1517 réponses à ce sujet

[Lady Artifice]

I blame comic books for all the things I dislike about video game aesthetics. Chain mail bikinis? Battle leotards and high heels? Over-sized weapons and armor on male characters? All that started with comic books.

 

I understand why they've had a large influence on the video game industry, even though I don't care for it. Given their popularity with geekdom in general it is probable that many video game developers are/were fans. 

 

My love for comic books is definitely part of why that kind of thing has never bothered me that much. Suspension of disbelief is a necessary part of the enjoying the medium.

 

But lately, with how frequently I end up searching through sci-fi artwork, I do sometimes end up feeling befuddled by how rarely I find depictions of women in armor where the armor looks like it could actually offer any protection.

[Laughing_Man]

My love for comic books is definitely part of why that kind of thing has never bothered me that much. Suspension of disbelief is a necessary part of the enjoying the medium.

 

But lately, with how frequently I end up searching through sci-fi artwork, I do sometimes end up feeling befuddled by how rarely I find depictions of women in armor where the armor looks like it could actually offer any protection.

 

Well yeah, with females usually the armor is exponentially stronger the less it covers...

 

...Would you like to know more?

 

And it's not exclusive to females either, I mean, the fact that the Qunari were changed into not using armor had nothing to do with

showing their muscular torsos for the benefit of straight female and gay male players, right?...

[yolobastien6412]

I blame comic books for all the things I dislike about video game aesthetics. Chain mail bikinis? Battle leotards and high heels? Over-sized weapons and armor on male characters? All that started with comic books.

 

/cut

You should read European comics such as Belgian and French ones. The style is quite different to American and Japanese comics, although now they are sort of converging.

[FKA_Servo]

My love for comic books is definitely part of why that kind of thing has never bothered me that much. Suspension of disbelief is a necessary part of the enjoying the medium.

 

But lately, with how frequently I end up searching through sci-fi artwork, I do sometimes end up feeling befuddled by how rarely I find depictions of women in armor where the armor looks like it could actually offer any protection.

 

Seconded - just as long as ME just keeps on keeping on, I think we have nothing to worry about.

 

Spoiler

 

ME2 and ME3 still have the best sci-fi armor I've ever seen.

[SardaukarElite]

And it's not exclusive to females either, I mean, the fact that the Qunari were changed into not using armor had nothing to do with

showing their muscular torsos for the benefit of straight female and gay male players, right?...

 

There's a world of difference between not wearing armor and wearing ridiculous fantasy armor. 

 

DA2's qunari were for the most part shipwrecked skirmishers who wore pants and carried javelins. There were also guys with metal breastplates and funny helmets like the ones in Ladyhawke. It's not quite the same as a woman whose supposed to wearing armor yet looks more like she's in fantasy themed lingerie.

 

Bull is ridiculous, but at least doesn't look like he's falling out of his clothes.  

 

I draw this distinction because I think that having muscled lady qunari javelineers wearing pants and fantasy sports bras would have been kind of cool as well*. Healthy people being athletic tends to be kind of attractive, and there's a lot of room for that in an adventure story. 

 

*Hypothetically ignoring the women don't fight under the Qun thing.  

[Han Shot First]

Well yeah, with females usually the armor is exponentially stronger the less it covers...

 

...Would you like to know more?

 

And it's not exclusive to females either, I mean, the fact that the Qunari were changed into not using armor had nothing to do with

showing their muscular torsos for the benefit of straight female and gay male players, right?...

 

The redesign of the Qunari bugs me in how much DA's aesthetics clashes with how the species is described in the game. I could roll with the shirtless Oxmen if the Qunari were supposed to be Thedas' uncouth barbarians, but they're not. The setting has the Qunari as the most technologically advanced species. Given the species' description, shouldn't they be running around in something like Gothic plate instead? How is it that a nation that apparently can't find a decent armorer, managed to fight Tevinter and Orlais to a standstill? 

 

Back to Mass Effect...

 

 

I wish something similar to that had been used for Benezia's character design in ME1. I think it would have been a better fit for her backstory as some sort of priestess / spiritual leader, than whatever she was wearing in ME1.

[Lady Artifice]

I'm not a typically an elaborate headdress enthusiast, but that is extremely pretty. I love the little drapey things and the silver filigree.

[Laughing_Man]

There's a world of difference between not wearing armor and wearing ridiculous fantasy armor. 

...

 

Finding explanations and excuses is never impossible, but it's still a contrivance.

 

Besides, as far as I understand, the change in style was not limited to DA2.

 

Going to battle without wearing any protection is just... dumb, even if you are supposed to have tough skin.

A battle in the DA universe is not a stroll on the beach, there are arrows, bolts, various medieval implements of sharp pointiness, not to mention

spells and alchemical concoctions that can burn or dissolve... No matter how fast you think you are, something is going to hit you eventually.

