The 90s and early 2000s had so many non-human or very stylized human-esque protags, especially a blue-skinned skeleton-like soul-eating vampire with torn wings, curtain hair, and talks like he's spent 50 years acting in Shakespeare plays. In contrast, the PS30 era was mostly generic soldiers.

The mid-2000 era of games single-handedly convinced me off of video game character art because I grew up on grand fantasy and creativity and by the time I got my degree we had started the mass FPS/3rd person shooter push of Gruff McDude w/ Oversized Gun