I actually like Diego outfit. Other than that, I agree with you.
"Diego" and "Rig" Revealed plus new footage
- Thread starter ryu_highabusa
- Start date
Macca Beam
Well-Known Member
sorry, but this is simply blind bias masked behind a lot of generic negative words. this series has always been a dumpster fire of unoriginal, tropey/cliche characters that were done specifically to pander to a particular fanbase. let's go over some of them.
big titted kunoichi #96570648403964
sexy blonde wrestler
screeching chinese martial arts practitioner trope
old mentor trope
"muh kung fu and techniques" trope; having a second one as a guest character doesn't help
elegant high class blonde trope
edgy brute
another edgy brute
bara bait
bara bait with wings
"Occupation: High School Student"
"Occupation: High School Student (male)", later gets seduced by an older woman mmm that's just like my doujins
naked lab subject trope
as far as visual design goes, two of the VV characters are [big titted girl with meme anime hair color]. the series had this since the first game. unless the mole is somehow your tipping point. the third has a less colorful color palette and no moles. unless the hairtie is somehow your tipping point this time. i don't see anything overdesigned about these. if anything, they're simple.
IN with the tropey and pandering designs? people have been emptying their jugs to skimpy sluts like mai shiranui, morrigan, sophitia and ivy for decades. street fighter is thicc/bara heaven: the game. the genre was filled to the brim with it ever since technology evolved enough to pack more than 60k pixels and 56 colors into the screen. and we're posting on a forum for the VERY series that tried to pioneer bouncing tits on the ps1. i know selective amnesia is a common symptom among "unghhh back then"*waves cane* people, but please.
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You are right that sexualized and tropey designs have been part of fighting game designs since antiquity. DOA's characters also always adhered to that principle. (And there's nothing inherently bad about that either.) BUT the characters were for the most part at least still visually very memorable. Memorable meaning unique and rather simple at the same time. Positive older examples: Leifang in her silk qipao and looped pigtails. Memorable, simple, her mere silhouette gives her away; Helena with her long, blonde ponytail and huge hair bow and renaissance stage attire; Kokoro as the quintessential nadeshiko with long, flowing hair and a long, flowing kimono. You see those characters, you understand them and their image immediately and you memorize them immediately. Same goes for Tina. Just because she is obviously way more sexualized, doesn't make her design bad. Blonde bombshell in a skimpy, silver wrestling outfit with tinsel fringes everywhere. Really weird, but extremely memorable.
Now look at the VV girls. There's so much to process. An overload of inconsequential details. I need written character bios and descriptions to understand what the hell they are about. And after reading them I am even more confused: Luna: She is a "scholar", she is somewhat eccentric, as she tends to use rabbit like poses and even use the onomatopoeia "pyon" (the sound used for a rabbit hopping in Japan), hobbies: "field work"
I also clearly remember people speculating over her default bikini design. It ranged from possibly being Bavarian/German style to Native American. Was that argument ever settled?
An hour after one sees and reads about those characters one already forgets most of it. The only memorable thing: They were cute or hot to the particular group of fans that the character was designed to pander to. That's basically their only merit. I repeat myself, I hope designs like this stay the hell away of the main DOA fighting game series.
Pn33milan
Active Member
I don't try to overthink the DOA character design. I just like it.
I don't pretend they give me the "objectively perfect for everyone" character, i'm okay with a concept, a design and, hopefully, some personality and presence in the story.
From DOA5, i liked Rig and Nyotengu (and honoka for her gameplay), because the first one has a fairly big impact in the story and some personality that shines, while talking about Nyotengu, design and personality are everywhere.
Moving to Diego, i don't think he's perfect, but he's okay to me.
He has a good design; the main costume could be better, but i know they'll add some new ones from the game launch; i'm not a fan of brute and unstylized fighting styles, but his gameplay seems okay; I don't see bad animations.
Probably i wouldn't have announced him as the first new character, unless they have something bigger to announce later.
The most probable reason for this may be that he's supposed to be one of the simplest and most accessible characters to begin with, or one of the easiest to develop.
I don't pretend they give me the "objectively perfect for everyone" character, i'm okay with a concept, a design and, hopefully, some personality and presence in the story.
From DOA5, i liked Rig and Nyotengu (and honoka for her gameplay), because the first one has a fairly big impact in the story and some personality that shines, while talking about Nyotengu, design and personality are everywhere.
Moving to Diego, i don't think he's perfect, but he's okay to me.
He has a good design; the main costume could be better, but i know they'll add some new ones from the game launch; i'm not a fan of brute and unstylized fighting styles, but his gameplay seems okay; I don't see bad animations.
Probably i wouldn't have announced him as the first new character, unless they have something bigger to announce later.
The most probable reason for this may be that he's supposed to be one of the simplest and most accessible characters to begin with, or one of the easiest to develop.
