I have a problem with faces being cast in too much shadow during conversations/close ups. The rest of the game has relatively appropriate brightness, although bodies/models of the generic NPC's do sometimes fall into too much shadow as well. I've been using OpenGL for rendering, and comparing with Direct3D 9 and 10, OpenGL appears the best to my eye. However this issue is basically present in all three.

Some screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Pvq4OKJ

Manderley is mostly okay, but all renders have Gordon Quick's face in too much shadow unless I have the flashlight on. This has basically been the general experience with OpenGL, rather than Gordon Quick specifically being extra dark. From the comparisons here the other two fare no better. I notice that 10 in particular is more washed out than the others, and is why I tried the comparison with brightness at .40. Frankly, .70 is actually too washed out for the most part. I suppose I could always turn the flashlight on prior to conversations, but you don't always have a ton of recharges readily available and I'd rather not lose all the power for my mods on this.

Another oddity is that Direct3D 10 for some reason crops itself into widescreen while playing, despite me having the resolution set to 4:3. If anyone knows how to fix that, or has suggestions for better renderers/options, I'd appreciate it.

If you’re using Kentie's DirectX wrapper, it’s a known issue,

You can change back to classic lighting using the renderer options:

- In game, press T to open a prompt in the bottom left corner
- Delete the word “say”, then type “preferences” and press enter
- In the menu that pops up, select Renderer > DirectX10 and set Classic Lighting to false.

EDIT, looking again at your screenshots, I think they all look more or less normal. Bear in mind this game defaults to 800x600 and tries to do moody lighting, so hi-res is going to look a bit rough around the edges. For what’s it’s worth, my Manderley looks pretty similar to the ones you’ve shown here, and looks consistent with the Deus Ex videos I’ve seen on YouTube.

I’ve seen examples of the “no classic lighting” issue leaving faces completely black, silhouetted against the background.

Presumably you have tried increasing the gamma property in the graphics menu and disliked the ambient result?

I guess there's no way around it, so flashlight it is. Yeah, that's the .40 and .70 I was referring to in my post.