as is isabella's fucking lip piercing
How so? I didn't notice anything off about it.
what's off about it is that she looks completely different and like just inflicts serious cognitive dissonance on me! it's just completely bizarre. i mean, in a movie or tv show i'm kind of willing to accept a drastic change in appearance because like a character might be played by someone else. but the way she looks in this game vs. how she looked in the first one is like so drastic but there's almost no reason for it. i can't figure out why an engine upgrade necessitates a boobtastic lip-pierced "edgy" version of the exact same character.
compare it with how they handled character redesigns in me2, you know? like you saw the same characters and they looked a little nicer but pretty much the same, right? garrus got a badass new scar but the first time you saw him he just looked like, well, garrus. with this game i like can't figure out why the art direction went to such gaudy extremes AND revamped extant characters in a way that like doesn't jibe with the first game at all.
and i dunno something about the dwarf guy just rubs me the wrong way i guess. maybe it's the noir dialogue.
i get the feeling that this demo really doesn't sell the game the way it wants to, you know? especially considering how, well, short it actually is, for a two-gig download. everything's condensed and rushed, and the fact that i'm not able to get a feel for the characters compounded with the like grating redesigns of some principals is frustrating. for what it's worth i think they've done the ME2 thing when it comes to the game's systems – that is, refined and narrowed and honed and trimmed away a ton of the fat. that, i like. i think it'll be fun to play. but there's a ton of stuff in the demo aesthetic- and story-wise that really make me furrow my brow.