Ninoasker
Well-Known Member
I'm guessing the first one is either Leon/Bayman/Bass??? But who's supposed to be the bara bait with wings, the classic Tengu? LMAO
Number 13
Well-Known Member
Diego and Rig in the same trailer fighting in a dark street fight area is as western pandering as DoA can get. DoA 5 vanilla really started a garbage trend with the dark urban environments with their direction from fighting in a war zones to fighting in oil rigs.
When is the bright colored non box stages that actually has some beauty gonna come back?
At least you can say DoA 6 marketing approach lasted longer then DoA 5 about shying away from the females and trying to convince people DoA has male characters too
When is the bright colored non box stages that actually has some beauty gonna come back?
At least you can say DoA 6 marketing approach lasted longer then DoA 5 about shying away from the females and trying to convince people DoA has male characters too
werewolfgold
Well-Known Member
I agree on larger, more elaborate stages. They've hinted that the Aerial Gardens may come back, so maybe we'll see that soon.
Macca Beam
Well-Known Member
that's not what memorable means.
mem・o・ra・ble
adjective
worth remembering or easily remembered, especially because of being special or unusual
i appreciate the "it's okay when it's pandering to me tho" which is something most people don't even have the balls to admit. but no, i wasn't talking about bad or good. i was merely listing what are overused tropes and/or blatantly pandering designs. conventional sexiness is consciously done to sate one of men's most basic urges. it is pandering by definition. dainty yamato nadeshiko with long hair and a traditional attire is an exceedingly popular fetish. looking up those traits can break some weeb databases. china dress is also a fetish. tina donned a cowgirl attire in multiple games and that IS a fetish.
it also seems weird that you made a big deal about unoriginality and cliche then proceed to cite [black haired chinese girl in a chinese dress and chinese hairdo] and [black haired japanese girl in a japanese dress]. the reason these images are understood immediately is because they're not original. it's an accessible, familiar design that was done 300000 times.
on the topic of VV, my only exposure to that game is via the tiny thumbnails and trailers on KT's official channel. i don't even play it yet i can identify its characters. a deadpan autist with bright pink hair. a 姉さん with a downy expression, green bob hair with an odd purple strand and a mole. enthusiastic girl with messy long hair tied into a sidetail and a reserved jacket.
if we're going with your [costume][hair][behavior] format, some of these don't even need all 3 to be recognizable. hell, you can just stop at the hair. and i don't even NEED to know what bikini they wear since bikini are all shit
so it seems to me you're just being intentionally obtuse here.
that would be bass, the other two aren't as huge
and yes, bankotsubo. when you make a big burly character like that a certain audience tends to get very wet.
he's unironically 1000 times better than nu-tengu, though. he needs to be brought back and preferably replace that slut
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Ninoasker
Well-Known Member
Bara is actually a genre of gay comics for homo men, not really an adjective to define a body type, so even if Leon/Bayman aren't really bulky af they still count as bara bait (and they are really beloved characters from the Bara-loving audience
I haven't really seen Bankotsubo get any love from the Bara community tbh, so let me differ in that. His design overall is something that just a "select" part of the community would get wet by looking at, not the whole community in general.
And I actually like Nyo so I'll do like I haven't read that last sentence...
I'd like for him to be back tho, whether is as an unlockable character like in DOAD, as a clone with some differences to Nyo like Kasumi/Phase 4 or just to make an appearance in the story along Nyo (because if she's back, then I'm 90% sure they'd want to dig deeper into her character and do something with her backstory).
Macca Beam
Well-Known Member
yep, you can see how hard it tried to pander to the dudebro audience starting with 5. in addition to the war zone and oilrig, you have
- palette made up of an overwhelming amount of black, gray, brown, orange
- dark, bleak, washed out environments
- dirt
- dust
- slow motion
- explosions and ruin
6 took it further with things that are more common in western fighting games
- wound decals
- blood drops
- """blood""" on the camera
- facepunches
- even more random slowdowns
it even leaks into the costume design with edgy black/gray and hoods everywhere. what the unholy fuck is hayate even wearing? he has always been a fairly homely guy in bright clothing, now he looks like something that just crawled out of Prototype.
where is my beautiful magic mountain with cycling weather? where is my colorful market by the sea with an extremely varied layout and tons of interactable objects? why does everything have to be a safe, soulless realistic turd
That's what I said.
Unique aka special or unusual. I guess your problem is "simple".
I wasn't giving anybody the Oxford definition of the word "memorable", I was stating what makes a character design memorable. That's uniqueness and simplicity. Good character design is simple. Look at all the iconic characters, you'll notice they are rather simple.
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Hayabusiness
Well-Known Member
I'd say DOA does have iconic and memorable designs, regardless of how bland they are.
