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Impractical character designs

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?

Is this a real question?
morfos.jpg


We know some of the suits dont have the circle shoulder pad and still let her transform into morphball (like hte fusion suit) but the great fuck up here was Retro doing the humongously huge in MP1.
The original and posterior designs have smaller shoulders and puts her back curved making her head more advanced than her shoulders so her vision wouldnt be obstructed by them.

Also from a design point of view it was created to make more visible samus sprite on the original GB.

I wouldn't call it impractical or badly designed, in fact, is pretty excellent and original without being busy or idiotic in details.

EDIT:
I see that I came late to the discussion.
 
...REALLY ?

That is what you say about the design ?

Not the fact that if she had ACTUAL CLOTHES she would be able to walk 100% of the time with a barrier or shield or ready for atack.

But she's already always ready for attack? I don't follow.

I don't follow a lot of this thread I guess.
 
But then imagine all the combat she faces. Not being able to move reflexively seems like a pretty big trade off for becoming a ball.

In Metroid Prime, the Varia Suit isn't required for the Morph Ball. In fact, in most of the games, Samus obtains the Varia Suit after getting the Morph Ball upgrade. What the Varia Suit does in Metroid Prime is allow Samus to explore extremely hot environments without expending energy, and provides a 10% damage reduction. In other games, the benefits include up to 50% damage reduction, protection from parasites, acid, and subzero temperatures, slightly increased speed, and the ability to absorb blue X-parasites without taking cold damage. I'd say that's a fair trade for a slightly restricted field of vision.
 
I've yet to see a videogame character fail in their objective (nor have I felt disadvantaged as such as a player) because of their character design, so everything checks out as pretty practical to me.
 
But she's already always ready for attack? I don't follow.

I don't follow a lot of this thread I guess.

I think what they mean is that if she wasn't using her hair as clothes, she'd be able to more effectively use it as a weapon or defense.

I'd say that checks out, because she does lose her clothing when she goes all out.
 
I think what they mean is that if she wasn't using her hair as clothes, she'd be able to more effectively use it as a weapon or defense.

I'd say that checks out, because she does lose her clothing when she goes all out.

But she clearly has no hang-ups or hesitations about stripping down to that weird metal bikini thing to go all-out when she has to, so one could argue that she's not slowed down by it either way.
 
I've yet to see a videogame character fail in their objective (nor have I felt disadvantaged as such as a player) because of their character design, so everything checks out as pretty practical to me.

Well, when you mechanically make a barely clothed character take a broadsword to the chest without flinching as if it were very well protected, obviously it won't hinder your progress (nor possibly a boner). Realistically it would turn them into two smaller, less living characters.
 
Those are like cross between tree brances and horns or antlers. He's half human half guado, which are forest elves.
Always pleases me when people bring up Seymours hair, it shows they either didn't play the game or just don't pay enough attention to pass a criticism.

^_^
The thing with Seymour's hair is that it looks far more unnatural than any of the other Guado and doesn't have extend out as any branch, horn or antler would. The two large ones on the side extend in a "T" formation, sharp angled and an equal split to extended points. Most antlers and branches extend in "Y" formation, extending up and out, not side to side. And the shape of his front bang mostly leads me to believe that his hair design was made SOLELY to be inpractable. It has origins based on Nomura's "tribal tattoo" era, and that's exactly what Seymour's hair looks like(more so than any other Guado's hair, which all look MORE natural and root-like). This was kinda the starting point of Nomura's tribal tattoo fascination. He'd get worse into this fad towards the middle of the 00:



Tribal design crotch guard?

I'm glad Nomura got over this fad. It was truly a dark time for his character designs(IMO).
 
The Varia Suit always look badass and kind of make sense when you know that the Chozo trained and give her part of their genetic material so she can use it without problems... and my controversial opinion is that I prefer the look of the suit in Other M since they give her that shiny and sleek look that make her look like a robot ninja =P

lXvRNhC.jpg


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I don't really mind if the design of the character in a work of fiction is practical BUT sometimes the most random things caught my attention like this one:

MqPfrF8.jpg


That connected sleeve in between her legs bother me so much =/
 

I always hated the big round shoulders, but there's something else about this image that bothers me: If Samus out of her suit is 6'3" and 193lbs, shouldn't she be a lot more muscular?
 
