Good Looks Please? kthx
A week ago I decided to start a brand new game of Fable 2 with one goal in mind: keeping my female character hot. I know it’s shallow, but I’m starting to get really sick of RPGs that mangle my characters into looking like some sort of deformed muffin. I understand the whole “your decisions affect what you look like” shtick, but can’t your choices at least try to make you look decent?
It may be cruel, but I’m forcing a low-calorie, no-magic, middle of the road diet on my Fable 2 character to prevent her from turning into the freak show I managed to create before. Even with Fable 2’s “good” look, the character you play still has a ridiculous looking halo floating atop their head. And the evil look? Lame looking horns. If you play somewhere in between, you may be graced with zombie or Dracula face (yay?). If you are a heavy magic user (who isn’t?) then forget about perfect, smooth video game skin. You get a body covered in horrible neon blue veins, as if you had just inhaled a few blue highlighters. Oh, and don’t even dare eat so much as an apple or you’ll turn into Heffer from Rocko’s Modern Life.
Yikes
And while I’m on the topic, what’s up with character creations that start ugly and just stay that way? Oblivion is the worst offender, no matter what I try to do with the female character she still looks like my grandma.
What say you out there? Do you care about how your characters look in RPGs?
(Thanks to IGN for the picture)
June 9th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I say that I could care less about RPG looks, but you get a total win for the Rocko reference =D
June 10th, 2009 at 7:16 am
I say OH MY GOD! I started Fable 2 with a female character on my first playthrough, and got so turned off by what has become of her at about 70% through the game that I switched to male clothes and simply started pretending she was a man. But I couldn’t keep lying to myself for too long, so I just stopped playing and am now considering just starting from scratch with a male character (even though I haven’t gotten to the ending yet).
It’s very sad. Fable is particularly offensive to the female form, it seems; at least on a man all the scars and veins can look borderline cool. But it makes the females completely hideous. I know Molyneux loves this whole little gimmick of your character’s physical appearance reflecting actions, but I think he has gone way overboard with it. Most people still play the game the way the want to play it, and all that is accomplished is a bunch of hideous looking she-creatures running around.
June 10th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I know exactly what you mean, my first female character looked like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, and I got so disgusted that I stopped playing. I was so rich, too! With my new female character, I don’t put any stars in Physique, and instead I pump them into the Skill section so that I’m tall and thin. I love spell casting though, so I still have the funky blue lines.
You should make it all the way to the ending, just so that you can buy Fairfax Castle. Once you do, there’s a potion you can find that will permanently switch the gender of your character….just what you need!
It takes a lot of effort to keep a female looking like…well…a female. I understand what he’s trying to get at, but he could have at least put more effort into allowing your character to remove gross effects (like fatness, scars, blue veins, etc) by creating potions, or some sort of medieval plastic surgery, or even just losing weight by all of the running that you do. There’s only one potion in the game that I’ve found that can eliminate fat, and it comes from one of the new expansion people in Bowerstone.
So far I’ve managed to keep my female looking good, as long as I keep her huge sunglasses on it pretty much covers up her face (just like women do today!). I think I’m just super picky when it comes to my characters in RPGs, in looks and in actions.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Thanks for the tip! Maybe I’ll bite my lip and put the old girl through the rest of the paces after all…