I usually don't mind fantastical character designs, especially in a fantasy setting. But the designs in this game are silly. Having guest artists design some of character was a mistake, it created that inconsistent look.
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How were Xenoblade 2's characters given the green light?
- Thread starter DominicanGlory
- Start date
I like how she shares the exact same design idea as Morag, but the designer went about the exact opposite way of how she was designed.Dunno how these were a good idea:
They treated it kinda like a gacha with a bunch of different artist doing the character designs. This leads to characters that look like they came from different worlds. Considering Nomura did some of the villains while a porn artist did the main characters, that is why you think it's a mix of Tales and Final Fantasy characters: because it basically is. And yeah, Rex and Pyra look dumb as hell. No arguing that. At least Morag looks cool.
I prefer GBF's take on character designs, having them all be drawn by the same person to keep consistency. It beats the FGO style of everyone not meshing with each other at all.
I prefer GBF's take on character designs, having them all be drawn by the same person to keep consistency. It beats the FGO style of everyone not meshing with each other at all.
I'm not even going to get into the designs themselves, but the clashing character art styles really bothered me. It was especially egregious when you briefly have Jin and Malos in your party at the beginning and their menu portraits are just the Nomura concept art, in a completely different style to the main character art. It just looked really sloppy, like in the RPG Maker 2000 days when people filled their projects with resources ripped from a dozen different SNES games.
Only character I liked the design and personality of was Nia.
Everyone else can tell their story walking.
Everyone else can tell their story walking.
I wish i would have liked the game at least half as much as i liked the character designs.
At least the Gacha mechanic was cool and fun.
At least the Gacha mechanic was cool and fun.
on paper, having a bunch of guest artists coming in to do character/creature design sounds rad!
but then this happens
it's honestly really hit and miss. And when it misses, it misses hard.
Everyone talks about Pyra but I think Dahlia was the biggest abomination in that game, coupled with the odd Texan accent
It is easy for people to shit on "anime" designs, but a lot of them do have thought put into them. Adenine is my other favorite Rare Blade design. Like how she actually opens and reads the book that's chained to her or bounces it off her butt.
I do think there was more thought put into Pyra/Mythra's design too, but I'm sure people would think it's dumb.
I'm not saying there isn't a plethora of trashy/horny/tacky/cheap/lazy sexualized female designs. There is, and it's not shit I like. But a lot of people are quick to dismiss a design like Dahlia's as something designed by "a horny teenage boy" when it's from an adult woman, who has her own reasons for designing a sexy female character - for fun, her own sexual confidence, etc.
We're in an age now where there are more games than ever - and that means more variety. Resident Evil 2, Horizon, Control, are all modern games that lean more towards realism, and their realistic designs fit. Games like XC2, Zelda, Astral Chain and many other sci-fi/fantasy/rpg games are more appropriate tonally for a lot of the goofy/unrealistic designs you see.
I wasn't trying to make a blanket statement that every single design that feature breasts should be seen as "this is normal", it's just that I think criticism of them should be a bit more open.
And if you really want to to get into how the media affects body image issues, beauty standards, self-esteem - oh, do I have a lot of personal issues I could get into, but unfortunately, none of it is video game related. If sharing my personal experiences with you would help describe my thoughts better.
To be a bit more clear, it's my desire/dream/idealized hope that boobs can be seen as just any other part of the body someday. Breasts are part of my body, and my body is normal - just like yours and everyone else's. I want to live in a world where I don't get fined with public indecency for going outside without a shirt, but a man can. Or a womans nipples being covered on news/shows. That's the "any other part of the body" part I'm talking about. I'm not talking about letting creeps fetishize whatever they want.[/QUOTE]
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There's really two related yet distinct discussions.
1) Is there inconsistency in terms of art direction?
Yes, you can tell there's different styles. It's mostly because of the guest designers. That could also be further explained, but it's a basic fact.
2) Is there fanservice and sexism involving various characters or costume designs?
