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14 comments
Also the "real person" thing is subjective too... I generally agree for rando NPCs in games, but she's the hero of the story and should look less technically "realistic" and more "heroic". But that of course depends on preferences.
I mean... when I make my own NPCs in games, I usually play males and I want them to look stern and heroic, not "realistic" and dopey like most people look IRL if we're being honest. It's fantasy, after all.
Yeah, she's the hero, but I don't think heroes need to look flawless or even "above standard." I personally prefer when they aren't, which is why I usually give my characters blemishes/imperfections in some way. They can still look unique, which Aloy achieves by being the only character with her style of hair, but based on the themes of Horizon (partly the representation thing) it just makes more sense to have characters that look more like normal/slightly above average people. It's normal/average people that can either heal the world or harm it
Both games also make it a point to have a diverse cast of characters. They don't lock themselves into what's considered conventionally attractive or whatever. They can give characters hairstyles that most people in modern society at least in the West would think are weird. They can make male and female characters have different body types like how the Oseram are a lot heavier than everyone else (instead of giving every single female character roughly the same slender build). To me it just reads as not being ashamed of natural human traits that modern society very often urges people to hide. And it also takes that larger than life narrative/setting the games have and grounds it. Because the story is really just an exaggerated version of the type of world we already live in. People like Ted Faro and Elisabet Sobeck exist. Ted Faro can be the worst person to ever exist, but he still just looks like a very average, normal man for a reason. Because technically anyone could be him. Just like anyone could be Elisabet Sobeck (at least, I'm sure that's the point the devs want to have).
Sorry for the essay lmao
In the original one she does *look* more chiseled, even if you can explain to me (technically) that shouldn't be the case. But in the end it's the looks that matter. And it's all just opinion anyways.
I just hope someone can come out with a face mod before I start playing it... And hopefully it won't stir up some idiotic "controversy" which gets the Nexus moderators involved.
I've also looked at both of her models from both games before in Blender out of curiosity, and if you compare her heads the only significant difference in face shape is that the outer parts of her brow ridge are angled down rather than up. This does give off more of a softer expression than "fierce" imo. I like either, especially since she can express both in cutscenes anyway. They greatly upgraded the amount of expressions she has in FW.
The other changes are much more minor, like her cheekbones being slightly more sunken in FW. But a lot of the small changes seem like just a natural result of the process of mesh editing/sculpting. The FW head has more polygons (10,900 triangles to 44,900), to the point you can see more detail on the mesh that would otherwise only be possible via normal maps. Which means they reprojected that detail from a high poly sculpt to this "low poly" model. So, it's actually technically closer to the original face sculpt than the face from the first game.
TBH all of this might make me sound like a lunatic, but as someone who makes CG characters I live for this s#*! lol. Studying video game models is fun
Unfortunately it probably would get controversial, since a certain crowd has made Aloy's appearance a huge deal for some reason (despite the fact people complained about her face even in the first game). I don't get why this is the hangup for some people though. There's so much cool s#*! in these games, and Aloy is a really cool and surprisingly relatable character
Also keep in mind I was using a face mod for the first playthrough which changes the model of her face, I think it's just called "Aloy Face Rework", I'm too lazy rn to look it up. It changed the actual model to make her look more 1990s-style action hero "heroic", the "chiselled" word I keep coming back to.
It's not the hangup for me, but it's one of them. I'm just waiting a while for the modding community to catch up so I can tweak the experience to my liking, especially regarding xp speed (I like to slow things down) and damage modifiers (I HATE damage sponges in these games). Also other more nuanced stuff. Modding is also fun!
And like I said, I hope the Nexus just kind of stays out of it. I don't understand why they let people use waifu barbie-doll face mods all over the place in Skyrim but for some reason HZD is some kind of forbidden fruit... it's truly perplexing. /shrug
Interesting conversation either way, cheers.
The peach fuzz made me genuinely excited about how far games have come. Which apparently seems to be an unpopular opinion.
Pretty sure not long and we're gonna have mods to make her more "appealing" to the male gaze in face and body ..
I prefer FW for all of the characters since their personalities are much more readable through their faces than before. But it is odd how in FW the transparency on Aloy's hair textures isn't as good as in ZD. Like they changed a setting with how it's rendered.
The hairstyles for black characters are weird in both though. I wish they'd stop giving them straight hair, especially when they created some Afro-textured hairstyles for the Tenakth. Just often looks very goofy