257 réponses à ce sujet

[Terodil]

I still think 'masculine' is a misnomer, tryping to group together something that cannot really be grouped.

 

<obligatory preface> THESE ARE MY SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS I AM NOT CLAIMING TO BE THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS PLEASE DON'T KILL ME ALSO I'M TALKING PURELY ABOUT COSMETICS I HAVE SAID NUMEROUS TIMES THAT PERSONALITIES ARE VERY IMPORTANT SIGH HAVE I FORGOTTEN ANYTHING

 

I think the problem stems from some people, me included, simply being disappointed in the lack of perceived beauty among the companions that we get. Trying to lump it all together is probably doing everybody a disservice, as the debate so far has shown. For me:

 

* Cassandra looked awesome in DA2. Make her age a little (--> scar, complexion), fine. But I think they buchered her facial bone structure. To me, her jaw looks somewhat dislodged (?). At the very least, every time I see her, she seems a bit 'off'

 

* Sera has an awesome personality. But her haircut is seriously effed up, I get the whole idea of 'underdog rebel fun girl', but even so I'd think they could have given her a better hairdo. Hell, Jack from ME had it better than her. And don't let me get started on her clown outfit, seriously, it looks as if BW took a leaf out of Blizzard's book when they designed caster gear back in TBC

 

* Vivienne is awesome. Really. I love her all around, BUT WHY OH WHY did you make her unromanceable. =(

 

* Josephine... if you wanted to give 'average' a shape and form, it would be her. She's pretty-ish, she's nice-ish, clever-ish, ..., whatever-ish, but none of them important enough to warrant a romance

 

* Harding... awesome. I really like her too. But again: WHY OH WHY did you make her unromanceable.

 

* Leliana... same thing as with Ashley in ME3: She just makes me go 'WTF' because she looks so different from previous instalments. Not at all unattractive, but she seems haggard, broken... probably a conscious design decision by BW, I get (and actually applaud) that, but that in itself removes her from the romantic pool because I at least wouldn't want to take advantage of a girl in Leliana's state. I want to hug her more than anything, and tell her it's going to be okay, if I wasn't so afraid that she'd stick a dagger in me because I still think all this talk about the maker is hogwash

 

It's just as if BW had decided it was an awesome idea to dangle good female LIs in your face and then to pull them away, going neener-neener, oh you sexist pig ARE SO SUPERFICIAL GET A LIFE. (see Gaider's god-awful quote earlier in the thread)

[Semipro]

I tend to agree that most of the stock non-essential NPC females are horrifying. And since there is no evidence that random facegen morphs are being generated for these stock non-essential NPCs it means some unpaid intern was basically tasked with using their internal design systems to whip up some extremely generic and forgettable faces so people wouldn't really pay too much attention to the fact that more or less all the NPC's look like the same small handful of people.

 

But.,..they failed because they obviously weren't taking their internship seriously, so you have blush opacity layers cranked to 100% and lip color that is starkly dark in comparison to the skintones in use, or too light in the cases of the few dark skinned NPCs.

 

We can debate "personal aesthetic choice" here all we like, but its dreadfully obvious that somewhere in this design flow, someone consciously decided there was no way they could artistically present the grandiose and extravagant obsession with beauty that has always been portrayed as the Empire of Orlais...so instead of simply unattractive nobles resorting to cosmetics and masks to keep up appearances in Orleasian society, the art design has simply opted for presenting almost all Orleasians in Orlais, at least, as wearing huge, face obscuring clothing, hats and masks....and this is supposed to represent the vision of what is fashionable in Orlais. And this decision has carried over to the entire game....though I will concur that what each person finds is attractive is totally subjective, most of what is on display in DA:I as far as non-player character design tends to be so extremely subjective as to not have any consensus whatsoever...and it all stems from this realization that the art design talent on hand could not meet the demands of visually reproducing what we believed Orlais to be.

 

I guess its been 14 years or so since Leliana was gushing about low cut bodices and shoes, but it does seem a rather extreme shift towards a puritanical victorian circus of fashion now.

 

Seriously Val Royeux felt less like a city and more like I'd walked onto a huge backlot Cirque Du Soleil set....I was not impressed by Val Royeux....and most of the art design in this game, that is environmental at least...has impressed me quite a bit.

[Gotholhorakh]

Allan Schumacher even stated that if there was one demographic he would be happy to short change it would be straight males, hence we end up with a bunch of what Bioware consider "real" women.

