<color=blue>Skip to the blue text below if you don't feel like reading my pointless ass-drippings.
We're all familiar with the handsome studmuffin with short brown hair that acts as the protagonist of roughly 75% of games nowadays, aren't we? Can we really lay too much blame on studios for making characters that don't look too distinct to eliminate the risk of alienating people from what is essentially a product intended to rake in a profit?
I don't think so, but I do think that the developers and publishers that make the faces of their games significantly out of the ordinary deserve some credit for having some weighty cojones.
I don't mean that the designers of Gordon Freeman deserve man-points for making a somewhat nerdy looking guy in power armor the face of the Half-Life franchise. No, that's not very ballsy at all.
I'm talking about selling a game with this face on the box staring at you.
Doesn't look like the sort of thing intended to rake in shit-tons of cash, does it? No, it looks like something that'll tell you a story to which only a character this mangled can do justice.
<color=blue>What instances of ballsy character design have you come across, designs that are most likely to turn away the average customer just because of how off-putting they are?
I'd like to point this guy out.
This is Raziel. Raziel is a vampire with no jaw, essentially no skin, few or no internal organs, three talons instead of five fingers/toes, the complexion of a Smurf, the stunning physique of a vulture's dinner, and two long, thick flaps of flesh hanging from his back that used to be wings before the supporting elements thereof were brutally ripped from his body by a vengeful monarch.
This guy was chosen to be the face of the non-Blood Omen Soul Reaver games. I daresay it takes some serious artistic integrity to try to sell these products to people with this character as their representative.
We're all familiar with the handsome studmuffin with short brown hair that acts as the protagonist of roughly 75% of games nowadays, aren't we? Can we really lay too much blame on studios for making characters that don't look too distinct to eliminate the risk of alienating people from what is essentially a product intended to rake in a profit?
I don't think so, but I do think that the developers and publishers that make the faces of their games significantly out of the ordinary deserve some credit for having some weighty cojones.
I don't mean that the designers of Gordon Freeman deserve man-points for making a somewhat nerdy looking guy in power armor the face of the Half-Life franchise. No, that's not very ballsy at all.
I'm talking about selling a game with this face on the box staring at you.
Doesn't look like the sort of thing intended to rake in shit-tons of cash, does it? No, it looks like something that'll tell you a story to which only a character this mangled can do justice.
<color=blue>What instances of ballsy character design have you come across, designs that are most likely to turn away the average customer just because of how off-putting they are?
I'd like to point this guy out.
This is Raziel. Raziel is a vampire with no jaw, essentially no skin, few or no internal organs, three talons instead of five fingers/toes, the complexion of a Smurf, the stunning physique of a vulture's dinner, and two long, thick flaps of flesh hanging from his back that used to be wings before the supporting elements thereof were brutally ripped from his body by a vengeful monarch.
This guy was chosen to be the face of the non-Blood Omen Soul Reaver games. I daresay it takes some serious artistic integrity to try to sell these products to people with this character as their representative.
