That's why I like them. I often shy away from texture packs as I'm a stickler for games matching the artists' intended vision, especially for games with great art direction like Mass Effect (if the game looks like junk, eg: Oblivion, I'll take all the mods I can get). JeanLuc seems to have basically gone over the original textures in a higher resolution, line for line, colour for colour, and only added logical details where appropriate, like fabric patters, scuffed metal, etc. Otherwise they look exactly like what I'd expect from official work.
Which is maddening, as it shows what could have been possible and what wasn't. I'd kill for Mass Effect 3 to at least try and push PCs a bit harder than Mass Effect 2 did, but looking at the required specs it seems to be taking the same path; a brute force port that just uses the extra processing power to clean up the IQ. Would be nice for some higher resolution textures and additional effects.
. Steam won't ban you for using another type of .exe. At least in my experiences and several other people, Valve isn't likely to monitor what files every single Steam user have on their computers and subsequently assess whether or not to entirely ban anyone from the service.
