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Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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Yikes, that's some primo jello jiggle.
Yeah, not *super* fond of the colors, but hey, not everyone can be as perfect as Titania. Looking back at the Tellius games after playing Awakening and Fates made me think, wow, the designs are actually at least vaguely practical and fit the character's roles? They might not be the most realistic, but they won't take you out of the experience like wondering what a mage is doing roaming a desert in a bodystocking and heels.
Also gotta say, Lissa's dress is really cute. Only thing I would do is cover her shoulders because she's probably mighty cold like that.
Yeah, not *super* fond of the colors, but hey, not everyone can be as perfect as Titania. Looking back at the Tellius games after playing Awakening and Fates made me think, wow, the designs are actually at least vaguely practical and fit the character's roles? They might not be the most realistic, but they won't take you out of the experience like wondering what a mage is doing roaming a desert in a bodystocking and heels.
Also gotta say, Lissa's dress is really cute. Only thing I would do is cover her shoulders because she's probably mighty cold like that.
Goddamn this outfit is stupid. A skirt so short it still shows your cameltoe, a corset, and a top with individual boob socks. And of course the needle-thin high heels because of course.Is this official art too?
Pantasia the panty warrior. Special move: Panty flash (always active)
Based on that artwork her butt should be covered by that... peacock thing, except apparently in the render it parts sideways just enough to show her butt because OF COURSE
Nothing really should surprise from Xenoboob Chronicles anymore, but c'mon...
LMAO It wouldn't be wise to wear that sweater in the middle of late winter.
It's not parody, it's exactly what it looks like.
Her (Perun) design is really fitting though, since her entire character is being, like, a knight in shining armor, and that's why she wears a skirt that leaves her underwear exposed when she's literally just standing still.
Her (Perun) design is really fitting though, since her entire character is being, like, a knight in shining armor, and that's why she wears a skirt that leaves her underwear exposed when she's literally just standing still.
Oh, for Perun, you'll notice there are some people with a trophy symbol on their heads. These are "mini-quests" that don't appear on your quest log but they usually have a small task for you to complete (either that or they sell you stuff). You need to complete three small tasks for her affinity chart to go up to level 2.
And yeah, a lot of the female designs in this game could be cool. But the fact that their skirts are just high enough to see panties, or dressed just enough to be indecent, utterly ruins them. Like, if the just gave them longer skirts and clothing must of the designs would actually be great. It's so annoying.
No there are some straight up black people in the game. They're kind of relegated to unknown townspeople or some sidequests though. No major black person is in the main story. The closest is the leader of the Uraya Kingdom but its clear that she's a different species. Vandamn also is darker skin but falls more into the Uraya race.
Totally. I love the Tellius designs because, while they're not obviously 100% practical IRL armor, they look just practical enough to keep me immersed in the universe while also being stylish and interesting to look at. There's also not a single boob plate in either game as far as I remember. And the pegasus knights even wear pants in Radiant Dawn!
Man, Tellius was just so good. What I'd do to go back...
I feel like the problem was the fact that the models couldn't really accurately reflect the artwork in those games. I'd really like to see that artstyle in a more modern Fire Emblem as the models could actually render the artwork a lot better. Also helps that the animation for the crits (one of my personal biggest complaints was the critical animation just weren't as flashy as the GBA ones) has finally improved so I'd like to see that as well.
Also, is it just me, or does Intelligent Systems keep making Lyn's bust bigger?
Oh yeah, I googled it at one point -- I have 1/3 done for her, but the first trophy person I've come across since is a kid in Fonsa Myma but I don't have the item he needs or whatever yet. But it's kinda whatever since I dislike her design so much anyway, it's an excuse to not have to use her LOL
And absolutely. Pyra's colors, her hair, some of the design motifs are all totally fine and would look great! If they toned down just... all that everything. There is definitely a way to be a little revealing/sexy without it getting to the point of horribly distracting and ruining a design and I stg XC2 has no in between. It's either really great like Morag, Nia, Poppi (at least base form for these -- I heard there might be other forms for some characters later but haven't looked at them cuz avoiding too many spoilers), or... Pyra, Perun, Mythra, etc and just everything hanging out. D;
So, there was a interview with Masatsugu Saito (the main designer of Xenoblade 2) and it showed some concept art for the characters along some of his thinking of the creation of the designs:
Pyra's boobs are really normal in the concept. I would love to see it like that in the game.
