I also like looking behind the scenes. The process of rendering of the NPCs , turn them to sprites and divide the animations must have been very difficult and slow. Also the size of all these sprites toghether was already too big, if they had added more NPCs , then they could not have put the game in one CD. So perhaps, many of NPC concepts were discarded, like the shady sands costume, or the tire armor, and who knows, maybe the scribes were meant to have another shape. I think that now, we have the opportunity to do all the things that the original developers wanted to do in Fallout, but could not achive for any reason. Of course, we can't know exactly what were these things, or if they discarded for some other reason.
About the known NPCs. Well, It's true that you empathise with the characters, of any game, and specially this one, of course, because we all love it. But, if you think about the new NPCs in Fallout 2, you realize it is just a matter of getting used to it. First time play FO2 and you see those ( Mobsters, Vic, San Fransisco people), you think "what? they are ugly!", but after years and years of playing it over and over again they start to blend and you end up not noticing them at all.
That's what I think.
And I can't make the girl turn into a man when she wears the robes, so don't ask me to do that.