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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6821 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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I think Miranda was very much a case of design and/or tech failures meaning Bioware didn't achieve the desired look for her, rather than them actively deciding to make her look plainer

I think this is totally possible, but I do also want to reinforce that if this was "we wanted her to look maximally attractive, but screwed up", it wasn't a decision that was fixed in Mass Effect 3. Miranda was redesigned, but still looks worse than Yvonne Strahovski: I'd argue worse than her ME2 iteration, though that might just be "coming even closer to the uncanny valley".

Many other characters get significant redesigns, most notably Ashley Williams, who I do find significantly more attractive in 3. So if it's a design failure in 2, it has to be paired with a second design failure in 3: absolutely still within the realm of possibility, but at least an unusual coincidence worth noting.

I think Miranda was very much a case of design and/or tech failures meaning Bioware didn't achieve the desired look for her, rather than them actively deciding to make her look plainer

I don't know about this particular game, but I've seen comparison of male and female characters which make me think that the "tech failure" argument is generally invalid.

In other words, I've seen cases where (1) the male actor for the game is handsome and the character based on him is similarly handsome; and (2) the female actor for the game is beautiful but the character based on her is noticeably less attractive.

I will note that it's possible for a game to have models that favor attractive-on-a-male features while not favoring attractive-on-a-female features, which would still be a technical failure while allowing this contrast.

My first thought here is Skyrim, where I've often struggled to make a properly attractive-on-a-female face without some very specific mods: Skyrim seems to really like wide, square-jawed faces that can work pretty well on a man but are rough on a woman.

At some point they had to make the call to not spend more time getting those features ironed out and to some extent that prioritization might be downstream of ideological goals, but it could also be a lot of other things that aren't connected to that.

I will note that it's possible for a game to have models that favor attractive-on-a-male features while not favoring attractive-on-a-female features,

Anything is possible, but given the totality of the circumstances (wokeification of video games in other ways; the uglification of female characters in general; the well known objection of feminists to attractive female video game characters; the preference of wokies for gaslighting everyone about what they are doing; etc.) I'm going to go with Occam's Razor on this one.

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