http://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2017...-Xenoblade-Chronicles-2-part-two-1319322.html
Pyra's boobs are really normal in the concept. I would love to see it like that in the game.
http://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2017...-Xenoblade-Chronicles-2-part-two-1319322.html
I also can't think of any boobplates in the Tellius games. It's actually really refreshing to have armor be nearly identical on the men and women in a game, at least in that regard.
Speaking of boobplates, though, I am still quite upset they did Ayra dirty in Heroes.
Yeaaah, the in-game character models haven't held up super well. I'd be down with a remake of the two games if they got Kita back, if only for selfish reasons like not owning a copy of PoR anymore.
And that's absolutely a thing that's happening. Compare her in FE7 to her in the Wedding Dress and Brave Lyn in Heroes, lol.
Speaking of boobplates, though, I am still quite upset they did Ayra dirty in Heroes.
Yeaaah, the in-game character models haven't held up super well. I'd be down with a remake of the two games if they got Kita back, if only for selfish reasons like not owning a copy of PoR anymore.
And that's absolutely a thing that's happening. Compare her in FE7 to her in the Wedding Dress and Brave Lyn in Heroes, lol.
Do you think it should be a different standard for MMOs when it comes to objectification and oversexualization? These sorts of games usually aren't telling a story where these things could be out of place and these games are supposed to basically be fantasy playgrounds.
This trend seems to be changing. It's pretty easy to find games from Asia that have men that are basically just eye candy and sex objects, especially in MMOs.
Of course, the west also does objectify men. They're usually just not boiled down to looks but rather looks, career and status. This is the case with all media, from Fifty Shades to that weird Clooney trend. Powerful "Hot" guy that can dispense money. He can be a piece of trash or hero but that's irrelevant to the fantasy.
It's obviously appealing to a certain mainstream fetish. I don't see why you need to shame people with it regardless of whether or not it's out of place.
This trend seems to be changing. It's pretty easy to find games from Asia that have men that are basically just eye candy and sex objects, especially in MMOs.
Of course, the west also does objectify men. They're usually just not boiled down to looks but rather looks, career and status. This is the case with all media, from Fifty Shades to that weird Clooney trend. Powerful "Hot" guy that can dispense money. He can be a piece of trash or hero but that's irrelevant to the fantasy.
It's obviously appealing to a certain mainstream fetish. I don't see why you need to shame people with it regardless of whether or not it's out of place.
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This is the same game that gave birth to everybody's favorite "thousand-year-old dragon", so really Awakening was just a damn mistake all the way around.This is her official artwork from Awakening. There's also the DLC that had a shot of her changing. She was always meant for that audience.
Also reminder that every character has some dumb meaningless "quirk", and Tharja's is that she "has the best body in the army".
Got her last night. The introduction scene just...when you think it can't get any worse, it does. And then comes back for more.
Then chapter seven stuff happened that made me think of all the fans of XC1 who have bailed on this because of those designs, and I was sad.
Yeah, I don't know. It really bothers me that some people seem to be willfully denying that the things that're bothering folks even exist. Like, I love the game. I put an unhealthy amount of time into the game. It supplanted every single 'favorite character' ranking I had for the year with characters like Morag, Brighid, and Nia, and stole my GOTY at the absolute last minute in an absurd upset. I have a feeling I'll probably look back on it as one of my favorite games of all time, even, in the long run.
But like I said last night, I could write a hell of a goddamn essay on how the character designs aren't just potentially offputting to a wider audience, but actively detract from the game's philosophical underpinnings and the things it has to say about unhealthy relationship dynamics, the toxicity of the shonen hero archetype's neverending and self-serving impulse to Protect The Girl regardless of context, and general respect for others' autonomy.
This is literally the worst kind of narrative that could've had the designs that it does. Literally everyone should've been given the same level of respect that Morag gets visually, because that's what they get from the actual writing, a few mercifully brief forays into stock anime comedy notwithstanding.