 

And considering that some of those implements of destruction can penetrate even actual armor made of the strongest materials, having "tough skin"

isn't going to be sufficient.

 

As was pointed out before, that's comic book "logic", where battles are clean, and shots miss unless the plot requires otherwise, etc.

 

With their level of technology it makes even less sense.

They could have possibly developed lighter versions of plate armor to be able to move quicker, if that's something central to their fighting style.

 

 

Edit: I don't want to drag this further off topic, it was only a side-note anyway, so let's focus any further discussion on Mass Effect armors rather than DA.

[Laughing_Man]

I'm not a typically an elaborate headdress enthusiast, but that is extremely pretty. I love the little drapey things and the silver filigree.

 

Yes, it's... almost something I would expect to see of a fantasy depiction of a priestess, it is certainly better than what Benezia had, but maybe something more... modern would have been even more appropriate.

 

I suspect that Benezia's headdress was part of the original design theme that had something of a fantasy feel to it, like the Saren design that made him look vaguely like a staff wielding sorcerer.

[SardaukarElite]

Finding explanations and excuses is never impossible, but it's still a contrivance.

 

I'm not excusing it as completely realistic armor design that makes perfect sense. I'm arguing that the design is invoking a different aesthetic to typical fantasy women armor that is complained about.

 

The Qunari in DA2 to me look like they are supposed to be unarmored skirmishers from somewhere tropical, not male models wearing underwear. That they are showing off their muscled torsos does not jar with what I see the look as trying to convey. 

 

Going to battle without wearing any protection is just... dumb, even if you are supposed to have tough skin.

 

And yet people have throughout history. Unarmored troops have exited, before firearms. You can argue the toss about how viable it is but there are a lot of reasons why troops would forgo armor - primarily logistics and economics.

 

I agree with Han in that the redesign doesn't fit with Qunari as described though.

 

 

 

Edit: I don't want to drag this further off topic, it was only a side-note anyway, so let's focus any further discussion on Mass Effect armors rather than DA.

 

Fine. 

[heinoMK2]

I'm not excusing it as completely realistic armor design that makes perfect sense. I'm arguing that the design is invoking a different aesthetic to typical fantasy women armor that is complained about.

 

The Qunari in DA2 to me look like they are supposed to be unarmored skirmishers from somewhere tropical, not male models wearing underwear. That they are showing off their muscled torsos does not jar with what I see the look as trying to convey. 

 

 

And yet people have throughout history. Unarmored troops have exited, before firearms. You can argue the toss about how viable it is but there are a lot of reasons why troops would forgo armor - primarily logistics and economics.

 

I agree with Han in that the redesign doesn't fit with Qunari as described though.

 

 

 

Fine. 

Heh, that's interesting. A crazy centuries old (female) android(!), who is also a head of a band of pirates, sporting high heels in some random combat situation is totally wrong, because it caters to "typical expectations" of female characters in games, but as soon as it is a male, who runs around in combat half naked it's totally cool, because some wild duders did it sometime in history(and because that is typical pandering to a female fantasy of a muscled dominat male showing off and this is totally okay for some reason while the reverse is wrooong, totally).

 

 

But this is still okay, to each his own, we just exchange opinions here. I just want to get following point across:

 

Mass Effect series started as a great adventure. It featured exotic species, lots of different characters, maintained a proper(subjective) degree of believability and offered a wild ride through our (fictional) galaxy. It was great and while ME2 got weaker story-wise, it maintained this spirit, although it went overboard with some details(breath masks in vacuum...). It still was an adventure through some fairly exotic places, with us meeting all sorts of exotic characters.

Then came ME3 and the adventure was over. It became largerly a typical linear war story with some already known aliens sprinkled in. The only somewhat exotic characters were the enemies who mostly had nothing of substance to say.

 

If ME:A should become a great adventure again, taking us on a wild ride just like ME1 did, it will need all sorts of colourful, weird, bizzare and crazy characters. Exotic places alone just won't do it. This does not mean the character design should throw away all common sense, but some personages could be designed in the way I suggested or in a similar fashion, as long as it makes some sense in the given context.

 

We probably could encounter high heel sporting female-looking androids serving as waitresses and security at the same time in a location like these:

 

 

 

 

And i sincerily hope that Bioware designers will step up their game when it comes to design of casual wear for such locations, given the mix of cultural influences bound to happen. Seeing something like the example below wouldn't be too crazy, imo.

 

Spoiler

 

We also could encounter some sort of a hoverbike gang also not wearing exactly the type of military armour we would be used to encounter in professional soldiers/mercenaries of ME universe.

