Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Atlus With the Old, In With the New
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Avec ou Nous
Posts: 105 |
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If we were talking 10+ years ago I would agree but these days modern Alexstraza is not the same design we had back in Wrath and she's covered head to toe now. I guess that's kind the issue with citing a bunch of old characters from legacy franchises. Times change and what was cool back in the 90s, 00s, and even early 2010s isn't really acceptable anymore. Everyone loved Morrigan, Liara, and the other women in classic Bioware games but not so much the cast of Andromeda or their other recent titles. I would guess people are hard on Star Wars and Spider-Man in particular because those two IPs for the longest time skewed very heavily towards male fans so Star Wars heroines no longer looking like Aayla Secura or Mara Jade upsets people. |
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Uchay
Posts: 78 |
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Are you making a case about new female character designs/models in the West being worse than in the past? Because I do think it's funny that you linked a reddit thread where a lot of people saw the change in design as positive, or still liked it enough---at worst, complained a little the armor itself seems a bit busy on colors. Some of the most upvoted comments are just people mourning for the cape, complaining about the oversaturation of the screenshot, or noting and joking about the fact both models are way too tilted to one side, which shows the change was, overall, a non-issue for most people... Maybe, people's mentality just changed. |
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NeoStrayCat
 Posts: 612 |
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Yeah, maybe one of these days, it could be possible, I mean, Breakers is a different story, but at least that came out (though the current gen port of Rage of the Dragons is still in release limbo, lol.), but speaking of Breakers, Exa-Arcadia just announced a new version of Breaker's Revenge, with the subtitle "Chicago" (I'm not kidding, lol.). Which is currently being playtested at Evo Japan 2024. |
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Bertram
 Posts: 10 |
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I never got into Pokemon Go but I always felt the art was a bit off similar to how the TCG client has a really ugly style. Then again Scarlet and Violet had some odd design choices too so it's probably a franchise wide thing at this point and not just limited to western development. Personally never particularly cared about seeing myself in games, especially in Pokemon where you're always a 10 year old kid anyway. I'd rather have a nice designed pre-set character like Pokemon had in the past. I would say that's why characters like Hikari/Dawn are so iconic and popular. It was really weird when BDSP let you pick her skin color when she was an established character.. Whenever a game has a character creator I always pick the default option and default name if at all possible.
I remember the Palworld devs mentioning they only put a lot of those options in the game because they noticed western players like to make really ugly characters. After watching Hololive EN play it and make characters with maximum size sliders and bright green and pink skin and hair I guess they were right. Been seeing the same with all the Pokemon Go update photos that have gone viral and people making total abominations. I never really fell into that memer category though and it would take me out of the game completely to play with a character like that. It does suck for people who bought cosmetics and now they look bad but that's the risk of all live-service games. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5940 |
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That’s the thing if you give players the ability to create and customize their own characters you’ll always have a section of gamers who will willfully create atrocious, horrifying, nightmare inducing abominations in the game. Usually it’s for the lolz other times it’s to deliberately illicit reactions from people watching who watch them play. It’s absurd but that’s what it is though I think it’s a west thing. |
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Vanadise
 Posts: 498 |
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There's not really any secret strategy here; the truth is just that the Switch is a very, very underpowered console compared to everything else on the market right now. The fact that the Deck can emulate the Switch at close to--sometimes even better than--native speeds says a lot. If you're planning on a multi-platform release from the start, it only makes sense to use the PC as your primary platform for development and testing and just assume you'll work out the details for porting later. Console ports always take some amount of extra effort, but the PS5 is close enough to high-end PC performance that it's minimal, and even doing a PS4 port isn't hard if your game isn't doing anything really fancy. But a Switch port? Suddenly you have to deal with CPU and memory constraints that are far tighter than you ever planned for, and if you're already far along in your development cycle, it can take a lot of extra work to optimize your game to the point that it can run acceptably on the Switch. If you're an indie developer who doesn't have a lot of experience with the Switch, it's going to take more than you expect, and you're likely to reach a point where every other platform is ready to go but the Switch still needs more work, and then you have to make the decision -- do you delay the entire release for just one platform? Release it everywhere else and delay it just on the Switch? Or release it on the Switch, too, knowing that people are going to complain while you work on a patch? None of those options are going to make everybody happy. |
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Stelman257
Posts: 272 |
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I do absolutely agree but there are just that big subset of Gamers TM that look at characters like Karlach and say "No one would ever actually be attracted to this in real life because it's not conventionally beautiful". They're the same ones that say crap like "Stellar Blade is a blessing because we haven't had a HOT girl in games since Nier Automata". It's absurd but I sadly have seen people say this stuff, so I'm not too surprised it starts to permeate the minds of people who should know better, or that it becomes a sort of perception of sorts.
