as stated various times by Red51 on the forums, the player model is not here to stay. because of this, i have a suggestion and a question.
suggestion: instead of making 1st person 'hand' models, i think it would be way better if the new player model had its body and head meshes separated, so when in 1st person, you could hide the head, and then the player would see his whole body. this also opens up a way to customization, since you would apply mesh modifying techniques only to the head mesh (be it bones, morph points or even sub models). a similar technique is used on the mount&blade series of games by taleworlds.
question: is the current, realistic-ish art style final? from an artists point of view, i think the current artworks(not 100% of it but, lets say, 85%) are great and true to the overall theme, but it may turn out to be a trap further in the development, since making things look real is way harder than more stylized work.
thanks for the attention spent reading this.