The original draft made them tan-ish beige, with spores being a dull orange, but keeping the green for zombies.
When I had been discussing enemy designs in Prey with Nelson, we mentioned the “scary black monster” aesthetic, and I think that’s kinda reflected in the Ethereal conceptualization.
Green works pretty well small-scale, but for larger enemies it’s hard to know (which is why I’ve created and manipulated various images to try and reflect some of that green on a larger scale, although the images reflect models that’d be higher-poly than implemented).
It might be easiest if some enemies have texture (material maps) like buildings and such have in some early Devlogs. Potentially even using normal maps to add depth and such. That way, larger-scale usage of the green could still look “decent”.
Full inspiration was: 7 Days to Die, DayZ Standalone, Days Gone, Dead Frontier, Dead Space, Dying Light, Generation Zero, Half-Life, Halo, Left 4 Dead, Lovecraft mythos (Cthulu Mythos), Metro Exodus, Mist Survival, Prey (2017), Project: Zomboid, Rainbow Six Siege: Outbreak (event), Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Rust, Stalker, StarCraft, The Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, The Forest, Unturned, Warframe, World War Z
I added the Desolate when I was showing off some of the early drafts to @Pork or someone else, and they mentioned content from the “Neutral Turned” thread.
I don’t think it’s worth adding a bunch of such passive Turned, but they’re interesting. If there was a “sanity” mechanic, it’d be interesting to have it tie into neutral Turned like The Desolate more heavily than into the hostile enemies.