I know! Absolutely wild how you can mishandle a game so bad the mass consciousness just forgets all of it's characters were once the highest searched terms on porn sites! |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5940 |
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In the interest of fairness I wouldn’t really call that a loss. Rule 63 can be a bit too much at times. |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2214 |
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Pretty much. A lot of the time it feels like these companies want to have it both ways where they clearly want access to the Switch's install base, but also don't want to put in the effort. If they want people to stop being disappointed, then put in the effort, don't just release a buggy mess (albeit on ALL platforms) and then wonder why you're being yelled at for being sloppy and negligent.
Every time someone says this, I bring out my go-to annihilator: Doom Eternal. Sure, it has a graphical and FPS hit but it runs smooth regardless. This is not a power issue. |
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funkfoot
Posts: 42 |
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Wouldn't one of the key components for media that challenges conventionally attractive beauty standards be admitting that they're unconventional and not traditionally attractive in the first place? Is it really a surprise a lot of people do not find Karlach attractive. Or that fat guy in a wheelchair from Hades 2 people are allegedly thirsting over from what I heard some people claim the other day on social media? I know people legitimately do find those kinds of characters attractive since anything can be a person's fetish or kink but it's weird people are acting like people not finding certain video game character attractive is some sort of revelation or insult. Even just comparing a single game's cast against one another it should not be a surprise to see more female fans swoon over Zack, Cloud, and Vincent instead of Barret or Cid. Or how they prefer Reno over Rude when it comes to the Turks. Even people preferring Shadowheart over Karlech and Lae'zel is an example of this. It shouldn't be shocking to see people say a more conventionally attractive character is more attractive than a non conventionally attractive character. |
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ninjamitsuki
 Posts: 591 Location: Anywhere (Thanks, technology) |
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I mean, there is the whole Tumblr Sexyman phenomenon. There was way more naughty fanfiction of Sans than the intentionally sexy Mettaton EX in Undertale, and I've seen way more thirst for Senshi than the rest of the Dungeon Meshi cast combined. |
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Stelman257
Posts: 272 |
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Firstly I think you really need to reevaluate what "conventionally attractive" means if you think Reno counts but Rude doesn't lol. What because he's bald? Even that's conventionally attractive with his build and looks. But more importantly, I hardly think finding characters such as Karlach or even Barret attractive is so wild that it constitutes a “kink”. Is it a kink to find a woman attractive? What I really take issue with is when this subset of Gamers™ act like characters such as Karlach are “acceptable horny” because they “don’t challenge feminists because no one normal would actually find them attractive”, and that’s why being horny for Stellar Blade is considered bad because it’s “normal horny” or some crap. I think plenty of people find Karlach and Shadowheart sexy designs. It turns it into this dumbass agenda war, and it’s equally ridiculous because as you even pointed out, Shadowheart is right there in Baldur’s Gate 3 too, so them holding up Stellar Blade as this last bastion that makes its women “actually attractive” is even sillier! https://twitter.com/syacvg/status/1781608508347084854 And it goes both ways, this Kotaku article was just as stupid attempting to pit the two games against each other. But it’s because of crap like that that the viewpoint that only games from the East like Stellar Blade make sexy characters anymore is permeating. |
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DKL
 Posts: 1951 Location: California, USA |
