I think part of the issue with Tali is simply that she was intended to be a secondary character intended for very specific lore and plot purposes that happened to take off in popularity to the point where Bioware was kind of unprepared to expand on it to the extent that the so called "Talimancers" wanted.
As far as using a stock image goes, you have to understand that Bioware has been dialing it in for years now. Mass Effect 2 & 3 and Dragon Age 2 were undergoing most of their development during the meat of developent of The Old Republic. Given the budget for their MMO, Bioware was doubtlessly being made by EA to focus most of their energy on their big product, while at the same time juggling the simultenaous development of multiple franchises. Something that doesn't work for a company that achieved it's level of quality by focusing on one title "until it's done". When it comes to creation, it's about the people making things, simply hiring more people and putting them on projects does not make them as good as the original creators as well... and I think with the energies of the original Bioware staff so heavily divided, the quality is doubtlessly suffering.
To put things into perspective this is the "lazy" version of what they did with Dragon Age: Origins which had years of dev time according to their hype before they started ToR, which was in part why there was some varying graphics quality due to the time things were created (which many people have talked about). For the ladies in DA:O they hired live models (whom were promoted when they game came out) to act as the physical/facial prescences they were going to animate. With Tali they found they needed a real actress rather than being able to keep her a cartoon, and grabbed a pic, rather than finding someone to actually play the character. The result being kind of obvious... though I suppose it works.
It all comes down to cutting corners, and part of the problem is that as ME-3 was being developed you had some portly EA Overseer probably wandering the offices with a whip and cattleprod going on about the needs to get TOR out as the #1 priority.
With ToR out, it remains to be seen if Bioware will get back to their old patterns and produce some truely exceptional games again, of course it might just mean that EA will heap tons more projects on them, or demand they focus their attention entirely on the inevitable ToR expansions.
That said, for those who read this far, when I say "go back to making exceptional games" I mean that literally. Seriously, what does "Mass Effect 3" have in it that makes it all that wonderful right now. All those cinematics were awesome back when Bioware started doing them in the last decade but they really haven't evolved. The gameplay has turned into a shooter, and reslly there are tons of third person shooters out there, and none of those aspects are things we haven't seen before, or probably haven't seen done better... perhaps even by Bioware itself. "Mass Effect 3" is a good game, but I'm not sure if it can be called exceptional because very little of it actually stands out from things I've seen before. I can look at games of a similar sort done by Bioware in the past (without going into other companies) and say that as a game they were better. Knights Of The Old Republic, Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins, and others. The technology/graphics quality for ME-3 is better but there is more than that to a game.
Oh and I did kind of spoil the endings for myself, but I won't do it for others, I will doubtlessly say some things about it before... but a lot of the things I said in comparing Mass Effect to Saberhagan's Berserkers and things that we were likely to see, I was right about a lot of them, especially one major ending possibility. While writing can't be totally unique, especially nowadays (just about everything arguably being based on something else) I must say that I don't think the direction they wound up going with quite delivered on the promise of the first game.
As far as using a stock image goes, you have to understand that Bioware has been dialing it in for years now. Mass Effect 2 & 3 and Dragon Age 2 were undergoing most of their development during the meat of developent of The Old Republic. Given the budget for their MMO, Bioware was doubtlessly being made by EA to focus most of their energy on their big product, while at the same time juggling the simultenaous development of multiple franchises. Something that doesn't work for a company that achieved it's level of quality by focusing on one title "until it's done". When it comes to creation, it's about the people making things, simply hiring more people and putting them on projects does not make them as good as the original creators as well... and I think with the energies of the original Bioware staff so heavily divided, the quality is doubtlessly suffering.
To put things into perspective this is the "lazy" version of what they did with Dragon Age: Origins which had years of dev time according to their hype before they started ToR, which was in part why there was some varying graphics quality due to the time things were created (which many people have talked about). For the ladies in DA:O they hired live models (whom were promoted when they game came out) to act as the physical/facial prescences they were going to animate. With Tali they found they needed a real actress rather than being able to keep her a cartoon, and grabbed a pic, rather than finding someone to actually play the character. The result being kind of obvious... though I suppose it works.
It all comes down to cutting corners, and part of the problem is that as ME-3 was being developed you had some portly EA Overseer probably wandering the offices with a whip and cattleprod going on about the needs to get TOR out as the #1 priority.
With ToR out, it remains to be seen if Bioware will get back to their old patterns and produce some truely exceptional games again, of course it might just mean that EA will heap tons more projects on them, or demand they focus their attention entirely on the inevitable ToR expansions.
That said, for those who read this far, when I say "go back to making exceptional games" I mean that literally. Seriously, what does "Mass Effect 3" have in it that makes it all that wonderful right now. All those cinematics were awesome back when Bioware started doing them in the last decade but they really haven't evolved. The gameplay has turned into a shooter, and reslly there are tons of third person shooters out there, and none of those aspects are things we haven't seen before, or probably haven't seen done better... perhaps even by Bioware itself. "Mass Effect 3" is a good game, but I'm not sure if it can be called exceptional because very little of it actually stands out from things I've seen before. I can look at games of a similar sort done by Bioware in the past (without going into other companies) and say that as a game they were better. Knights Of The Old Republic, Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins, and others. The technology/graphics quality for ME-3 is better but there is more than that to a game.
Oh and I did kind of spoil the endings for myself, but I won't do it for others, I will doubtlessly say some things about it before... but a lot of the things I said in comparing Mass Effect to Saberhagan's Berserkers and things that we were likely to see, I was right about a lot of them, especially one major ending possibility. While writing can't be totally unique, especially nowadays (just about everything arguably being based on something else) I must say that I don't think the direction they wound up going with quite delivered on the promise of the first game.