That's true. It doesn't mean people can't possibly like any of them, but folks should also understand and respect why others do not feel that way.
1) Is there inconsistency in terms of art direction?
Yes, you can tell there's different styles. It's mostly because of the guest designers. That could also be further explained, but it's a basic fact.
2) Is there fanservice and sexism involving various characters or costume designs?
That's true. It doesn't mean people can't possibly like any of them, but folks should also understand and respect why others do not feel that way.
Don't forget the Game of Thrones-tier ending! Only this time it's worse, as at least D and D messed up Game of Thrones through their incompetence, rather than forcing in a harem ending for fanservice.
Seriously, what happens to Rex at the end is exactly what happened to Jaime in Season 8.
Seriously, what happens to Rex at the end is exactly what happened to Jaime in Season 8.
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I respect where you're coming from with this reply and it's very thoughtful, but you make it sound like a female artist can't make an exploitative design meant primarily for the male gaze and the objectification of the female character being designed. They can, and do.
PS - I think your post is formatted incorrectly.
User banned (1 month): Misrepresenting and dismissing concerns over sexual objectification
Cause a vocal minority are jealous that it's the most successfully Monolithsoft game in their history and could be the template used for all future blockbusters they produce. Anger is often driven by fear. It's okay though, people can express differing opinions and make a lot of noise, but it won't have any impact on anything.
Overblown does not mean there aren't bad designs and design choices. I do think boobs are too big on some blades. Even Pyra and Mythra's official concept art don't have boobs as big as their game models have and they'd look much better that way. The boobs also just look weird the way they are.Horrible excuse and hardly overblown from a lot of evidence in this thread already. Here's 3 more where fabric does things it never normally does
(I think it's like some sort of bubble-latex getting squeezed by black straps cuz....____????)
Battle underwear and an incomplete magic bra!
No idea how the middle part does that...does it suction to her tits? Is it transparent all (ALL) the way down??? This is such a unique design, it really didnt need the maximum-level of cleavage going on here, nor does it fit the character at all.
Right....So...go on.
Blades are basically hardlight holographic projections of computer AIs. Apart from special cases like Flesheaters and Blade-eaters, Blades only conform to the physical world when they want to. They can't even be physically harmed. While it's certainly fine to object to how they look, the realism aspect of their designs is not an especially strong position since they're not even "real" in the world of the game.
Praxis is a water blade. The orbs and netting give an impression of water droplets. The straps on her chest don't seem to be tight though or squeezing anything and are holding her breastplates on. The top under them is too form-fitting, though. Hell, they might even be made of water; it's hard to tell.
I just noticed that the breastplates are basically the opposite of her eyepatch. She has and X shaped patch covering her left eye and eye-shaped patches covering her breasts.
Zenobia is a gender-bent version of the Japanese wind god Fujin:
The "bra" is a magical wind sack.
Brighid's hair, boots, and gloves are made of fire. Her dress is pretty elegant like something a celebrity would wear to a party or an awards and she does consider herself a celebrity and has a hangup about not being as famous as Mythra.
I'm not condoning Tora's behavior; I'm saying in a lot of cases, due to his upbringing and due to being a kid and a Nopon, he is unaware that his ideas of how he and others should be acting are not normal. He is called out on it and burned both figuratively and literally.
People are actually really tsundere for XC2.
Just ask yourself: If you show up to every XC2 thread to express your thoughts, without fail, do you really hate it?
I understand where the inconsistency claims are coming from but I personally didn't mind because most of those were from the Blades.
The main characters were mostly Saitom's designs or Nomura's designs, and the fact that Nomura's characters were the other faction made it less bothersome.
The main characters were mostly Saitom's designs or Nomura's designs, and the fact that Nomura's characters were the other faction made it less bothersome.
Oh yes. It is so far below Nintendo's standards, much less the standards of the series, that it is impossible not to trash the game at every chance I get.