 

Of course on the other side of the spectrum there is somewhat more "regular" combat equipment that could still be different from our crew's:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

With an extreme on that side of the spectrum as opposed to high heeled android:

 

Spoiler

 

This is exactly what we need for visuals for ME:A - a spectrum of varied clothing and armour, each fitting the given situation/environment and creating visually impactful characters. Encountering boss enemies on their own turf and finding them wearing what they think is comfortable and fitting in that situation - even if you as a player/protagonist might disagree - does not appear illogical as long as it's not too unrealistic for the given setting.

 

As much as I like ME armour design(Shepard's and this one, absolutely fantastic), I'd find it boring if we would encounter every humanoid and alien wearing same armours and clothing as all other humans/humanoids and aliens as it happened in ME3.

[heinoMK2]

With that logic you can justify literally anything anywhere. Say for example you wanna include a velociraptor riding a shark jumping above the sea while brandishing an rpg;

See the raptor here was once a dude who got his mind downloaded inside a cloned velociraptor by cerberus and is now out for revenge against the bad guys while riding a huge great white shark (which he'd saved when it was a baby shark) and likes blowing **** up with an rpg....... Not so hard is it?

 

Now granted you do have a point as developers can with decent writing make weird things possible. As an example I'd say Quiet from Mgs V: Phantom pain. She's a sniper who's literally clad only in a bikini but the story explains why she does it. But it's still gonna come of as fan service though and not everyone is gonna take it the same way. Same goes for extreme high heels in combat because that's just really impractical as well.  

Actually that picture is a pretty good start for a new alien race design

 

 

Amphibious aliens riding their version of sharks:

Spoiler

 

At some point there is a huge space battle raging above their planet and a lot of poisonous debris falls down, polluting their world with Eezo and other exotic chemicals.

Over time some of the aliens mutate and lose their connection to the water, turning into land creatures. Some of the sharks mutate too and thanks to Eezo in their bodies become levitating creatures scourging the lands now.

Mutated now land-dwelling aliens tame the floating sharks and with their help search the lands for the artifacts that came down from the skies, fiercely competing with each other - tadaa, your velociraptor with a bazooka, riding a shark, is born!

Some weird researcher could start some crazy project akin to the one in Avatar where he builds himself a remote controlled body to study the species while his actual body is securely floating above the planet inside his space ship/station.

 

At some point the aliens might even be as technologically advanced as to build some (space?)ship in a shark shape to honour their roots:

Spoiler

 

That could be a quite unusual setting for some exploration.

[Laughing_Man]

 

 

 

 

This picture has some potential.

 

The armor looks top-heavy for some reason, but if you ignore that the armor seems rather cool in the gritty sense of the word,

and is rather realistic for a setting that can't resolve everything with "super materials" and "space magic".

 

Instead, if you want heavy armor, you need to go at it from the same angle Fallout did: Heavy plates of armor mounted on a robust mechanized exoskeleton.

 

I would argue that such a design can have benefit even in a setting that contains easily accessed super materials and Eezo or "space magic",

due to the sheer volume of fire such a super-heavy armor made from those materials (and mounted with heavy shield generator) can withstand.

 

What can I say, Fallout 4 was not a perfect game, but the feeling of jumping from the roof of a building and stomping in a heavy power armor into a hive of scum and villainy while spraying attacking mutants / raiders / monsters with incendiary fire from a Gatling-gun (as cliche as that sounds...) was really fun.

 

For The Emprah!

[SNascimento]

That sword looks too much like a sword and not enough like a Sharpened Helicopter Blade.

Besides that, I like it. It's an intereting heavy armor design. 

[Laughing_Man]

That sword looks too much like a sword and not enough like a Sharpened Helicopter Blade.

Besides that, I like it. It's an intereting heavy armor design. 

 

True that, but the sword is not my favorite part anyway.

 

If I had to design a melee weapon for a power armor I would probably go for some sort of integrated power-fist design, something that packs a punch (literally.. heh) if by a release of energy or a blade or some sort of pneumatic hammer - an intuitive weapon that you don't need to draw, rather than a a weapon that requires the user to sacrifice the free use of one hand / carry it around in a sheath that might interrupt movement in near walls, etc.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

True that, but the sword is not my favorite part anyway.

 

If I had to design a melee weapon for a power armor I would probably go for some sort of integrated power-fist design, something that packs a punch (literally.. heh) if by a release of energy or a blade or some sort of pneumatic hammer - an intuitive weapon that you don't need to draw, rather than a a weapon that requires the user to sacrifice the free use of one hand / carry it around in a sheath that might interrupt movement in near walls, etc.

So something like this?

[Xerxes52]

I'd go with some kind of large retractable omniblade, plus an interesting finishing move.

 

https://youtu.be/pZJs74530Tg?t=88

[Iakus]

 

Back to Mass Effect...

