The original version looks pretty good, if not a but messy, but I’m exited to see the new version!
I hate to send a conflicting message, but I think he looked slightly better with the big torso plate than the small one.
The problem might not be the shaping so much as there being a massive blob of black there, whereas there aren’t any big concentrations of it elsewhere on his body. You could try putting a gold addon part on top of it, but I imagine that would end up looking awkward too…
Perhaps you should look into making a custom armor bit rather than just one of the big prefabricated ones?