He’s not fat, he just has some thick bones
Gerald from Witcher 3 for sure
EDIT: Not sure if that counts as western since it was made in Poland, which is in east europe.
Well given that Russia moved further east, I think Poland is western now.
It really depends who you ask, but many don’t see the (what was historically) eastern bloc as part of western society. I hear that constantly as I’m from Baltic states.
Just say you like femboys, OP.
I want to be the Western side, but I want to plap the Eastern side.
I think western design is a result of aiming for the most realistic look possible. It limits the amount of artistic expression and results in less immediately attractive characters.
Eastern design is like 60% realistic 40% anime and that gives them enough room to create doll like characters that have exaggerated or unrealistic features that people naturally find attractive.
Western, hands down.
Meanwhile FROM SOFTWARE character design:
Left side - androgyny-ish. Right side - male anger issues and revenge fantasies.
Ur Fav[e]
None of these look like everyday Sumerians as one would see in Ur.
They don’t even get but bitched out by a customer who owed them debt, no representation for the greatest copper merchant.
Note Ea-Nasir was owed money by Nani, which using other roughly contemporary documents the amount owed could’ve bought Ea-Nasir like 12 years of labor from a skilled team of mariners.
Also Comic from Ratopamboarts because where else am I gonna post this.
Udreeeheeeeeeeee
Ur my hero
Who’s the bottom left of the eastern side?
I’m pretty sure they’re all bottoms, but maybe some of them are power bottoms
Oh sorry I misread, I don’t know who’s the “bottom left”
Pinocchio from Lies of P maybe
Personaly i have much easier time to identify with ugly old males than teenager models.
hmmm
The “western” ones here look more real. The “eastern” ones look fake to me. I definitely think this post is weird bait.
The left ones are either a twink or a femboy stereotype depending on how you look at them.
On the other side, i really like these lisa the painful characters, they’re pretty real aren’t they. And they all have problems.
This is an (old) parody of an even older (allegedly sincere) meme comparing women in video games. The “ugly western” women were like Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, the ladies from the Last of Us 2, and I think new Lara Croft from the reboot series. The “beautiful and correct” eastern women were all anime characters with huge tits, obviously.
The joke here is of course that all the “western” men are stereotypically masculine and all the “eastern” men are bishonen anime characters and femboys.
I say it was “allegedly sincere” because how could you even tell if something like that is parody or a truly held chud belief?
Ah, I see. Thanks for that explanation.
Kenshiro consumed so much manliness from Japan that, even 40 years later, the country has not fully recovered. Their situation is so dire that not even Shinzo Abe telling men to procreate could keep the population from shrinking
I mean not to put too much effort into a meme but this is also from BG3. Wouldn’t call him too unappealing
Nothing against the artist, they’re obviously highly skilled, but this (and other) character art is the biggest barrier to me wanting to try BG3.
I really don’t like it and have a hard time putting the reasons why into words. At the very least, the sneering smile, the hand gesture… It’s all too much. Feels like a Marvel movie poster.
It’s literally a poster and, small spoiler ::: spoiler spoiler he’s a vampire, so he’s supposed to give a slightly unsettling vibe :::.
I think they’re all in the style of D&D portrait art which is always/often trying to portray as much about the character as possible without resorting political cartoon labels.
A movie promo poster is not too far off an assessment.
I also simply dislike Astarion. I have never understood the appeal.
It’s funny watching him get ganked by goblins while Dark Urge, Laezal, Shadowheart actually deal with the problem.
I completely understand the appeal but I still just don’t like him. Great story! Still don’t want to be near him!
The writing for his character is a rare mix of selfish and evil that functionally meshes with the storyline.
But I don’t care for him anyway.
In my evil run he ended up being pretty fun. But he does usually end up dead in the nautiloid crash region otherwise.
I brought him on a goody good playthrough and regretted it.
well that’s the point isn’t it? it’s not a Bethesda game, you don’t gotta catch’em all and there are consequences to your actions
Counter point KOTOR 2 made me want to collect an increasingly eclectic and thoroughly insane group of misfits. Which admittedly just devolves into Kreia being a bitch while T3 and HK act like an old married couple.
The Dreamworks face doesn’t help
people call everything that now. this is not dreamworks face.
Thing is about being picky and selective. I can always pick good vs bad characters en the same media.
Ex.: Sephiroth is trash and one dimensional.