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As someone that has actually put a decent amount of time into both games, honestly, Baldur’s Gate is a good deal hornier than what I’ve played of Stellar Blade so far. Outside of some camera angles and the way most of the costumes are designed, the game doesn’t play into the horniness at all if you just like… sit there and actually play it and watch the story unfold… which I suspect a lot of people have not. (If it’s that distracting, you can always get the jank looking bear costume from that one side quest… that said, I do wish the boob jiggle wasn’t cheap looking since Azucena from Tekken 8 kind of set a new bar for me in games: it can actually exist as a thing and look very very nice) Baldur’s Gate is like… aggressively horny and everyone is trying to get at me constantly (which I’m down with…. Lae’zel hit me with that I want to step on you vibe and I was like “OK”), while Eve’s looks or attractiveness in Stellar Blade is barely even referenced outside of maybe the salon place with the NPC that can change her hairstyle (who then goes on to talk about his dead kid and how Eve’s hair reminds him of her, so now I feel bad). I feel like the pro degeneracy side that wants to stick it to all the woke feminists or whatever dumb shit they mindlessly go on about are doing a disservice to the game with their lack of nuanced insight since they are devaluing what the game is actually doing extremely well: vibing to cool music in a desolate wasteland. Fishing subquest. Absolutely amazing. Of course, you could argue that the game makers are devaluing what they’re doing by having this relatively small aspect of the presentation contained in the thing to begin with, but I find the contrast between the storytelling and the aesthetic choices really interesting since its commitment to its mood and lore is all played convincingly straight. I’d even say I like this game a good deal better than Nier Automata since the production is smoothed out and the actual gameplay and exploration is by far a lot more interesting. That said, yes, Stellar Blade’s actual game is sick. I was a bit worried that I was outscaling the power levels of the enemies at first since meter is very powerful and can stunlock things, but they’ve done a pretty good job of scaling things up in a way where you get the most out of using the game mechanics (has some mechanics spoilers if people are actually interested in seriously playing the game): https://youtu.be/_nUDIk75Ang?si=eGaKgg7pjyaD9qNX The enemies are quite beefy at the point in the game I’m at and I like that I’m getting some mileage out of my build that’s centered around building meter quickly (not that the building is that in-depth… I have my suspicions that pure DPS is weak, but I haven’t really tested it out yet). I also like that you have more options to put things into execution state than just sitting there and attempting to get a perfect parry. I can actually put up an offense to get where I need to go. Pretty good game and worth playing. |
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Nigel Planter
Posts: 69 Location: London, UK |
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I'm going to say a portion of this just boils down to the thinly veiled anti-Asian sentiment that was all the rage in the early 2000s gaming community that never truly went away. It just shifted to clickbait websites and people with hot takes comparing western games to eastern ones and saying the west is better because it's more progressive while Japan, Korea, and China still relies on outdated designs and have embrace the modern era where people of all shapes and sizes are called sexy and no one is ever ugly. This has resulted in people allowed to say penis jiggle physics in Baldur's Gate 3 is cool but boob jiggle physics in Stellar Blade or DoA is bad. Or that it's okay to say the new miHoYo character is too sexual and hot but if people say Aloy or Karlach are ugly then they're clearly virgins who have never seen a woman before or some other silly ad hominem. Personally I don't find BG3 or Hades sexy at all but if people can then good for them. It would be nice if we could all just freely admit if we like something or not without putting on airs to try to justify why dumping on the latest Japanese game's character designs are considered cool and acceptable but doing it to the newest AAA western game's female lead is bad. |
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Hal14
 Posts: 669 Location: Heart of africa |
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@Nigel
Most comparison posts online are literally the reverse of what you're complaining of. Gamers TM posting images of characters from western* games mid-speech and then comparing them to characters from japanese or korean games striking poses. Or complaining that western influence has led to japanese game franchises having less sexy characters (this came up in the pre-release of pokemon s/v and it's come up again with the new avatars in pokemon go). Is there anti--asian discrimination online? Yes, it's been discussed in the origins of the term JRPG. But it's disingenous to act like that's all it is. Many of these people online coming up with terms like 'safe horny' aren't asian nor do they actually care about the discrimination of asian people. *The MC from Forspoken is a favourite example of this even though the devs and publishers of that game are japanese. |
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