Of course there is space for both. In a total fantasy game, like Nier Automata, or Bayonetta, or Stellar Blade, crafting an impossible beauty can just be part of the tone, or story craft. In Nier, the female androids are beautiful and the male are children because the male dominated society that invented them designed them that way, beautiful women and non threatening men, interesting commentary on today’s society for a game set thousands of years from now.
But in a game going for a gritty realism, or a grounded type of experience, like the Last of Us, or Horizon Zero Dawn, realistic looking characters with faces molded by lived experience is what will make the game immersive, and sell the experience to players. Abby looks like a woman driven by revenge, spending her days in the weight room and pounding back ration burritos in preparation.
These folks don’t seem to get that, they want every game to star 2B, and they have no idea what 2B’s design is saying about humanity. Art is lost to them.
Exactly! I’ll always come back to the first time I saw this argument with gamers losing their shit over Ellie in borderlands. Like in a game where every character is a cartoonish exaggeration of hillbillies and other rural poor folks they had a problem with a fat horny lady.
These people don’t want art to speak to them, they want it to entertain them and flatter them while lacking any message or themes. And they feel threatened by the reminder that women exist even when we aren’t pretty and available
Yeah seriously. Even if your goal is peak beauty,(I’ll try anything once) and you think there’s only one static eternal standard that matters(insane) part of how you achieve that is contrast with ugliness, both static and dynamic.
I’ll say this referencing a German, so these people can understand. To paraphrase hegel: ‘everything exists in a context, it cannot exist without context, and if it could, that would basically be god. Which doesn’t look like a hot lady, because ‘looking’ like things is the product of reflected light or touch and this hypothetical thing does not have context’
Well yeah it’s how these people wind up with ratcheting expectations. Hot as fuck in rural nowhere is fine in a major city and probably ugly in LA. And if most of the women you see are models who’ve been airbrushed and are in the most male gazey presentations suddenly a gorgeous woman who looks somewhat realistic becomes extremely ugly in your eyes. It’s a critical deficiency of grass touching.
Eve just looks…unnatural. She is, obviously, since she’s basically a full-body cyborg, but she really hits the uncanny valley for me.
People just don’t look like that. Stellar Blade probably could’ve benefitted from a more stylized art style, instead of one that can’t decide whether or not it wants to be realistic.
Also it would be artistically strange to make Aloy conventionally beautiful in 21st century supermodel standards. The game is heavily about the divine feminine and Aloy is living off the land. She should have a bit of a belly, no cosmetics, functional hairstyling, and muscles.
I’d take a hundred Aloys over Eve. Aloy is more natural to me, I’ve seen far less women that look like eve than I have women who look like Aloy.
I think there’s definitely space for both in the industry
absolutely hate the schmucks that want everyone to be a NIKKE: Goddess of Victory character tho
Of course there is space for both. In a total fantasy game, like Nier Automata, or Bayonetta, or Stellar Blade, crafting an impossible beauty can just be part of the tone, or story craft. In Nier, the female androids are beautiful and the male are children because the male dominated society that invented them designed them that way, beautiful women and non threatening men, interesting commentary on today’s society for a game set thousands of years from now.
But in a game going for a gritty realism, or a grounded type of experience, like the Last of Us, or Horizon Zero Dawn, realistic looking characters with faces molded by lived experience is what will make the game immersive, and sell the experience to players. Abby looks like a woman driven by revenge, spending her days in the weight room and pounding back ration burritos in preparation.
These folks don’t seem to get that, they want every game to star 2B, and they have no idea what 2B’s design is saying about humanity. Art is lost to them.
Exactly! I’ll always come back to the first time I saw this argument with gamers losing their shit over Ellie in borderlands. Like in a game where every character is a cartoonish exaggeration of hillbillies and other rural poor folks they had a problem with a fat horny lady.
These people don’t want art to speak to them, they want it to entertain them and flatter them while lacking any message or themes. And they feel threatened by the reminder that women exist even when we aren’t pretty and available
Yeah seriously. Even if your goal is peak beauty,(I’ll try anything once) and you think there’s only one static eternal standard that matters(insane) part of how you achieve that is contrast with ugliness, both static and dynamic.
I’ll say this referencing a German, so these people can understand. To paraphrase hegel: ‘everything exists in a context, it cannot exist without context, and if it could, that would basically be god. Which doesn’t look like a hot lady, because ‘looking’ like things is the product of reflected light or touch and this hypothetical thing does not have context’
Well yeah it’s how these people wind up with ratcheting expectations. Hot as fuck in rural nowhere is fine in a major city and probably ugly in LA. And if most of the women you see are models who’ve been airbrushed and are in the most male gazey presentations suddenly a gorgeous woman who looks somewhat realistic becomes extremely ugly in your eyes. It’s a critical deficiency of grass touching.
All true and worth saying, but its also a misunderstanding of how beauty and meaning are constructed.
Eve just looks…unnatural. She is, obviously, since she’s basically a full-body cyborg, but she really hits the uncanny valley for me.
People just don’t look like that. Stellar Blade probably could’ve benefitted from a more stylized art style, instead of one that can’t decide whether or not it wants to be realistic.
She looks like a character from dead or alive beach volleyball, so of course they approve.
No, those look like an exaggeration of a human and are pleasant to the eye. Especially Kasumi, loooove her.
Eve looks like a haunted mannequin trying and failing to emulate beauty so I’ll be less scared of her, and it’s backfiring horribly.
Never heard of Stellar Blade till this post, that’s when I looked it up and my gut reaction was basically “No… just… no”
It takes a lot to uncanny valley me…
Also it would be artistically strange to make Aloy conventionally beautiful in 21st century supermodel standards. The game is heavily about the divine feminine and Aloy is living off the land. She should have a bit of a belly, no cosmetics, functional hairstyling, and muscles.