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Worst Female Character Design in Gaming?

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I actually liked the gameplay in Z2 Chaos

It doesn't count cause its not even an outfit

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ming from lost odyssey

i can't stop laughing

Don't disrespect the vein boobs :X
 
Sexualized = / = badly designed.
If the character looks great with clothes or armor on, then it's a good design in my book.

Chun Li in SFV looks great regardless of what she's wearing.
In MvC, nothing can save her.
The problem is that most of these characters look absolutely juvenile.
 
Pyra's design is legitimately bad even for a stripperiffic otaku pandering outfit.

I bet that she's around 16-18 ingame, but it doesn't help when this game is supposed to(?) be a love story between her and the main character. The main character looks like a 10-13 year old kid and I assume she'll be around that age too unless being a sword girl makes you live longer like a High Entia. It's not even the huge tits she has. Her outfit looks horrible and they have yet to show that you can change it unless I'm missing something.
 
Yes it is. There is a reason why softcore can show tits and ass but not vaginas and cocks.

Free the nipple! It's just chest fat.

Male chests are not sexualized in the way that female chests are. That is not to say that they are not at all, but they're generally viewed as non sexual.
 
At least when challenged over his content, the artist's response was basically "lol what r u gay? have beefy dwarves to jerk to."

Yeah, Kamitani made it pretty clear that he's just a childish dumbass and it all made sense. Because of course, the only way that as a man you can be bothered by sexy female designs is by being gay, also being gay is funny and bad, and thus perfect as an insult.
 
crash-s-girlfriend-is-based-on-pamela-anderson


Go look at that Crash Bandicoot 1 intro.

It's surprising what we thought was fine back in the day.

Her redesign is alright in the remake actually. She seems alot more like she has much more of a personality than the wooden statue she was before.

As for Lara Croft, I really liked her in Legends. I thought that was a great redesign that held onto her iconic design elements while modernizing her design overall. She had an awesome look to her and I see none of that with the new one. The reboot feels like she's Lara Croft in name only, or that it's "Lara Croft the Movie the Game, Hunger Games Edition". It's just so bland and generic.

I said it earlier but it's become the generic female action hero in the way that nathan drake and tom cruise looking archetypes are for men. Star Wars Rogue One's protag was such a safe "committee approved" design. There was nothing special about her or anything that told you about her personality on visuals alone.

I mentioned it in my other post but I think it's interesting that Mass Effect Andromeda manages to have both Nathan Drake and Hunger Games Lara Croft as the two defaults. It's fine to do those sorts of designs but you have to DO something with it otherwise you're just doing nothing but using the least offensive character you could and not going any further than that.

I just get really bothered when people treat full realism as the pinnacle of design when I just think it's the most boring thing ever. Even all our favorite movies give characters something iconic that makes them stand out even if it doesnt make sense. The Terminator is the perfect example of this. He wears sunglasses at night for no reason other than because it makes him instantly recognizable as the terminator and we remember it.

Sexual or not you have to treat your characters like there's something special about them or people won't care about or remember them when they're done with them.
 
what if they were all of these things and more

I feel like you wanted to say something genuinely interesting and profound, but you just came off as arrogant and ignorant of my entire point. My starting statement was about how people stop at the idea of "they are sexy and don't look like they should be fighting" as a way to critique the character design despite the character design not actually being about those things. They aren't wearing hyper real warrior gear because thats not the point in their characters and not the point in their design.

Sexualized = / = badly designed.
If the character looks great with clothes or armor on, then it's a good design in my book.

Yeah, theres plenty of designs in this thread I wouldn't even put in my top 100 worst designs let alone number 1. Though the idea of sexualized =/= badly designed won't go well in this thread because to some people context, thematic meaning, colour choice, and aesthetic contribution to a work (do they clash, are they consistent with the world, etc) matter less than "does this character have something about them that is 'sexy'".

Though on that note the code of princess main character and that one character form warrior within are indeed bad designs.
 
Quiet and Velvet are definitely the worst designs I've seen recently. It's not even that they're hypersexualized; they're just fundamentally stupid. Quiet is a sniper that chooses to wear ripped tights over a bikini with no underwear underneath. Velvet is a criminal on the run that has chosen to wear a bunch of scraps and a thousand belts. At least Velvet's outfit can be changed right away.

Pyra from Xenoblade 2 is also horrible. She looks like someone would come up with if they tried to design a sexy Lego.

