I do however think though that representations of individuals and factions is important. A name and a ship is not enough for a real impact. The human mind is attracted to shapes, symbols, and faces. In my own creative project I have wondered as to how to display entities that arent quite human, aren't quite robot, aren't quite digital or quite physical, arent quite alien, but are most certainly thinking, feeling, percieving and communicating with the world around them. What I came up with was to strip faces of their humanity, of their visceral fullness, and instead represent them as abstractions.
Conceptually, in my own project, these beings are well aware of how the human brain works, and when they are trying to communicate with humans, will present themselves in a way that humans can understand. In Psychology, there is a phenomenon called Apophenia, where the brain creates patterns in random information and will see something that isn't actually there because the brain wants it to be there. One of the most common forms of Apophenia is Pareidolia, the seeing faces in things that are not faces. Anyone who has seen a "face" in the layout of a car or electrical plug or understands a smilie has experienced this.
Well, In my own project, I have some sketches as to how these beings portray themselves.
Of course, what you see here is not at all a face, but many of you may see some sort of alien face in it, because it has the essential components of a face in relatively the right order and shape. Quickly said, you need very few things to appear as a face; you need two objects of roughly the same size and shape at about the same level to function as eyes, and you need some height above and more below it to function as a guide, the next most important thing is a mouth, a good portion below the eyes, its position and size can vary, but the object will convey different emotions depending on how this is done.
Of course more can be added to a face to add expression and complexity. After the mouth, the eyebrows are the most expressive, then the cheeks, and so on.My thinking is that such pareidolic faces could be relatively easily PCG rendered and given life and activity to convey a wide range of emotions and stances without having to go all the way to rendering a human face. In some senses, this method even liberates LT from humans, as these images were conceived for the purpose of rendering alien and digital entities in a way that humans can understand; this could appeal to those who feel LT should be populated by aliens or robots or mind-uploads.
Anyways, just a thought. Here are some more of my sketches to give you a better idea on my thoughts as to the variety of Pareidolic faces.
Spoiler: SHOW
I'm not suggesting anyone here is schizophrenic -- it's just something that occurred to me.
Oh, and I am sure I don't have to remind Josh that Star Wars would be a very disappointing universe without its immediately identifiable characters. Even the limited NPC's in Freelancer had the power to keep me returning to a specific location to indulge in simple dialogue consisting of praise and possibly another interesting/rewarding mission. I expect much more from Limit Theory. 
