About Marathon since I actually quite like the game and its designs; I think part of the reason why some people think the characters are ugly are the colors choices for the faces.

Vandal for example (the first character in that section) looked quite odd to me when I first saw her, I think the two-tone face color was an attempt at a half-masked appearance but it just looks strange with both colors being light colors. I think the alternative color palettes that don't use flesh tones for the bottom half of her face look much nicer.

Triage (the second character) likewise looks quite odd since there's a lot going on with his face. Most of his alternative palettes don't do his face any favors either, especially the one that turns his face white lmao

Then once you get to a character like Theif she just looks like a regular Asian woman for some reason? Most of her alternative palettes don't bother changing the color of her face like with Vandal or Triage, leaving her face as-is. Even her eyes look relatively normal as well (discounting the neon irises and pupils), every other character clearly has strange looking eyes but you wouldn't notice it with Theif at a glance.

It looks like they tried to keep the characters average-ish looking while attempting to give them an alien appearance but it just makes me wish they had leaned into one or the other. Hell, just give them helmets and call it a day. That's what they were going to do in the first place with customizable characters but decided to go down the hero shooter route because yeah why not, fuck it who cares about that shit. Halo-style customization where you make your own Runner? LAME! Give the players skinny emo guy and a Master Chief ripoff