The rare blades are a worse situation than I thought they'd be too, because it's not just a gameplay mechanic. They all have extensive subplots with directed, voiced cutscenes and pretty detailed character arcs via sidequest chains, and very few of them have designs that match their character in any meaningful capacity. I'm easy for this kind of stuff, but several of those questlines actually made me pretty emotional and then you compare the narrative content to their designs and it's just like...what?
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The lack of plot relevance beyond their introduction for the vast majority of the characters only exacerbates this. There are way too many characters and they cycle in and out so quickly that they have no time to grow beyond their designated quirks, and the supports barely offer any further insight. For instance, Miriel exists to teach you how to trade items between units and that's about it. Her supports don't reveal anything about who she is, either, other than her mother was a scholar so she is too. She discovers gravity, though, which is cool, I guess?
This is actually a very common trend in modern media that "takes advantage" of connected internet fandom in incredibly interesting ways. You can see it in Fire Emblem (of course), The Idolm@ster, Overwatch, and so on. It effectively becomes a collaborative effort with long-term fanbases. Characters hit broad archetypes, are numerous as hell, and are sketched out incredibly vaguely in their debut. Then as fanfiction, fan comics, fanart, etc. continues to build on them and add quirks, the IP holder curates and canonizes elements of that fan media in the next official work. Over time the characters become more defined, more through the low key canonization of elements of fanfiction by way of subtle reference than the actual archetypal suggestions they're depicted as in official media.
I'm not sure I like it, but it is fascinating. It's probably going to become more common as Games as a Service trends build and cultivating a long-term, enduring fanbase becomes the top-level goal of every individual, single game. It keeps fandom active and gratifies their 'contributions' to the characters with occasional nods.
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To be honest, I think the whole "you can marry anyone!!" thing hurt characterization a quite bit. Characters are just barely related to each other; they can be friends, but not too much because you don't want them to have a closer bond with another character than they can potentially have with your self-insert.
Echoes, for example, has several canon pairings that deeply affect the characters involved and how they interact with the world. Not only that, but there's Leon who's gay, and Lukas who is heavily implied to be asexual. That just isn't possible in Awakening/Fates, because god forbid we upset the player by making a unit not available for marriage. The characters largely exist in a vacuum, a window display from which you can pick the one you like most. They don't affect the world they live in, and the world doesn't affect them. They're dolls for you to play with.
Yup. I've encountered this with online serials, to the point where some people advise it if you want be at all successful: you're apparently more likely to attract fans if those fans feel like they're somehow involved in the writing process, that the characters are, in a sense, "theirs".
...and that goes completely against my own writing style. As do male self-insert harem power fantasies, which is the other route to popularity XD
You can also see this in effect in Squeenix's treatment of the FF7 cast...
Isn't Aqua also directly related to Corrin as well?
Man, don't get me started on FFVII. Let's devolve every character in this game for fan points and completely screw up Cloud's arc from the original game! I'm afraid of what they're gonna do in the remake. Well, that and when said remake will ever release
In a way, it does make sense, as there's been so many fandoms that show outrage over "OC-ness" cus it doesn't fit in with their personnal headcannon. It's one of the ways I think fandoms shoot themselves in the foot, as I think it really limits storytelling and actually makes characters blander.
The fun thing about this trend (I'll write an essay about how dating sim elements hurt the character writing in the Trails series circa Cold Steel compared to Sky's actual female protagonist led hetero romance (!!!) at some point if Morrigan doesn't see this and get to it first) is that shoehorning this crap into games where it doesn't fit winds up making them more reductive about relationships than many of the actual visual novels they're conceptually riffing off of get. A fixation on the superficial notion of picking your favorite waifu or husbando out of the window and marrying them torpedoes nuanced characterization, and the fact that it's a secondary mechanic with actual gameplay ramifications prevents much interesting being done with it.
You're never going to see a Fire Emblem game with 'routes' dedicated to failed or toxic relationships that don't work out, infidelity, or actual nuanced romance and the in-depth character work that comes with that that you see in many actual, literal "dating sims" because ultimately they're not there to talk about romance or do character building, they're there to sell fandom for a character as a product.
