Bioware, we need to talk about your NPC designs (ALIEN EDITION)

A while ago I made a thread where I talked about the strange design choices that Bioware made with human NPCS, specifically regarding uncanny, bright eyes, monocolored hair and intense, clown-like makeup. I also retouched a few screenshots to show how it could be done. You can find it here.

But another thing has really been bothering me, and that is the alien NPC designs that Bioware has put into Andromeda.
Specifically the turian and asari, where I feel there was not a lot of polishing with their designs.


For example, take these three turians here:



Their faces are just one solid color, and with the two male turians on the right it's even more jarring because these are two NPCs you met back to back, you talk with one, and the other one is pretty much the next NPC you talk to. It feels like they were created with an automated algorithm, and nobody bothered to touch them up to give them a little bit of variation in color in their faces

Compare that to Joram Talid, a turian in ME2 that you only meet for a very short time in Thane's loyality mission. He has a very plain face as well, but there are still color variations within the face itself, and there's even a bit of uniqueness to it since the mandibles are a lot darker than the face itself. And he is a pretty insignificant NPC as well.







Secondly, the asari in MEA share one single facemodel, as people have already noticed. Only markings / makeup change, but the structure of the face remains exactly the same.
It's just lazy design to recycle one single face when in the trilogy there were at least three or four asari faces that had definite differences in structure and design. Yes, those facemodels were reused as well, but there was definitely a lot more variety, especially in addition to all the different markings / tattoos etc. that were also used.



This wouldn't be too bad, if the one facemodel they used wasn't so... off. This is not about beauty or ugliness, it's about it looking not realistic in a game that seems to strive for at least semi-realism.

The things that stick out most to me are:
a) The eyes are just a little too big and "open", it would definitely help if they were sized down a little.
The upper lip is very small, and often seems to vanish when talking. If it was increased in size just a bit, it would not look so off.
c) The cheeks are too round and make the face look a little puffed up and oddly shaped, if they were toned down a little it would work so much better.

I illustrated this in a retouch that I did of the lower left face:




And just for fun, I retouched the rest of the faces as well.
Lexi (the first) I gave a face that more closely resembles Natalie Dormers proportions. I know it's not perfect by any means, but I also do not have the facial scanning and capture - technology available that Bioware has.
The others are just edits from the base face, just trying to slightly change the nose, lips and eyes to create a few different variations of the original face.






These issues I talk about might not be a big dealbreaker for some people, but I personally feel the people that inhabit a game world are extremely important and should be given a great deal of care to make sure they look right. Especially in a game that relies so heavily on character interaction and dialogue as the ME series does, as Bioware games generally do. If your characters look odd, bad or even lazily designed, then people will notice. And they have noticed.

I hope the Montreal team will take note of how people reacted to their design-choices with both humans and aliens, and even if they most likely won't fix it in this game, might remember it going forward. In a game where talking with characters is a very integral part of gameplay, you have to make sure that those characters look good. Not as in beautiful, but in realistic, believable and varied. And I just think Bioware really didn't deliever in that department.




EDIT: Here is also a video that really shows the problem, they are all just clones, and with their wide, big eyes they look really creepy:






EDIT 2:

Some of you have mentioned the problems with salarians as well, and you are absolutely right!
Here is Director Tann and Professor Herik, the exact same face. Not even a different color, it is the same face.





Compare that to 3 NPC salariens from the original trilogy:


Merken