 

Personally I just want a bunch of Lara Croft types running around but not going to happen. Game of Thrones manages to have a bunch of hot, intelligent, awesome women so I'm not sure why Bioware couldn't follow suit and create hotties.

 

Is that really true? Respectfully I find it very difficult to believe.

 

If you can show us a BioWare employee singling out a group specifically by sex, race and sexuality and saying their needs are less important than their other customers, that will be a shock to us all, no doubt.

 

BioWare does not do (as far as I'm aware) racism, or sexism, or sexuality based discrimination towards their customer-base, if anything doing the opposite seems like something of a mission statement.

[Renn]

Personally, I think all companions/advisors have been rendered beautifully.  Their faces are interesting and realistic, while remaining, in my opinion very attractive.

 

I'm quite grateful that bioware didn't create a world populated by nothing but playboy bunnies in skimpy clothing and hulking muscle men... because that's a world I'd become bored with very quickly.

 

Carry on.

[ashwind]

I understand that it's unrealistic to have every female character look like a supermodel, but why do ALL have to be ugly. Above all, why are the ones that used be pretty now ugly? Leliana used to be good looking, now she's all emaciated and icky. Morrigan went from being beautiful (allowing for graphics) to looking like an aged crack ****** (just look: http://www.dragonage...humans/morrigan). And the romance options are ugly enough to make one asexual for life.

 

It has been 10 years since the blight. They got old.

 

I am sure that in Dragon Age 5 or 6, Morrigan if still alive would look like Flameth

[Semipro]

Personally, I think all companions/advisors have been rendered beautifully.  Their faces are interesting and realistic, while remaining, in my opinion very attractive.

 

I'm quite grateful that bioware didn't create a world populated by nothing but playboy bunnies in skimpy clothing and hulking muscle men... because that's a world I'd become bored with very quickly.

 

Carry on.

 

In all fairness that has everything to do with cutscene lighting and post processing effects and not so much the facial design or even the assets in use. Granted the skin actually looks like skin now, but the neck seams are still brutally real on any outfit that doesn't cover someone from ankle to throat.

 

And the hair situation is a bloody disaster. I'd love to see a dev panel technically justify their decision on how to handle hair in DA:I....cause its easily the most amateur asset in the entire game.

 

I think the relevant NPC's as far as your companions and advisors go turned out alright within the limitations of the skeletal rig they're using, none of them are ugly really....well Blackwall's no prize but hes not going to cry about not being pretty either. I think Cullen has cleaned up rather nicely but I also think its decidedly unfair that hes the only man in Theda's thats allowed to have nice hair. But hes not really my type. None of the males really do anything for me, and the females are...eh. Sera is cute but shes cute in that crazy kind of way that gets tiresome after a few days/weeks. Cassandra is so driven by faith its unnerving and...yeah shes just wound up tight, Josephine actually comes off as more naturally fun and light hearted, though very competent at what she does and seems the best balance of all the female options but...also never leaves the office, shes kind of the Samantha Traynor of DA:I, nice to play with at home but useless to develop a relationship with anywhere else.

 

Oh wait this is the ugly thread, not the romance thread, so there went my ADHD again...sorry about that.

[Hair Serious Business]

All in all...ignoring fact that in here pretty much everyone just complains is about...females not being hentai characters...bad hairstyles...no romances...personality...and everyone almost ignoring fact that all this has nothing to do with someone's face...this is all once again beating a dead horse!

 

---THE END---

[Sparky862]

welcome to dragon age. The devs are prob into males. Thats why they made ugly women, which is a dissapointment as i like playing female characters

[massive_effect]

Can you tell me what, exactly, it is about their faces that makes them look masculine to you? I mean, I can get Cassandra to a certain extent, she does have a fairly square jaw, but the others? I'm genuinely curious, as I can't see it at all.

 

The skin looks thick (women have thinner skin), and something about the proportions of their faces look boyish, rather than feminine. Bioware has always focused on men first (for good reasons), but this often has a negative effect on the female designs.

[Kantr]

Sure Cassandra has a square face and stern expression, she looks better when she smiles though. The rest of the women look like actual people. Not some idealised form of beauty

[massive_effect]

Sure Cassandra has a square face and stern expression, she looks better when she smiles though. The rest of the women look like actual people. Not some idealised form of beauty

 

Often realism leads to uncanny valley. Wax statues that look identical to the real person, are always uncanny. The artist needs to adjust to the medium he is using to soften the hard edges of realism.

