Strength and Dex Phenotypes

[darkling.lithely]

I hope there will be a distinction made between the body types of strength characters and dex characters. I love playing dex characters and am always annoyed by having overly muscular avatars.

 

Has there been any word regarding phenotypes?

[Ieo]

The question/suggestion has been asked/made in both the official #34 art update thread and in general discussion, but there has been no definitive answer.

 

Also, +1 for using the word phenotype.

[rjshae]

I vote for making high Dex/moderate Str characters be a half pixel skinnier.

[TRX850]

NWN2 offers user-defined height and girth options at character creation.

 

Maybe something like this could also be implemented in P:E. I also don't like some of the older, chunkier phenotypes from some games. Humanoid anatomy is so much more variable than some games depict. I guess it always comes down to difficulty and expense to code it into the engine.

[Osvir]

I love rolling in Baldur's Gate. Could the statistics themselves be tied to the physique and some character appearance features?

 

I'd be fine with just changing the color of the character (Like you do in Baldur's Gate, hardly any character customization at all). It'd be fun to see your character look different depending on if they have a high Strength or a high Wisdom.

 

A very high Constitution (in relevance to Strength/Muscle) could make your character wider, and if there's any "Tomes" that gives you +1 Constitution in the world it could make you more wider? Could that make the 3D model slightly wider as well?

 

Strength = Muscle

Dexterity = Mobility (Acrobatic muscle)

Constitution = Fat, Size, Grounded

Wisdom = Soul/Aura

Intelligence = Beard, Mind

Charisma = Charming, Dashing, "Beauty" Appeal

 

In Baldur's Gate it was more the classes that determined what kind of "appearance" you had. A Thief always had the hoodie, as an example. It wasn't determined by stats but more dependent on the race+class you chose. I think it'd be cool with a stats based appearance instead, getting a bulky muscular Wizard visually. Not advocating for Obsidian to model any "muscle's" and we'll see that grow or degenerate, more like the model would simply just get +1 size or -1 size in width/height~

[Tamerlane]

Attaching physical appearance to stats gets very Fable-y very fast.

 

...

 

That's bad.

[Sabotin]

I'm not sure it'd be too visible on such a small character, especially after applying armor. We can already expect some re-proportioning in the interest of visibility. I'm still all for it though.

[JFSOCC]

Now I know intelligence is going to be in (because of the low intelligence dialogue comment) but I've always thought that you can't really fake intelligence. Ultimately, the problem solving skills of the player will either outdo, or limit the problem solving skills of the party characters. Also, the distinction between wisdom and intelligence, like between strength and dexterity, is sometimes ambiguous. I never enjoyed the DnD examples of low/int high wis or high int/ low wis. It brings to mind another fear of mine, which is that certain classes need to focus on certain attributes, which means generally that you'll find no high intelligence fighters, high strength wizards or low dexterity rogues. It should all matter to all classes, that way you get much more ability to diversely roleplay your characters.

[Tagaziel]

Although it seems intuitive, it's actually rather jarring in practice. Very strong people don't have to have a bodybuilder appearance (eg. many specops) and vice versa.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Waste of resources.

[Jarmo]

I want a tall skinny mage with a pot belly. In the game. Not in life.

[Karkarov]

If you aren't going to go for the full monty on this (which I go into in the only thread I started), and Obsidian isn't, then there is no point tying it to stats etc. Just give players the option to pick a body type and some other things at character creation. I will also say this, on screen your character looks small, however, nothing says you can't have the characters get zoomed in for conversations like many RPG's do it these days. Even if you never see your player "up close" except for character creation a more detailed character model is still better than one that lacks detail.

 

If you want an example of what I mean about the never normally seeing your character up close but get zoomed in comment look no further than Obsidian's own Dungeon Siege 3. Most the game is played with your character at a reasonable distance from the camera, but the higher quality models still get some use.

 

It is not really that hard to implement this and outside of RPG's where you are put in control of a specific character (like Witcher 2) it is pretty much standard these days.