 

 

I wish something similar to that had been used for Benezia's character design in ME1. I think it would have been a better fit for her backstory as some sort of priestess / spiritual leader, than whatever she was wearing in ME1.

Asari Gesserit?

 

[Laughing_Man]

So something like this?

*snip*

 

I didn't actually see the movie, but this design seems to be a good option.

[Rascoth]

Just one thing about qunari. Female qunari are also quilty of stupid "armor".

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Not to mention in game qunari armor.

The thing is, first time we see female qunari in game (aside from qunari Inquisitor) is in Trespasser. And even then not everyone might play it. That's why it feels like male qunari were the only targets of "Vitaar" stupidity.

 

But that's all from me on this topic. It's not DA board. So back to ME. 

 

Recently I found this fanart by Antoine Di Lorenzo and I must say, it would make nice female counterpart to armor BioWare showed some time ago.

Spoiler

 

Not sure how I feel about the amount of detail, but to tell the truth BioWare's one is not really that less detailed.

[Laughing_Man]

Just one thing about qunari. Female qunari are also quilty of stupid "armor".

 

 

Not to mention in game qunari armor.

 

The thing is, first time we see female qunari in game (aside from qunari Inquisitor) is in Trespasser. And even then not everyone might play it. That's why it feels like male qunari were the only targets of "Vitaar" stupidity.

 

But that's all from me on this topic. It's not DA board. So back to ME. 

 

Recently I found this fanart by Antoine Di Lorenzo and I must say, it would make nice female counterpart to armor BioWare showed some time ago.

 

Essentially agree about female Qunari.

 

As for Trespasser, I didn't buy it and not going to, but a picture I saw of the Qunari female antagonist showed that while similar in style to the drawings and other examples of Qunari armor and had exposed skin, she actually had a plate that covered a large part of her torso. Seems like a "modesty armor" rather than something realistic and functional. (or something halfway)

 

So now I'm even more confused.

 

As for the new armor designs for ME:A, they are okay, but I don't see the point of the hanging fabric outside of the armor.

Those armors are supposed to be rated for space, and to protect from hazardous environments, the fabric on top is useless and might ignite and become a hazard under some circumstances.

[Rascoth]

Essentially agree about female Qunari.

 

As for Trespasser, I didn't buy it and not going to, but a picture I saw of the Qunari female antagonist showed that while similar in style to the drawings and other examples of Qunari armor and had exposed skin, she actually had a plate that covered a large part of her torso. Seems like a "modesty armor" rather than something realistic and functional. (or something halfway)

 

So now I'm even more confused.

Viddasala was an exception. Those happened among male qunari as well. Like this:

Spoiler

On the right.

There were other qunari females in Trespasser, among enemies randomly thrown at you, and they were sporting this:

Spoiler

Seriously, I wouldn't mind it if they had Viddasala-style armor. But they didn't.

 

As for the new armor designs for ME:A, they are okay, but I don't see the point of the hanging fabric outside of the armor.

Those armors are supposed to be rated for space, and to protect from hazardous environments, the fabric on top is useless and might ignite and become a hazard under some circumstances.

Agreed about fabric. But BioWare already showed us armor which has it outside.

Spoiler

 

 

And the one I mentioned in my previous post:

[Laughing_Man]

Viddasala was an exception. Those happened among male qunari as well.

 

There were other qunari females in Trespasser, among enemies randomly thrown at you, and they were sporting this:

 

 

 

Agreed about fabric. But BioWare already showed us armor which had it outside.[spoiler]

 

So essentially Qunari females fight in a bra, or boobie straps. Sounds kinky but not very realistic.

(and they don't even have the "shipwrecked skirmishers" excuse...)

 

 

As for fabric, the stuff that sticks from the top seems different than what's on the armor itself, less space-suit-super-kevlar-CNT-fabric,

more the start of a poncho that really has no place there.

[KirkyX]

Apropos of nothing, but I thought this artist's concept of a 'Growth-Adapted Tensegrity Structure', a self-assembling space habitat envisioned by NASA, looked pretty cool. It'd be interesting to have areas of the Ark dedicated to more rural landscapes--there's something delightfully strange about the idea of placing an idyllic countryside setting within a ridiculously high-tech space colony. You could handwave away the inefficient use of space with genetically-engineered, super-efficient oxygen-producing grass or something.

[Laughing_Man]

Apropos of nothing, but I thought this artist's concept of a 'Growth-Adapted Tensegrity Structure', a self-assembling space habitat envisioned by NASA, looked pretty cool. It'd be interesting to have areas of the Ark dedicated to more rural landscapes--there's something delightfully strange about the idea of placing an idyllic countryside setting within a ridiculously high-tech space colony. You could handwave away the inefficient use of space with genetically-engineered, super-efficient oxygen-producing grass or something.

 

I'm thinking that this is more pretty art than science... Kinda strange considering the source.