-FUCKING-one is to make sure that save importing is goddamn flawless. Shabby.

This is moot for me since my xbox broke while playing ME2 and I have since jumped to the PS3 version of Mass Effect but this is just silly. Shouldn't have to jump through hoops to play as your character. Bit of an oversight by the Bioware folks but at least there is a workaround.

@devilzrule27: I'll definitely pour one out for your xbox/Shepard. The best part of this whole affair is once I found and followed those instructions, I extracted (from my ME2 save file) all the values for my character and manually created him in ME3. Got values for each of the sliders and the results were almost identical. I'm sure it's a lot more complicated than I know, but the data's all there...wonder why Bioware couldn't figure out a way to get at it?

Seriously Bioware? And they wonder why people have lost faith in their company.

It seems, at least from what I've read on other sites, that this issue is specifically in regards to players who made a Custom Shepard in ME1, imported him/her into ME2 and then are trying to import that same character into ME3. I can hope that this is the case, as I just spent 80+ replaying both ME1 and ME2 in the last couple of weeks and will be severely upset if I cannot play ME3 because of this, what appears to be, insane oversight.

So my face looks perfectly fine, though it completely went out of left field with my hair. My short cut redheaded lady suddenly had long black hair. But that was an easy fix.

Shepard looks a little different, but she doesn't look bad at all.

My first Shephard, and the one I'll be playing as, was the default male Shephard. My impatience finally served me well.

However, I was much more patient in my second run, but the femshep I made there is ugly and I wanted to redesign her anyway. This still sucks, it should have been in the game, but it's not really an issue for me. Yet.

Well, it's confirmed, if you imported from ME1, your ME2 character face won't import into 3

So weird that a bug like that gets through. I'm sure it will get patched, but that doesn't help the people who are playing it now.

@Kingloo: @Kingloo said:

BioWare literally fucked up Job #1.

In a series about choices mattering across multiple games, job-FUCKING-one is to make sure that save importing is goddamn flawless. Shabby.

Absolutely. What a dreadful misstep for the trilogy's grand finale.

My Shepard's face didn't import either. I contacted EA's customer support by email and got the following reply today

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts Customer Support regarding Mass Effect 3.
I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing those problems with your EA game.

Unfortunately, the face of your character from Mass Effect 2 does not transfer to Mass Effect 3 - you have to recreate it again.

We apologise for any inconveniences caused.

Should you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

This doesn't sound very good. I spent a while in ME1 putting together my Shepard and trying to recreate my Shepard seems like it will be difficult and I'll also have a strange thought in the back of my mind that this Shepard (the one I'll have to try and recreate) isn't the same Shepard.