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[Bugsie]

[ruminates]Notices a suspect influx of 'straight female gamers' with small posting history telling us not to get worked up by a bunch of pixels.

 

Perhaps I've been too long on this forum but I can't help but feel cynical about the motivation of certain people existing to rile people up and present faux outrage when things turn on them. Or they're the alts of others too cowardly to post under their real forum names.

 

[/ruminates]

 

Back on topic, how about that Iron Bull? Those pixels are awesome.

[Ynqve]

FYI, I'm a real person, so don't call me names. You don't know the impact that can have. Iron Bull *isn't real* and has no emotions.

 

Would you PLEASE listen to yourself for a moment. The way that you act right now is not helping you. Your rant about the Iron Bull may not affect the Bull himself, but his fans are real and the artists that designed him are real. If you think the fans are silly for taking offense, that's one thing. But there are people who have put many hours into creating the Bull, and please respect that.

 

Like I said, I have no problem with the fact that you find him ugly, it's the way that you voice your opinion that rubs me the wrong way. I criticized your comment, not you personally. 

[Bugsie]

Real forum names?

Well known posters.  Not real names.

 

Many have alts.

[Ynqve]

I don't believe you.

 

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

 

We're done here.  

[Stelae]

It would be awesome if the lot of you could get back on topic before the thread is locked.  Or at least take your peeing contest to PM so the rest of us don't have to read it. 

 

The purpose of this thread is to evaluate the characters of this game for their relative gorgeousness, so telling people not to get upset because it's only pixels is a bit silly.  We are, I'm pretty sure, aware that we are not discussing persons living or dead.  But saying it doesn't matter is like going to a restaurant review page and saying the reviews don't matter because it's only a meal.

 

Attraction and attractiveness are complex and alchemical things.  One person's Sex-On-Toast is another's I'd-Starve-First (Varric -- I'm in the former group, many are in the latter).  And someone can be gorgeous and ghastly at the same time once you get to know them.  (Bloody Anders--again, YMMV).  At the moment, we have a few scant screenshots and incidental footage from the demos, and a bunch of speculation.  How do the characters move?  How do they sound?  What's their idea of a fun night out? 

 

I'd argue that anyone who called Dorian or the Iron Bull average was out of their ever-loving mind. But then, I find Cullen kind of bland, and I know that's not the opinion of ... well, many. 

[Bugsie]

I actually share your opinion on Cullen, Vian.  But I'll wait till I play the game and he might be a perfectly good character in the game, maybe even romancable by a Bugquisitor.

 

Allan had a thread on overused tropes (currently closed) and one of the things I thought about was that if we press too much on developers not to use supposedly overused tropes then we might step into the territory of making characters that are so bland, that no one will like them.  I've seen a lot of 'tropes are inherently bad' kind of comments of late and I would have to disagree with that assessment.  The thing I like about most of the DA:I cast presented and independent of their 'looks' (because that really doesn't bother me people can like or dislike for whatever they want)  is that their character and personality sound really interesting and diverse (and not overused at all).

[Allan Schumacher]

I'll agree that men in general are more frequently varied in their physical looks, although I've had to read and endure a non-trivial amount of commentary about how ugly our women are too.  So it's a bit tricky to reconcile.

 

As an advocate for pushing away from conventional depictions of beauty, though, it seems more to me that we need to vary the women (if its determined that their range is too narrow) than to tighten up the men.

 

How do we reconcile this?

[Nocte ad Mortem]

Many of the tropes people listed were like "promiscuous bisexuals", "promiscuous abuse survivors", and "always making the nice guy straight". I think a lot of them were important points about representation and could be really useful. There actually weren't that many that I think would lead to characters coming out bland.  

[Bugsie]

Many of the tropes people listed were like "promiscuous bisexuals", "promiscuous abuse survivors", and "always making the nice guy straight". I think a lot of them were important points about representation and could be really useful. There actually weren't that many that I think would lead to characters coming out bland.  

