I'll drop this as I don't want to take this thread off-topic any farther, but it was an earnest question. If I don't associate the two, I imagine many others don't as well, and I imagine that's where Ubisoft's thinking was.
Did you not meet many woman in real life before? Cus I really don't see how otherwise you can see woman as having strong jawlines as so out there.
Don't worry, this is perfectly on-topic, as this is about how women are represented in media, and how this representation actually warps people's perception of what women look (or should look) like is certainly a relevant point of discussion.
Perhaps you are projecting here, as I would at least hope that most people don't need to look up women on the internet to see what they look like. But I dunno how pervasive it really is anymore.
I see no reason to lie on the internet. I actually did search "women with strong jawlines." Olivia Wilde was one that popped up and had me like, "Oh yeah..."
Sorry dude, you were wondering if it was. I didn't mean to be rude.
I know you said you're dropping this, but I just want to point out that this is pretty much a perfect example of objectified representations in media influencing real-life perceptions of women. This is why representation is important.
Seriously? I love Cassandra as she is, how could anyone think such a....
We like variety - I'm not saying having no attractive woman but woman come in all shapes and sizes, and it's also nice to have media that goes beyond the idea that women stop existing at 35. You are saying "some" but imagine having no choice but seeing "attractive" women characters which all have the same face shape, big boobs, tiny waist and round bum with the only differemce being slightly different hairstyles and colouring. It becomes pretty clear that it wasn't designed for you, and it's also a standard that you have seen in media for as long as you remember and generally something that without starving yourself and a serious amount of plastic surgery, you cannot achieve. It's shitty. I also point out I never said woman only wanted unattractive characters.
No, she wasn't. In fact she was implying nothing even close to what you wrote.
OK. But you could also, like, listen to the women speaking up in this thread...
I see that; Clash and Nomad both could be them aiming to shift direction in their character design, but I think we'll have to see if her face model persists to make a better judgement, seeing as how they like to change them all so often.
I see that too, but the sexualization of Ash and IQ's default designs are still less evident than that of Ela and Dokkaebi's.
For a long time now I've been a little miffed by that same kind of subtle sexualisation in practice with Rainbow Six: Siege's character designs and I've harped about it in the OT from time to time to some others' distress, probably. If you look at the vanilla characters, they're all more armored and their faces are concealed. Almost every female DLC character has foregone a mask or other protective headwear when anonymity is extremely important in the special operations groups these characters belong to. In addition often female DLC characters completely forego bulletproof vests, which isn't excused by their light armor gameplay rating, because many characters with a light armor rating wear vests. All the male ones do, in fact.
Here are pics of obvious examples that hopefully make what I'm talking about clear.
Vanilla:
DLC:
Technically, the face thing applies kind of to every character because vanilla Siege had pretty primitive facial animation. Since it's been upgraded DLC character designs have much more often been without concealing headwear, but that aside, there is a trend of female characters foregoing concealing headwear alongside the male counterparts of their DLC pack who come with them wearing masks i.e. Dokkaebi & Vigil, Finka & Lion.
They've also gone back to vanilla and old DLC characters to make them more attractive. The first character used as an example above, Twitch, has been wholly redesigned.
Note the slightly thinner, tighter, brighter appearance.
Valkyrie's old face was complained about and memed on enough for them to redo it. Solemnly tell me that's a bad face model. It isn't. It's not an attractive face by typical standards; I don't find it extremely attractive. It's a strong face. But it isn't a bad face model. C'mon. Therein lies the issue—these characters are the highest level combat forces operatives, attractiveness isn't really a requirement. Not that they can't be pretty, but pretty is all people out there want and all creators out there give. And how important is pretty for Siege? A game ostensibly about soldiers tactically destroying and killing in a semi-grounded setting. That isn't a pretty thing by most standards, is it?
I
The last example I'll post is of the first DLC character, Frost. This is what she looks like in her elite skin that also came with her default face portrait and model redesigned.
"Elite skins" also come with special victory animations:
It's like clockwork for these sorts of threads. Do we have a bingo card yet? :P
However you're feeling, sexy cops are a pretty well covered fetish so I don't know how you're not seeing how others might be attracted. Especially when they're in tight jeans like IQ—IQ's ass also being another well covered fetish. I think you're missing the subtleties of the examples, the topic, and what they mean.
Yeah, and she made those faces because of the goofy facial animation, which has since been largely fixed in coincidence with her face update. And she is and was far from the only character to make those faces. She is the character who had the most popular flinch face meme made out of her, though.