Even before getting into it, some of the designs were implanted into my mind: Kasumi in her blue garb, Ayane with her purple outfit + huge red ribbon, Helena in her elegant red jacket, La Mariposa (I guess mostly for being a luchadora which are rare in fighting games), Kokoro and her kimono...
Granted now, not all DOA characters are memorable, iconic, blablabla... but since DOA5 they've been rather sucky with making the new characters more than either "oh here is a tuff fighter" or "HERE IS AN ANIME ^_^ LOOK AT HER BOOBS/LACK OF THEREOF".
Diego is literally Kazuma Kiryu with a latin-american spin and while that's enough for me to like him he is still not exactly a dude that turns heads towards him and makes you remember him.
Even before getting into it, some of the designs were implanted into my mind: Kasumi in her blue garb, Ayane with her purple outfit + huge red ribbon, Helena in her elegant red jacket, La Mariposa (I guess mostly for being a luchadora which are rare in fighting games), Kokoro and her kimono...
Granted now, not all DOA characters are memorable, iconic, blablabla... but since DOA5 they've been rather sucky with making the new characters more than either "oh here is a tuff fighter" or "HERE IS AN ANIME ^_^ LOOK AT HER BOOBS/LACK OF THEREOF".
Diego is literally Kazuma Kiryu with a latin-american spin and while that's enough for me to like him he is still not exactly a dude that turns heads towards him and makes you remember him.
Macca Beam
Well-Known Member
then you shouldn't bring up the word "meaning" and expect everybody to simply play along with whatever personal definition you use. a vastly more common definition of the word "memorable" doesn't say anything about simplicity. voldo is far from a simple character and he's sure as hell memorable.
you also blew up the "unique" part in your examples, as nothing you mentioned is even remotely unique. they're extremely common archetypes and fetishes. this is what makes them popular. "the reason these images are understood immediately is because they're not original. it's an accessible, familiar design that was done 300000 times."
unique and simple are usually exclusive qualities. why? because logically, simplicity increases the likelihood of an image coinciding with something that already exists, making it no longer unique. the reason anime sameface happens is because you're taking away enough detail from them, thus simplify them. yamato nadeshiko in a traditional dress is simple, but there's no way in hell it's unique. there is also no correlation between iconic and good whatsoever. ryu is an iconic character, but he's as generic and plain as it gets. sephiroth is an extremely iconic video game character that's an edgy pretty fuccboi which isn't even halfway passable in my book, and you could say he's overdesigned.
yes, at least someone had a more coherent thought process.
personally, the only thing that stood out before getting into the series was la mariposa in her doa4 c1. i was familiar enough with weeb materials to not be surprised by the other images /shrug
now i have nothing to say about tuff fighter and comically big anime tiddies (though the latter can arguably become "iconic"), but i'd say some of the boldest moves they've taken were still in 5. you have a female character that's much more rough looking than the usual, and one that's much less big titted, long legged and conventionally sexy than the usual. redhead tomboy in athletic wear, twintailed doll in gothic dress, himecut traditional beauty are also generally clear, coherent enough images.
Hayabusiness
Well-Known Member
I agree with you with TN taking bold moves in 5, although I'm unsure if Marie Rose can be called such because so many characters look like her and are popular... In fighting games we already have Rachel Alucard who is very similar to her (identical color palette, loli, twintails, gothic lolita attire), and in anime there is many many more. I'd say TN took a look at what was popular in Japan and what was missing from DOA and decided to go for it. After all she orignates from the Arcade version and arcades are much more popular in Japan.
Macca Beam
Well-Known Member
you're right, though the principal behind it isn't unlike many other popular ones in the series: pick a tried-and-true, common, familiar image and run with it. and with the sheer amount of butthurt and controversy generated i'd say it's incredibly bold lmao.
also i was hoping they'd do that "look at what was missing from doa" thing more often because this is the damn game that housed 6(!) black-haired asians
also i was hoping they'd do that "look at what was missing from doa" thing more often because this is the damn game that housed 6(!) black-haired asians
human013
Well-Known Member
When I saw the thumbnail with Diego I initially thought he was a guest character from Yakuza so I understand the criticism but the characters being "bland" in DOA is something I like. It feels like a breath of fresh air when you spent a lot of time playing Soulcalibur, Blazblue, and Guilty Gear. The characters in DOA are less exaggerated and are more human like due to their appearance. Its basically people in either believable or somewhat believable clothes. Hayate, Mila, Hitomi, Ryu, etc.
Could the characters be less bland? A huge yes. I remember not knowing Lei Fang from Kokoro when I first started. The only thing that came to mind with Diego's reveal was that he fits the series. Other than that I don't find him interesting appearance wise.
Could the characters be less bland? A huge yes. I remember not knowing Lei Fang from Kokoro when I first started. The only thing that came to mind with Diego's reveal was that he fits the series. Other than that I don't find him interesting appearance wise.