Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Art design for female characters

Comparing a game by a Tripple A studio with a big publisher that has also one of the most famous names in RPG history, to the first Tripple A level game by a polish studio that among other things maks their money by selling outdated games in a steam competitor that doesnt even have DRM.

I mean, i dont know how on earth you want Bioware to look like the underdog here.

The entire point is: nobody wants ugly characters.
The shift in consciousness is new, its been pushed by a few very loud people that pretend to champion one cause or another.
and those western games that do it, somehow keep failing.
Its a truly a mystery

You keep equating "not sexualized" with "ugly".
These two are unrelated. You can find plenty of examples of sexualized characters that are also ugly. And you can find characters that are neither sexualized nor ugly just as well.

It's pointless to answer him. With this quote below you could already tell he lives in a parallel universe.

The good point being that he gave me inspiration for my new avatar. By the way, is there some moderation rules on avatars ?

He probably believes that Dragon Age and Mass Effect games (all of which are totally "SJW" and "snowflakes" friendly) sold really badly because of this.

It's new inasmuch realistic graphics are comparatively new. Even when studios end up with hideous characters it's not necessarily by design; e.g. Oblivion and its half human, half potato thing. And even then not everyone was hideous, though arguably a bit of a case of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

I suppose I'd also like to examine the cause and effect thing. Are studios deliberately making their female characters ugly or are a particular SJW fraternity latching on to games that messed up their aesthetics? I dunno really. Though I kinda sorta agreed with some stuff regarding Inquisition, not totally. I'm not sure the characters were deliberately ugly or not. I'm not attracted to guys so I can't really comment beyond "half of them look like Alistair from Oranges" though even I thought Blackwall looked hideous without the beard. And Solas and his big shiny head. And Cole who was literally that kid at school who perpetually had a cold and his arm in a sling.

On the other hand it also had Dorian, who was such a chap that even I fancied him. And Varric, I mean who could resist that chest rug?

But the female characters... well I kinda fancied Cassandra maybe because of her not totally convincing severity. Or maybe she just reminds me a bit of Lætitia Sadier from Stereolab. And Widdle. There's Morrigan and Leliana who are hard to include because they're from the original and started out as deliberate opposites but turned out to be "complicated". Maybe I'll just stick with Sera. Yeah, something didn't quite work out and it wasn't just the deliberately bad hair thing which I've done myself (okay, with kitchen scissors rather than a dagger but I do have a bunch of actual swords nearby... which I'm probably going to need to set about with a pan scourer because I haven't oiled them in years) but it's the personality, if not necessarily the personality delivered by the Derbyshire accent, but that has its own something or other.

No. I mean there's obvious stuff like if you post a picture of a willy or something I'll probably ban you, but other than that not really.

A nurse in a videogame




Also a nurse...



And yeah, also a nurse



A teacher



Also a teacher....



I think it is pretty obvious when you want to make a pleasant character for a videogame; and when you just want to sell flesh.

The latest Dragon Age sold terribly, especialy the DLC.
The latest mass effect sold terribly. It wasnt just because of this, but definitly part of this.

And yes, women are attracted to different things than men.
Women are, by large, attracted to physically powerfull men, if not, tell me why are there not more scrawny as fuck male strippers running around.
Why do you think movie protagonists tend to be buff with a square jaw line?

You can pretend its different all you want. Men and women consider other things sexy.

If you believe that women would fall over themselves if men were sexualized in the same way as women are, then its you whose living in bizarro world

Wrong Dragon Age Inquisition was a success https://www.pcgamer.com/dragon-age-inquisition-had-most-successful-launch-in-bioware-history/
I know facts are scary. If it was not successfull they wouldn't do Dragon Age 4.

I do not think I agree with that, sadly




Holy cow!

They´ve made a lot of DLC, they do not do that if you do not sell (look at ME:A. No, wait, do not look that thing).

The characters were pleasant, and it was an end for the story of DA (For Hawke at least) so it was not that bad; but whatever they are planning for the Da4 worries me. Solas was not really an interesting character for me, to be honest. They´ve should stick to Flemeth.


Sexualized or not, pretty or ugly, mostly depends on the character, too: A nurse in short skirt and fishnet stockings will be ok in a brothel, but it would be weird in a hospital.

