Generally speaking, the goal was to make the look "cute" in order to create that same disonnance we felt during Star Control II. That is, it's so cute but the subject matter is so horrifying.
The Star Control: Origins story isn't a happy, go lucky place. There are beings who see us humans as a serious threat and want us exterminated.
From their perspective, humanity is very dangerous. In the blink of a cosmic eye we have gone from hanging out in the trees to interstellar travel.
Part of the goal of the story is to make the case that yea, the "bad" guys probably have a pretty sensible reason for wanting to exterminate us. Not because of ideology but maybe we really are pretty dangerous.
Firstly, I admire your willingness to come to a hostile space to protect your game. You have banned me in two places because I called you for what you were.
A scam artist and a liar.
You in fact, blocked me when you made the statement "Buy star control 1 2 and 3, fred and paul will get royalties" and I said, openly with a link, that they released the game for FREE. Sucks when the truth cuts into your profits. You can't ban me here. If it wasn't you, it was someone from your team with the same exact slimy excuse.
The fact that you are even defending the art style really shows you just don't understand what is going on here. You don't understand why the aliens in Star Control looked the way they did, or the art style, or why they were so loved. The argument I saw in your forums said "look at the orz! they are so cute, but so horrible!"...Are they? Firstly, I never viewed the Orz and cute. I viewed them as incredibly alien, even with the voices given to them in the 3DO release. They were rolling around in the Uncanny Valley of something who had no idea how to make something appealing to another alien race with no research. Also...Fred and Paul never officially explained the Orz, so calling them "horrible" or "Terrifying" is a misnomer.
It's so strange of you, to focus on the orz, but forget the important species of the game. The Khor-Ah were SIX EYED DOOM CATERPILLARS THAT HUNG OVER THE DEAD SKELETONS OF EXTINCT SPECIES EACH CAPTAIN PERSONALLY KILLED. Where is your cute here? The Ilwrath were -literally- psychotic, sociopathic, evil worshipping spiders without a lick of 'aw it's cute!" No word on the Chenjesu, towering cybernetic crystals that practically scream 1960's Sci-fi magazine cover art? The bombshell space babes of the Syreen? You never really played this game, did you?
Amusingly enough, the argument was made that "humans exploring space" is star control. I want you to know that literally every other space exploration game called and demanded you stopped plagiarizing them.
Given how this game looks from it's demos and shoots, you scraped assets together from the floor of your prior Galciv games and smashed them together with the name of a game that holds a special place in Video Gaming history.
Frogboy, I will say it here, loudly and proudly, where you CANNOT ban me for speaking ill of this project, and criticizing your bad behavior:
Your game is not Star Control. You will never change what Star Control means to its fans. You have insulted the fans and they will not support you until you stop. Your company is acting like a warped mixture of EA games and Michael Bay when it gets it's hands on an IP.
We do not appreciate what you are doing to something we love. Now, I get it. It's your job to shill your game. You want it to succeed. You want to make money and that's all well and good. I really hope your game succeeds better than your previous endeavors, which on the whole range from "Par" to "Sub-par in quality. I know you will defend your game voraciously because it's your JOB to do so.
But if you come here, you don't have your magic ban button. We can call you out for what you are, which is a salesman for your game who likely never played the original beyond super-melee. We can call your game for what it is, a desperate attempt to cash in on nostalgia while lacking everything that made Star Control....Star Control.
We can't change the culture of evil space spiders because of a convoluted prank of mischevious space blobbies.
We can't fall in love with a beautiful blue skinned psychic bombshell in space.
We can't trade with the truly hilarious and entertaining Melnorme...while shudder at the nature of the Keel-Verezy.
We can't look in disgust at the true nature of the Druuge.
We cannot see the true maddening horror of how far the Ur-Quan fell from grace.
What we CAN see, are muppets that belong in a children's TV show who are super scared of humans because humans are dangerous and stuff (not like any of them aren't dangerous but somehow we totally are).
Your plot premise is so depressingly contrived and predictable too. It makes you sound like a "HUMANITY F*CK YEA!" type with a guilty conscience. "Humanity is advancing so fast and so well the aliens just gotta stop em" is such a stupid plot point that just makes no sense in any sort of narrative. There is no depth, there is only ONE solution (which is we fulfill their terrible prophecy, advance fast enough and prevent our extinction) and humans go on to rule the galaxy as number 1. Compared to TUQM, where humanity are, at best, bit players in the war, with ships that are sub-par at best and only shine because they had ONE shot, with ONE ship. Any other race could have done it, we just got it at the luck of the draw.
You can do better than this. You know it and I know it.