[Kantr]

Well they don't fall into the uncanny valley at all.

[Chaos17]

I understand that it's unrealistic to have every female character look like a supermodel, but why do ALL have to be ugly. Above all, why are the ones that used be pretty now ugly? Leliana used to be good looking, now she's all emaciated and icky. Morrigan went from being beautiful (allowing for graphics) to looking like an aged crack ****** (just look: http://www.dragonage...humans/morrigan). And the romance options are ugly enough to make one asexual for life.

Sera is really ugly, imo.

[MeganMugin]

The point being, not everyone finds them ugly. More people have gone on about how attractive they are than not. They are not to your taste, that is fine. Don't romance any of them. No one is forcing you to settle for "ugly woman" because you are not being forced into romancing them. You do have a choice in the matter.

 

I don't care about this issue at all but there is hypocrisy here. If there were less romance choices for female players than there are for men then there'd be complaints and controversy. There have been lots of complaints about there not being much choice for women in gaming and what we've seen are demands for more choices for women at the expense of men rather than making things totally equal. This isn't solving the problem, it feels like revenge. It feels like the issue wasn't a matter of equality, it was a matter of jealousy. Like certain people wanted to be in the position of power and wanted to abuse it.

When men developed games they didn't go out of their way to ostracize or isolate anyone, they just made games that they wanted to make and left out certain perspectives and choices as a consequence then the free market took over and men bought more games etc.

Certain people seem to want to "let them see what it feels like" when it comes to men like they're punishing them. The current generations of men haven't done anything to us yet we treat them like they're oppressors. They feel frustrated and have become hypersensitive. If women were showing the amount of anger men are online we'd be asking what's causing it. When men are doing it we call them entitled. People interested in equality of outcome only care when one side is underrepresented and when their side starts to take over they don't see a problem.

Turning the issue inside out doesn't solve it. I'm a few hours into DA:I and most of the stupid characters have been men, all the women seem to be perfect as usual. This is insulting to us and men. No wonder men bring up silly issues like the one in this thread, there's so much unfairness and misrepresentation that everything will set them off. Most "anti-woman" sentiment is passive, it isn't purposeful. Most anti-man sentiment feels very heavy handed in pretty much all media. There's hypocrisy everywhere that isn't being addressed.

 

Again I don't care about the issue of the women in this game, art is art. It's free expression. But just don't complain and try to get games, movies and every other type of media banned or shamed when it appeals just to men.

 

I've gone on a massive tangent here. I just hope that when a woman doesn't have choice or when there are games that appeal only to men that you say "don't play them then, you do have a choice" to them. That's how things should operate but people are trying to stop that.

[Razir-Samus]

i like how cassandra looks, and leliana, and vivienne(?)... sera looks awkward, speaks awkward... she's just plain awkward

[Deepsetsoul]

This thread is hilarious. Apparently liking thin, long haired white women makes you a biggot now.

 

The only male romance options are a butch lesbian looking woman (dont kid yourself. Lets be realistic here) and a non companion indian woman.

The only somewhat girly looking female IN THE GAME (Sera) still has a boycut, still dresses like a man, and is only available as a lesbian love interest.

 

In the meantime, "Heterosexual women" get Cullen who is basically every male model in existence, and an older white gentleman.

Homosexual women get Sera, and homosexual men get Dorian, the french male underwear model.

So basically if a straight person likes glamorously feminine white women (you know, the ones that littler the cover of magazines due to their popularity) they are no lifer ugly virgins who have never seen a real woman.

 

HOWEVER, all homosexuals/Bisexuals can dream of having pixel sex with Darien Grey and Natalie Portman.

 

This is the kind of double standards we face.

 

BTW, I'm not a virgin, I have a daughter. Yes I'm currently single but fortunately for me, I'm not so insecure that I care what anyone else thinks of my taste, or of my ability to find a mate.

 

I'm more just appauled that heterosexual men are now bigots simply for liking CONVENTIONALLY beautiful women.

 

Sorry ladies, I dont find Cassandra sexy. She looks like a man. If you feel the need to make a sociological statement about how men are biggots for liking what we like, do it somewhere other than video games.

[Ryzaki]

Having a preference is fine.

 

Saying someone's ugly and looks like a man is exactly where you get the eyerolling and the mocking.

