Female character designs - let's have variety.

[MNOne]

Pretty much what Umberlin said but it would be nice to see some older women too. I always think it's strange in RPG's where there are tons of old guys knocking about (mostly wizards) and no women. Especially since women tend to live longer xD

 

I really love Wynne and Flemeth in Dragon Age

 

I came here to say this.

I would really like to see old people as playable characters.

 

I agree, on the other hand if they don't actually let you play them as old, if the story never really is built for an older character and treats you like a young start up for too long? It feels off. The option, I'd love it there, but it can't just be there, the story needs to support it, or, more importantly, not contradict the choice you made.

What might be a nice feature would be an ability to select an age 'stat' or characteristic on character creation.

It does nothing but feed into the dialogue system where periodically NPCs or party members will address you using a simple [adjective] [noun] lookup system based on your age (or gender/class/species/favourite colour etc.). In essence: "Go thee here and kill ye this thing, [young] [pup]/[old] [codger]."

Edited September 17, 2012 by MNOne

[Amentep]

There's a lot of interesting things that could develop a game world like appearance expectations (what is attractive, how do people get treated when they do and don't conform to norms) and treatment of individuals due to age (do they honor or disrespect age; what's important to the culture).

 

This is the excitement of having a new setting because each of these things could be considered and addressed and become a part of the game world.

[FreezingShock]

I always wanted body builds for females as varied as the female Olympians. From the smaller petite and often flat Gymnasts to the extremely muscular weight lifters with more modest chests, to the lean and toned runners to the well formed aquatic athletes. Obviously though they shouldn't all look like sports stars, what about the short skinny librarian or the more motherly figure? And, you know what, sure, make room for the busty girl too, that's fine as long as there's variety outside of that option.

 

And now I no longer have to say anything, because this post truly says it all. Especially those last few sentences. If I'm playing as a mage or a bard or some other class which isn't very likely to engage in physical activity very often, I'd very much like to be able to have a character which is slightly on the plump side, or skinny without being athletic.

[Giantevilhead]

I just want body shapes/builds to make sense.

 

If you have a mining town where everyone engages in a lot of hard labor breaking apart rocks with hammers and pushing around big carts of ore, it wouldn't make any sense for the men to look like Sylvester Stallone but the women to look like Natalie Portman.

[Meshugger]

In order to satisfy everyone, i suggest that Obsidian outsources female design to an external company that specializes fashion trends among females through very selective focus group testings and committ

[Kittenmancer]

I am all for variety. I don't think it's feasible (or even supported by the engine) to have players tweak various body-related attributes on character creation, so let's think about what the developers could actually do.

 

Pre-designed body types to choose from at character selection? Possibly doable, will likely lack great variety and animation could become tricky for body types at the extremes of the spectrum, if those are included at all.

No variety in body types, but other character customization options exist and allow a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic approach to character creation (wrote multi-racial at first, then remembered it's a fantasy game).

Cosmetically equipped items. Quite a few games do this, but it can be immersion-breaking (my character looks like he's wearing robes, but in fact he's wearing full plate armour). It also requires quite a bit of content to be created, so it's resource-intensive.

[Shadenuat]

Not sure all that would matter in isometric 2D environment.

[Ieo]

Not sure all that would matter in isometric 2D environment.

 

Fair point. It's not like a game like this--based off our memory and understanding of the old Infinity Engine games--is going to have zoomed-in 3D body/head creation (I do like LotRO's 'body type slider' that only allows large breasts on a body type that's already 'large'). But there could be more general templates covering both sexes that's obvious from the "distance" portrayed in 2D isometric--

 

buff

average

wiry

heavyset

small

whatever

 

 

For an 'elderly' character, white hair and perhaps wiry/small. We don't know just how much detail we can see in terms of game camera at this time. Obviously there are issues with animations and design of worn items because things would have to be tweaked across races as well.

[limaxophobiacq]

From what I remember of the BG1-2 and IWD paper-dolls, I'm not that worried about the in-game representation of women being too sexualized. IWD also had some amazing portraits and of them it was really only a few human female wizards and a bard who were obviously drawn to look sexy.

[Amentep]

Not sure all that would matter in isometric 2D environment.

 

Fair point. It's not like a game like this--based off our memory and understanding of the old Infinity Engine games--is going to have zoomed-in 3D body/head creation (I do like LotRO's 'body type slider' that only allows large breasts on a body type that's already 'large'). But there could be more general templates covering both sexes that's obvious from the "distance" portrayed in 2D isometric--

 

buff

average

wiry

heavyset

small

whatever

 

 

For an 'elderly' character, white hair and perhaps wiry/small. We don't know just how much detail we can see in terms of game camera at this time. Obviously there are issues with animations and design of worn items because things would have to be tweaked across races as well.

 

If they use Onyx Engine (is that right), I seem to recall Dungeon Siege 3 being able to zoom a good bit for vanity views.

[MNOne]

There's a lot of interesting things that could develop a game world like appearance expectations (what is attractive, how do people get treated when they do and don't conform to norms) and treatment of individuals due to age (do they honor or disrespect age; what's important to the culture).

 

This is the excitement of having a new setting because each of these things could be considered and addressed and become a part of the game world.

