Either New Vegas or Fallout...
if you could change your face, such that no one would recognize you, and then it would conceivably clear your faction reputations and criminal records, etc -- I assume this would otherwise pretty much shatter the game(s)? I mean, it seems like it should be possible, especially in fallout 4 with the face surgeon, although no amount of change makes people fail to recognize you.
I guess the problem would be that while their recognition of you would vanish, any quests you finished for them would have to stay finished, probably not workable.
But I just avoid the face surgery unless it's for something small, because it just feels weird that everyone recognizes the character no matter how much is changed.

The surgeon it's bethesda ingame escamotage to let the player modify his/her character, IMO trying to find too much sense in it is pretty pointless. You got a bunch of people that in 200 years they haven't managed to rebuild almost anything, that live submerged by litter even in their own house and that keep wearing clothes made 2 centuries before in a costant state of paranoia on the real identity of anyone around him(fallout 4) but accept that in their hometown there is a 200 year old piece of hi tech machinery that can modify any parameter of your body in less than a hour.

Fallout 4's commonwealth civilization outside of the institute is on a downward spiral, rather than a forward progression. That isn't wrong, or bad writing, to show a people in decay, slowing falling toward extinction (although I don't think Diamond city knows it yet, as it seemed they're in the dark as to just how dangerous the gunners would have been.)

The west was running on the equivalent of two absolutely heroic characters that are responsible for the advanced of civilization in California. The Commonwealth and DC didn't have those two heroes, and are lucky to even have people living there as a result -- California would have in horrible shape by the time of New Vegas without those two heroes building it up. Even if somehow the Master and the Enclave had failed on their own, the forward progress of civilization wouldn't have happened without the first two heroes.
Fallout 3 and 4 didn't have those heroes in their past, so the forward progress of civilization never happened like it did in the west.

People in real life live in shanty towns, surrounded by filth and garbage -- far worse than Diamond city even. And they haven't even been nuked or screwed up by crazy vaults. It's not bad writing to portray a post apocalyptic world that is on the verge of total failure and extinction, living in shanty towns and filth. That's human nature for at least thousands if not more, in 21st century real life.

No it doesn't make much sense lore wise, but a complete seemless re-sculpt of a face also isn't a real thing. It's just a mechanic to allow you to change the way you look.

I'm guessing implementing a whole system that modifies reputation and resets recognition would be too much work, and cause way too many issues to implement. Honestly it doesn't bother me that much. My immersion doesn't really hinder on how my character looks, unless I want it to, so adding or removing dirt and scars is the majority of what I do.

I don't use them myself as generally I go into a new playthrough with a character look and concept in mind, and would just start a new one if something occured to me or I wanted a change. Fallout lore has gotten pretty... odd... since we hit the 3D entries. Back in the day we had scientists who could genetically great talking Deathclaws and even chess playing plants, and targeted viruses, and Auto-Docs that could over weeks implant enhancements. Now we have... face sculpting tech? The Memory Den? Synth gorillas? Spy crows? It's both more sensible and more whacky at the same time, if that make sense,

I think Fallout 2 was wackier. People would scream if they brought back even a fraction of the weird shit from those days, a lot of it has been sort of forgotten by the fanbase.
In Fallout, SCIENCE! has a long history of being able to do silly things that can't be done with mere "science," so I don't doubt that a bored scientist could create gorillas just to see if they could do it, and I doubt doubt that face sculpting could exist, but it lacks immmersiveness in that no one notices that the face was changed, and that is the part that I think is implausible.
There's a long, long list of things in the past game that have had their intelligence and speech capabilities increased, and I think for some reason Bethesda is afraid to go back to that even though it's a solid piece of the lore -- even though Bethesda is quite fearless in making some other rather unpopular decisions.

@ Sirdanest (First Post)

This wouldn't be too far out of the realm of possibility in Fallout, because there was the whole replicated man quest in Fallout 3 which involves you tracking down a runaway synth from the common wealth, of who had facial surgery to reconstruct his face so that he wouldn't be recognizable by anyone from the institute or anyone related to track him down.

Now as for applying it from paper to in game. It would be perfect for a character who is super evil and has a change of heart, or some one who's so good they become the bad guy. In fact, changing sides isn't unheard of in Fallout anyways. In fallout 3, you can other play up multiple sides in a conflict, just to yield the most rewards, and similarly, in Fallout New Vegas, once you get to Mr. House. Your reputation with the NCR and Legion is reset to neutral if you have any negative reputation with them.

In vanilla fallout 3, there are two perks that can change your identity in a very minor fashion, and that's the stairway to heaven and hell's highway perks. Both respectively set your karma to very good or very bad. So a good character can turn evil, and an evil character can turn good.

Plus, if you really want to get crazy, look at what the institute does in Fallout 4. They create synth clones of people and replace the real versions with their clones. Similarly, Mr. House has turned himself into a super A.I., and can be omnipresent, so you could get someone like Mr. House working on an institute level, and insert himself into any capable body to do his bidding in whatever way he sees fit.

So when it comes to changing ones identity in Fallout, there's really no limit to how it can be achieved. It's just that I don' think Bethesda or Obsidian ever designed the Fallout Games with major identity chaining mechanics in mind.

While an interesting concept, it's just not something I see as possible within Bethesda games.

They are stories where the world literally revolves around your PC. It seems like it would be better suited for GTA Online or something like Dark Souls where it doesn't matter who your character specifically is because they have a successor.

Interesting questions raised but overall I think it would hamper the experience for people like me who just never are able to settle on a definitive look for their character and always notice something they want to change on the fly or like to "age" their character (mostly only applies to Fallout 4 and Skyrim) where I'll add some aging to them over time, some battle scars if there was a particularly climactic fight, or whatever the case may be.

@rogerrabbit130

That's the thing, no matter what you did, it really only is a cosmetic thing.

I don't see how we could do something like it and have it affect gameplay. (I think in Skyrim, it erases your bounty but that's it)

@"Tribal Raven" Yeah, I mean I feel like it would be odd to have it effect gameplay. Like yeah, suspension of disbelief and all that, but personally I think it would just be odd. Like the OP said I can't imagine the headache of trying to get something like this to function with all the quests etc. etc.