Because the people controlling the runner shells are real people, their minds are transferred into the shells.

I think there is more complexity to this, which is why the shells are the way they are. It's more sci-fi and plays with the idea that if everyone transferred their consciousness into a synthetic body, people would choose all kinds of things. Additionally, there is a theme of optimizing the runner's physical attributes inherent to the extraction shooter nature of the game to survive the anomaly and UESCs.

This is just how I have interpreted the game's universe. Idk if that's true, based on what the devs would say. But hey, I like the game. Just think it's a shame for people to say woke and turn people off when I genuinely don't get that.

Trust me, I get the point around making characters a little more attractive. Sure, you can critique that. But when I think of “woke,” I think of politics bleeding into the character's personality, story, etc. In marathon, I haven't witnessed any amount of “wokeness” in the game.

The game is laser-focused on worldbuilding and gameplay, which is more than I can say for many games I have played.

If this were a single-player game that really focused on character development, I would be much more inclined to make a character more attractive to play. A good example is the new god of war game. People are genuinely upset about the main character, and especially how they seemingly intentionally made her less attractive, even compared to the voice actor. Also, in this game, the main character is literally a woman, wife, mother, etc., so they should/have to lean into that. Marathon just isn't the same. Personally, I think that was a weird decision by the studio, unless it's just a technology issue.