I would've understood them changing it if it wasn't based on a real person, but it was. Could've just updated it. Sad to see it gone.
I don't get the "to make him look more like Lowenthal" reasoning...who cares? It feels like a deepfake to me now and worse fitting than before.
The thing is, it wasn't just "to make him look more like Lowenthal" for artistic reasons, but performance reasons. Yuri Lowenthal did the voice work, and the motion capture for Peter Parker. That means that the motion tracking dots were mapped to Yuri's face, not the face model. With the facial structure of both Yuri and the face model being so different, there would be problems mapping that facial capture onto the character model.
Now let's say that Peter Parker's PS4 character model has X number of bones on his face. The difference in bone structure probably wasn't as big of a deal, because there was a limited number of bones on the face that could be manipulated to make the facial expressions needed for that performance. A lot of work probably went into the original Spider-Man PS4 game to get the result we got, which was pretty good.
Now let's say that Peter Parker PS5's character model has XXXX number of bones on his face. Now, he has a wider expressive palette to play around with, unfortunately, because of the structure of Yuri Lowenthal's face, the motion capture tracking dots align differently on this higher fidelity model. The amount of work to then get the depth of the performance they need for Spider-Man PS5 is now quite an undertaking. The "simpler" solution, would then be to find a face actor who's structure closer resembles Yuri's. Now, the motion capture dots map to the in game model closer, resulting in a tighter, more emotive translation of Yuri's performance.
While I didn't hate OG Peter's look, one of the things I noticed during the many times I played Spider-Man, and watched Lets Plays of the game, is that his facial animations were "stiffer" than the animations of characters like Otto, Norman, May, and MJ, for example. Otto in particular is a standout, which is no surprise, as the voice actor and motion capture actor of Otto is the same person, so the motion tracking dots on his face map very well to his in game model. I actually had to get used to the OG Peter's face over the course of the game, because, in my head, I associated Spider-Man in 3 dimensions so much with Tobey Maguire and Tom Holland (sorry, Andrew Garfield, you were a great Spidey, but I couldn't stand your Peter Parker). I'll have the same adjustment to make with this new Peter.
Now, obviously Yuri and the new face actor don't look exactly alike, but the structure of their faces is similar, meaning a better match between the motion captured Yuri, and the in game model of Peter, especially compared to the original one.
This is 100% speculation on my part, as I obviously don't know the behind the scenes at Insomniac, but basing it off of what I know of motion capture and facial capture, this seems like the likely reason for the change: to get a more emotive performance out of Peter Parker for future Spider-Man games, and since they were already working on this Remaster of Spidey, why not update that model as well?
Motion capture, and in particular, facial capture, isn't as simple as "press button to capture emotions." A lot of work goes into it. Look at Naughty Dog's output in that area. They used to hand animated the faces to tighten up the facial capture performances. Now they don't have to, but it's still a lot of work to get the level of performances they manage to get in the Uncharted and The Last of Us games. Insomniac has entered that arena with the Spider-Man games, and they are upping their prowess with it with each successive game.
I'm super impressed by what they did with Spidey PS4, and even moreso with Miles and this Remaster of PS4 Spidey.
