• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Impractical character designs

M

Maffis

Member
Something that bothers me with some character designs is that, while they look really cool, I couldn't even imagine someone walking around in an outfit/armor like that because of real impractical reasons. One example is Samus Aran.

Metroidprime3_1.png


While her armor is real iconic and just awesome looking; how and why would anyone want to wear this? It's the Batman from the Nolan films all over. She can't look left or right without seeing those huge ass shoulder-pads so she has to basically move her entire upper body to look around. Another question is, why are the shoulder pads even so huge? Do they store some kind of battery for her suit or what? They don't make any sense whatsoever from a practical point of view.

What other examples do you have?
 
See: anime

Hair alone, oftentimes, would be extremely impractical for the scenarios anime characters are in. That's the style, but it's also ludicrous.
 
Pretty much any piece of female armor in TERA or Guild Wars or any RPG, really. All leave the torso open to attack.
 
Samus's shoulder pads are so huge because the Gameboy was in black and white. The large shoulder pads help differentiate better.

It just kinda stuck.
 
I think with Samus the arm canon makes sense as all doors in the metroid universe open when shot at so it's needed. Agree about the shoulder balls though but they look cool and that's where the morph ball lives (right?).
 
-Any armor that's is barely there, be it on a dude, girl, or whatever. Armor was made to protect people.

-Rayman.

-Sonic's torso and by extension all sonic characters torsos minus Vector is, at least I think, too small to contain everything needed for a character like that to exist. As granted they've got huge hands, bigger than are own so it in reality would be bigger than it appears, but at most it's gonna be like the size of a small dog torso, like kinda bigger than a Chihuahua.
 
Maffis said:
While her armor is real iconic and just awesome looking; how and why would anyone want to wear this? It's the Batman from the Nolan films all over. She can't look left or right without seeing those huge ass shoulder-pads so she has to basically move her entire upper body to look around. Another question is, why are the shoulder pads even so huge? Do they store some kind of battery for her suit or what? They don't make any sense whatsoever from a practical point of view.
Click to expand...


lRovhzW.jpg
Click to expand...
.
 
So... basically any video game not based on the real world?

I'm not getting the point of this. Videogames as an escape from reality for a ton of people. Trying to rationalize most things in games is just futile. It would be one thing to call out Samus' suit if she was in the middle of... Call of Duty, for instance. But in the world she's apart of, it fits perfectly.

There is nothing wrong with crazy armor designs, roided out dudes, and chicks with giant tits in video games. One might say there is a bit too much of it, but there is nothing wrong with crazy character designs. Having everything based around reality would makes for a terrible selection of games.
 
6209453088_a099fc305c_b.jpg

Havel armor, an armor made of rock. awesome, but you have to be ronnie coleman just to walk around with that thing on you
 
So are we talking just impractical clothing/armor and weapons within the context of the games universe and ours or are we just saying anything impractical about a character design? Because boy howdy that would be most games right there lol
 
JPizzle84 said:
Ivy was my first thought.
Click to expand...
Ivy's Whipsword and Tira's bladed donut disc are the first 2 weapons that come to my mind.

Also any character that has a boomerang as a weapon.

This is weapon design more than the characters themselves obviously but at the moment people have hit most of them. Weapons are the things I have problems with.
 
Lulu.png


The best thing is as much as Nomura loves zippers the dress doesn't have one so it is impossible for her to take it off (if it is please enlighten me because I can't imagine how).
 
Crimsonclaw111 said:
Samus's shoulder pads are so huge because the Gameboy was in black and white. The large shoulder pads help differentiate better.

It just kinda stuck.
Click to expand...

They're heatsinks (not that that makes sense). Also, spaulders are a thing, video games just go varying degrees of overboard with them.
 
Razzorn34 said:
So... basically any video game not based on the real world?

I'm not getting the point of this. Videogames as an escape from reality for a ton of people. Trying to rationalize most things in games is just futile. It would be one thing to call out Samus' suit if she was in the middle of... Call of Duty, for instance. But in the world she's apart of, it fits perfectly.

There is nothing wrong with crazy armor designs, roided out dudes, and chicks with giant tits in video games. One might say there is a bit too much of it, but there is nothing wrong with crazy character designs. Having everything based around reality would makes for a terrible selection of games.
Click to expand...
This. Never got the point in bringing up practicality in comics and videogames.
 
K from Virtue's Last Reward, but the explanations have endgame spoilers.

latest


Okay, so there is a person in there who has been in that suit for his whole life. How could the suit grow as he grew? At the true ending, he's out of the suit and unconscious: wouldn't the change in pressure (since the suit no longer presses on him) kill him?
 
Flappy said:
Actually, female fantasy armour would be practical because she could actually move quite easily.

Male armour, however, is always far too big and cumbersome to be practical in the real world.
Click to expand...

No it wouldn't. The point of armor is to protect the wearer many times at the expense of mobility.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

What kind of character designs should Western studios pursue?
2
68
948
KanKamAndNob replied
  • Poll
[VGC] Final Fantasy 9 character designer, Toshiyuki Itahana, quits Square Enix.
49
1K
sigmaZ replied
Invincible VS: More character reveals
25
785
March Climber replied
Favorite Character Creation Themes
Social 
10
376
Robb replied
  • Poll
Do you self insert in character creators?
2
93
1K
polybius80 replied
Top Bottom