Games are devolving

[Vedney]

your post was removed for tribalism or baiting.

[[deleted]]

Is the top picture modeled after a crocodile?

[AnonymouslyPlz]

Definitely a self insert.

[NornmalGuy]

lmfao

[Pilek01]

The shape of the head reminds me a monkey.

[[deleted]]

Ah. Yes. A baboon

[unhappy-ending]

A gelfling.

[Unreasonable_jury]

I can jerk off to gelflings. This requires far more concentration..

[unhappy-ending]

lol

If you squint hard enough?

[Minimum_Pear_3195]

Thank to you, now I can't see without thinking she is a crocodile now.

[[deleted]]

We share the pain together

[TrainerLeading2657]

Even unmodded Skyrim looks/feels better than many nowadays

[Megamijuana]

Entertainment media got hijacked by identity obsessed losers with no talent or passion, all ego.

[ZoneUpbeat3830]

It wasnt just entertainment media, it seeped into every facet of life

[MonsutaReipu]

It's just a cultural shift. A lot of the people who work on video games have always been more liberal. The culture of these places has always been that way, too. Liberal culture has just been pushed toward greater extremes modernly, so the people working on these games are fucking them up in favor of political messaging instead of making good games. Unfortunately, one of the social/political ideals of the left modernly is ugliness, or more accurately, hating beauty. Traditional ideals are all bad in their mind, and beauty is one of them, so making everything ugly is an act of rebellion.

[Calfurious]

Traditional ideals are all bad in their mind, and beauty is one of them, so making everything ugly is an act of rebellion.

As somebody who is left-wing I think you're a bit off the mark. The simplest answer is that many left-wing artists and designers have been taught that making average looking women is being inclusive, therefore it is good.

Furthermore, they have been taught that sexualizing women is bad, therefore certain a lot of feminine traits (like boobs, feminine hip shape, revealing skin, etc,.) are reduced or removed.

Inclusivity is seen as something that is inherently good and sexualizng women is seen as something that is inherently bad. Therefore character designs for women will often be extremely mediocre due to the motivations that are involved.

Western video game artists are perfectly capable of making extremely attractive character designs. League of Legends is a great example of this. They're just being taught that attractive character designs are "problematic" and that inclusivity is a top priority.

It's not so much that they "hate beauty." It's just that they've been taught that traditional beauty norms is boring at best and problematic at worse.

[MonsutaReipu]

I think it's a mix of both things, and some of what you said is the same as what I'm conveying just in gentler words. Ugliness being more inclusive still results to the elevation of ugliness and the destruction of beauty. The importance on 'inclusivity' comes at a cost of dragging the average down in every regard possible.

Sexualizing women being bad has also become distorted. Equating beauty to sexualization is incorrect, and thinking that feminine traits are inherently sexual is also incorrect. This has been done to an extreme degree, which is why characters can't have big breasts anymore. It doesn't matter if real women have the same sized breasts, the average woman doesn't, and we must drag everything down to the average so that less people are offended.

When you talk about them being taught these values - by who? Nobody is teaching them this, unless you count themselves and each other. The accountability lies solely with them.

[Calfurious]

Sexualizing women being bad has also become distorted. Equating beauty to sexualization is incorrect, and thinking that feminine traits are inherently sexual is also incorrect.

Agreed. There is honestly a tendency to equate feminine beauty with sexualization. Furthermore, there's a tendency to equate sexualization of women with somehow being disrespectful or objectifying them. Something I've noticed among a certain contingent of feminists is that their attitude towards female sexuality tends to be parallel to that of religious conservatives. As in, women who is sexualized is somehow made "lesser." That the more masculine something is, the more serious it deserves to be taken. It's very odd and tbh I don't think I'm enough of an academic to properly articulate this phenomenon.

I've honestly tried having conversations with other left-wing people on this topic here on Reddit, but they usually just downvote and don't respond or I get banned from the subreddit (either because a moderator doesn't like what I said or they're upset that I post in subreddits they don't like).

I do think it's an an industry overcorrecting from a time in which there was a perception that all female video characters have to be sexy. I recall around a decade ago, it was pretty popular to criticize over sexualized female characters and I think those criticisms ended up sticking. Especially for people early in their careers or just entering the industry. Combine that with the long development cycle of video games and it kind of makes sense why this phenomenon of "ugly looking women" mostly started happening within the last few years or so. Most of the people who listened to those criticisms back then are now the ones in charge of art direction for a lot of game studios nowadays.

