The many salty faces of the Eternal Throne: SWTOR's new facial expressions explored

The patch notes of the Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion contained something that piqued my interest:

"Added new engine technology to improve fidelity of facial expressions in conversations and cinematics for all characters across the entire game. This graphical improvement is visible on High Shader setting."

When I played through the expansion, I made sure to look out for improved facial expressions and documented them whenever I could. I apologize in advance for the screenshot heaviness of this article.

I guess leading the Alliance is cause for wrinkles

In a conversation with the press one day after early access, Charles Boyd explained a bit more about what exactly has changed. The looks of characters have been updated with cool effects like wrinkles and the facial expressions in the cinematics are better than ever before. The skin texture of main characters have been significantly improved; it’s a huge difference from where SWTOR started five years ago. In general, we are promised more expressiveness in characters' faces.

Let's see those facial expressions, then. I've collected the most noteworthy ones of Knights of the Eternal Throne for you in this overview. There are no story spoilers, so you can safely scroll ahead even if you haven't finished the story yet. However, you will of course see the faces of some characters that play a role in the expansion.

One detail that I never noticed before and does make characters look more lively are hair animations. If your character suddenly turns around in a cutscene, their hair will reflect that movement in a natural way. It's a change I really like. Unfortunately it doesn't always work for all hairstyles. On my sage, the hair above the shoulders moves, but the "dreads" remain glued to my chest (see picture above). In this case it looks odd, but I think it looks great on most.

Really, Ravanel? Hair animations?! Booooring. Alright, on to those facial expressions, then!

First off, we still have the traditional grumpy face I came to love in Knights of the Fallen Empire.

However, in Knights of the Eternal Throne, we also see some more realistic grumpy faces.

Okay, maybe this one not so much.

Vaylin deserves her own sub section:

There are some hilarious surprised faces.

Some expressions are difficult to describe in one word, but you recognize the emotion right away.

Others are easier. Sad.

Smug - I bet everyone took a screenie of this moment.

Is that fear, Lana?

And finally, we even saw some unexpected people looking happy.

That last one gives me the chills!

What do you think: are SWTOR's new facial expressions more realistic? And do you like your character's wrinkles and hair animations?