Square Enix Appears To Have Ended Working Relationship With Sweet Baby Inc.

[Uncle_Jafar]

The writers are more to blame than anyone else. What sweet baby does any other corporate PR department can also do.

[PercibelTheren]

The writers are more to blame than anyone else. What sweet baby does any other corporate PR department can also do.

You see, we can't admit the writers of whichever gaming company we're fanboying for messed up, though. We have to blame something external.

[CaptainLagbeard]

You see, we can't admit the writers of whichever gaming company we're fanboying for messed up, though. We have to blame something external.

Sure, it is ultimately the writing and art teams that make the final products...

But they're not being help by people who tell them that this


is going to be more popular with the average person that this

[Nestama]

Sure, it is ultimately the writing and art teams that make the final products...

But they're not being help by people who tell them that this

is going to be more popular with the average person that this

Both games here have pretty meh stories, but the gameplay from both is pretty fun. How a character looks doesn't matter to me, tbh. All I care about is "will I have fun?" and that's what I got.

[lolnotacat]

Snip...

Forspoken is kinda wild. I actually think Frey from Forspoken is really attractive when shown in screenshots without emotion, and Ella Balinska, the woman she's modeled after is drop dead gorgeous. To me (I'm not a graphic artist so this is just a layman view), it looks like they were trying to focus too much on realism and when emotion is involved, Frey immediately dropped into uncanny valley.

I think the real issue with Frey and the art design in general is it looks muddled and focuses too much on the wrong things in an attempt to be realistic. It actually reminds me of something Yoshi-P said when talking about the graphics update. I'm paraphrasing, but he was asked if they were going to make the characters more realistic, and he said no because it would detract from the look and style. I think he's fundamentally correct -- look at how stylized Stellar Blade is to use your example.

Now look again at Frey from a more forgiving screenshot. Aside from the swept over sidecut that modern game developers love and I hate, I'm not gonna be convinced this is unattractive. She's a little plain Jane, but that also has its own appeal.



Personally, I don't always need characters to be dressed up in scantily clad outfits to enjoy them. Yes, I do want them to at least be conventionally attractive, and having some coomerbait is nice occasionally (Nier Automata is one of my favorite games), but generally the art style needs to fit the game's aesthetic as a whole. I think having a character designed like Eve would be kinda silly in a pseudo-realistic fantasy Isekai (not counting that pretty much everything from Forspoken was a flop).

[PercibelTheren]

Sure, it is ultimately the writing and art teams that make the final products...

But they're not being help by people who tell them that this


is going to be more popular with the average person that this

I mean...yes? The main sin of Forspoken is that the dialogue is insanely cringe. That is LITERALLY a writing problem. Stellar Blade is just much of a meh game as Forspoken, it just has a thirst trap of a protagonist, so chuds treat it like it's the second coming or something while it's nearly a worse NieR knockoff.

[Nestama]

I mean...yes? The main sin of Forspoken is that the dialogue is insanely cringe. That is LITERALLY a writing problem. Stellar Blade is just much of a meh game as Forspoken, it just has a thirst trap of a protagonist, so chuds treat it like it's the second coming or something while it's nearly a worse NieR knockoff.

Well they did, but then they got mad because some skimpy outfits were "censored" or something. Unsure if they recovered from that. Funnily enough, 2B is gonna appear in Stellar Blade DLC lol

[Raven2014]

I mean...yes? The main sin of Forspoken is that the dialogue is insanely cringe. That is LITERALLY a writing problem. Stellar Blade is just much of a meh game as Forspoken, it just has a thirst trap of a protagonist, so chuds treat it like it's the second coming or something while it's nearly a worse NieR knockoff.

