Okay, so, this week is Guild Wars 2 norn week. The Monday article is basically about a) norn aren't just big humans and b) here's some things that might make you want to play one.
The picture included was, of course, full of boob:
Okay, to be fair here, I do actually like this armor, boobs and all. The GW1 norn typically wore somewhat less than covering armor in both genders in any event, and while I've always felt that they went a little more overboard with that in the case of women, a lot of norn guys walk around with most of their chest exposed and bare arms and such, so I expect to see somewhat less than fully-covering armor during norn week.
And if this armor was matched with a male version where that was the case, I wouldn't be writing this post. Except, of course, it's not.
Here's the concept art that corresponds to that armor, in both its male and female versions:
[Edited to be a little less bitchy:]
This is too much dichotomy. The guy has a bit of bare skin (on the arm, possibly on the legs if those are the same coverings the chick has, and maybe a little abdomen, though it's hard to tell), but he generally looks pretty much covered, very much unlike the woman, who definitely comes off as "lightly dressed" at best. It's not like the woman shows large tracts of cleavage and a little more leg skin, but the guy has a mostly bare torso, too. That would've been fine, even if the woman ended up with a bit more skin showing; I expect there to be at least a little divergence between the genders because men and women tend to dress a bit differently anyhow. But this is just too much difference, much more like
And this is exactly why I feel compelled to plan to make several male characters, even though normally I default to female. I actually don't have anything against cross-gender character creation, it's just that unless I've got some reason to make a guy (occasionally for RP purposes, for instance), I tend to just pick "female" without even thinking about it. But thanks to this sort of dichotomy and the fact that it never runs the other way I feel now that the only way I'm going to get a satisfying experience in terms of the way my character looks is to make sure I have a mix of genders (at least when it comes to the human/norn/sylvari characters; the asura and charr don't seem to have sexxay fun tiem outfits in general).
In fairness I should note that, as game companies go, ANet does a better job with the dichotomy issue than most. (I should also note in fairness that we have not yet seen the in-game version of the male version of this armor, but since so far rendered art and concept art have been very, very similar, I expect it to still have the same dichotomy.) Even in GW1, with the absolutely horrid example of the elementalist and the less-than-spectacular assassin armors, there's generally a much closer style between genders than seen in this particular armor. They even have some revealing armors that are revealing for both genders.
More, I know they're aware there is a problem that needs to be addressed. As recently posted during the human week article on character design:
I would like to say a quick word about where we stand when it comes to the “sexiness” of our armors and costumes. This is a controversial subject that I encounter frequently on forums and message boards—not just about Guild Wars, but about a lot of games. I understand that many players feel that armor should be practical, realistic, and shouldn’t leave skin exposed to attack. When coming up with ideas for armor, the character and concept department try to balance the practical with the fantasy. We make armor that looks protective and functional, but we also make armor that looks sexy and shows a generous level of strategically placed skin. We recognize the “fantasy” aspect of our game; if you are able to rain down balls of fire from the sky, your clothing should not be a factor when it comes to body temperature, whether you are wearing your underwear or a fur coat. We’ve always intended to create outfits for male and female characters that are appealing and attractive without making our players feel uncomfortable about what their character or other player-characters are wearing. I think that Guild Wars has been very successful in this regard, and we will continue to make outfits that adhere to this philosophy.
And, look, that's commendable, but it totally misses the point I'm making here (and one I'm not alone in making), and that's this: it's not that the norn chick is wearing revealing armor, as sick as I am of the way that underclad women are used in marketing materials. If you want some armor to be sexy and impractical, I'm with you on that part... I even will choose to wear it at times. It's when the difference between the two genders in a single set of armor is like this; that's the main issue I have with the Guild Wars franchise's armor. If you want sexxay fun tiems armor, make it that way for both genders.
Update: Two of the three additional armors shown this week—in all cases, both genders showing in-game renders instead of one— have some dichotomy issues. I'm not including the pics this time, but I've provided links to them, and am going to describe them:
Armor #1, the good example (as seen here, about halfway down): This is, seriously, terrific. The woman has what I can only describe as a very cropped jacketesque thing, with lots of abdomen (and presumably back) and part of her arms showing. The guy is wearing a vest over his bare chest, with the same basic arm coverings. The woman has a very very short skirt, some knee-high boots, and some interesting leg wrappings in between. The guy has shorts that stop a bit before his own knee-high boots. Both of them have a long half-jacket/half-skirt thing, almost like a waist cloak. This is about as close as you can get while still acknowledging that there are some differences between what we think of as sexy on men and women. And even judging purely on the "how much skin is showing" criteria (which I feel is less important provided there are a range of options), the chick is pretty covered. I won't be staring at my own underwear if I wear this outfit, and that's a nice change from some outfits (*cough*GW1 Elementalist Canthan*cough*Blade and Soul*cough*).
Armor #2 (found here along with #3): This one is problematic for me. The guy's armor essentially covers the majority of his torso, with some weird bare bits up near the neck and shoulders. The girl is wearing some sort of very cleavage-exposing jackety thing. Both have roughly the same arm coverage. Up to this point, things are fine, even if I might prefer some slightly less fabric-straining cleavage. Where it goes off the rails is the bottom. Guy is wearing baggy pants with a loinclothy part that attaches to his large belt/hip covering thingie. The girl is wearing a loincloth as well, but her legs are entirely bare, a fact only slightly mitigated by the fact that her jacket is actually more a trench coat, if one can imagine a trench coat done in bearskin. I'm seriously afraid that if she sits the wrong way, I'll be able to take a screenshot and send it to my OB-GYN for evaluation.
Armor #3: This one both irks me and makes me question the fashion sense of whoever designed it. This set appears to be influenced by the Dervish armor from GW1 and is the Raven shaman armor, which means I ought to like it. Unfortunately, there's two problems with the woman's version: a) her abdomen isn't so much covered as strapped into place, and b) someone decided it would be a nifty idea to make her skirt have hip cutouts, which is just not attractive even if it weren't an issue for the extra skin purposes. The guy's abdomen/chest is, of course, completely covered, and no one gets a view of his hips. (Also, the chick's armbands are different and she inexplicably doesn't have the cool feather gloves, the latter of which I hope just means they left them off for the render.)
And, no joke here, these latter two armors completely ruined my enjoyment of Ree Soesbee's excellent lore/fiction article. I was really enjoying it until I scrolled down and saw that second armor, and actually said out loud "Oh, come on. Seriously, guys?" At that point, my attention was split between reading the article and wondering who I have to shake over there to get them to really hear what my issue with these types of sets is.
I'd just like to repeat that part of why this is so frustrating is that sometimes, they get it right. Even just judging on GW2 armors, I've seen more than one example of at worst negligible dichotomy... minor differences that don't really matter to me or even are completely understandable because of the fact that there are differences between the two genders' bodies. Again, GW1 has a lot of examples of getting it right, even if they also had some fairly egregious bad examples as well. I just wish that with all they were doing that made me happy about their game design, they'd just step up and solve this one issue.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment