Yeah, the story behind the NPC animations is that Dust's frame-by-frame animations took up half of the RAM on the XBOX. Another animation method had to be used for the rest of the game to fit in RAM. I think if Dean had tools like Spriter or Spine 2D he would have used them, maybe even for the main character if he had the foresight to see that limited RAM would become a problem.

Even if they were released today, I don't think Sonic or even Jazz would have fallen under the furry stigma. Neither Sonic or Jazz (with the exception of Eva and Lori) used Petting Zoo People character designs, whereas Dust did. It's totally possible to create an anthropomorphic character design and not have it come off as furry, even to the most adolescent of the gaming public. Just avoid putting an animal head on a human body. (Well, there's other design elements that should be avoided and utilized too, but I don't want to feel like I should have started another thread.)