User blog comment:Suparockr/List of Plotholes throughout the series/@comment-5503561-20120718012533/@comment-4950455-20120729072557

Personally, when faced with a divergence between visuals and description in visual media, I always tend to go with whichever option is better supported for the rest of the work. Sometimes this actually involves siding with the visuals, as in the case of the Alliance ship that gets blown up during [Prologue: Earth]. But more often I just chalk up the visual error to "artistic license". In other words, Sovereign-class Reapers don't actually all look like Sovereign; they're just depicted that way on screen to make Bioware's job easier.