 

If these threads were instead versed as "Could we get more traditionally feminine companions in future DAI games?" I guarantee the mocking would at least halve. But as it is these threads come off as "How dare this game not cater to what I find attractive! These characters are ugly and how dare BW present them as LIs no matter who might like them!" and honestly that is just...ugh.

[MiyoKit]

I personally love the woman in this game. Opinions and all that. I didn't like any of the romances for females in DA:2, I didn't go to the forum and demand a man be crafted to my exacting specifications. Just because you want a certain something, doesn't mean 'all the women are ugly'.

[SardaukarElite]

This thread is hilarious. Apparently liking thin, long haired white women makes you a biggot now.

 

No, liking fair slender women with long hair is fine, it's the rest of your post that makes you a bigot.

 

If these threads ever just left it at 'these romances don't appeal to me, here is an example of what would' it would be so much easier.

[R0vena]

I personally don't find any of the males in DAI that attractive, they are OK-ish at best, in my opinion, which is fine, it is my taste - never thought Alistair or Anders where that good-looking either. Fenris was the only one in DA universe who ever looked as a knockout to me. That didn't prevent me to enjoy other romances at all. 

I do think Cassandra is gorgeous, Josephine is fine, and Sera is... a... Sera.)

But than again, I am a female, I might look at looks and romances differently.

[Sidney]

Cass's main problem is the hair. Josephine...well the hair is an issue as well but oddly her tarot card looks a lot better than the actual character does.

[Terodil]

Having a preference is fine.

 

Saying someone's ugly and looks like a man is exactly where you get the eyerolling and the mocking.

 

And once again I'm baffled. Absolutely baffled. And this post actually got 'liked'.

 

Having a preference (= opinion) is fine, but voicing it isn't, and therefore deserves "eyerolling and mocking"?

 

Or are we, once again, debating whether 'ugly' is an absolute/objective term or a relative/subjective one? I really don't get how ANYBODY could construe any kind of value statement as 'objective'. It's utter nonsense, and, like other straw-men repeatedly voiced in here ("I'm glad not all women are photo models"), borders on the demagogic.

 

So this statement is either dumb (= doesn't understand what an opinion is) or malicious (= doesn't want others to voice differing opinions). Neither is particularly charming.

[Darkfyre]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder my friend. ♥

to a certain extent. but the op is right, the women in this game are all pretty ugly as far as their faces go. i'd say leliana is the only one that is alright.

[Ryzaki]

And once again I'm baffled. Absolutely baffled. And this post actually got 'liked'.

 

Having a preference (= opinion) is fine, but voicing it isn't, and therefore deserves "eyerolling and mocking"?

 

Or are we, once again, debating whether 'ugly' is an absolute/objective term or a relative/subjective one? I really don't get how ANYBODY could construe any kind of value statement as 'objective'. It's utter nonsense, and, like other straw-men repeatedly voiced in here ("I'm glad not all women are photo models"), border on the demagogic.

 

So this statement is either dumb (= doesn't understand what an opinion is) or malicious (= doesn't want others to voice differing opinions). Neither is particularly charming.

 

you really don't see the difference in saying "I would prefer Y." and "Eww Y is ugly why didn't I get X?" really?

 

Really?

 

This is hard for you to comprehend? You can have any opinion you like but if you phrase it in certain ways hell yeah you're gonna get mocked.

 

I don't like really buff dudes. I'm not gonna call them muscle bound uglies. I'll simply say heavily muscular guys aren't my preference.

 

One is insulting to the party, the other isn't. If you really can't tell the difference then...

[Terodil]

you really don't see the difference in saying "I would prefer Y." and "Eww Y is ugly why didn't I get X?" really?

 

[...]

 

I don't like really buff dudes. I'm not gonna call them muscle bound uglies. I'll simply say heavily muscular guys aren't my preference.

 

One is insulting to the party, the other isn't. If you really can't tell the difference then...

 

There is absolutely ZERO difference. If you say 'He's a pea-for-brains rambo' it's directly equivalent to 'I personally dislike him a bit because some might consider him slightly intellectually challenged, but I TOTALLY admire him for his impressive muscular build.' They are both perfectly acceptable value statements, albeit with a massively different word count.

 

Your argument about insults only holds water if we are talking about real people with emotions. We are not -- these are NPCs. I doubt they could care less about what we think of their artwork and if we formulate our criticism in a whitewashed, PC-compliant, NLP-enabled way.

 

Yet again, some people seem to take criticism directed at the artistic design of NPCs as direct criticism of themselves. Which they/you really shouldn't.