REGARDING USE OF FACE SETS

I'd actually recommend trying to keep the face options in- it sounds like a fun detail. I don't think this sounds so outrageous when other gamemakers are drawing huge anime-style characters posing for specific dialogues. Maybe a good compromise to prevent it from getting out of control is to just limit this variety of faces to specific cutscenes- so that, when Hero goes to speak to Random NPC #14 in Town 1, he isn't showing off 3 different faces.