Why are human males so.. Ugly?

[Dave]

The faces we get to make human male characters are just... bleh... not very attractive.

[innuenstu]

I would rather have to stare at a woman all the time than a male video game or not. I myself always make females of any race. Oh! Except Dwarves, always males!!

[PocketYoda]

Originally posted by innuenstu:

I would rather have to stare at a woman all the time than a male video game or not. I myself always make females of any race just never males

I used to think that until they added romances and i just cannot handle lesbian stuff myself.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by Rogue Reshi:

Originally posted by dulany67:

I can honestly say that at no time in any game have I ever looked at my character and thought he just wasn't pretty enough.

Raise your standards

Raise my standards of what? Vanity? Body dismorphia?

[ExcaliburV]

One or two of them are alright, but... yeah, there's a lot of duds. Shame, but I vaguely remember hearing mention that they might be adding more customization options by full release. So I'll hold out for that.

Fun anecdote, but I remember one time when I was chatting with someone while I had BG3 up, I was randomly flitting through customization options while my friend was looking over my shoulder, and all of a sudden I hear "So, do they just not care how the guys look in this game or something?" Heh.

[id795078477]

Originally posted by wraith_73:

Originally posted by Dellecross:

Jeez, of course there will be some "extra info" in the thread that has no relation to the matter at hand.

the simple truth is "beauty" ("ugliness") is a subjective thing to begin with. There's no way it's possible to please everybody unless it's an enormous effort (and budgets) invested into characters design and thousands of options are available. See Korean/eastern MMOs for the reference.

But that's not BG3 way, the devs opted for a minimalistic approach to characters. Hence it's impossible to expect them having eye-candy faces. I personally consider all vanilla faces way below average, to put it mildly. But devs were not committing to satisfy everyone's "bar" of expectations.

P.S. If that is a deal-breaker, just install some character design mods. There are decent ones available.

Not true really, they could throw in sliders and allow character customization, but doing that would likely screw up all the coding they did on the endless cut scenes they want you to watch so you can admire the dirt everyone is covered in.

Your "throw in sliders" in reality means "employ completely different tech". Current tech they use is a fully pre-combined face mesh and "sliders" assume the possibility of partial face edits which is miles ahead of what they currently have.

Don't get me wrong, I am not defending them. If anything, I always strongly opposed their choice of outdated (by more than a decade) tech. Yet we have to see past emotions and into the reason. If they chose to do the cheap fully pre-combined mesh approach, it can mean one of two things (or both in some variety):

1. They don't care about how characters look. In this case - this topic's question has its answer right away.
2. They don't have the budget for more progressive tech. Because - while yes - it's somewhat a standard nowadays, it still requires an order of magnitude more work: sheer implementation, modelling, testing those sliders, designing the choices, seeing if it stylistically matches, you name it. In this case - my previous post applies.

[shinrin]

LOL! Play Solasta: Crown of the Magister if you truly want to see ugly characters. Then you'll appreciate BG3 faces more,

[Vixziค็็็็็n]

Originally posted by innuenstu:

I would rather have to stare at a woman all the time than a male video game or not. I myself always make females of any race. Oh! Except Dwarves, always males!!

This excuse is so lame. Look...just do you. Any justification just looks ridiculous.

[Dave]

Originally posted by Dellecross:

Originally posted by wraith_73:

Not true really, they could throw in sliders and allow character customization, but doing that would likely screw up all the coding they did on the endless cut scenes they want you to watch so you can admire the dirt everyone is covered in.

Your "throw in sliders" in reality means "employ completely different tech". Current tech they use is a fully pre-combined face mesh and "sliders" assume the possibility of partial face edits which is miles ahead of what they currently have.

Don't get me wrong, I am not defending them. If anything, I always strongly opposed their choice of outdated (by more than a decade) tech. Yet we have to see past emotions and into the reason. If they chose to do the cheap fully pre-combined mesh approach, it can mean one of two things (or both in some variety):

1. They don't care about how characters look. In this case - this topic's question has its answer right away.
2. They don't have the budget for more progressive tech. Because - while yes - it's somewhat a standard nowadays, it still requires an order of magnitude more work: sheer implementation, modelling, testing those sliders, designing the choices, seeing if it stylistically matches, you name it. In this case - my previous post applies.

