Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Khryseis_Astra]

Here's a very direct comparison, orthographic view. I won't comment on the ears or eyes here because the shape keys haven't been set the same on both of them. It's very clear to see that the middle of a Lalafell face is now a pinched/squished in hyur face, same with the lips. I'd be willing to bet actual money this is identical across all races.

This illustrates exactly what I was having trouble putting into words: how everything looks squished in towards a central point, making all the features look off. The odd thing is, if it’s Hyurs that are the base model, why are so many of their faces just as wrong? lol You would think if they were the master template, they would all look more or less unchanged.

I wonder if that’s why, despite there being a few issues on my Lala I’d still like to see fixed, that Lalas don’t seem to have as many problems as some of the races, just due to the sheer effort of what they had to do here!

[nattherat]

I always saw this as a product of the models being so old (remember older races like hyur are like decade old at this point) either forcing the modelers to basically create character with (imo) bad anatomy due to technical limitations or the modelers at the time just not being up to task and I hoped they would fix these anatomy issues in the update.

I won't go on about it, but this definitely wasn't a product of the models being old - it isn't as though people couldn't model humans ten years ago. It was deliberate stylistic choice, it's very reminiscent of things like the Tactics series illustrations, with the exaggerated bodies and poses. Erasing the art style erases the identity of the game, it's the age-old graphics =/= aesthetics. If you don't care for the stylisation, that's totally fine of course.

The odd thing is, if it’s Hyurs that are the base model, why are so many of their faces just as wrong? lol You would think if they were the master template, they would all look more or less unchanged.

Because Hyur got a new mesh too, it just happens that their new mesh is what everyone else's new mesh is based on. So everyone got changed, including Hyur, which is why Hyur players are (rightfully) upset too.

[Iscah]

Because Hyur got a new mesh too, it just happens that their new mesh is what everyone else's new mesh is based on.

I feel like it's the wrong approach to say they are what everyone else is based on.

The new model is a generic human face. The Hyur faces are specific human faces. Their features are getting forced towards the generic face every bit as much as the others; they just aren't coming from such a distant starting point.

[GreenLeafy]

The odd thing is, if it’s Hyurs that are the base model, why are so many of their faces just as wrong? lol You would think if they were the master template, they would all look more or less unchanged.

You really would think so right? Its baffling that that's not the case to begin with.
But the fact that things are the way that they are now really speaks of a bigger picture about the way they decided to handle the character overhaul as a whole. If they made the concious choice to approach the very base version with such negligence, lack of quality control and attention to what the original truly was and the parts of it that made it work , the outcome that we received makes sense with it being so poor. If they couldn't be bothered to put in the care and effort into the most basic of the races in the game , why would we expect them to do that for the more complex ones?

I don't mean to discredit the work that the developers have done but it does speak for itself at the end of the day. I wasn't in their offices so I can't say if it was burnout , crunch , rookie devs , supervisor negligence , lack of quality control or just a lazy approach they thought would work - I don't know. But it is bad and it also speaks volumes when compared to what the same situation was for the model changes going from 1.0 > 2.0. The effort put there was very much evident for preserving the spirit of the characters and applying a level of understanding for their details , something that seems to just be completely missing here.