I watched the new Half Life 2 documentary and they literally said that they wanted everyone to feel part of the game's world so they made thr npcs every shape, size, race, age etc., with roughly even numbers of men and women.

But the thing is, it didn't come off like diversity pandering, did it? It actually worked, when you were playing HL2 you probably just saw the NPCs as "a bunch of realistic looking people." Nobody made you swallow a Jaguar ad, they just showed human biodiversity in all it's lumpiness and bumpiness and the end result was that the miserable and downtrodden everyday look of everyone made you feel like a trve Slav.