And I mean, don't get me wrong. I own nerd merch myself. I take part in fandom to some degree. It's just, like--I feel like it's important to be able to be introspective about this shit.
Whenever I see things like this I just stop and think about all the advancements in rendering tech that have happened over the past decade. The industry got full performance capture. Game devs have future proofed their engines by adding modern rendering in order to achieve CG like visuals and/or at the very least achieve anything they want in terms of art direction. Game worlds the size of countries can be fully built without compromising hard on asset density. So many tech advancements. And devs apparently still can't figure out how to make breasts move like something other than balloons and jello. :|
I mean, if they ever remake FE4, they would. It's funny how FE4 feels like a deconstruction of modern FE games despite it being released on the SNES years ago
God, if they remake FE4/5 and leave the story intact, certain groups are going to lose their shit.
WHY DOES MY PURE WAIFU LACHESIS CUCK HER HUSBAND WHAT A SLUT REEEEE
...you made me laugh out loud in the middle of a fancy restaurant. I hope you're happy.
But yeah, it would be hilarious.
Yeah. That group of people already lost their shit at the ending to Mario Odyssey, FE4 would cause them to go nuclear.
Yes, bring back Senri Kita to FE.
Too bad those games sold poorly.
Too bad those games sold poorly.
Though other groups will love the disgusting genetic superiority angle it plays with holy blood.
I agree that the characters not having much development beyond a quirk is a bit odd considering how well sketched out some of the older minor characters are in comparison.
If I can just play devils advocate with one minor point here, I do think 'way too many characters' is something that's part of the nature of a game where almost every character can be lost at any point. On my first run through of Awakening Muriel died minutes after being introduced and I carried on without her. From a strategy game perspective, it is constantly supplying fresh 'units' of multiple types to replace potential losses and maintain options for a balanced force for those players that are happy enough not to have a 'perfect' run. That seems a fair enough reason for the high number of units a player that always restarts when a unit dies might end up with- I often end up removing the weapons from the more annoying characters and sending them off on a suicide charge just to keep the roster a bit more manageable! :D
Of course, those units are also characters, and if they are going to make several pieces of art and sprites for them, it would be good to have characters with depth beyond 'I'm good/bad at *insert activity* , I'll train you/you train me.' That seems to be a modern cliche coming from, as other posters noted above, a lack of willingness to develop meaningful relationships between a cast in case a player wants to marry them off to someone else.
It's a shame- despite the lack of battlefield conversations, the interplay between the Tellius characters was great and made me love them even more. I like Shinon being Rolfe's grumpy tutor, Shinon and Gatrie being less keen on Ike taking over than the others. Titania being Oscar's mentor, Oscar being Kieran's imagined rival, Kieran becoming the deputy leader of the Crimean royal knights, at which point his axe-crazy enthusiasm in contrast to Geoffrey's devoted command makes more sense. There's loads more, it's been nearly a decade since I played it and I can remember them so clearly compared to most of the characters from Awakening/Fates because their arcs are largely the nature of their relationships with others, not their quirky hobby. In comparison, the Echoes crowd sticks in my mind more too, stuff like Clive/Mathilda's relationship makes them more memorable than any number of cliches.
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I am pretty happy, to be honest :P
... somehow I didn't even consider that. Damn. :( I wonder if there's any way to portray the whole holy blood stuff without it having uncomfortable connotations...
Oh God, that reminds me of Bahamut Lagoon. The subset of people who can't accept anyone but the protagonist having a successful relationship really fucking weirds out.
These people weird me out too. Fandom entitlement is surely a sight to behold!
Yeah, it's something I didn't realize until I thought more about its role in the story and as a gameplay mechanic.
I think the best thing would be if it just wasn't a gameplay thing. The story could run with all the royalty claiming it makes them important, but in reality it doesn't make a difference. And it would need to be called out as the manipulative lie it is.
FE5 is a better on that though. It doesn't make a big deal about holy blood, I don't think it's mentioned on their stats and many characters are fantastic even without it, and Leif is kind of a shown as a terrible leader at one point(though everyone still treats him as the most important person).