The issue for me is that the character designs in western games are just ugly and bad designs. That doesn’t mean that all the characters have to be hot and sexy. You can have unconventionally attractive or even unattractive characters that are still appealing to look at because they are designed well. There is an art to a well designed character. Not a game reference, but a good example of a well designed and unattractive character in entertainment is Long John Silver in Treasure Planet. Nearly everything about his design is unsexy, but he is still appealing to look at because the character has soul, his design tells a story about him, his ambitions and the humanity he has, but tries to suppress. He has a recognizable silhouette, his color palette is earthy and warm, the contrast between the dark of his pirate hat + coat against the white of his shirt tells us that he is complicated, has both good and bad in him. Often when he hangs out with Jim alone, the dark hat and coat are nowhere to be seen and he’s mostly wearing white. His shape is round and soft, often a shape related to kind ans trustworthy characters. His hat and coat have sharp edges, the hat is literally a triangle, a shape that we subconsciously associate with danger. He is both a father figure, a safe person for Jim to lean on, but he’s also treacherous and dangerous. He is a cyborg, half machine, half doghuman or whatever he’s supposed to be haha. Warm and soft, and cold and mechanical. That is such a brilliant design for a character who is somewhat of an anti-hero.
With some of the shit I have seen coming out of gaming in recent years, it’s not just that the characters are physically unattractive, it’s that the clothes and color palettes they have been settled with is as unappealing as possible as well. To the point where it’s nonsensical to look at. I don’t get a sense of the character’s history or personality when I look at many of these designs. It looks slapped together. Concord was a great example of ugly af designs that felt entirely void of personality and purpose. Colors were clashing, silhouettes were nonsensical and the clothes didn’t fit together at all and communicated nothing about the character to the player. Many of the characters also had the same mid value if you turned on the graycale. No contrast anywhere. So dull to look at.
I know people desperately want to perpetuate the narrative that gamers just hate these types of designs because they are stupid incels who want to wank to the characters in game, but that is and has always been an intellectually lazy argument used to dismiss fair criticism.
You can have ugly characters that are well designed. Most of the ugly designs we see coming out of western gaming are barely designs. It is what happens when you press a randomizer button and purposefully look for the ugliest result as possible.
I heard a theory that they do this on purpose to give players incentives to purchase better looking skins which would not surprise me in the slightest. The games industry has become so predatory and lazy in the past ten years that it honestly deserves to fail. The fact that they get to hide behind political correctness and blame the criticism from their customers on racism, sexism and whatever other ism is out there is nothing more than a pathetic deflection from the real issue. They treat their customers like brain dead consumers who should be shamed for demanding a better product and they use minority groups as a shield against valid criticism.
It is pathetic. Even more pathetic that so many people are falling for this marketing tactic, that permeates almost all of the entertainment industry. It is shameful.
Concord characters have that look of “it’s 1982, let’s make quick sci-fi cash grab based off Star Wars”, a cheap attempt at making realism “cartoony” - one of the characters is a fucking yellow bucket, half the characters have puffy donuts or some shit that looks like “exposed entrails” on their attire. The aliens are just “human with makeup”. Not a single character in the roster has an ounce of “cool”
It’s funny, because someone claimed the character designs looked good in concept and I looked it up so see if they looked better in concept, but no. Sure they are technically well drawn, but their designs still look like shit in my opinion. I don’t get a sense of character at all.
On the other hand, I came across an artist named Kevin Trentin, who had decided to have fun redesigning the characters and they look so much better the way he did them.
He even bothered to give the characters some much needed personality. Amazing.
i love inspiring these essays 😍 thanks
I think it’s a very interesting topic in general. Very frustrating too because the important discourse is always shut down by some people who have had too much ideological cool aid. It is a shame because at the end of the day, these companies are predatory toward all of us and should not be defended as fiercely as some people are. I just want entertainment at large to produce worth while art, be it books, movies, games etc. Good stories, great characters, well made art and so on. Stuff that can move people. ❤️
If I told you Concord had some pretty good concept art that was badly translated into playable characters, would you drop the incel talking points? Yes, even the big lady with the dollar store cosplay armor.
How are my talking points in any way related to incels? Also, are we supposed to give them credit for nicely looking concept art when the final product looks like ass? That’s news to me.
You are confirming my point about using cheap identity politics insults to deflect from the fact that these games are made by companies that don’t give a fuck about their customers. The only area where identity politics is relevant is when these very companies use them as a shield against criticism and people like you falling for their tactic and defending shitty game design because you think only incels could have negative opinions on a game like Concord.
