I thought the main crew and some select important figures were designed well. I'll agree with you when it comes to random NPCs. You could tell that their hair tech just wasn't up to par and that's why we got the hairstyles that we did and it's a bit sad that was the case, because you could tell some characters were supposed to have longer hair but didn't.
It was very heavy handed with the capitalism part. I didn't get a sense of the heavy handed 'men suck, women rule, you're mansplaining' part. I'm not sure which moments you felt it was like that. Honestly from what I saw it was more the case that everyone(men, women, aliens, robots) kind of either sucked in personality, sucked in attitude, were so self absorbed, or were so corporatized that they were speaking ads to me, that it all became grating over time. I like capitalism from a theoretical standpoint, but I also understand how bad capitalism can get at times. I do think that some things like the Kylie Jenner pepsi commercial are ridiculously stupid, I do think that corporations, the rich, and multiple parts of different governments buying parts of the moon and mars when nothing has been built yet is quite a ridiculous concept, and I do think that we have reached moments like in The Truman Show where someone will literally advertise something to you in current times directly to your face.
That being said, I don't want to experience this level of ridiculousness over and over from a story standpoint. I get it, no government system is perfect. So when people tell me theirs is, I raise a high eyebrow of skepticism at that sentence because to me it means they've planted a deep flag and essentially wear their government like a sports jersey. Again, I don't want to constantly see this though, and that's where the game lost me at a certain point. After a while it became aggravating background noise to tune out, and that's why I think back about the game wondering if that was a deeper level of making a big point.