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Do you hold the appearance of the main character in Returnal against the game?

Well?

  • Total voters
    380
  • Poll closed .
Tschumi

Tschumi

Member
(I don't, just an attempt at catching people who don't read OPs)


returnal-awakening.gif

images

images

I've seen a ton of people saying Returnal is the best game of 2021 on another thread and I distinctly remember a lot of GAFers being triggered by this character's lack of sex appeal and karen'ness in the run-up to release. The idea being, I think, that if developers don't offer up something like Tifa in FF7R they're being.. woke?

Do people still feel that way?
Was it a passing reactionary fad?
Were you, are you, one of them?

Are you, like me, free of triggerdness in this case?

Are you prepared to nail your colours to the mast?
 
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Con_Z_ǝdʇ

Con_Z_ǝdʇ

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
No why should i?

Finally a protagonist who looks more like a real human, with a non-symmetrical face and some edges and corners, while also having a nice butt.

I can only laugh at anyone who asociates their joy in playing a video game with the face of a protagonist who, on balance, and in the worst case, can be described as average and by no means ugly.
 
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ToTTenTranz

ToTTenTranz

Banned
I think it's nice that the protagonist doesn't look like a sub-40 year-old woman or a sub-50 year-old man in the prime of their visual appeal.

And unlike what bioware did to their female models, in this case I don't think Housemarque went out of their way to make the actress look ugly. She's just a ~50 year old astronaut who isn't all that worried about eyeliner and foundation because she's kind of alone in space.
 
Ellery

Ellery

Member
No of course not. I think it is pretty silly to expect every single game to have a 10/10 athletic mid 20s protagonist that looks like a photoshopped model from the cover of a magazine.

Completely cool to have different characters. That goes both ways for me. I also don't mind when people love big tiddy Dead or Alive character and games. Same as I don't mind playing Trevor in GTA V.
 
Guilty_AI

Guilty_AI

Member
Pretty sure a lot of people skipped the game due to its roguelite nature, while some roguelite fans seem to not consider it a very good roguelite.

Basically looks like one of those games that aren't necessarely bad but live in a weird limbo, which is probably why it didn't do all that good.
 
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John Bilbo

John Bilbo

Member
Depending on her personality, she might fit the story they are telling. Looking at the pictures provided in the thread, she looks like a determined person. Determined to survive I would guess. Other than that is hard to say without playing.

If the game comes to PC and is cheap enough I will probably play it.
 
RoboFu

RoboFu

One of the green rats
I don’t think a lot of people complained about how she looked… a few people just thought they made her that way to appeal to the woke and were more irritated by that.. then the actual woke people proclaimed those people hated it solely because of her looks and sexism..

We use to call that a “ carnival of stupid “ now it’s just society 🤦‍♂️

Me .. I just don’t like the concept of the game. 🤷‍♂️
 
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NikuNashi

NikuNashi

Member
I don't care however the character model is very ugly and I have no idea why anyone would consciously decide on that for the main protagonist.

My problem with Returnal runs much deeper, the lack of a mid run save and resume, artificially extending a short experience by making players restart everytime (it's a rogue lite duhhh!. As if calling a shit idea by a special name makes it stop being shit).

Just patch the game with a continue where I died and an option for three character settings. Heroine, average chick or ageing granny with man's hair.
 
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Soodanim

Soodanim

Member
If sex appeal was a driving force behind my choice to buy or not buy a game, I'd be ashamed of myself.

I know nothing about Returnal, but from those screenshots I do feel that she is in uncanny valley territory. But I'd be more concerned with whether or not the character is a good character or if the game is fun to play, because most of any given game is from the character's eyes or looking at the back of their head.
 
Saber

Saber

Member
I do mind. Although this doesn't necessarilly make the game bad, games for me are a form of escapism. Just like movies, no ones wants a boring bland looking actor or actress. And this has nothing to do with sex appeal, thats some phrase people at Reera likes to regurgitate(like male fantasy).
If I want realism I would rather go outside.
 
Kupfer

Kupfer

Member
Well, kind of. I find the main character unattractive, but that's not why I don't play the game. But the whole appearance doesn't turn me on and gives me one more reason not to be interested in the game.

Edit:
I also find the character in Ghost of Tsushima unattractive, but I like the game itself better in GoT, so the characters' appearance shifted to the background. What I want to say is, if the game is good (imo ofc), the look of the main character doesn't matter that much. But of course I prefer to look and play with characters I find attractive.
 
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Guileless

Guileless

Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
Spaceman292 said:
No, I'm not a crazy person
Click to expand...
Surely it's not crazy to notice that the faces of mass entertainment products tend to be conventionally attractive? It can be useful to cast against type sometimes and there are plenty of non-conventionally attractive character actors that thrive in smaller roles, but those are exceptions. It's not likely that people consciously made the decision described in the OP, but I bet there were plenty of people browsing the PS store who were subconsciouly offput by the character design in a game that was already a tough sell for a mass audience.

But that doesn't mean it was a bad artistic choice by the devs.
 
Azurro

Azurro

Banned
I'm old school, I like my protagonist to either be cool in some way, and that usually goes hand to hand with attractive, though not always. However, what kept me away from the game was that it is a rogue-like, not that it stars this ugly, ugly man with a pretty behind. :p
 
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N

Notabueno

Banned
The problem is not the woman but the terrible uncanny rendering, making the character uncharismatic, fucking badly scaled in the morphology, with a very gross face mocap result (which is why you want to either have la creme de la creme in face mocap, or just stylise the face like they do in most big productions, the best exemple to date being TLoUII)
 
tommib

tommib

Banned
Con-Z-epT said:
No why should i?

Finally a protagonist who looks more like a real human, with a non-symmetrical face and some edges and corners, while also having a nice butt.

I can only laugh at anyone who asociates their joy in playing a video game with the face of a protagonist who, on balance, and in the worst case, can be described as average and by no means ugly.
Click to expand...
It felt fucking refreshing to play as Selene who looks like an actual female astronaut instead of a waifu in space. Thing is, no one would be talking about what Selene looks like 10 years ago but somehow her looking normal triggers all the incels who complain about the “agenda”.

Selene looks and feels real and her tragedy hits harder because of it.
 
Con_Z_ǝdʇ

Con_Z_ǝdʇ

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
tommib said:
It felt fucking refreshing to play as Selene who looks like an actual female astronaut instead of a waifu in space. Thing is, no one would be talking about what Selene looks like 10 years ago but somehow her looking normal triggers all the incels who complain about the “agenda”.

Selene looks and feels real and her tragedy hits harder because of it.
Click to expand...
Well put.

Just a normal looking woman yet you find people in here calling her very ugly, uncanny rendered and badly scaled in the morphology. How bad of a perception about an average woman does somebody have to actually believe this.
 
Closer

Closer

Member
The problem is that if you don't pander to a certain group of people, you are either woke or sexist. These groups says that devs should do whatever they want but actually want things their way.

I don't care how my character looks because I'm looking for a good game with good gameplay. She could've been a walking nail with a gun and I'd still like the game just the same.
 
Kikorin

Kikorin

Member
I don't mind her not being sexy, if I've to criticize something, I always thought her head is unnaturally big for some reason.
 
Tschumi

Tschumi

Member
boomcrab said:
Lol this is kind of dumb I'm sorry. A thread like this makes this whole forum look bad. Not just the OP but all these comments as well. I can't believe some of you actually care about this stuff. This right here is one of the reasons some games are creatively held back.
Click to expand...
Neo member takin' shots, is there a more nakedly pointless thing in existence?
 
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