I can only add my own experience to that but a bunch of friends who are long-time Bioware fans mostly loved Inquisition. I don't mean unconditionally, we have our own assorted gripes about this and that, but it seemed very popular with people who'd been gaming with them for a long while. But y'know, people said DA2 sucked too, but having replayed it comparatively recently I found it to be a much better game than its reputation suggests; and a much better game than I remembered myself as I'd certainly over-stated the problem the game being dominated by the "every fight is the same three waves of ridiculous abseiling ninjas", which was a valid moan but it actually didn't overshadow everything else. My other gripe about the lack of original locations was largely a fault of Oranges too, and significantly resolved in Inquisition. The Hinterlands remains one of my favourite videogame places.

And yeah, Solas as DA4's antagonist: I'm also not sure about that. But one of those friends is inexplicably fangirly about Solas so she'll be happy. Which I suppose brings us back to attractiveness: she likes him for his personality (I mean unless she has a secret thing for big shiny heads) but I suppose I'm more or less the same with Sera: it doesn't matter so much that she's less physically attractive than she could've been (though as I said, I did re-add the make-up they scrubbed off) but I liked her because she's a laugh.

"Oranges"? You mean Origins? Origins doesn't have any fantastic locales with breathtaking vistas, but it doesn't have the excessive copypasta and location recycling like DA2 does, either.


I can't stand Sera. Aside from her attitude, I swear, I don't understand what she's saying about 80% of the time. It's probably partly because English is not my first language, but the way Sera says things, her word choices, and all the metaphors and slang or whatever, make what she says almost pure gibberish to me. I had subtitles on all the time and hell, most of the time I couldn't even follow the subtitles for her dialogs while ignoring the VO altogether, because I struggled to understand the words that she uses. Sometimes it was hard for me to tell with certainty whether she was approving or disapproving, agreeing or disagreeing, because of the way she talks. Gosh. Every time I was about to talk to Sera I would be like "$&#@ me here we go again..."

Sexualized is a goofy word and entirely subjective.

I find it amusing, though it could be argued that I'm easily amused. Anyway, the point is that DA2 wasn't quite as bad as I remembered it, and that memory was largely because of my own incessant moaning about overuse of the same areas. True, Oranges wasn't as bad but it also wasn't great and I recall getting truly fed up with seeing the same Denerim back-street or random woodland clearing in Ferelden cropping up for the eleventy billionth time.


*shrug* People like different stuff, I guess. Perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to admit my personality's not that different to hers.

I feel slightly awkward commenting on the "not a first language" matter as my abilities with other languages are... well, frankly rather questionable. But as an Englishwoman myself, I found Sera to be very easy to comprehend compared to some accents where I've really struggled to figure out what they're talking about: sometimes I don't even get as far as the colloquialisms because I can't understand the words. You'd be forgiven for thinking that with the torrent of American stuff on British TV, by my age I'd know e.g. US accents inside-out but they often confound me. Okay, I could reasonably claim that I don't watch much telly, but the truth is that I'm just not good with accents, so the further it is from mine, the more perplexed I am.

I admit it's a combination of the accent and the way she expresses herself. Don't get me wrong though. IRL, I don't "hate" on folks like her, folks with a particular accent or way of talking. However, as she's a companion in a video game, it's a rather different story. I felt that "obligation" to interact with and involve her in my playthrough. I rushed past her dialogs, quests, and ignored her when I could, to spare myself the irritation, but then I'd feel like I was forced to miss out on parts of the game. So yeah, all these factors made me dislike Sera as a companion in a CRPG.

It´s a pity, she has hilarious banters with The Bull.
I kind of like all companions in general in DAI, besides Solas. I am not fond of the guy. No particular reason.

Dao2 was not that bad. The repetitive combat and the copypaste zones are a minus, but the companions and the replayability value was worth it. You could have different dialogs depending on the game you import, if your character is a mage or not, or your personality (Albeit I always end with the sassy one). The DLCs are more fun, especially the one with Felicia Day/Tallis.




I respectfully disagree.

Image of Ilya


Sexualized image of Ilya

How could anyone like Vivian.
Her writing was atrocious.
Specifically because no matter what dialogue option you chose, your character awlays dropped 20 IQ points, just so she could berate you.

That particulary pissed me off when i played a Tal Vashoth or whatever they were called PC and my character conveniently forgot somehting baout his own culture (that you couldnt previously know since that group wasnt heavily featured, i double checked) just so Vivian could berate you on it.

that stuff made me furious.
its one thing to have a character be knowledgable and haughty, its another thing when you offer up blatantly false dialogue options just so your character ends up looking like an idiot in comparison.
Threw me right out of it.

