'Ugly characters?' thread

Yea yea, you are right... I was more referring to the notion that having overly attractive characters is somehow "bad" or "unrealistic". BW is not even guilty of that - at least not in past games, but it is becoming a problem with the general attitude of some gamers/developers these days. All I'm saying is: Most games are still just fantasy, so having eye candy characters is not the problem... having badly written ones is.

Attractiveness is not something to set in stone. There is people who love Final Fantasy's art style when it comes to people, some hate it. I remember some people saying how they hated how Fenris looked like FF character. There is different art directions and different preferences so sth overly attractive might actually be closer to repulsive to someone.

I don't personally like sis!Ryders look that much, but I'll do my own character so not a big deal. I like bro!Ryders default, but will still do my own (I don't play with defaults). What comes to NPC on not-Brevnau's post- I actually think she looks great. I also like look of new female Turian, though overall I think frostbite ME looks quite different from trilogy art style-wise what I have seen from trailers so there is sth to get used to.

I do have to say i hope there are some conventionally beautiful human women in the game. I'm not going to judge them yet on 2/3 designs so far released which seem rather less attractive at least to me.

My point is more that people actually forget women npcs, in Bioware games, are always criticized for their look, at least since ME. I don't recall one game since then where there wasn't a debate and criticism on their looks. What people wrote for DAI was often the same, exact thing I read during DA2's development, as well for certain characters in Mass Effect. It's not exactly a new trend.

1. I apologise for that. Most a joke on the "old people" trope.

2. Well, this goes both way.
I mean, people are complaining that females are ugly based on 2 human females (where one is customizable).
People are complaining that Bioware do something different and that it is "an agenda" (And I don't even know what agenda, sneaky agenda ) 
And I believe that for game to evolve they must try new things, and sometimes that backfire. This is true for most developers.

3. The problem with that is that I have not seen any (objective) proof that it was better before late 20's. 

I don't think there's been anything bland about Bioware characters lately - quite the opposite in fact. I think they've been very diverse in terms of appearance and this seems to be where some people have a problem, because they want all characters to conform to some sort of uniform or conventional 'beauty'. I don't think there have been any ugly characters in the last couple of games. I understand why Cassandra might not be to everyone's tastes, but that doesn't mean she isn't attractive. Same with Josephine, Sera etc. SisRyder is pretty in a kind of cute girl-next-door way.

Regarding your point about realism - it was only less than 100 years ago that women didn't even have the right to vote. We've come a very long way since then, so is it really so inconceivable that in another 150+ years, we might have come even further and women become much more represented among leadership/sciences/exploration etc? Especially in the Mass Effect universe, where things like cybernetics, biotics, implants etc can go a significant way in reducing the physical differences between genders. I don't think a shift like that precludes it being hard sci-fi.

You consider Miranda conventionally attractive, and yet plenty of people criticized her face and said she looked like a man (which I don't agree with). The problem is that we don't have all the same opinion, and a character that for someone is attractive for others it's not, to a point of getting excessive criticism.

I'm not debating the majority of people finding her attractive, which, by the way, isn't proven for recent LI as well. I'm saying that the way the scan worked, several people mentioned she was ugly, and looked like a man, with the MJ meme comparison. 
This is what happened in DA2 as well, and then DAI. If you want to point out it's a recent trend, is your choice. But as far as I'm concerned criticism on female appearances in Bioware games is quite old news.

I don't see Miranda conventional beauty. Jack has the face that is more what I would call conventional beauty though shaved head and tattoos don't quite match that.

It's really not that complicated. We're analyzing the Mass Effect universe, which is set far in the future where social change has progressed far more than it has to date. I'm not sure why you're trying to analyze it through the lens of our current culture; that will only lead to failure.

In case it needs to be explained, the ME verse is a place of 99% equal opportunity (for humans), something that most certainly was not the case when those explorers you're talking about made their voyages, so it makes sense that we'll see much more even numbers of males and females in any given position or status.

Hard or soft scifi has nothing to do with social issues.

I apparently over read that, sorry, but it's true... still, it's far harder to change instinctive behavior then just changing the circumstances... it sure helps, but I doubt it would be enough.

Sure, there are a lot more reasons why people choose to be soldiers or explorers, and yes BansheeOwnage, there have been added barriers for woman to pursuit certain professions in the past - many of them highly supported by woman them self, but still - even in our current world - trends have shown that, the more free and technologically advanced a society gets, the more typical the occupations become the genders pursuit.

For example, there are more woman in manufacturing, tech, the stem science jobs in India or the middle east then in the US, why? Because those are the occupations that pay the most and are needed by society... in the west, woman are more free to choose social and artistic vocations, because society can afford for them to do so.

So, while we might think - largely supported by today's pop culture, I might add - that many woman would take up traditionally male jobs if they just get the chance, in reality most of them still don't, because they just don't want to. They still, as they always have, tend to gravitate towards more social and SAVE lines of work.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some badass fighter chicks in fiction, but I am very aware that it's still just that: Fiction.

Call it whatever you want, I'm not here to "mansplain" reality to you, that should have fallen to other people.  Consider this, though: If I'm right, even your ability to simply dismiss what I wrote as "old fashioned sexism" is a sign of how free and save our modern world has become... which is quite an uplifting thought, right?

Enough off topic, though...