Hello. I would like to provide feedback on the aesthetic of the player characters. I noticed that they all have these super long arms, which look really weird and humanoid. I would like for an option to be added to play with a character that has normal looking arms.
This situation really puts me off from buying the game for me and my wife.
This is just the game’s artistic direction. Characters are intentionally stylized this way, just like the rest of the game is. Maybe a feature to change some proportions could be introduced down the line, doubt it would be prioritized anytime soon though. Sounds like something they’d do only after the game releases, if ever.
If it helps, the arm proportions don’t even look distracting once you put some armor on. Some glove & torso piece combinations even seem to narrow them down quite a bit I think. You won’t be looking at your characters naked for that to distract you enough anyways and even if you have to, just pick female body type. Those have a bit less accentuated arms.
All characters are at least a bit disproportionate compared to typical real life body proportions, don’t think about it too much and you’ll be fine. What does your wife think about this aesthetics direction by the way?
The long arms stop looking weird (to me) once you have have armor on. You are mainly viewing your character during combat/exploration, and not straight on (like you do in your inventory screen). During gameplay, I don’t notice it at all. If anything, it adds to the weight/impact of weapon swings and attacks, and makes animations easier to read in general. The choice seems very intentional, especially considering some of the armor is very bulky, and having shorter arms might make your character look like a T rex (especially when viewed from the PoV of wicked’s camera).
Adjusting the size of only the arms probably isn’t as trivial as it seems. It will lead to a lot of extra work in order to avoid your gear clipping/going through your character’s body visually.
In the end, it’s a stylistic choice. Your character is a “cerim”, and not a human, so it makes sense that there are different proportions for them. I encourage you to give the game a try anyways, and just refund it before two hours of gameplay if the arms are really bothering you that much.
If it helps, the arm proportions don’t even look distracting once you put some armor on. Some glove & torso piece combinations even seem to narrow them down quite a bit I think.
So this is definitely not the game’s artistic direction. Character CAN look normal depending on armor and we need fixes so the character looks normal always
That was your deduction after looking at the rest of the game? The proportions aren’t supposed to be normal so there is nothing to fix. Move on if it isn’t to your liking or you’ll stay disappointed, its that simple.
For example male’s legs by default waaaaaay narrow. But in some pants they looks much wide and better. So there is zero reason why they are narrow by default, it’s not an art direction they can be wider. Same with arms
You can’t expect all apparel to abide by the same cut across the board. Some pieces will fit tighter, others looser.
Yes, some pieces (usually plate armor) do affect the characters’ silhouettes making them narrower or wider in some places, but that is to be expected honestly. When looking at those as full sets however, once again there is something disproportionate going on for the sake of the game’s artistic stylization.
There is never going to be an appearance that looks “normal” by IRL standards because the game’s models aren’t meant to look realistic in the first place.
We are beating a dead bush here. There is no argument to be had as the developer’s aesthetics intent is clear as day.
You’ll have better luck learning how to mod the game yourself to touch everything up to your liking (if there are tools out there to touch up meshes currently). Hope this helps.
I’m talking about “normal” in terms of the current art direction. Characters can look less gorilla-like and more accurate.
One of the good examples. Both are from the game. Both fit the current art direction. But the first one is good and the second one is terrible.
Huh… honestly, this is fair criticism on this particular scenario. I can tell this happens in actual gameplay because the skeleton for idles when it comes to weapons is shared, but I hope in the future they make this distinct for male and female bodies. I like the difference in arm length of the female body (since the big thighs are the focal point instead).
This was brought up already early on in EA’s launch so its cool of you to mention it! Hope the devs can dedicate the time and resources to fix this in the future.
The female appearance looks far more normal than the male one.
And when the game rolls out and a large portion of the players end up playing the female character because they only worried about making one of the options attractive/aspirational, some of you are still gonna act like we don’t know why that is.
Artistic direction is not a bible. It is not set in stone.
It is not immutable.
It can absolutely be refined in response to feedback.
And if the feedback and game telemetry data shows people don’t play the male character because he looks like Fiddlesticks from League of Legends while the female actually looks human instead of a gorilla with no calves, they are not forced to keep the design exactly as it is.
They want to sell a game. Part of selling a game is making the player character as compelling to the prospective playerbase.
Anytime I see a person saying the male character isn’t a problem, it’s because they mostly play women anyways or they are running the male character in full plate.
“Some of you are still gonna act like we don’t know why that is”
I am going to assume this is pointing at me and if so I’d like to clarify: I have no problem with how the characters look currently, aside from the female’s skeleton whose arms sadly elongate as much as the male’s in actual gameplay. Alexei did good to point that out as it is definitely a glaring issue post character creation. I am sure artistic direction is not absolute but it isn’t as malleable in some games and cases (if at all) as it is for others, so that is what I am always taking into consideration when talking wants and what-ifs.
Yes, it would be better if we could fine tune more stuff to our liking, arm length and other proportions included. I’d also say the current slouched idle poses for the playable characters (outside character creation and ESPECIALLY during dialogue) don’t do them any favors, no matter their proportions 
It depends on how tweakable all this is on the team’s end so I try not to give priority to such suggestions for now. You do have a point about how attractive the options are to even pick a game up, maybe it isn’t as low in priority as I initially thought. Could be something they could focus on post-Patch 1 or multiplayer update?
I suspect the character creation is much more limited than what we’ll see on release. In that sense, any feedback is useful because the alternative is for the developer to think there are no issues because nobody voiced them.
It’s usually OK for side characters to be unsightly, or even give the player the option to play a rather marred character.
But players overwhelmingly choose main player characters with aspirational qualities.
If we saw the female with much more deformed/unsightly qualities just like the male option, you can bet these forums and discord would have seen a lot of topics cropping up about it.
There’s a reason far more players play a Yasuo or Lee Sin compared to an Urgot or Gragas. There’s a reason Kratos is the protagonist and not somebody who looks like Thor in God of War.
Even in a recent soulslike like Khazan, they put some effort to make a character that players want to control and get invested in.
It’s really hard to get invested for many, many hours into a character you don’t find particularly appealing from a visual perspective. Which is why feedback has to come early enough, which by all means we still are as we have not even seen more than 1/4-1/3 the game in early access.
You are right, agree with ya
I just hope @thomasmahler keeps an eye on this topic and we get some changes
Sadly, I don’t think he has ever commented on this and there are a few topics expressing concern about the lack of appealing visual character models.
this may be the most nitpicking issue ever posted on this forum lol
With all respect, this post is just hilarious