Other terrible designs:

Ming from Lost Odyssey:


Jessica from Resident Evil Revelations:


Claves from Eternal Sonata:

 
I found the Halo 5 design to be really boring. It's neither normal outfit nor like the old ones. Doesn't help that she only appears in a cgi cutscene so she feels even more detached from the actual game

I think the problem with H4 and H5 Cortana is that they culminated a trend where Cortana got less and less transparent. I think people would have reacted far differently to Cortana in H4 if she had the exact same proportions but was transparent like H1 Cortana was (overall, I still prefer it immensely to H3 Cortana, where the designs on her body just looked like they were scrawled on randomly, rather than the "data" look.)

In H5, she's got her new Hubris Armor, but it seems again weirdly detached from the rest of her design—like she plopped her existing head onto this armor that's colored similarly, but doesn't quite mesh.
 
I feel like you wanted to say something genuinely interesting and profound, but you just came off as arrogant and ignorant of my entire point. My starting statement was about how people stop at the idea of "they are sexy and don't look like they should be fighting" as a way to critique the character design despite the character design not actually being about those things. They aren't wearing hyper real warrior gear because thats not the point in their characters and not the point in their design.

That line read as if you were dismissing the reading that they were relevant to theme of
overlap between sexual gratification and violence
. My bad for misreading.
 
I bet that she's around 16-18 ingame, but it doesn't help when this game is supposed to(?) be a love story between her and the main character. The main character looks like a 10-13 year old kid and I assume she'll be around that age too unless being a sword girl makes you live longer like a High Entia. It's not even the huge tits she has. Her outfit looks horrible and they have yet to show that you can change it unless I'm missing something.

Rex's design is also bad. Actually all the character designs are a major step back from the first two games. 1 had this cool sci-fi/fantasy combination going on that fit the vibe of the game like a glove and X basically continued that trend abiet leaning a lot harder on the sci-fi. Xenoblade 2 looks like it came from the most generic Tales of Game that was never made.
 
Each and every character who looks like a porn parody [job]. Porn parody wrestler, porn parody soldier, porn parody ninja, etc. (This is like 80% of female characters).
 
Rex's design is also bad. Actually all the character designs are a major step back from the first two games. 1 had this cool sci-fi/fantasy combination going on that fit the vibe of the game like a glove and X basically continued that trend abiet leaning a lot harder on the sci-fi. Xenoblade 2 looks like it came from the most generic Tales of Game that was never made.

I've gone on and on about that where It's moot to continue saying that. This obviously appeals to other people. I agree that the original wasn't free from that sexualization but at least Sharla was obviously someone you could tell was an adult unlike alot of the sword girls. It's not that they can't make Xenoblade look good in HD. Shulk looked fine in Smash 4 and i hoped that they could have translated that to 2 but It looks like Tales.
 
I think there should first be a discussion about how you know when a design is good or bad. I think intention plays a role in this. Consider the Bikini Slayer models. I think they're horrible to look at. Not sexy, just tacky and they make me cringe. What makes them bad designs to me is that their developer clearly intends them to be sexy, and they fail at that.
 
that line read as if you were dismissing the reading that they were relevant to theme of overlap between
sexual gratification and violence

oh no, not at all. I was dismissing some people in this thread talking about how they are "ballerinas" or have no further meaning beyond eye-candy and thus bad.

The themes of sexual gratification (or rather the concept of sex/ sexual attraction in a social light, roles in sex, gender identity/roles, the lines between love/ sexual lust/ hate) are huge and complicated themes in Nier Automata, and the characters obviously reflect that in ways. I was just insinuating that the main reasoning behind their designs shouldn't be thought of only in terms of "are they sexy", because that achieves nothing when talking about design and whether or not it is good. The more important questions should be "does this design contribute to themes or offer greater context to the story or world? If so how?". Nier automata, imo, handles its designs very well beyond being "eye candy".

(I also like Kaine's design from Nier for a similar reason due to the juxtaposition created from her look & motif and her self-expression as well as tying to themes of context mattering beyond your own. Seeing her costume and being off-put is part of the whole point and contributes greatly when you realize its all about her gender expression rather than "just being sexy", but then again Kaine is more of a "you either like it or you don't" sorta deal. Though that being said, Papa Nier's post time skip outfit is bad design especially compared to Bro Nier's costumes. )

Sorry for misunderstanding you as well.
 
KOS-MOS from Xenosaga 1 and 3 is awful. Felt embarrassed playing those games because of her design. Who would design a war machine to look like that (complete with high heels)?
 
Patty from the first Risen game

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And no, its not a psx game, in fact, the games enviroments were actually quite beautifull for its time, but the npc design was simply horrible, and Patty was among the worst, even though she was the first npc you get to know on the game.