"Okay okay this music is a bit weird but she looks mostly fine and he looks mostly fine and he looks mostly fine and
what the fuck"
The thing that annoys me the most is when fandoms erase the negative traits of characters out to make them all "nice" and "good". It's the foibles and shitty traits that make me like the characters! I mean, yes I like a "purely good" character now and then, but I like variety, you know. But then I also like the characters that go against the PC, and those get slaughtered by fandoms usually. And.... it's also best not to look at some of the LIs I picked in the BioWare games. I'm apparently attracted to characters who will screw me over
Solas (DAI), Anders (DA2), Quinn (SWTOR), Reyes (MEA), I mean at least Alistair in DA isn't that bad? Though I did die in that game at the end ...
I don't know what you mean, I always go shopping in Primark's novelty discount lingerie section for my heavy armour needs :D
The Dunkey video hits on one of the things that bothered me about XC2 the more I learned of its premise, which is that I really really just find the "magical women who are also weapons/spirits of objects and are bonded to serve the male protagonist" trope to be sketch as hell
C'mon Tharja is clearly a very classy lady. She'd totally go to M&S lol
Seriously though, wish this forum had a like comment for this comment :)
:-) While I freely admit that I've previously said that 'my wife/gf/SO said...' comments don't carry much weight in discussion, I thought this was important enough to ask my wife. She agrees with you and suggests that a mage like Tharja would definitely prefer the M&S hosiery due to use of Fire magic probably disintegrating the crappy Primark stuff in seconds. I suggested that perhaps she was a Victoria's Secret kinda gal but no, apparently Tharja looks like someone smart enough to tell her beloved it was from a lingerie shop but secretly buy something comfortable, clingy and half the price. Apparently. I have a lot to think about.
It's the most transparent male power fantasy self insertion possible and that's saying something when you consider that this is the gaming industry.
On the subject of Fire Emblem Heroes.
If that game somehow manages to become the place all the fanservice goes, and the main games could get more character designs like FE5/9/10, then I would be okay with it.
FEH is a lot of nonsense that isn't trying to be taken seriously to begin with, seems like the right place for it if it also meant it would stay out of the main games.
Will it happen. Probably not. But it's hard to guess what FEH's success could mean for the series, we'll just have to wait to see the Switch game.
If that game somehow manages to become the place all the fanservice goes, and the main games could get more character designs like FE5/9/10, then I would be okay with it.
FEH is a lot of nonsense that isn't trying to be taken seriously to begin with, seems like the right place for it if it also meant it would stay out of the main games.
Will it happen. Probably not. But it's hard to guess what FEH's success could mean for the series, we'll just have to wait to see the Switch game.
On one hand it could work just putting all the fan service in heroes. But they still may want to add some in the main game. I don't imagine they want to rely on just Tharja and Camilla. I could them trying to add "new blood" for figures and stuff.
I do think the next game will probably have less fanservice then Fates. Just a gut feeling but I think it will be around Awakenings level at worst.
I suppose at least with all the harem fantasy stuff in some JRPGs the women are still actually people (despite their bizarre group dynamic). The whole reducing much of the female cast to borderline Pokemon feels a bit weird to me. Perhaps because, on giving the artists free reign to design blades, most went for young women, giving it a severe imbalance in terms of what the blades look like.
On a lighter note, maybe that's because I tend to treat such units really badly in SMT. 'Yeah, we get along, let's travel together, *merge/merge/sacrifice to slightly better demon*.
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But that's the thing: Rex is kinda the opposite. Later in the story,
it's pretty much put to him that he's a bit useless because he's always thinking about himself first, and always relying on Pyra for strength rather than developing any of his own.
There's a definite theme of "stop relying on other people to give you strength/purpose" running beneath the plot.
It definitely plays into this weird "have your cake and eat it too" thing this game has in general. Also,
How far are you in Chapter Seven anyways?
I feel it's time for a new artist, so it might depend somewhat on who they get if so.
Meant in terms of how it's a dude quite literally collecting women as weapons.
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