The Definition of "Handsome"

[aveyond-dreams]

Someone recently linked me the following article, which goes on at length about the design process behind Zero. Notably, a rough translation of a segment of it reads as follows:

Zero started out with an order as a “genderless character”. I received an order from the scenario team, saying, "I'm not sure whether I'm male or female. I want to make him look like a handsome young man with a masculine skeleton and clear facial features."

Let me be absolutely clear that from the perspective of most players when we saw Zero it was blatantly obvious that we were looking at a female face that was similar to the quality we saw with Venat's model, albeit with a more faded look. "Handsome" is not a word I would use to describe what I saw, as this is clearly not a male face.



When those of us who for the past year if not more requested more handsome male characters in the cast, we did not mean "pretty boys" or whatever Vrtra's human visage form is supposed to be. In comparison to most other male Au Ra characters, his is a very uncanny appearance that calls to mind to the eeriness of CGI G'raha Tia's 3d model than anything else.



The time has come to shift priorities in terms of character design away from this trend and towards what people have been quite clear as to what they want to see more of. The absence of a Snow Villiers, a Basch or Balthier, or any of these other actual handsome male characters has only grown more noticeable with time. In fact, it was uphill struggle to even get a beard midlanders added just barely at the start of 6.0. Nevermind that said beard has appeared in trailers and has existed as a model somewhere for the past decade. Let's not pretend as if there is no place for characters with those sort of appearances to play a part of the main cast, especially when FFXVI is about to be headed by Clive whose design is in line with the male characters I've just mentioned.

Tldr, what we meant by handsome was this:




and not Zero or Vrtra.

[Saraide]

This just in, if you dont have 3 scars in your face and still have the ability to not look grumpy, you're not male.

[Tetsujin]

This reads a bit like a schizo post, but regardless, I find it fitting. Within the context of FFXIV Zero is quite masculine. Compare her face to any of the scions. With the exception of Urangier, she would probably be the "manliest" and most masculine. The androgyny is there still, yeah, but so is her boyish attitude, aloofness, and mannerisms. I don't particularly subscribe to uh... certain mindsets either, but I think they nailed what they were going for.

[Seraphor]

aveyond scraping the bottom of the barrel of "things to complain about FF14" again.

[Saraide]

aveyond scraping the bottom of the barrel of "things to complain about FF14" again.

Hey, compared to getting mad at ads this is technically more relevant. But that was also an insanely low bar to clear so there's still a long way to go for aveyond and friends.

[Boblawblah]

Why is it I don't even have to read the author's name to know who made this thread?

[TheMightyMollusk]

I've seen waist bands at Walmart that had less stretch than this topic.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Hey, compared to getting mad at ads this is technically more relevant. But that was also an insanely low bar to clear so there's still a long way to go for aveyond and friends.

Weirdly...yeah XD
This isn't much better then getting weird about ads, but its at least a little better

[Vyrerus]

Kinda weird. I don't see anything remotely mannish about Zero.

Vrtra's adult model just looks like a sad boy to me.

XIV's face selection does lack for good guy selection, but lacks a lot of good female faces too imo. They really could stand to add more faces to the game at some point for everyone.

[SassyAssassin]

Zero has a very feminine voice at least to me, I play the game in English so I don’t know how she sounds in other languages, if they wanted to make a genderless character they could have tried harder.