In a recent Eurogamer article Cliff Bleszinski confesses that the limitations of designing games on current-gen, or otherwise affectionately known as "now-gen," consoles is probably the reason there are so many bald space marines floating around these days. Or rather, this gens specialty is rendering, grungy space heroes. He says,

"At the same time, in this generation the translucent effects are very hard to pull off. That's why everybody sees a lot of these bald characters and wonder why games feature so many f***ing space marines. Well, the tech is good at showing off armour and it's not that good at doing hair. That's why we have bald space marines. There's your answer people."

This got me to thinking: How much does to capacity to do a certain thing well on a graphics engine drive the creative process? If your engine is especially proficient at rendering grit and detail then, most likely, that would, influence the look of the game. I guess that's why there are so many gruff heroes in games these days. There's also a lot of dirt and grime. But this isn't always the rule, of course. Remember, the Mirror's Edge was Unreal 3 (the same as Gears of War 2) and with the exception of some close-up textures, it was positively silky. But this at least explains Marcus Fenix's do rag.