Dragon Quest III: HD-2D Remake - 14th November

[Hero-of-Time]

18 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

That's not really the issue here though. It's the constant years of ridiculous female character designs over the years that have resulted in an absolutely toxic environment for women who want to play games without feeling like their whole gender is just something to be ogled at.

Developers shouldn't face backlash for daring to feature a female character that doesn't look like a supermodel, dresses appropriately, and is shown to be capable. And yet, you see that all the bloody time these days.

What about the market/audience that don't want change though? Is it basically a "Screw you. Your opinions don't align with mine so I don't care." kind of attitude? 

As for developers not facing backlash, then the same rule needs to apply to developers who do want to make more suggestive designs. They constantly get it in the neck these days.

Just to be clear, I dont care either way. If a developer wants to cater to a certain audience or not that's up to them but when their hand is being forced to make changes they don't really want to make, then things become a little more complicated.

[Jonnas]

10 hours ago, Julius said:

I think sometimes having Type A/B/C/etc. can be just a bit too nondescript, and I think that extends far beyond just the gender options in some games.

Agreed. When each "Type" of character gets called exactly that (like it's a car model or something), that's a lot of potential worldbuilding that's just being needlessly sterilised. Like, the various designs for DQ3 HD are already known: each gender gets 4 appearances. And there's a world of difference between an "Old Fogey" and a "Male No.3".

It's such a ridiculous naming convention, too. I'm sure the women of the world are thrilled to be described as "Gender Type-B"

(Incidentally, I remember the Harvestella Demo in particular had gender options that... slightly made your character wider or thinner, but did not change the main character's design or costume. Non-binary was the middle option, btw)

10 hours ago, Julius said:

I mean just to point out the differences with the female warrior here, they literally just gave the her some briefs and an undershirt:

The female warrior in DQ3 is a curious case. It clearly reflects the aesthetics of the time - the "excessively skimpy lady" in fantasy & sci-fi settings was a popular trope for warrior princesses, damsels, and concubines alike throughout the 70s and 80s - but it did not reflect Toriyama's sensibilities at all. Toriyama was more of the type to use sex appeal for comedy, rather than design a skimpy outfit for serious female characters. Dragon Ball is an excellent example of this. Heck, DQ3 itself is an example of that (the male jester is a clown, whereas the female jester is playboy bunny-girl)

In that sense, the Female Warrior actually clashes with the game she's on. None of the other female classes look like this, nor do they differ so much from their male counterparts.

That said, the change they went with is laughable in itself. Skin-coloured under clothes? It just screams "we're technically complying with a highly-specific demand". It doesn't change anything meaningful (the bikini mail still looks like one), but it does get around a "maximum amount of visible skin" rule.

In the end, it's just stupid age rating criteria wanting easy solutions: instead of looking to see if a character is sexually exploitative or not, they just measure the amount of technically visible skin. Meanwhile, the Japanese ratings seems to only look at whether underwear is visible or not. Incidentally, Zero Suit Samus bypasses both, regardless of how many sexually suggestive poses she might make.