True, but from memory (maybe not here I'll have to check) 'defrosting the ice queen' was one, personally I like this one because it made my mShep romance with Miranda bearable (If Miranda had been available for fShep romance I don't think that trope would work though because I would likely play that Shep as an 'ice queen' too!)

[Nocte ad Mortem]

I'll agree that men in general are more frequently varied in their physical looks, although I've had to read and endure a non-trivial amount of commentary about how ugly our women are too.  So it's a bit tricky to reconcile.

 

As an advocate for pushing away from conventional depictions of beauty, though, it seems more to me that we need to vary the women (if its determined that their range is too narrow) than to tighten up the men.

 

How do we reconcile this?

There are two points that especially stand out to me;

 

1.) Make more females that are of other races than human, but not the stereotypical "pretty" races only. (Elven, Asari)

2.) Don't humanize them and scale them down to an extreme compared to the men when you do so. 

 

In this game, the Qunari and Dwarven companions are male, the two races that don't inherently lend themselves to conventionally accepted beauty standards. Almost all the women are fairly younger humans, with the exception of Sera, who is extremely human-like and belongs to the one race that's especially designed to be thin and pretty. Make Qunari women and don't make an effort to feminize them. Make a big muscular Qunari woman with battle scars, like IB. Make a dwarf woman as a real companion who is more like Branka than Dagna. Or, even if it's still just human women, make a woman who is like Blackwall or Loghain, obviously up there in age and weathered from it. Basically, sometimes take the concepts that lean outside conventional beauty standards and make them a woman, but don't still make an effort to make them look thinly built, pretty and well under 40. 

[Allan Schumacher]

1.) Make more females that are of other races than human, but not the stereotypical "pretty" races only. (Elven, Asari)

2.) Don't humanize them and scale them down to an extreme compared to the men when you do so.

 

Excellent points.  Although I was actually referring to reconciling the idea of "make the men prettier like the women" when I'm of the position "we should be more willing to make the women less pretty!"

 

But yeah, I think there's more we can do here, for sure.

[Bugsie]

I really like the depiction of older women in DA games even if they were conventionally pretty at times (I thought Wynne for example was a beautiful older looking woman) Flemeth in DA:O looked more true to what an older woman would look like and I liked that, also a lot of NPC were older, lined faces - although the women still had the same body shapes.

 

I'd like to see a battle scared female qunari - or a Branca over a Dagna kind of character too.  The femturians I thought were awesome and I wanted to see more female krogan (maybe next Mass effect?)

[DaySeeker]

How bad is beautiful? There are complaints about the appearance of every character- mostly because they are going to be romanced.  How bad is beautiful though?  we like looking at pretty people, this does not mean everyone has to be the same beautiful, but with design restrictions we can't do all kinds of body types, but making companions attractive, of different races and cultures great.  Add characters of different ages to be important noncompanion characers.  Make the romancible companions physically attractive (and honestly, I think the women all are).  

[RevilFox]

Also, how about some females who are built more like men? Those exist irl. Flat chests, tall, muscular, broad shoulders. There are ladies out there of all shapes and sizes.

 

Like Aveline? 

[Allan Schumacher]

There should always be a range between conventionally attractive (Cullen) and unconventionally attractive (Iron Bull) to satisfy most people's interests. I go for the happy medium, like say Solas. He's not conventionally attractive like Cullen and nowhere near as unsightly as Iron Bull. I'd put him in the middle. Then scatter Dorian and Varric in that range somewhere.

The women should have a range like that too. Conventionally pretty. Happy medium. Ugly.

Since beauty is subjective, this covers a range of tastes, and makes characters less watered down.

 

Is it safe to say, then, that the issue isn't so much that you're unhappy with the selection of men that women have, but rather that compared to the selection of women available it's unbalanced?  Your posts beforehand read more like the former than the latter, to me, so I need to clarify.