Discussion: The Intrepid Informer: Galaxy's Last Stand

I've only read the first 5 pages, so if this has been addressed, please forgive me.

But out of those first 5 pages, the only responses I've seen so far center either on the artwork, or are glowing about the mechanics of this. Bot nobody seems to have raised the concern of "pacing."

Great, we can now throw complete newbs into a huge zone battle, get the blood roaring, get really jazzed for the game....... and then what? They will be ejected out of the tutorial into Atlas or King's Row (Mercy or Port Oakes villain side), to the letdown and snail-like pacing that is the 7-year content we have had from the beginning. While I'm all up for an exciting invasion, as an introduction to a game (or a movie), if you can't back it up by keeping a good pacing after the intro, why would the average player stick around?

Echoing a few other posters, one glaring problem with this problem is the very blatant changes to BAB. As a comparison, here's a still from one of the CoV launch trailers:

Compare that to the piece of art we were given in this thread. Not only was BAB's skin lightened quite a bit (the comparisons to Dave Bautista are spot on, he's looking like he's Greek/Filipino rather than black), his hair was straightened. In the CoV trailer, he has extremely curly hair, such that this new hairstyle looks like he took a chemical straightener to it.

The problem with this is how common such lightening of skin tones is in media. There was even a case where singer Beyoncé Knowles (who is already quite light-skinned) had her skin tone lightened by a magazine editor for their cover.

Sister Psyche's pose (and unfortunate facial expression) are a separate problem that has plagued comic books horribly. The attempt at making a feminine pose has left her with at minimum a strained spine, and for those less flexible, a broken one.

We all agree in one thing:
Old heroes need an upgrade badly.

Intriguing.

Agreed on the comments on SP's errr interesting face (read: pornstar) and BaBs.

Not really taking sides, but the in-game version has apparently transparent panels with the radials and panels being the same color, while in the cgi version the panels are opaque and a different color from the radials. That's the main difference aside from the shoulder hoops which need to either be dropped from the official render or added to the in-game model, I don't really care which as I think the costume is fine either way.

I'm not sure how big a deal any of that is on Sister Psyche, I'm just saying Techbot has a point that they are different.

And it's also a mind-bendingly difficult pattern for me to make for a model

Something else I thought of - will there be another contest to design loading screens for the revamped Atlas and Mercy, or will they both use some kind of comic effect to transition from the tutorial to the starting zone?

I have to agree... BABs doesn't look black at all... and yeah, Sister Psyche looks like something straight out of porno flick... can't they at least try to replicate the in-game characters a wee bit more...its insulting on both fronts... and yes, I always enjoyed the game in that aspect, its diversity....now its becoming like all the others..as well as most comic books... please say it isn't so Paragon..say it isn't so...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noxilicious Holy hell this is some serious white-washing right there. It's like Paragon Studio is actively trying to send people of colour a message that they don't want them to play their video game. And right next to Babs we got Sister Psyche who reacts to immediate danger by making a porny O-face while strutting out her breasts and ***. I dare you to make the same pose as her, it's uncomfortable and unnatural as all hell! And as a previous post showed, the picture's composed to draw attention directly to her breasts. Now you often hear that superhero comics end up being pretty damn misogynistic and racist, but to have a single poster that so solidly encapsulates that, and as a poster to basically represent CoH at that, is just shocking and revolting. Seriously, what the hell, Paragon Studio?

I still think it might have been put out now to test player reaction to it - and as the lead designer, I couldn't really see War Witch allowing that to be the final version of a new player's first introduction to a major female signature character.

LOL..maybe if we cancel subscriptions then they will feel they failed the test?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noxilicious Holy hell this is some serious white-washing right there. It's like Paragon Studio is actively trying to send people of colour a message that they don't want them to play their video game. And right next to Babs we got Sister Psyche who reacts to immediate danger by making a porny O-face while strutting out her breasts and ***. I dare you to make the same pose as her, it's uncomfortable and unnatural as all hell! And as a previous post showed, the picture's composed to draw attention directly to her breasts. Now you often hear that superhero comics end up being pretty damn misogynistic and racist, but to have a single poster that so solidly encapsulates that, and as a poster to basically represent CoH at that, is just shocking and revolting. Seriously, what the hell, Paragon Studio?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noxilicious Test what exactly? How sensitive players are to bigotry? With how much casual sexism and racism they can get away with? Are the devs some clever masterminds that create a picture loaded with subtle discrimination in the hopes the player-base will rise up to prove their empathy? Seriously, what the hell does this test?

So in other words, even though you believe War Witch totally wouldn't let some sickenly objectifying display of Sister Psyche go through she let it go through for this "test" anyway to see whether it gave the "right message" to the playerbase?

Like seriously do they simultaneously know it's sexist but test if it gives the right message?

But see, I didn't get that out of it at all and probably they didn't either.

I'm not quite willing to read enough into the illustration to start waving around the "-ism" danger-flags about it, but I will say that it took me a minute to figure out exactly who Brawler was supposed to be the first time I saw it. It doesn't look anything like him. I was very much scratching my head and wondering, "Who the heck is that guy?"

Once I figured out he was intended to be Brawler, it was more of a "Since when is he a white dude? That just looks weird."

Psyche's expression and pose, on the other hand, didn't strike me as anything unusual, I'm afraid. It's so standard issue for a female comic book character that I didn't even give her a second glance... "Yeah, yeah. Big boobs. Goofy expression. "Look at these!"-pose. Whatever." Sort-of sad, that. To be so used to that kind of thing that it doesn't even ping as odd.