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Okay, so this is a dumb article, but it's not quite as idiotic as it sounds. Kotaku makes it sound like the devs are saying female characters are just somehow
by ryusage 13y ago
Okay, so this is a dumb article, but it's not quite as idiotic as it sounds.
Kotaku makes it sound like the devs are saying female characters are just somehow more complex technically than male characters, and they literally didn't have the technology before to create them. That's just obviously flat-out stupid.
What they're actually saying here is that their previous engine wasn't able to support custom characters, and so they never thought to try and make characters who would be representative of their full audience. When they made personalizing the character a focus, they realized they needed females to be an option, and that prompted them to add it.
It's still obviously sexist that it never even occurred to them there should maybe be a female in the game. There's no reason they couldn't have put one or two as options in the game before. But they never actually said it was impossible to do it. That's Kotaku's own not-very-generous interpretation.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- brimanning 13y agoKotaku makes it sound like the devs are saying female characters are just somehow more complex technically than male characters, and they literally didn't have the technology before to create them. What they're really saying is that it would be twice as much work with two different modeling and movement algorithms running instead of a single, streamlined approach. It's not impossible, but considering the amount of work developers already have to do and the graphics the games are running, it was left out in favor of a smoother, finer experience. What you noted about creating an engine to support custom characters means that those developers took the time to go back, refactor existing code and optimize around different multiple different models running simultaneously while keeping a smooth experience.
- ryusage 13y agoEh, I don't think they said that at all, and that doesn't make sense anyway. They would need to add an extra 3D model or two obviously, so sure, that's a bit more work, but in the big scheme of things it's very straightforward. By "modeling and movement" algorithms, I assume you mean animations, and I don't see any reason at all that they couldn't just use the same skeleton as the male characters, which negates the need for new animation work. I'm not sure what the point of your second statement actually is, but I disagree with that too lol. I feel like you're making the easy parts sound very difficult and then completely trivializing the part that's actually a lot of work.