NPC faces on Mog Station

[Terrini]

I wonder how many female characters will look like this:

If we can actually get flat chested females I'd make a Roe female, call him a boy and put a beard on him <3

[Rofel]

Yes for options.

No for cash shop.

We have a crapload of cheevo points and nothing to spend it.

[Iscah]

which is honestly why i was surpised that estinien, of all major npcs during 3.x, wasn't given a unique face, but instead a hairstyle. (this makes me think they won't release his hair simply due to the fact it takes 2 minutes to get his face down...)

He originated in 2.x though, with the Dragoon job questline.

I wouldn't say "all" the other major NPCs got unique faces though, even if quite a few of them did. I guess with Haurchefant being such a prominent character, but also a 'non-unique' design, they can't make everyone else stand out by comparison?

Though also, as I start to work through Stormblood job quests, I'm noticing that there seems to be a running theme of characters with standard faces and unique hairstyles - so far, the antagonist from the summoner quests and Gatty from the white mage quests. Estinien's not-in-armour model was probably created around that point in the game development too. (Post-release of Heavensward main quest and ready for the release of Stormblood.) Which also fits in with what seem to be the limitations of the character creator - since they seem to be able to add new hairstyles more easily than new face elements, they must also be adding these 'hidden' ones to give some NPCs a more distinct appearance without having to make unique faces for them.

Further thoughts may count as spoilers for some people, so hiding to be safe:

They may also not want to release that hairstyle because, depending on how averse they are to giving 'old spoilers', they avoided showing him not wearing his armour for a very long time - even in the lorebook which includes a story summary to the end of the Dragonsong arc, though that might be due to a lack of decent screenshots. (I found it quite frustrating throughout Heavensward, having this major companion character but not really knowing what they look like! I wish they'd shown his face properly earlier. The 'campfire scene' before visiting Zenith would have been a good opportunity.)

Though I'm not sure that it *isn't* a unique face? I played around a bit in the creator but didn't feel like I could get an exact match. Also I'm not sure he looks 100% the same 'unmasked' compared to the few glimpses you get of his face under the armour. (My character is short enough that I could see under the visor if he was standing around in-game and I got up really close to him.) Particularly the very dark sunken look around his eyes, though that's a justifiable change after he's spent several weeks? months? in the wilderness possessed by a vengeful dragon spirit. Combined with a few times that they've avoided showing his face even after you've seen it - eg. the closing cutscenes for Dragonsong, where he's only shown from behind or from the chest down, and this side story where they've specifically made a character design for the illustrations and *still* avoid his face, when they could just use the model that already exists - I have to wonder if there was a point where they were redesigning him and told animators to avoid showing his face in cutscenes until they finalised it.

(I assume he does eventually turn up in game - have just finished the Stormblood main game and they just keep teasing me at this point! If/when he finally reappears and is standing around in the game I'll be interested to take a comparative screenshot of his face from the same angle as I could see under his armour.)

[Iscah]

Oh alright. I agree with you NPCs should stay unique but it would not hurt to get at least some parts of their faces or at least something simliar. Only parts and not the whole face. In the end I want just a way deeper character customisation in the next expansion. I would want that even more than a new race.

Adding "parts of" specific NPC characters faces would come back to the same issues we already have - that there are never any new additions to the face elements, whether that's a hardwired inability to add more options or just something they don't want to do.

If they did add more face elements, I think it would be more likely that we'd get additional 'generic' ones than character-specific ones.