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God, it's only been a few hours, but knowing what I do now I think I'd change this post. Most of this stuff doesn't feel intentional anymore. I've noticed that most Face 1s seem to have the most care put into them--and were the ones shown off during previous screenings--but even then some of those still look like the current impression is entirely lost. They just, for the most part, seem to be the only ones without a super sloppy lip shape & texture change. Aside from messing with Au Ra limbal rings and Viera noses, I actually get the impression these weren't worked on at all since their initial showings.
While I genuinely believe the developers do care about this, it remains so strange to me how little effort there appears to be to actually save the current looks of the characters. Things like pupils, brow density and shape, lip appearance, eyebags, eyelashes, makeup, contours of the nose, blemishes, cheekbones, the way light hits the face, etc, etc... These are all important aspects to a character design. Yet it feels like there was very little effort in matching those small details.
It's confusing. Why are all of the misshapen lips misshaped and flattened in the exact same way across different races? Why are there so many little broken things? Did a human actually look over this? This game is stylized, and we have clear references of the previous models; I know it's possible to make them look closer while still being "better"!
It just feels bad, especially when you notice things are copied and pasted between two clans that used to have subtler differences (Wildwood/Duskwight, Rava/Veena, etc). Like there's simply a lack of looking at the details that actually make these models look the way they do.
Though, on the other hand, I think female Hrothgar look great! They have exactly the type of effort and stylizing and character flourishes I expect the team to put out in a new race! So, really, now I'm more worried with thinking about "how are they possibly going to fix this in two months?"
The character changes are being widely criticized both here and in the JP forums. There's no way they'll think this is okay, right? But it feels like too much on such short notice. I suppose I wouldn't know any better, though...
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The lip changes to female Seeker and Keeper lips 2 on F3 was a little disappointing: they're pretty noticeably different. I don't think that the new ones look bad per se, but it definitely felt like they weren't interested in keeping the original spirit of the option. I'm aware that there are other, more pressing issues that others are experiencing in terms of the graphics updates but this unfortunately irked me.
https://imgur.com/FJEWaWc
https://imgur.com/SBHuFhp
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The eyes seem better on most races but they totally botched the skin. Everyone looks like plastic dolls. Plus lips are just thin lines now.