True, I like that. It gives 'just a game' a way of saying something more (the whole games-as-art argument).

Not to bump my own suggestion but a table of descriptors that can be dropped into otherwise generic text like quest-vendors dialogue (in addition to case-specific flavour text) would be a feasible mechanic to add depth to such explorations.

 

It can be a wider-reaching thing - one person's character is a bit bigoted towards a certain species, but that only comes out in insulting terms they use if a character of that species talks to them (nobody say 'knife-ears'!). Another person has a bit of a thing for heavy-set characters and greets them as 'hey sexy'. Yet another is excessively deferrential to the elderly for some reason.

 

 

 

I don't think different body builds would be too difficult to implement, for males or females. A mesh might work for armours and other wearable items that need to shift in size. Clothes in skyrim have to contend with subtly shifting heights as well as a slider that controls 'fatness'. The shirts and pieces of armour scale and change to take account of the person beneath them.

 

A few presets would mean work, certainly, but not an insurmountable obstacle.

 

Afterall, you're dealing with maybe 4 human-sized models (say average; buff; skinny; fat) to stretch or shrink an item to fit, then a similar number for maybe dwarfs diminuitive hominds, etc. If such species-specific models need a different mesh, then that mesh can be stretched or shrunk depending on build in a similar manner to that of the human model's. It would come down to making more-or-less the same number of models per in-game item as BG or IWD (human-version, elf, dwarf...), and then morphing the model per body-shape.

[mkreku]

 

All I want is a chainmail bikini and some boobs, is that too much to ask?

[Starwars]

For the love of god mkreku, you are on the internet. Is all the porn, hentai, Boris Vallejo artwork, and every other fantasy game in existence not enough?

[mkreku]

No.

[HoonDing]

What happened to that other thread about female armour, btw?

[AdaMusic]

Pretty much what Umberlin said but it would be nice to see some older women too. I always think it's strange in RPG's where there are tons of old guys knocking about (mostly wizards) and no women. Especially since women tend to live longer xD

 

I really love Wynne and Flemeth in Dragon Age

 

Wynne and Flemeth were the most boring characters in Dragon Age.

Morrigan was fun... but otherwise the game was really lacking in that department.

 

However, as thread creator stated, KotOR 2 has some amazing female characters. Baldur's Gate 2 also have amazing female characters.

 

Anyway, would definatley not look at Dragon Age.. the characters there are hidious compared to the classics.

[Tauron]

Have it straight forward than, let the phyical build of your character be determened by his/her attributes, exept height, color of skin, hair and some other things :/

 

As for Npc's, it is about devs to make diversity.

 

I hope we will still have Custom portraits option.

Edited September 17, 2012 by Tauron

[septembervirgin]

I came here to say this.

I would really like to see old people as playable characters.

 

I'd love to see *fat* people as playable characters. My lord, don't these characters eat at all?

[molarBear]

i guesstimate that we're 90% male as customers. ½ skanky broads and ½ decent clothed broads would be nice

deep inside everyone is a horny teenager

[incubus9]

I think Obsidian should make normal looking variety of females that really reflect what an adventuring lifestyle would do to their body. Fighter types would be muscular and larger in general. Stealthy types would be smaller and wiry in general. Mages can be whatever they want really, just strong enough to carry their backpack. Lets leave the DD's and chainmail bikinis to the modders. You KNOW they will fix all that anyways.

[The Sharmat]

From what I remember of the BG1-2 and IWD paper-dolls, I'm not that worried about the in-game representation of women being too sexualized. IWD also had some amazing portraits and of them it was really only a few human female wizards and a bard who were obviously drawn to look sexy.

Torment's renders were ridiculous for absolutely every female character though. Well, except maybe Ravel.

[limaxophobiacq]

From what I remember of the BG1-2 and IWD paper-dolls, I'm not that worried about the in-game representation of women being too sexualized. IWD also had some amazing portraits and of them it was really only a few human female wizards and a bard who were obviously drawn to look sexy.

Torment's renders were ridiculous for absolutely every female character though. Well, except maybe Ravel.

 

Yeah the upper-class women who wore less clothes than the harlots and the balloon-boob Curst girls were pretty bad, and Annah could probably have worn something more sensible than an absolute-cleavage leather swimsuit. Though don't forget dustmen females (dustgirls/dustwomen?), who were very modest.

Edited September 20, 2012 by limaxophobiacq

[Darji]

What happened to that other thread about female armour, btw?

The same that will happen with this one after a while it gets closed XD

[Rostere]

Avoiding the ridiculous sexualization of women is very important to me. Let this be a game taking place in a realistic, coherent fantasy universe. Look to Arcanum for inspiration in this.

[pipboy2000]

I always wanted body builds for females as varied as the female Olympians. From the smaller petite and often flat Gymnasts to the extremely muscular weight lifters with more modest chests, to the lean and toned runners to the well formed aquatic athletes. Obviously though they shouldn't all look like sports stars, what about the short skinny librarian or the more motherly figure? And, you know what, sure, make room for the busty girl too, that's fine as long as there's variety outside of that option.

 

Perfect!

 

And no female armor that is basically nothing more than a steel bra and iron hot pants! I always found those so ridiculous!

 

(In the witcher 2 Triss often wears normal, functional clothes and still is beatiful.)