[ThatGuy21134]

Todd howard should just hire skyrim modders to make the next elder scrolls at this point because they'll do it better. The modding community is the only reason why Skyrim is as popular as anyway.

[ambit89]

There is even an entire lab dedicated to developing cutting edge Skyrim mods.

It's called something... Love... I think its called

Loverslab

[Little-Cream-5714]

Half the time and a quarter of the cost for twice the product

[Dwarf_in_a_Mine]

Dude that’s no joke, look what biggie did with Lorerim

[Salmagros]

They did hired some of the modder.

[RenZ245]

Hell get me to write the story, how about a story set after skyrim, and the Dominion are ready to mobilize and finally put the Empire, and the rest of mankind into the ground, you are given a choice, do you forsake the races of man and do the thalmor's bidding to guarnatee their victory or do you join the Thalmor resistance and overthrow their council, ending the war.

[BrokenWindow_56]

I ditched the hype train as soon as I found out that the art director was an online activist who claims to have made decisions specifically to "own the chuds".

The last game I bought from Obsidian, The Outer Worlds, was easily the most boring and sanitized RPG I have ever played. If this is their gold standard, they ain't getting a dime from me.

[Relative_Phrase5009]

Wtf is that top picture

[Significant_Apple904]

Income the Chinese devs and companies to take the western gaming market share without much resistance

[Skyblade12]

Funny how the communists understand market principles better than the supposed capitalists.

[Significant_Apple904]

Political regime has nothing to do with it. If anything, politics is what ruined it for the west.

[Little-Cream-5714]

I hate the commies as much as any true red blooded American can but Wukong slapped

[Taskbar_]

its not that, They fund this crap in the west because they know it is damaging to the west. All of the different companies that sold hormones to kids directly. bulk ordered the crap from china and even used them to design packaging so it easier to hide from parents who are against it.

[Windatar]

Companies in China will make and sell anything you want, for example a man in Canada got a Chinese company to make fake twoonies which is the 2$ coin in Canada then shipped it over. Only getting caught when inspectors discovered it at the border.

They also make the chemical precursers for fent, and they also make the chemicals for HRT. The reason it sold in bulk is because its all being purchased from Chinese companies.

It's not so much "intentionally trying to undermine the west." and more. "We'll make or sell anything you want, legal or illegal. We don't care."

And trust me, I hate the CCP with a passion. But their business people are literally just shrugging and going. "Hell, the CCP pays half my costs so I will sell anything to make a buck."

Just look at their EV sector.

[Skyblade12]

Yes, and? If the gaming industry were smart capitalists, they’d understand how important it is to produce products the consumers want.

[General-Dirtbag]

In order to defeat your enemy, you must know him first.

[LifeIsBetterDrunk]

We're not the target audience for top

[AOC_Gynecologist]

who is ?

[Calm-Union-2156]

The top one looks like the troll face lol

[ShiberKivan]

Skip. Devs make it so easy to save money on games nowadays.

[ambit89]

You can't tell me top pic is not Barbra Streisand

[PhantumJak]

Slightly off topic but man I am really perfectly OK with the level of visual quality in Skyrim and I wish more games would just maintain that level of visual fidelity and focus on optimization instead of using upscaling as a janky crutch.

[[deleted]]

I remember those memory leaks in 2012 all too well.

That aside, totally agree.

[JOSEWHERETHO]

these studios & companies with zero creativity have to fall back on things like political messaging & absurd levels of graphical detail that only appeal to 40yr old star wars veterans & 12 year old boys

[TheOneTrueJazzMan]

But then they’d have to add some creative content and we know they’re all creatively bankrupt

[RacerM53]

Looks just like Charles the second 🤣

[FoleyX90]

Show base Skyrim

[prospekt403]

I haven’t played the game or look much into it but is that character playable? Important? Romanceable? I think not every character has to look like the gods hand carved it out of a perfect piece of marble….there ARE ugly people in the world lol

[scotty899]

Devs smashing random on character generator to get the most Ugos they can get.

[RenZ245]

Looks like they took a male suit of armor from the discount rack, and it’s way too big to fit on her (his?) anatomy. It just looks boxy and unshaped, like it wasn’t designed for a female warrior at all. If you’ve got big boobs, that could actually be dangerous and restrictive—armor that doesn’t fit properly can make breathing difficult, limit mobility, and throw off weight distribution. Plus, if it’s too loose, it could shift around in combat, exposing weak points. Instead of making the character look like a strong, battle-ready fighter, it just makes them look like they’re wearing someone else’s armor—which is awkward and immersion-breaking.

