Turjan
2mo ago
Like I said, I like cute, petite women, and frilly costumes help, so Harley’s classic design does nothing for me, and her persona is repugnant. That’s my taste, but I get that I’m not in the majority.
That said, I do think her curves are in line with what might be considered conventionally attractive, and her face is probably closer to that as well in the old games.
Turjan
2mo ago
Can you name many conventionally unattractive male game protagonists from major franchises?
I went down a mental list, and all I could come up with was Mario, who barely has human proportions anyway. The other one was Link in the classic Zelda games, but that was fixed by Ocarina of Time (one of the developers’ wives famously asked for them to ditch the bulbous nose and the rest is history.
You have a wide variety of looks for male protagonists, but they usually fall into the pretty boy camp (Link, Cloud, 9S in Nier Automata) or they’re more classically masculine (Simon Belmont, Snake, Chris Redfield), or they’re somewhere in between, bishounen who project some masculine energy (see Alucard and basically all of Iga-era Castlevania, or brother Nier in Replicant). This is the way it always was and I haven’t seen much deviation.
Women have frequently fallen into the supermodel camp. You have Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Samus, 2B and the old Harley Quinn as classic examples. I prefer petite and/or cute, personally, so women like Lara Croft and 2B don’t do much for me, but, say, Zelda from Skyward Sword does and a lot of female characters from RPGs fall into that camp (a recent example would be Xenoblade 3, with Mio, and there’s a steady selection of Fire Emblem and Atelier characters over the decades that work fine for me). So my tastes have always been a bit underrepresented. Suffice to say masculine or chunky characters aren’t that popular with guys, and there’s room for guys with my taste but they’ll rarely be the only protagonist in a game outside select RPGs, which is fine. Heck, even Saber from Fate, who would realistically be muscular, doesn’t look like it.
I don’t play many AAA games, so I’m mostly unaffected by the trends I’ve seen. But the trend seems to be that every attractive female character is made less attractive by conventional standards, and every new female character is either ordinary or unattractive, which has never been the case with guys and seems to continue not to be the case. By what rubric in film, television, or popular art could you make the case that Aloy from the second Horizon game, or that protagonist from the latest Fable trailer, or the Forspoken protagonist, or that super-masculine woman from The Last of Us 2 is attractive to men in the general population? Maybe there’s some art from certain periods with large women, but that’s always seemed to be a result of the artist’s proclivities, not overall trends. I don’t recall seeing masculine women being all that popular with men in any period in history. Why have new characters who look like Samus seemingly become so rare? And why have things seemingly tilted away from those female signifiers of beauty, as in the case of Harley Quinn?
How many modern male characters have seen the equivalent treatment? I don’t even recall many recent male protagonists, but does, say, the guy from the latest Assassin’s Creed adhere less to conventional male standards? What about the guy on the art of Baulder’s Gate 3, who at least looks like he fits into the bishounen trope? What about the new Prince of Persia protagonist, who, haircut aside, just looks very fit, the Simon Belmont type?
Regardless, it looks like the principles of female character design have changed, where the principles of male character design have changed more incrementally if at all. I think that’s what people are latching on to.
Again, Mario is my go-to for that. Can’t think of a single other example.
If you count Emil as a protagonist in Nier Replicant, that could work, but he doesn’t even look human so would that count?
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