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.
I think one of the issues is that they put visuals into the games that they want. And they want people to look ugly in order to break the shackles of beauty standards, or whatever the hell excuse they use. (It's like intentionally looking ugly, then get mad when people are repulsed. You did that to yourself, knowingly. What did you expect? I won't get into that rant though, we only get 12k letters.)
Completely missing the fact that fantasy isn't real, it's fantasy, and you want those 11/10 girls and guys walking around in video games. Forbidden fruit and all. They know this is true, too. All you have to do is glance at the covers of romance novels and see the one in a million male physiques on display. Even those that work out and make themselves look good, there's a chance that the symmetry will be off by a lot, or that the abs just aren't visible without life threateningly low body fat %, and other factors that might be disappointing to discover.
A lot of them are just not good at using the software that creates the shapes and appearances of people. So you get the muddy textured strange facial shapes. As you said, graphics might not matter, but art design does.
Think back to the memorable games from yesteryear. Games with unique styles that were fun and enchanting when you first ran through them. Games like Jet Grind Radio, Sly Cooper, Psychonauts, Jak and Daxter, Crash Bandicoot, Mario 64. They all have fun art styles with distinct looks. Hell, even Borderlands has a unique look. As much flack as the series rightfully got, it was early on the stylized cell shading look back in '09 when it first came out.
Point is, there's a collective effort to make things unattractive, and that fucking sucks.
IIRC they usually get that effect by dehydrating themselves for 3 days or something before a photoshoot or shirtless scene.
Do you mean Jet Set Radio?
It was actually called Jrt Grind Radio for its original dreamcast release in America.
Ah, I think it was the original Japanese "Jet Set Radio" for the port/remake in the Nintendo Marketplace or whatever.