The Varia Suit always look badass and kind of make sense when you know that the Chozo trained and give her part of their genetic material so she can use it without problems... and my controversial opinion is that I prefer the look of the suit in Other M since they give her that shiny and sleek look that make her look like a robot ninja =P

lXvRNhC.jpg


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I don't really mind if the design of the character in a work of fiction is practical BUT sometimes the most random things caught my attention like this one:

MqPfrF8.jpg


That connected sleeve in between her legs bother me so much =/

We have a winner.
 
There's no reason why stylish cannot be combined with practical.

Take Alyssa's outfit in Cosmic Star Heroine:

cshalyssa23.png


She looks cool and stylish, but the artist actually put a lot of thought into her design so that it would fit her job and the world she lives in. I found that really cool.

I don't mind sacrificing a bit of practicality for style or "rule of cool". Even in the above example, if we wanted to be strictly practical, Alyssa would probably keep her hair tied up during combat or action scenes. But that long flowing hair looks cool as hell, so why not.

But when it goes too far (e.g. bikini armour) it just looks incredibly stupid. [Edit: case in point, the huge pic above me.... urgh >_< my eyes!]

Actually, female fantasy armour would be practical because she could actually move quite easily.
Not even close. Most female fantasy armour show them wearing metal directly on the skin, which would be uncomfortable as hell, and often with sharp ornamental pieces that would pierce the skin.

Besides, if mobility is the argument, why would anyone wear bits and pieces of metal around their naughty bits? They'd just wear normal light-weight clothing. I'd rather go fight in my pajamas than wear whatever usually passes as "female fantasy armour". I wouldn't be protected either way, so why wouldn't I pick the more comfortable option?

Calling female fantasy armour "practical" because of the "mobility" is such a joke, it's frankly insulting.

Male armour, however, is always far too big and cumbersome to be practical in the real world.
Maybe the overdesigned stuff with giant pauldrons and spikes everywhere, but most armour would be perfectly fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCvOC2VwDc

Imagine, if you will, a world wherein Rob Liefeld designed games.
No thanks, I don't want nightmares. XD
 
I hate that design so much but just because is really tacky, just like the ones in Tera.

I don't mind sexy armor design but at least make it beutifull to look at. =/

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Fucking, really? First time I shook my head in shame in this thread. There are a lot of bad ones here, but this one - goddamn.

I know, it was when Prince of Persia was in his "Edgy and troubled" phase... that Penny Arcade comic is legendary for a reason.

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Also, maybe the OP would find more practical the Power Suit since is more sleek and don't have the big shoulders...

 
The Persona you have pictured is a Soejima design, not a Kaneko one.

Not that practicality is really a thing you're going to find in MegaTen creature design.

I feel like it's practical for demons to look impractical, y'know?
 

Clipping between articulations helps a lot, doesn't it?

Hilde from Soul Calibur IV
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Even if i like her design a lot, i always thought how impractical would be fighting with BOTH a sword and a pole arm ("usually" two-handed).

Not the most impractical out there, but it always itched me...
 
From Reddit regarding Minecraft Steve:
Reddit said:
Steve canÂ’t hold just 44.5 million kilogram, he can hold 355.8 million kilogram. Not only that, he can jump 1.249 meter high while holding this. And all this, he can do in the world of Minecraft. According to this site, the gravity is 3 times as strong then on earth. So that's 10,674,000,000 newton. How much energy does he need to jump 1.249 meter high? 13.3 gigajoule

Steve is 406,250 cubic centimeters (source) and the average human body weighs 1.062 grams/cubic centimeter. And although I am reluctant to call Steve an average human, I, and this site have nothing else to go on for now. So he weighs about 431 kilogram.
 

So we're sending Link off to war, tons of moblins n stalfos wielding swords n spears n bows n shit, and we should give him a warrior priestess as an ally. We'll introduce her rallying a regiment of soldiers at a time when the Kingdom is on the brink of collapse.

Also lets expose her entire stomach because its not like there are about a million weapons being pointed right at it at any given point in time.
 
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