Mass Effect director says the next game won't feature any Veilguard-style aesthetic switchups: 'Mass Effect is photorealistic and will be as long as I'm running it'

Not photorealistic, realistic. So normal proportions, faces, textures etc.

Like I’d argue Golden Eye is a game with a realistic art style. It is as realistic as the technology allowed at the time. But it clearly tries to emulate the real world, and not a fantastical cartoony world or a woodcarved illustration, or anime etc etc.

The comment from the ME guy is probably in response to Dragon Age Veilguard being much more cartoony than Inquisition. Characters have huge heads, textures are flat and stylised etc.

Eh stylized assets aren't necessarily easier or less time consuming than PBR. It's not difficult to make a game look realistic these days at least to a reasonable amount of scrutiny. Also this is a large developer with a lot of funding so EA isn't going to cut corners in the art department with one of their flagship IPs. You also can't just reallocate artists to work on mechanics, these are entirely different departments and the process of hiring/firing workers dynamically doesn't gel well with a production pipeline.

People have complained about it though, so it's probably addressing that.