They tried going for youthful cutie rather than womanly.
Joining the military makes everyone seem older. Your 18 year old sibling comes back from boot an adult.
That's my beef with her appearance. I don't think she's ugly. She looks plain to me. But she looks more like a high school athlete than a soldier.
With FemShep you immediately noticed the intensity and quickly realized she's a warrior.
Helmets or covers( hats) and military uniforms can maybe make people seem older than they actually are, but if you were to see a group of junior enlisted Marines in civilian clothing they would mostly look indistinguishable from any random group of 18 to 25 year olds, except for the haircuts and none of them being overweight.
It wouldn't be the first Sci Fi story to hand wave inexperience to put a main character in command, no matter how unlikely (the Star Trek reboot with young Kirk & Spock for instance), but I've always found that slightly ridiculous.
They may be going with a defined age background again, though. Maybe the protagonist is younger than Shepard's canonical 29? If you buy the DuncaN7 speculation, the PC isn't supposed to be in command.
True, though I hope they aren't going with a protagonist who is younger than Shepard in ME1. That potentially creates some issues with the story's verisimiltude. Someone who is fresh out of officer candidate school shouldn't be placed in command of a warship, particularly if there are other officers on that ship with more experience.
I'd very surprised if the PC isn't in command, because a cog in the machine wouldn't be able to set the ship's course. It would be very linear playing experience and souls lessen the impact the player has on the game world. If Shepard for example were just leading an away team on Noveria, with Anderson still the captain of the Normandy, Shepard should be deferring to Anderson on how to handle the Rachni.