She kinda reminded me of Dayna off Blakes 7 (no apostrophe, they couldn't afford one, and the later crappy series minus Blake) in terms of look, voice and general demeanous. But was a much less likeable character in execution: in effect she was pretty much the female equivalent of Solas in that you needed to think carefully about what she wanted to hear rather than what you wanted to say.

Then again, people have described Sera in the same way. And I've just described myself as having a similar personality, so maybe that's why I got along with her okay.

It can be annoying, but having seen the counterpoint, I actually understand and appreciate that way of doing stuff. The point of view being that characters are their own thing with their own opinions and their own world views, and unless you're playing an arch manipulator, you're not going to please everybody all of the time. Or any of the time in some cases. And nor should you want to. I guess the problem is when your affinity with everybody gets hit because of one malcontent or someone you just don't get on with; but even then is it that different to the way stuff is IRL? Other people may not care for your nemesis but they will quickly tire of you arguing with them, so maybe not so unrealistic.

Although there's a lot to be said for the art of persuasion, speechcraft or whatever one wants to call it, I think it's unreasonable to consider it as an infallible, overriding mechanic because it's just unrealistic. I recall one discussion (it may have even been here, though I forget offhand) where someone asserted that a character who was persuasive enough should be able to get an unambiguously homosexual character like Sera or Dorian (or hetero like Cassandra, for that matter) to sleep with their PC because they're just so charming, and I was just left feeling that it doesn't work like that. I guess it's better to have characters who are irksome than a bland world full of people who can be talked around to any PoV by fairly basic means. Though I reserve the right to complain about it when it suits me.

Anyway, Vivian fails because there's only one Vyvyan.



Edit: handy link for the curious since the built-in player seems to have no sound.

My problem was not that she was unlikeable.
unlikeable characters are actually good. they add to the game, espcialy if they are a rival.

What i dont like about Viviane is not that shes annoying or bitchy, what i dont like about her is that whenever you are engaged in a conversation with her, your character is given the idiot ball so she can act high and mighty.
Especialy about things that for you, the player who comes from a modern society, are painfully obvious.

Ill give you another example than the vashoth one which also annoyed me to no end.
At some point in Vivians (vivane? Vivienne? whatever) Dialogue tree, she quizzes you about your opinion on Mages.

Funly enaugh this was AFTER you declared allegiance to the Templars or the mages, i personally liked that descsion because it specifically made you pick one.
it didnt give you a weasle out of it choice.
But that was deliberate, no matter what your character thought, he had to agree with one of those two factions, even if he thought htey were too extreme.

Now with Vivienne (i think that was how it was spelled), she asked you what you thought and you got, if i remember correctly, two dialogue choices.

>Go Wizards, muggles are basically idiots and there is literaly nothing wrong with letting a bunch of Nuclear Warhead tier Assholes walk around with any restrictions placed on them
and
>Templars arent even extreme enaugh, Wizards should basically be slaves and who needs em anyway

To which she replies something to the effect of "Well well dummy, i think that both are right, and that mages should be restricted but not as draconically"
And then to add insult to injury she goes on in the way of "thats not such a hard concept to grasp right?"

That made me angry. Yeah, tis the OBVIOUS answer, an answer the game didnt let me choose.
It deliberatley did not let me make that choice so this NPC could act smug.

Simply put, its terrible writing trying to make a Character look smart, without having the capacity of writing an actually smart character.
so the main character has to be dumbed down to Grugg level to make her look intelligent by comparison

Oh, yeah, the "choose a side, by which I mean be completely and utterly beholden to their every aspect and whim" annoys me no end, whether it's Vivienne or any other character or RL (the latter of which is pretty much why I've given up with politics and news: it sucks). Another notable transgression for me was the Tenpenny Tower fiasco in Fallout 3: I could tell from the outset that Roy Phillips was a complete and utter scrote but you were pretty much railroaded into following his cause otherwise you're castigated for being prejudiced. Literally, Three Dog broadcasts his disappointment for all three listeners to hear. That wasn't a "shades of grey" quest either, it was just annoying and stupid.

Far from the only example, just one that stuck in my mind.

And without checking, I believe the spelling is indeed Vivienne. The Young Ones character probably had the Vyvyan spelling because it looked angular and nasty.