Tides of Annihilation Dev Says Gwen's Face Was Never Changed

Another Day, Another Side-by-Side

If you spend any meaningful time following gaming discourse online, you know the cycle by now. Footage drops, someone posts a comparison screenshot, and suddenly a developer is on the back foot explaining the finer points of skin rendering to an audience that has very strong feelings about cheekbones. This week it is Eclipse Glow, the studio behind upcoming PS5 action game Tides of Annihilation, navigating exactly that situation.

When footage of the game leaked before the review embargo lifted, the conversation that followed focused less on the gameplay and more on whether protagonist Gwendolyn looked different from earlier promotional material. Social media users claimed her character model had been “downgraded.” The studio responded swiftly and firmly.

“To be very clear, we have not changed Gwen’s character model and her model has remained the same since the game was first revealed,” the developer said in a statement, as reported by Push Square. “From the very beginning of the project, our intention has been to create a protagonist who brings together both Eastern and Western aesthetics, and that direction has not changed.”

What Did Actually Change

The studio did not leave it there. Eclipse Glow went on to clarify the technical work that has happened around that unchanged model. According to the statement, the team has made improvements to skin rendering and clothing materials, introduced different outfits, and adjusted the lighting across builds. It also noted that recently implemented “new facial techniques” mean some of Gwendolyn’s expressions may read differently compared to earlier versions of the game.

That last point is worth sitting with. Facial animation systems can genuinely shift how a character reads emotionally, and changes to how light interacts with skin can make the same polygon structure look softer, harder, or simply different depending on the scene. Whether that fully accounts for what observers are seeing in the side-by-side comparisons is harder to say without access to the builds.

Push Square editor Sammy Barker, who played two hours of the game ahead of the embargo, weighed in with a measured take. He noted that in the comparison images, the character does look “ever so slightly different,” and acknowledged a personal preference for the original look, describing it as more natural. He also floated the possibility that a bug in the newer build might be responsible for something looking slightly off. He stopped well short of calling it a scandal.

“I do think it makes sense for the art to evolve during development,” Barker wrote.

No Release Date, Plenty of Opinions

What makes this particular moment feel a little out of proportion is that Tides of Annihilation does not yet have a release date. The game is still in active development, the studio says it is “continuing to refine and polish as development progresses,” and the final product is some unknown distance away. Discourse about a character’s facial structure locking in right now assumes the current build is what ships, which is rarely how game development works.

Barker’s broader preview of the game was enthusiastic. Separately from the face controversy, he described the title as impressive after his hands-on session, calling out six specific elements that stood out to him across two hours of play.

For Eclipse Glow, the statement appears to be an attempt to draw a line under the conversation before it consumes the lead-up to launch. Whether that works depends largely on whether the people most invested in the debate are interested in the technical explanation or not. The studio’s position is clear: same model, better tech, still in progress. What Gwendolyn looks like when the game actually ships remains to be seen.