It is harder than you might think to take something that is low-res and make it high-res without making some changes. I promise you that the guy who made Sarge's new face knows a lot more about the structure and anatomy of human faces than whoever originally built Sarge over a decade ago. The original artist probably took 5 minutes to apply that dark smudge to his upper lip and called it a day and now here we are, 10 years later, and it has become a sacred cow to some.
I'm still of the opinion that the majority of people will find Sarge perfectly acceptable.
I'm not impressed with the Chief, though. He's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. There are things about the way he was originally built that are very very crude -- sloppy angles, weird proportions, surfaces that awkwardly transition into other surfaces. They had to make the new Chief strongly resemble the old one, though, and they clearly sacrificed a fair share of modern high-res design principles to achieve that. I'm not going to say there's no way to do that and still produce something that looks like a modern asset, but after several iterations, they couldn't pull it off. It's semi-faithful, but still looks dated and awkward.
Whatever problems I have, I'm sure they will bother me less and less given time. I am looking forward to the game.
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