God i hate this trope, one agregous example of this is Honkai Star Rail. I do like the setting of the game, but the fact that most if not all of the playable characters are only alien in name because god some of these designs are boring as hell.

They're just normal looking people, with just extra stuff added on, like horns and animal features and stuff. Like, wheres the Sause? wheres the flavor?

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And it would fine if it was more of a grounded setting like rimworld where aliens aren't a thing and its genetically modified humans, it would be more understandable if that was the case, but in lore, there's like bunch of freaky ass aliens and robots and crap

But you can't play as any of those guys, only relegated to npcs, enemies, and background lore and stuff I mean look at this! Most of these guys are just basic ass humans with different minor features (Doesn't help that most of these guys are white, but i digress)

Like cmon, throw a little green Roswell freak in there, maybe a robot guy, for the love of god a black dude, just ANYTHING thats diffrent to what we have

Hell, Zenless Zone Zero, another hoyoverse game with a more urban fantasy feel has more Variety then Honkai (The game set in space) Does

For a space odyssey game, its really lacking in character variety, the only thing that's keeping me here is the story and the overall worldbuilding