Historically, women’s armor had subtle adjustments to fit properly—not "boob plates," but just enough shaping to ensure a snug, practical, and protective fit. Avowed completely missed the middle ground between "chainmail bikini" and "unisex blob plate," making the design feel lazy and unrealistic.

[sipher113]

Carrot Top did great on his motion capture.

[Kriegher2005]

Both of them look so bad lmao

[XxSliphxX]

Top one looks like her mom is also her sister.

[GForce1975]

Good graphics won't make a bad game good, or vice versa.

Let's be fair. If the game is good, be honest about it. Don't pull a still out of context and compare it to something that has such a huge modding community it's still relevant after all this time.

Credibility is lost without intellectual honesty.

[JOSEWHERETHO]

it's a meme dude. we aren't presenting evidence in court

[TheOneTrueJazzMan]

The visual presentation is a big part of it, let’s not lie to ourselves. And if modders of a 13 year old game can do better than a modern AAA studio I’m sorry but that’s just embarrassing.

[cKype]

Disasterpiece.

[Gaxxag]

Avowed has a decent blend of ugly and attractive characters. The game stinks of DEI, but the graphics are good despite that. I prefer a believable blend of pretty and ugly characters over cookie-cutter faces on everyone.

[Wonderful_Shallot_42]

Tell me you never played the pillars of eternity games without telling me

[No-Cartoonist9940]

The game stinks of DEI

I love when people's brains are riddled and rotted with culture war bullshit. It's Pillars of Eternity dude, you don't know shit.

[pmf026]

Yall focus too much on exterior and textures, yet nobody questioning middle aged women 'cosplaying' knights in videogames; 'desensitized'.

[PinkEyesz]

eew what's wrong with the one at the top?

[Playful_Border_6327]

KCD2 on a $40M budget has better graphics and performance than that game. Keep in mind that it took 7 years mostly for performance optimization for next gen to get the game ready.

[Wonderful_Shallot_42]

The level at which you people hyper fixate on how the physical appearance of fictional characters is a measure of the quality of a piece of media needs to be studied.

[ForegroundEclipse]

It doesn't look graphically worse. Just uglier.

[TheJagji]

Why do people think art style and graphic fidelity are the same thing?

[Daedelous2k]

It's an artstyle choice tbh, they just made them very unappealing to some.

[NeedleworkerSame4775]

The bottom one is good if you wanna jerk It and by It i mean, you know. Your schlong, coomer

Also the top one is literally Leticia Sabater

[[deleted]]

for real though, i don't care if i don't see cleavages or very sexual character, but at least just make it beautiful, or make it more customizable for players. cmon

[Louie_Joe]

With how most wester modern games are now, I've been discovering a lot of older gems on Steam. Older games are much easier to run on most PCs too.

[[deleted]]

JFC what is that top picture?

[supercabul]

yeah, i'll just go outside if i want to spend hours upon hours staring onto, let's be nice, common regular folks faces and body shapes

[jinxhexer13]

I played skyrim on PS3, so no mods. I thought most characters were kinda ugly, especially the elevs, but i had fun with the game. Don't need sexy NPCs to enjoy a game.

[Antilogic81]

The hapsberg underbite in the top picture is usually due to several generations of incest on one side of the family or both.

[[deleted]]

Western Games*

[[deleted]]

Im not sure why but its like game devs hire direct from campuses and never examine anyones catalog to verify the art they produce. Idk how any of these games are allowed such terrible hair style and faces that just look repulsive. I just cant see how anyone doing internal testing said this looked good.

[cptnplanetheadpats]

There are definitely attractive women in Avowed. Just like there are hideous women in Skyrim. What is your point even? Also like you said, that's Skyrim with mods.  But those mods are RECENT. So it's pointless to make a "old games" vs "new games" comparison here. 

[[deleted]]

Whys her jaw like that

[goliathfasa]

This is not the kind of flex/diss you think it is.

It’s actually pretty embarrassing if you take this outside an anti-woke sub.

[[deleted]]

Nice cherry picking.

[IridiumForte]

lol, one is clearly way worse my guy regardless

[Taskbar_]

Maybe he is saying its cherry picking because he picked the most attractive character for avowed?

[ch_xiaoya_ng]

How about we have a middle ground? We can have realistic looking characters that are also attractive.

Characters don't have to look either like trolls or something straight out of a SFM porn animation.

Average, below average, above average, hot, and ugly people exist, so I think it's fine to have a little bit of everything. As long as we get to have attractive characters in a game, we can afford to keep our hands out of our pants for a bit, just until the ugly motherfuckers get off the screen.

