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Post by Joseph Joestar on Jun 24, 2015 7:00:23 GMT -5
You guys are ableist.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Jun 24, 2015 7:45:42 GMT -5
They should have just let you pick Jensen's skin color like you could JC's in the original game! It's a bit of a copout, but that was something I always thought was interesting about the original game. I was going to say, it's so stupid that they don't let you. Even in Deus Ex 2 which had a messed up budget and super fractured production you could choose skin color and also be male or female. Like in a game where they already have female character models and Jensen has so little voiced dialogue anyway it would have been relatively easy to implement. I mean, it was accomplished in Invisible War so the bar isn't high. This lack of customization is something that frustrates me more than a lack of developed character representation. So many VG protagonists have only minimal dialogue, or you barely see them because the game is first person/you're wearing armor/whatever. But a lot of them won't give you any customization. But then in RPGs you get stupid levels of it. Other games love to have "RPG elements" like upgrade trees and stuff so that they don't have the stigma of being "just a dumb action game" but the customization is often absent.
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Post by kaoru on Jun 24, 2015 8:20:14 GMT -5
But if you could customize the dude, he wouldn't look like the game's lead designer anymore!
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Post by Neo Rasa on Jun 24, 2015 8:38:25 GMT -5
Hilariously, Reiko Nagase, the race queen from the older Ridge Racer games, her face was also based on one of the dudes who made the game.
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Post by bakudon on Jun 24, 2015 8:40:22 GMT -5
I don’t really get the problem. DE:HR could have given you customization, and it would have been OK, but it didn’t, and I can’t see it as a significantly lesser game for it.
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Post by JDarkside on Jun 24, 2015 8:49:16 GMT -5
I don’t really get the problem. DE:HR could have given you customization, and it would have been OK, but it didn’t, and I can’t see it as a significantly lesser game for it. That's because you're most likely represented by plenty of games as it is. Most everyone else has to be represented by awful stereotypes, and it's especially frustrating when games that could easily add character customization to don't have it or limit options significantly. It's especially annoying with Human Revolution, because it came from a series with plenty of customization and just cut out a ton of it for the sake of creating some vision of a main character that was about as interesting as a loaf of bread.
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Post by TheChosen on Jun 24, 2015 9:09:57 GMT -5
It's especially annoying with Human Revolution, because it came from a series with plenty of customization and just cut out a ton of it for the sake of creating some vision of a main character that was about as interesting as a loaf of bread. Plenty of customization? You sure? All there was were the skin color option and name change and the latter did jack because everyone still kept calling you JC Denton. Original Deus Ex had as much vision of a main character as Human Revolution.
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Post by bakudon on Jun 24, 2015 9:14:07 GMT -5
Might be. My nationality certainly isn’t represented in games just about ever, but I see no reason to feel sour about it. I’ve played both the Walking Dead and Sonic the Hedgehog and haven’t felt bad about not being represented even though I’m neither an African-American male or a blue hedgehog.
If you believe that games, or media in general, should statistically represent some other distribution of humans in the real world (like, should every fifth protagonist be Chinese?), I can understand your position, though I don’t necessarily agree to it. What I didn’t understand is the motivation to pipck out Deus Ex specifically, and still kinda don’t, because I don’t feel that visual character customization was ever a defining part of DE, and because I think that as a character Jensen is still much more interesting than your average, neckless military type.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Jun 24, 2015 9:19:35 GMT -5
It's because HR is an example of a lot of game protagonists where 90% of the character and plot development is done through text, making the main character more of a cipher than was probably intended. Like as an example I wouldn't call out The Witcher on this because the game is so meticulously built on a character that looks and acts the way Geralt does. HR's protagonist could have literally been anyone (made even more true by information about Adam's origins revealed later in the game).
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Post by Neo Rasa on Jun 24, 2015 9:25:25 GMT -5
Plenty of customization? You sure? All there was were the skin color option and name change and the latter did jack because everyone still kept calling you JC Denton. Original Deus Ex had as much vision of a main character as Human Revolution. I don't think that's really the case given how much more Adam's story was about RoboCop references and pining for his kidnapped ex-girlfriend. The original did more with less.
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Post by Allie on Jun 24, 2015 9:31:28 GMT -5
They should have just let you pick Jensen's skin color like you could JC's in the original game! It's a bit of a copout, but that was something I always thought was interesting about the original game. I always felt like things like that are somewhat pointless on some level. Power structures are about who make the laws. I feel like if the people wanting more diverse heroes are going to stuck true to their ideals, then they have to demand stories where said minority heroes ascend to the top of the socio-political 'food chain' and topple the white oppressor.
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Post by Allie on Jun 24, 2015 9:32:05 GMT -5
Hilariously, Reiko Nagase, the race queen from the older Ridge Racer games, her face was also based on one of the dudes who made the game. Not Reiko. Ai Fukami from Ridge Racer 5 is the one with a man's face.
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Post by JDarkside on Jun 24, 2015 9:33:26 GMT -5
It's especially annoying with Human Revolution, because it came from a series with plenty of customization and just cut out a ton of it for the sake of creating some vision of a main character that was about as interesting as a loaf of bread. Plenty of customization? You sure? All there was were the skin color option and name change and the latter did jack because everyone still kept calling you JC Denton. Original Deus Ex had as much vision of a main character as Human Revolution. I meant more mechanically, but Human Revolution removing a basic feature is so weird. It's a modern sequel, it should be adding, especially with that narrative.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Jun 24, 2015 10:18:46 GMT -5
Not Reiko. Ai Fukami from Ridge Racer 5 is the one with a man's face. Actually yes. You could read about it back in the day in any of the late 90s/early 2000s mags like Incite, etc. Reiko's face is based on modeller Kei Yoshimizu from 1998 on (when the character was redesigned and given much more exposure) when he redesigned the character so Namco would have a set model to use for all marketing and game appearances. I don't know who modelled Ai Fukami for RR5 but I don't think that was actually the case for her design.
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Post by JDarkside on Jun 24, 2015 10:27:23 GMT -5
Might be. My nationality certainly isn’t represented in games just about ever, but I see no reason to feel sour about it. I’ve played both the Walking Dead and Sonic the Hedgehog and haven’t felt bad about not being represented even though I’m neither an African-American male or a blue hedgehog. If you believe that games, or media in general, should statistically represent some other distribution of humans in the real world (like, should every fifth protagonist be Chinese?), I can understand your position, though I don’t necessarily agree to it. What I didn’t understand is the motivation to pipck out Deus Ex specifically, and still kinda don’t, because I don’t feel that visual character customization was ever a defining part of DE, and because I think that as a character Jensen is still much more interesting than your average, neckless military type. Jensen himself is barely a character, more like a thing that exists for other characters to use or express themselves on. His backstory is so simple and vague that his race, sex, and gender have no real impact on his worldview that you can choose for him. He's the perfect situation for character customization. And I don't get this statistics argument at all. What people want is for there to actually be a significant amount of characters that they can relate to, not just the normal white guy protagonist the AAA industry keeps pushing (usually angry and wanting revenge, actually a nice guy, dead wife/girlfriend/best friend he totally wasn't gay with, kills things good, ect). It's a bizarre belief that white is the norm, created from a broken western power structure that benefits people born white, and marketing decided it should be the norm for the sake of selling units to what they see as the "main" audience base. The most obnoxious thing is how little you'd have to change to satisfy a lot of people wanting women or LGBT protagonists (not to mention non-white). It would barely cost anything with most projects.
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