The Kett (Game Informer Video)

Saw them in the magazine and am pretty disappointed with the direction. It's superbly bland.

The humanoid aspect I'm not fussed about. Ideally yes Mass Effect, Andromeda especially, would be more inventive with alien physiology. But I feel we're looking towards the wrong series for that kind of vision. Mass Effect draws more from pulpy sci fi wherein aliens can simply consist of different coloured humans. It is what it is, plus purely from a development point of view I understand the pipeline advantages from being able to recycle animations and keep consistency with stuff like weapons. I don't fully agree with it because I personally don't need it, but I can also appreciate the argument that for some a more human-like design makes the alien more relatable.

What I am disappointed with is the overall look and physiology. With exception of the Asari (even then I'd argue there's a simple elegance), even the bipedal, human-like designs of Mass Effect generally leverage some unique weirdness. The Geth and Collectors have funky heads, in the latter case wings, and are part of the hierarchy of weirder looking stuff. Geth bouncing off walls, spider-like Praetorians collecting heads.

I like the idea of an exo-skeleton species, where you can see the bone strung with flesh and muscle, but the Khett looks like someone took a basic humanoid template and ran a terrain generator over the skin. The face in particular loses me; it's borderline 1:1 to a humanoid in nuances; the way the eyes sit, human teeth, nostrils, muscle folds, wrinkles, and clefts. Compare to the faces of Turian, Salarian, Collectors, Protheans, etc and this is pushing for "safe" much harder. It's disappointing to see in the artwork the jaw line is more unusual and alien. Maybe it didn't translate well to 3D, but I can't see why not.

They're just not visually striking. Hopefully their animation and lore elevates them, but yeah. Design wise they look interchangeable with basically any other alien grunt from other games.