Seriously, its like they just put something together really quick for testing, forgot to update it for the final game and just rolled with it. Its even more funny when you meet her again in risen 2 and they try to convince you its the same girl.
 
Iirc Permed for trying to differentiate between animated child porn and "real" child porn. Anyway.....

Hi, my game had a controversy where people found imagery featuring a white man gunning down Africans to be at best, incredibly egregious, so they added me to alleviate the fears that the game will be in anyway racist, please pay no attention to this alternate costume:

Winner! Almost forgot about this design...
 
KOS-MOS from Xenosaga 1 and 3 is awful. Felt embarrassed playing those games because of her design. Who would design a war machine to look like that (complete with high heels)?

I love her design, but yeah, it's straight up ridiculous and the game is pretty nonsensical.

MOMO's design makes sense within the context the game sets up, but yeah, that game is just bonkers. I definitely wouldn't defend it, but I can say it speaks to me. I like ridiculous things tho. For example: Anything that looks too much like generic Tolkien Fantasy is a bore for me, but add some Daft punk looking suits and dinosaurs and giant swords and I'm probably on board again.

Yoko Taro.

Is this true? I actually really liked the style in 1 & 3 vs 2.
 
Felt like I read this thread ten times in the last four years with the same exact posters saying the exact same things. Anyway, nothing in the new century tops this:

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Wtf is this lmao? Reminds me of a bad dreamcast game but I can't remember the name. This might be it
 
Quiet's default is pretty bad, ESPECIALLY given the reasons why she's not wearing much. So so dumb. She looks badass in the soldier outfit though
 
Oh man. I LOVE this design. I never played that Prince of Persia game, but that girl looks both super-hot and badass to me. I even like the short hair.
When it comes to female character designs that I dislike, there are many that I find very unattractive or plain boring, but Makoto from Street Fighter 3 is probably my best example. She has giant feet, nothing visibly feminine going for her and she looks too similar to the king of vanilla character design (Ryu).
I do concede her ball-punch Ultra attack in SF4 was pretty funny.

SF3_Makoto.gif


I really dislike Zarya from Overwatch too. I like her face and her gun, but her super-muscular body is something I'd rather not see.

So, you hate any female character that isn't designed for sex appeal, got it

holy shit man, some people. go look at porn if you want to get off
 
Nobody's going to say 3DRealm's Bombshell?

Bombshell-Ann-PS4-PC.jpg


I'm not sure if the design was legitimately trying to hard, or if it was intentionally cheesy?

BombShell was originally conceived by the old 3D Realms as a female sidekick to Duke for Duke Nukem Forever. Her original design was very straight forward. tank tip, jeans, blonde hair, just like Duke. But after new 3D Realms lost the Duke License to Gearbox, they pulled this character out of storage and revamped her. I like the idea in theory, but the execution..
 
So, you hate any female character that isn't designed for sex appeal, got it

holy shit man, some people. go look at porn if you want to get off

it's hoya destroyer. he thinks screaming "I LOVE TITS&ASS!!!!" makes him bold and daring, but he just comes across as a douche.
 
Given the wealth of options, I can't believe there are people saying reboot Lara Croft is one of the worst female character designs. Come on guys...

My contribution is this monstrosity

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You know what? At least Kojima had the courtesy of letting Quiet have her two eyes unobstructed.

You win. I totally forgot this even existed. You found te one true "winner". Congrats.
 
Reboot Lara Croft: looks like a normal woman wearing a tank top and pants
(some of) GAF: BORING, NON-FEMININE, GREY, UNATTRACTIVE, LITERALLY THE WORST DESIGN
I have no problem with sexualized characters but 9/10 of my favorite female character designs aren't.

It's really weird to me that so many people think things have to be sexualized or should never be sexualized. A good design is a good design. Laura's is great.

I do wish she would become a badass already though. Like she's killed a billion people now, stop freaking out about things.
 
Dark Suit - Metroid Prime 2

250px-Dark_Suit_mp2_Artwork_01.png


Now this design is not even in the same stratosphere of awfulness that every other design in this thread is, but I've gotta say that the dark suit is my least favorite suit in the entire franchise. The brown, grey and red color scheme, the overly large shoulders, the weird indents and red circles, they just don't work well together IMO. It looks way worse than the light suit, the varia suit, and even the PED suit.
I fucking love the Dark Suit. I love how it matches the Luminoth technology aesthetic established through the entire game, I love how it's such a radical departure from the Varia Suit, and I love how you go from a dingy, clunky brown and grey industrial-looking suit to the sleek and sexy Light Suit.
 
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