She had the most popular because she looked the worst. Her face did not look good as a model. I'm not going to argue that she's not more attractive now: Of course she is, she was literally inhuman looking before. I don't think THAT change was made to 'hey she'll be sexy' her up. I agree with most of your other points, as I stated. The Valk change was good though, it's not fun playing characters that look actually fucked up, male or female. We're not talking scars or whatever else (I give my female characters in rpgs scars every chance I get, for instance) we're talking 'hey the model looks like someone was drunk when they made it'
I think you're misreading what I'm writing, at least in intent. I never said that they didn't do this, I said it seems weird that they're specifically calling it something like 'fuckability' when I don't think that's ever going to cross anyone's mind playing these games. OBVIOUSLY Nerissa is made to look 'sexy' I guess because she's a stripper, but that's actually in line with the character too. I don't consider Snow White or Kate 'sexy' or 'fuckable' though, and I doubt most other people do either. They're good looking characters in that art style. So, to me, that makes it bizarre to hear that these conversations happened in that manner. I'd feel the same if we heard this about, say, Horizon Zero Dawn, for instance. It's not that Aloy is an ugly character by any means, but if they said specifically they were trying to make her fuckable, I'd be like 'wut?' because that doesn't come across to me as the user.
Fair. I disagree, but fair. I like more visually fucked up characters though, because I'm kind of fucked up, so it's cool to be represented.
Stop, seriously. Apart from the weird eye and teeth glitches, her actual face, the thing they changed? Looked like a normal woman. The fact you think that looked "fucked up" is on you. I'm not gonna listen to some guy tell me that a face shape I've seen on plenty of women isn't good enough. Stop it with that shit.
Doesn't mean it's always the publisher. Sometimes lead designers can be perfectly misogynistic pieces of shit all by themselves. And waaaaay too many male artists draw those kinds of designs by default without anyone even asking for it. And then they get through because in a predominantly male industry, no one questions them or criticizes them or makes them change anything.
You think? I don't notice it. In movies and stuff there were always things like grandmas and large people, just because of story needs. In games they have to make a whole new model so in general it's more regressive in that respect.
I'd say that's a very, very recent development, but perhaps you're right, it has been getting noticeably better.
You can always click on people's names to see if they set male or female on their profile.
I know women who believe that strong jawlines and broad shoulders indicate transgenderism.
Even if that's true (it's not, plenty of cis women have strong jawlines... can't believe I need to point this out), so what? Trans women are women.
Wow that's.... just weird, plenty of cis women look like that.
"I know it's wrong but I did it for money so it's ok" is not a strong justification for an action.
Valkyrie's old face was complained about and memed on enough for them to redo it. Solemnly tell me that's a bad face model. It isn't. It's not an attractive face by typical standards; I don't find it extremely attractive. It's a strong face. But it isn't a bad face model. C'mon. Therein lies the issue—these characters are the highest level combat forces operatives, attractiveness isn't really a requirement. Not that they can't be pretty, but pretty is all people out there want and all creators out there give. And how important is pretty for Siege? A game ostensibly about soldiers tactically destroying and killing in a semi-grounded setting. That isn't a pretty thing by most standards, is it?
I don't disagree with the notion that R6 skins have gotten 'sexier' over time, but I would disagree that most of them are remotely sexy in the first place even now, besides the IQ elite, and the dumb skintight pants on Ela and Dokk.
The Valk thing...that picture doesn't do justice how fucked up her old face looked. Every kill cam she looked like the stupidest person on the planet. THATS why it was a meme. in game she looked terrible.
I don't think it's wrong to say that people don't want to play as 'ugly' characters in games, male or female. I don't think making her face not look like she was beaten with an ugly stick at birth is exactly in the same realm as 'All women have to wear heels' and it does a disservice to the real issue to try and push that alongside it. Lack of armor? yeah. Lack of 'boy that model looks ugly' nah.
I think it's super weird that Telltale had this kind of thing going on, since I don't think I ever considered any of their characters particularly sexualized, so...they wre doing this AND they failed at it I guess? They're definitely not ugly, but neither are most of the characters in these games. So mostly I'm surprised.
EDIT: They DO tend to make them all kind of waifu material in writing though. Even in the games where it's not super appropriate to the story. That's very noticeable.
That there are some really oblivious and misguided people out there.
Let me be clear, the women I know who believe this are not "feminist" in any sense of the word.
