Star Wars: The Old Republic's modernisation update has turned some players' characters into corpses, flattened abs and introduced other quirks: 'Look how they massacred my boy'

pcgamer.com:

Yesterday saw Star Wars: The Old Republic developer Broadsword release the first part of its modernisation plan, boosting the fidelity of several planets and tweaking player character models with new textures and ocular specularity (eyeball highlights), as well as lighting and shader improvements. The effect was meant to be subtle, so as to not dramatically change the appearance of characters which some players have been rolling with for over a decade. The reaction has been… mixed.

In a lot of cases, the impact is—as was promised—minimal. If you take a look at my Smuggler, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the difference. His face is maybe 1% more weathered—ever so slightly more like a real person. If I didn't have the side-by-side comparison to look at, I probably wouldn't have noticed.

The same goes for my Trooper. She has smile lines now, but other than that the differences are too subtle to really stand out. There's just a broad sense, to me, that she looks a little bit more like a believable human being now. That's it.

But there's certainly a more noticeable difference when it comes to the aliens and their more varied skin colours. My blue chiss, for example, had flawless skin before (sadly I don't have a screenshot), whereas now he looks incredibly patchy. Like he's had an allergic reaction to some space nibbles, or maybe just skipped his shower after running around on Tattooine.

It's even more obvious on characters that flaunt a bit of skin, and in combination with lighter, non-human skin tones, the result is something pretty corpse-like. That might be a good look for a corrupted Sith Sorcerer, but those sorts of decisions should really be left up to the individual players.

Over on the SWTOR subreddit, the response to the update runs the gamut from folks who barely notice the changes, to people who feel like their characters have been ruined. It's a particularly rough time for players who've been roleplaying beefcakes. «Look how they massacred my boy,» says one