3. Do what I finally did today: Install mods with better (in my opinion) faces.

[Dave]

Originally posted by dulany67:

Originally posted by Rogue Reshi:

Raise your standards

Raise my standards of what? Vanity? Body dismorphia?

Beauty varies from human to human and ANY human that says "looks don't matter" is either lying or lying to themselves. Anytime, someone has said this to me, all I have to do is point out various people until that person says "I don't find them attractive." Point is made. No human will ever find every human attractive.

I'm not saying use any standards of beauty. I'm saying give us more diverse faces or give us more control over shaping those faces.

[Dragon Master]

You know, when there have been a ton of articles that are so against hyper-sexualizing women that various entertainment in Western Civilization have been de-feminizing women and making them more masculine, then proceeding to call anyone who wants to look at pretty women in their entertainment sexist or misogynistic, it's funny to see the opposite issue in this game, where it's the men who don't look good.

Personally, I'd love good looking people no matter which gender.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by Dave:

Originally posted by dulany67:

Raise my standards of what? Vanity? Body dismorphia?

Beauty varies from human to human and ANY human that says "looks don't matter" is either lying or lying to themselves. Anytime, someone has said this to me, all I have to do is point out various people until that person says "I don't find them attractive." Point is made. No human will ever find every human attractive.

I'm not saying use any standards of beauty. I'm saying give us more diverse faces or give us more control over shaping those faces.

It's a video game. At a certain point, asking it to solve personal body image issues becomes creepy.

I'm not saying more options is a bad thing, but the options given should be enough to make something people can live with. And on the extreme end, calling them ugly shows a particular break with the reality of how people look. The game isn't instagram.

And TBH, the standards of beauty aren't really variable- the minimum standards of beauty are variable.

[Dave]

Originally posted by dulany67:

Originally posted by Dave:

Beauty varies from human to human and ANY human that says "looks don't matter" is either lying or lying to themselves. Anytime, someone has said this to me, all I have to do is point out various people until that person says "I don't find them attractive." Point is made. No human will ever find every human attractive.

I'm not saying use any standards of beauty. I'm saying give us more diverse faces or give us more control over shaping those faces.

It's a video game. At a certain point, asking it to solve personal body image issues becomes creepy.

I'm not saying more options is a bad thing, but the options given should be enough to make something people can live with. And on the extreme end, calling them ugly shows a particular break with the reality of how people look. The game isn't instagram.

And TBH, the standards of beauty aren't really variable- the minimum standards of beauty are variable.

Character creation is a REALLY, REALLY big thing in the gaming community.

The standards of beauty are FAR, FAR more variable than you think.

[id795078477]

Originally posted by Dave:

Originally posted by Dellecross:

Your "throw in sliders" in reality means "employ completely different tech". Current tech they use is a fully pre-combined face mesh and "sliders" assume the possibility of partial face edits which is miles ahead of what they currently have.

Don't get me wrong, I am not defending them. If anything, I always strongly opposed their choice of outdated (by more than a decade) tech. Yet we have to see past emotions and into the reason. If they chose to do the cheap fully pre-combined mesh approach, it can mean one of two things (or both in some variety):

1. They don't care about how characters look. In this case - this topic's question has its answer right away.
2. They don't have the budget for more progressive tech. Because - while yes - it's somewhat a standard nowadays, it still requires an order of magnitude more work: sheer implementation, modelling, testing those sliders, designing the choices, seeing if it stylistically matches, you name it. In this case - my previous post applies.

3. Do what I finally did today: Install mods with better (in my opinion) faces.

--------------------→ (My point)

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(You)

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by SnarkOne:

Apparently they're modeled after real people

I love when dev's do that, you know... instead of allowing fantasy to exist in a fantasy world they just give ugly characters instead. (Heavy Sarcasm)

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by Dragon Master:

You know, when there have been a ton of articles that are so against hyper-sexualizing women that various entertainment in Western Civilization have been de-feminizing women and making them more masculine, then proceeding to call anyone who wants to look at pretty women in their entertainment sexist or misogynistic, it's funny to see the opposite issue in this game, where it's the men who don't look good.

Personally, I'd love good looking people no matter which gender.

Well, some people forget the genres called Fantasy.

So personally I think characters should look the way the player wants, and what fits the archetype a npc should represent. Elves = beauty, Dwarves = Rugged, etc., etc.