This is something that I thought with Baldur's Gate 3 as well even with the race customisation and everything. People were noting in the character creation how the male/female characters look exactly the same. That's not really the worse of it though. When you start examining them in a bit more detail you realise for the most part, they really do look generic. Sure, they've got horns or tails on them, but that's about it, the artists haven't really spent any time trying to edit their curves and features beyond that and it shows.
I'm also going to throw some shade at Starfield now since I hadn't realised thankfully but that's going to be releasing in about 3 weeks since September is coming up. Sorry guys because I know some people are looking forward to it, I was willing to give Baldur's Gate 3 a chance too and it failed hard.
https://youtu.be/OtXlygBDX4M?t=755
If you advertise customisation as one of your biggest features, this is not what I want to see. Even No Man's Sky with their aliens and everything has so much more variety than this. If you asked me a few weeks ago whether graphics matter I would have said no and really, it still doesn't. I think though art design matters and what is surprising me is that this is yet another heavily hyped big studio title all the normies are looking forward to but I'm just not impressed.
I would rather see something like 6 unique and interesting companions that the artists took their time with designing rather than whatever generic NPC customiser this is supposed to be because even the characters they're giving you brief glimpses of in their trailers don't look remotely interesting.
Ha! Much obliged. My long-winded comment aside, I 100% agree with everything in your post.
Baldur's Gate 3 has one of the most uninspired art-styles I've seen. It's so generic, and the options are so limited in terms of characters. Every time I see a clip of the game the player's character always look so generic.
It's like that in a lot of games, though, and most of everyone's comments in this thread about the mix of ESG + diversity hires + consolidation of tech are all right on the money. So we end up with a lack of talent outputting generic box-checking content.