Edited January 8, 2013 by Karkarov

[moridin84]

I don't think trying your appearance to your stats is a good idea.

 

Most games these days (e.g. Guild Wars 2) have the option to change height and width so if you want a skinny wizard or whatever then you can just setup that up on character creation.

 

That said, this is going to be an isometric game so the character might be a bit too small for it to be worth it.

[Nonek]

If Hollywood's taught us anything, it's that the height of strength is only achievable by anorexic high kicking young girls.

[Lephys]

The most extreme version of this I'd be fine with would be to have option ranges for the different types. Like... say you have over 14 STR. Now, you cannot pick the little twig people, but you aren't necessarily the hugest person ever. You'd have to be at least slightly muscle-massy, but you could still be more lithe, or stocky, or toned, or padded, etc. This way, you could have an 18 STR (just using D&D values as an example) character who was just mid-range on the buffness scale (and as tall/toned/padded as you wanted) and a 13 or 14 STR character who was literally the buffest model the game was capable of producing, if you so chose.

 

I don't see any benefit gained by making sure the appearance is 100% derived specifically from your exact stats, but I do see a little benefit (and not much detriment, really) in organizing the character creation options so that someone with 5 STR isn't the Hulk. I mean, that kind of inconsistency is bordering on "I want to have a sword equipped, but I want a bow to appear in my hand, instead," or "I want to be female, but I want to use a blatantly male character model."

[TMTVL]

Don't overestimate the amount of polish the graphics are gonna get. There might be some difference, but I think it's really gonna be more IE-like.

[Lephys]

^ Fair enough, but also don't underestimate the level of quality the graphics will possess. I don't think "This is as good as we can do, feasibly, 13 years ago" is really an integral part of the style they're going for. But, yeah, we're not gonna be playing isometric Crysis 2 or anything.

 

People keep sort of acting like we're gonna be dealing with Super NES sprites or something, but you'd be surprised how small a character model can be and still be quite impacted by poor animation/aesthetic details. I think someone referenced Starcraft II. Look how small those units are, and you'd notice if they just fidgeted between a few pixels of difference in animations. Or DOTA II. The heroes and units in that have nice, fluid animations, and detailed armor and weaponry. Hell, people pay MONEY for cool aesthetics in armor and equipment in that game, all the time. So, obviously it's a level of detail that's capable of being noticed by the human eye and brain.

[Karkarov]

Don't overestimate the amount of polish the graphics are gonna get. There might be some difference, but I think it's really gonna be more IE-like.

I certainly hope not as IE game graphics look like crap by today's standards, and anyone who thinks they don't seriously needs to play a modern game. This game doesn't need to look as good as Sleeping Dogs or Far Cry 3 (two of 2012's most graphically impressive games on PC) but it certainly better look at least as good or better than Diablo Already Looked Dated on Release Day 3.

Edited January 9, 2013 by Karkarov

[moridin84]

Don't overestimate the amount of polish the graphics are gonna get. There might be some difference, but I think it's really gonna be more IE-like.

I certainly hope not as IE game graphics look like crap by today's standards, and anyone who thinks they don't seriously needs to play a modern game. This game doesn't need to look as good as Sleeping Dogs or Far Cry 3 (two of 2012's most graphically impressive games on PC) but it certainly better look at least as good or better than Diablo Already Looked Dated on Release Day 3.

Uhh, you probably aren't going to get much better than Diablo 3.

 

Or rather, I wouldn't consider Diablo 3 to be ugly.

[Karkarov]

Or rather, I wouldn't consider Diablo 3 to be ugly.

For a game that cost as much money and took as long to develop as it did it looked like complete crap.

[Ieo]

If Hollywood's taught us anything, it's that the height of strength is only achievable by anorexic high kicking young girls.

 

And only when they're the Cipher class.

[darkling.lithely]

If Hollywood's taught us anything, it's that the height of strength is only achievable by anorexic high kicking young girls.

 

Ahm, kicking young girls is just wrong--I don't care if it's an anorexic high kick or not.

 

(couldn't resist--might be lack of sleep)