Well, consider Nier is one of the highest rate action games in the last few years, it's not the worst game to be compared to. Better be servant to a great emperor than being the king of blind, no? Also even if the protagonist is a thirst trap ... so what? I'll tell you what, if the Concord's rosters were at least filled with thirst traps, it would probably survive for two years instead of two weeks. Gaming should be about entertainment and allowing escapism, and having attractive characters used to be one of the most natural thing about it. It's really only a selection of people that trying to guilt trip others and make these elements as some kind of sins. And before you're making a jap at gamers being shallow and horny ... Go to steam, turn off the Adult filter, and see how flood it is with real "cummer" games. If thirsty and horny are all what gamers are about, than all nominations and awards would be dominated by porn games every single year, but you never see that happening, do you?

Frankly, trying to discredit Stellablade's success due to its protag is about as honest as blaming SW: Outlaw's flop on woke, so you're about as honest as the very people you're trying to criticize. Stellablade was a solid game, and the attractive protag definitely give it a boost. SW: outlaw flop wasn't BECAUSE of woke, it was just a shit game, the wokeness just make it worse. In away it's exactly what happen with DT Wuk Lamat. I doubt wokeness is the reason with why the character is so badly written, that's 100% on shit writer. But wokeness because it could be the reason why the English voice was given to a VA that's not suitable for the job, making a bad situation even worse.


Think about a game is like a dish, and most gamers would want as much a complete package as possible and that includes gameplay, writing, character designs .etc. no one single ingredient or seasoning would carry a dish to a masterpiece. And that actually include DEI elements. I do believe if used appropriately, DEI stuffs can help enhance the flavour and bring out a better dish. You already note that with BG3, or just look at the more recent Space Marine 2. Like we are not going to pretend the squad contains a black, white, and Asian guy, or that one of them has a robotic arm are all design coincidence are we? Yet do you hear anyone complain about DEI? No, because in this implementation, the DEI element was tasteful, and more importantly it doesn't try to overpower/interfere with the other elements that most players of this game will be after, like the power fantasy and muscularity (and yes, those are not bad thing to look for, especially not in game).


The problem is some developers pick up this bottle with the DEI label on it, and believe it's the new magical seasoning that they can use to replace everything else, from the cohesiveness of the writing to altering popular design choices than ... yeah, what do you expect? Like I said it's like a dish, I don't care how good one particular ingredient is, if you flush the dish with half of the bottle and overpower every others flavour, you won't end up with a dish most people want to eat. This is true for DEI, and believe it or not, it's also true for "thirst traps". Again, that's why you don't see game that only has sex appeal and nothing else pop out either, at best they're just there to feed the whale. BG3 was such a generational success is because it's about as complete as a package as a gamer could want, it has things that make both the woke and anti-woke people happy. And you may not want to admit it, but Nier and Stellablade are still far more a completed packages than any of the AAA flops we've seen in the last 6 months.

[Hallarem]

Fantasy is supposed to be escapism, you don't want the real world in your fantasy world. The real world is enough.
FFXIV just is suffering from what WoW is suffering from too. Lack of competition. WoW has FFXIV beat on gameplay, here to the ends of the earth.
FFXIV has WoW beat on the visuals, the "2nd life escapism" and roleplay mechanics, housing etc.

If both of these MMO's had some actual competition that kept them evolving, they'd be amazing and could vibe off on that competitive atmosphere, trying to one up each other constantly and with that us players would benefit from better, more passionate games. But let's face it, the company will rather go for easy cash than actually put in some BIG CHANGES and effort.
FFXIV is content on rehashing old FF stories and pulling a "remember FFIX" instead of making something of their own and the list gooooes on. Pumping out the same formula because its SAFE and I hope to God it stops being safe for them soon enough for them to wake up a.k.a people leaving and unsubbing.

[PercibelTheren]

Fantasy is supposed to be escapism, you don't want the real world in your fantasy world.

If this is said in good faith, I completely agree. The problem is a lot of people use "escapism" as an excuse for bigotry. I'm sorry, if your "escapist fantasy" is "there are no people of X minority I don't like", then you absolutely don't deserve to have that fantasy have catered to just because you're a hateful little gremlin with a crippling fear of everyone different from you.