In fact, trashing this piece of trash at every opportunity gives me far more enjoyment then I ever got from playing this terrible game.
Overblown does not mean there aren't bad designs and design choices. I do think boobs are too big on some blades. Even Pyra and Mythra's official concept art don't have boobs as big as their game models have and they'd look much better that way. The boobs also just look weird the way they are.
Blades are basically hardlight holographic projections of computer AIs. Apart from special cases like Flesheaters and Blade-eaters, Blades only conform to the physical world when they want to. They can't even be physically harmed. While it's certainly fine to object to how they look, the realism aspect of their designs is not an especially strong position since they're not even "real" in the world of the game.
Praxis is a water blade. The orbs and netting give an impression of water droplets. The straps on her chest don't seem to be tight though or squeezing anything and are holding her breastplates on. The top under them is too form-fitting, though. Hell, they might even be made of water; it's hard to tell.
I just noticed that the breastplates are basically the opposite of her eyepatch. She has and X shaped patch covering her left eye and eye-shaped patches covering her breasts.
Zenobia is a gender-bent version of the Japanese wind god Fujin:
The "bra" is a magical wind sack.
Brighid's hair, boots, and gloves are made of fire. Her dress is pretty elegant like something a celebrity would wear to a party or an awards and she does consider herself a celebrity and has a hangup about not being as famous as Mythra.
I'm not condoning Tora's behavior; I'm saying in a lot of cases, due to his upbringing and due to being a kid and a Nopon, he is unaware that his ideas of how he and others should be acting are not normal. He is called out on it and burned both figuratively and literally.
None of what you're saying is helpful to excuse the incredible lengths some of the designs go to sexualize women, so I'm not sure what you're trying to explain. Magical wind sacks or literal-water-filled-boob-balloons doesn't address why NONE ZERO NADA ZIP of the male designs are even HALF as egregious as one of the tamer female designs. Clever? Sure. But good?? ... I mean these designs could easily be tweaked in small ways to make their intent less transparent.
lol shame they never went for a design based more on this, then maybe we'd have a really unique female design for once/
I'm sad (not jealous) that my favourite game series has little interest in how it depicts my sex as anything other than ridiculous looking most of the time because I've never been considered its target audience. And Im sad the industry has to "fight" for respectable designs to which male designs are often always afforded by default.
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Way to dismiss the validity of any of the complaints in here by pulling the "vocal minority" and even the middle school-tier "jealousy" card? Such a bafflingly condescending post
Like this post. Frankly, a lot of the points of that first post you're replying to read to me like drinking the Kool-Aid, and it distresses me because it comes off like designers can do really egregious stuff consistently in a game that isn't even meant to be pornographic as long as they have the flimsiest most hollow explanation/design inspiration. Of COURSE that one design is super scantily clad, it's based on a Japanese wind god and there was no way to represent that that wasn't a mostly naked woman fighting in her underwear!None of what you're saying is helpful to excuse the incredible lengths some of the designs go to sexualize women, so I'm not sure what you're trying to explain. Magical wind sacks or literal-water-filled-balloons doesn't address why NONE ZERO NADA ZIP of the male designs are even HALF as egregious as one of the tamer female designs.
lol shame they never went for a design based more on this, then maybe we'd have a really unique female design for once/
I'm sad (not jealous) that my favourite game series has little interest in how it depicts my sex as anything other than ridiculous looking most of the time.
As for that second post, almost infuriatingly handwavey. "Sold well, your concerns are invalid" like holy heck.
People are jealous because XC2 sold 2 million-ish copies? lol
Some of you are really trying to hard to dismiss criticism.
What even in this post. Jealously is literally the last reason I would think of to explain why people aren't happy with the art direction in XB2.
There are true examples of that, but then how do you, in your opinion, tell the difference between "I'm a woman who drew this because it's what I genuinely wanted to draw" and "I'm a woman that was pressured into drawing this"?
Fixed, thanks.
