You don't understand me at all.
they should look different from one another
They look different.
I should be able to describe these women's faces without always having to repeat the words "symmetric and smooth-skinned"
Why?
since again, I don't have to do that with male characters.
Yes you do they have symmetric faces and smooth skin.
Saying that female bodies have less variation IRL too is a poor excuse of an argument because the art style clearly demonstrates that MALE bodies in this universe certainly do.
That so?
Hanzo, Reaper, McCree, Torbjorn, Reinhardt - Average, Average, Average, Small and bulky, Big and bulky
Bastion, Winston, Zenyatta - two robots and gorilla.
Pharah, Symmetra, Widowmaker, Mercy, Tracer, Zarya - Top heavy, Bottom heavy, Mostly average, Average\lithe, Short\lithe, Big and bulky
But look at Reaper.
Good point, but he has a mask on. All he gets out of sinister look is cool skull mask, trench coat and copious amount of edge. No facial features.
But even while saying that, I don't get why you're suddenly talking about "biology" when previously you were saying that none of this is a problem because of "stylization"
Anatomy plays big part in stylizatation. Consistency is key. Look at hair, eyes, shape language, color schemes. If you bend something too much, model\draw it in a different way, it will stand out. Muscles definition doesn't depend on how much your exorcise, it mostly depends on fat to muscle ratio, something that testosterone helps you to do is to burn fat to muscle, estrogen does the opposite. Cut physique is not optimal for strength so people who go for that usually keep body fat to ~25% body fat at which point muscle definition is not that high.
Do you mean that they should be believable?
No, just consistent within art style. You have heavies in armor and lithe character in clothes. Female dwarf of Reinhardty looking lady would fit in, outside of that it's either armored Rufus or revealing Rufus, if it's just female Rufus though I don't mind. Rufus is amazing.
I would not fucking believe that Tracer with her skinny legs can run like she can, or that Reinhardt wouldn't just fall over because he's way too top heavy.
A lot of shit would be realistically possible from physics viewpoint even if these characters looked like realest humans you ever saw.
You can't have some characters follow exaggerated, stylized rules, and argue that others should follow "realistic" ones
Yes you can't. That's why I would be fine with two female body types mentioned above. They make sense within stylization but necessarily real life.
Not to mention you're literally contradicting yourself, arguing for biological realism, because you then talk about how it's acceptable for gnomes to have body proportions that on a human would mean they're unathletic.
Dwarfs are athletic as fuck. Beer belly is a bother but within fantasy it's pretty much given that every single dwarf from baby to elder is ripped. It makes sense for his race to have this physique. If they had ork women I'd also argue that it's completely fine for her to be tall bulky and more muscular than human female and probably even male.
"no we can't have any other body types except bulky gunshow and size zero because reasons"
I'm not saying that.
Unless you're arguing that Blizzard is reluctant to give ups any other body types or hell, faces that look distinct, which literally makes no sense since they were the ones to talk about how they wanna do female characters better this time.
And they did. They look distinct and memorable, with more variety then Blizzard usually provides, though I bet there will be even more.
As you pointed out, in fact, when you said that certain faces, especially certain narrow type of face, are coded good
It's not as simple as that. Anatomy again comes into play. Females usually have more narrow jaws, sharper chin and smoother skull in general. The more you align sliders to the opposite side the more masculine female will look. Femininity of overall character partially decides how head will look. Zarya's chin and jaws are wider, cheekbones are not as soft and roundish.