A game like Elden Ring I could get, but the player character gets a lot of facetime in Baldur’s Gate 3. Conversations/interactive cutscenes are a main pillar of that game.
Even if you wear a full helmet, of which there are relatively few compared to open face helmets, hats, circlets, etc., a lot of cutscenes still take place at camp or in other situations where your character takes off their armor and switches to casual clothing anyways.
And on top of that the game includes toggles to turn off headwear in cutscenes or always, which gives the character 100% facetime be they wearing a helmet or no. That’s more than what I’d call “split second” at least.
I recall seeing NPC faces a lot more in game than I saw my own PCs face, even with helmets hidden, but it’s very likely that is just confirmation bias on my part, since I invested nothing into the PC appearance, so nothing stuck.
But that doesn’t discount your point, and of all the games I could have named, BG3 is probably the worst example.
It is confirmation bias. Every interaction with a companion includes close ups on the face.
I’m glad I spent almost an hour making Tav’s face perfect.
It really paid off during that scene where he’s eating Astarion’s ass for 15 minutes.