What a stupid take, so if I find X2 designs trash (which is what this thread is about) is because I'm jealous? How does it even make sense as an argument.
Some of you are trying really hard to defend some trashy otaku pedo bait design. At least try to make some sense.
As I am not a woman, I find that distinction hard to make and honestly despite my point you're probably more qualified to make a judgement call on something like that. The reason why I think XC2 specifically is not an example of that with Dahlia is because the game is absolutely lousy with similar designs that were not produced by women and it makes it seem as though the game has an agenda that is not in line with the sort of empowerment that's possible with female-derived designs that look like this. Having gone through some scenes to try to get a better idea what the game is doing, the camera seems voyeuristically positioned and the girls and women in the game typically not in control of or even aware of the eyes on them.
This does not necessarily mean that Dahlia's artist was pressured, but rather that assuming the design is a product of an enthusiastic artist who liked and wanted to design that (and I find that likely!) it's become a component of a greater whole that has what I believe to be an exploitative bent.
Thanks for soliciting my opinion, I hope what I said was coherent to some degree.
God awful looking characters and creepy objectification but it's a great game .. Hoping against hope that Monolith (and most other JRPG makers) get into the 21st century in the immediate future.
It's also really on here and sometimes fun to read some opinions. The best posts are those saying that some horny dude designed XY character, but it was a woman that did that. This thread is better though because we have someone in here explaining some designs which is interesting. Otherwise other communities don't have a problem with the game. The best people are those that complain about XC2 and then say that XC1 was so much better in that regard like...have you played your own favourite game? Yeah some designs are trash, but some are also really great and the villains have top tier design.
The lack of aesthetic consistency definitely bugged me too. Typically when I don't like designs or an art style, I can get used to it by just powering through it. The other two Xenoblade weren't exactly lookers when it came to the characters to me, but after a while I got desensitised and moved on. That was a lot harder in Xenoblade 2, where you could see radically different art styles share the screen at the same time, and more styles would get thrown into the mix as you went on. I understand what their intention was, but I hope they got it out of their system, and don't do it again.
the game making people angry is a feature, not a bug. its been several years now since release and you can still get much entertainment out of it
You're not the targeted audience. Noone in the west is.
It's a niche game for japanese teenage boys. That's the main reason this isn't going away anytime soon. Even nintendo isn't against the whole anime-sexualisation on their system. They're aware what helps them sale their stuff in japan.
The only reason this isn't happening way more often is that most japanese customers are on mobile now.
I've seen some horrible character designs in rpgs but Xenoblade 2 might just have the very worst, the dialogue isn't much better either. What a disappointing decline the series has taken since Xenoblade Chronicles.
True on the breast thing they really exaggerated but the game itself is so worth purchasing, loved every minute,...same for Torna
all in all I hope a better design and writing (not scenario that's fine) for interactions, jokes etc will be there for XC3, clearly they were the biggest flaws
all in all I hope a better design and writing (not scenario that's fine) for interactions, jokes etc will be there for XC3, clearly they were the biggest flaws
Yeah people are definitely gonna be surprised when they see certain characters jiggling in full HD.
Maybe its all part of the build-up to the release of Xenoblade Wars the mobile gatcha game. These designs would fit that perfectly
Did you have issues with previous Xenoblade games? While not as bad as XC2, they had stuff like this
(It might even be the "censored" version for Lynn?)
While XC2 is definitely more outlandish, I hated many outfits in X as well. They clash too much with the general aesthetic.
There's some silly character designs in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but there's a lot more great ones in my opinion.
I respect people's right to continue to voice their displeasure. That said, I hope with the release of definitive edition in the coming months, people can finally move on.
I think some people are in for a bit of shock when they revisit the original game, updated with better graphics and more... fidelity.
I respect people's right to continue to voice their displeasure. That said, I hope with the release of definitive edition in the coming months, people can finally move on.
I think some people are in for a bit of shock when they revisit the original game, updated with better graphics and more... fidelity.