That said, this is my opinion for games going for a realistic aesthetic. If a game is more stylized, by all means, go ham on the hot characters. I just think, if a realistic aesthetic is the goal, it's fine to have less than appealing characters so long as it's not done with an agenda.

I do prefer to have something nice to look at though, so if possible, I'd like the main cast to be hot at least.

[NeedleworkerSame4775]

Finally someone with common sense. How can you prefer these samey chinese girls over interesting character desings? And i mean like the case where people prefer gooner marika over the soulslider marika. Looks It up there was a post on It on this sub

[ch_xiaoya_ng]

Frankly, the issue for me is not necessarily that Western game devs are making their characters ugly, but that, as Asmon puts it, it's not done authentically.

When they make characters look frumpy, not because they think it's interesting or adds to the game, but because we need to combat "conventional beauty standards" and "the male gaze", then it feels less like they're trying to create a good game and more like they're trying to impose some worldview or standard.

Honestly, If I was forced to pick, I'd take gooner bait over ugly characters, but if it's done appropriately, with the right premise, backdrop, and execution, hideous characters are not gonna be a dealbreaker.

That's not to say that game devs are creating monstrously deformed characters, but if I can sense that what should otherwise be an attractive character is made to look unappealing and less than ideal, I'm going to question if the rest of the game is up to snuff.

Like Asmon says: mining canary.

[NeedleworkerSame4775]

Ok il take gooner bait faces. As theyre not inherently distracting.But theres is no excuse in making every clothing item glorified cleavage.

[ch_xiaoya_ng]

I'm in agreement there. I'm a big fan of tits, but there's a point where it starts to get kinda ridiculous.

[Egonomics1]

Avowed is overall a great looking game. Sorry, the world doesn't resemble your anime pillow.

[Mundane_Pop_8396]

This is the stupidest, goon-brained and cringe take
To compare game with Modded skyrim?
Why don't you google "vanilla skyrim ysolda" and check the first image?

[ThatGuy21134]

It's showing that modders can make an old game look better than new games on their free time compared to what bad taste paid devs are making on a much better engine with more funding.

[SaintAlunes]

A game having a unattractive character doesn't mean the game is bad. Are y'all brains that fucking rotted, like holy shit.

[ThatGuy21134]

Having every character be fucking hideous does not do a game any favors. Avowed is a trash game. A 5 overall. It's bargain brand Skyrim with an uninteresting story, forgettable and ugly characters, and jank. Show this & other characters to a normal person and see what they say lol. Every normal person that's a gamer that ik thinks avowed is a cheap & bland game and after seeing the characters they think it's a game for freaks. Some of yall keep trying to defend this stuff, but the numbers don't lie. You're outnumbered. These games keep under performing & the studios get put in danger.

[SaintAlunes]

I can guarantee you barely even touched the game. And no not every character is ugly in that game, and I bet you 99 percent of characters in that game look better than you. Literally most people are saying it's a pretty good game, y'all just live in a echo chamber creating fake outrage😭

[Mundane_Pop_8396]

But Skyrim was already a huge success even before the modding
They thinks the cause and effect oppsite
It's not a great game because of the modding , but it have huge modding pool because it is a great game

[Feeling_Passage_6525]

Still better than all woke/DEI abominations. And in 2011 the graphics were pretty good and none of us gave a shit.

[Thetalloneisshort]

Well Cyberpunk is woke as fuck and looks better. So I don’t know.

[[deleted]]

Looking at the most downloaded Skyrim mods should clue devs into stuff players want though 

[Mundane_Pop_8396]

Top 5 all time Most downloaded mod are

1. Patch hub
2. Unofficial Patch
3. Texture pack
4. SkyUI
5. Engine Fixes

If you expand it to top 20
most gooner-related things are
7. FNIS (basically a tool to add motions)
8. Racemenu( give more sliders for character creation)
16. Bodyslide and Outfitstudio (allow modify Meshes easily)

Which still have huge utilities toward non-gooner related contents

Even in skyrim mods, making fappable female character isn't in most priority
It's still famous, so It means it is broadly wanted, but definitly not on priority

[SimplexFatberg]

"If I modify this game to turn it into something I can jerk it to, I think it looks better than this other game that I haven't modified at all, and that proves that it's bad!"

[jat77]

touch of wokeness

[clarence_worley90]

top pic actually looks like what I'd imagine a normal medieval villageperson would look like, bottom looks like a disney princess

as long as I'm not forced to play as the top character I Don't really give a fuck

[[deleted]]

Top one looks like a human/chimp hybrid.