Diablo 4’s character creator shows Blizzard’s problems with body types

Blizzard Entertainment has a bad track record with fat characters.

Sometimes it’s a matter of leaning too hard on irritating fat character tropes: Chen in Heroes of the Storm, for example, can master the martial arts but can’t find a shirt that fits him. Priscilla Ashvane and Harlan Sweete in Battle for Azeroth encapsulate the “fat and greedy glutton” villain trope. Look at Roadhog’s… well, All of us are able to do this. in Overwatch. Other times, it’s the complete absence of fatness: World of Warcraft players had to wait nearly 15 years for a playable race that wasn’t a wasp-waisted supermodel, a muscle bro, or a Literal Anthro Cow.

The following is a list of the most recent and relevant articles. Diablo 4 art director John Mueller claimed in 2021 that the game would have “the most inclusive experience we’ve ever made with a Diablo game,” let’s just say I tempered my expectations considerably. As it turned out, this was justified: Writing in December of last year about a preview build of the game, Polygon’s Mike McWhertor observed that while the character creator had numerous options for body paint, hairstyles, and jewelry, “[w]hat players won’t find is a wide variety of body types.”

Diablo franchise head Rod Fergusson claimed that this is because body type is closely tied, in Blizzard’s eyes, to “class fantasy,” a somewhat amorphous modern term for how the gestalt experience of playing a character — their mechanics, aesthetics, and so forth — should “feel.” In Diablo terms, the “class fantasy” of playing a Barbarian might be about feeling powerful, strong, or indestructible, whereas a Rogue’s might entail feeling as if you’re fast, cunning, and untouchable.

From a design perspective, class fantasy seems reasonable. You can also check out be going into the process asking ourselves, “How should this Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.?” However, Fergusson’s claims that body type and class fantasy are inextricably tied feel disingenuous. Speaking with Polygon, he said that “having a dad bod Necro or an emaciated Druid didn’t really play into the class fantasy,” and the question I might throw back at him is: Why not?

For an answer, let’s take a break from Diablo and examine a game that came out just four days earlier. Street Fighter 6 includes a “World Tour” mode, a sort of fighter/brawler/RPG hybrid where you create a custom avatar and bring them into the SF6 universe. You play a fighter that is new to the world of fighting. During the World Tour, your character learns different styles of combat and techniques. SF6’s various playable characters — some new, and some familiar series regulars.

It’s a rare thing in the gaming industry to be able to create a fat character for World Tour. I attempted to make as best an approximation of myself as I could, something which — as a fat person in real life — often falls apart entirely, but surprisingly, I really liked the result I got in SF6. Sure, this is still a little idealized (my gams are not nearly this gorgeous), but it’s close enough for a video game.

The writer’s Street Fighter 6 character, posing with arms outstretched, wearing red rights under jean shorts with a white top and jean jacket

The writer’s Street Fighter 6 character performing Chun-li’s Spinning Bird Kick on an empty train car

The writer’s Street Fighter 6 character, rocking red tights and jean shorts, standing over a defeated opponent at the end of a match

At left, a Street Fighter 6 character in a black gi lying on the ground post-match defeat, with the writer’s Street Fighter 6 character on the right with their hand on the hip of their jean shorts, worn with black tights and a pink tank top

More importantly, though, I spent most of World Tour with my character using Chun-Li’s style. This meant my fat ass was jumping off walls, doing ridiculous high kicks, throwing fireballs… all sorts of amazing fighting game chicanery. The game never once said, “Well, you’re fat, so you can learn from E. Honda or Zangief and that’s it.” Anything a thinner or smaller avatar could do in SF6My World Tour avatar would too.

The reason why, if I may draw on my academic day job and my own research into how games portray fatness, is because mechanically — i.e., in terms of a game’s systems and how the underlying logic works — fatness means basically nothing. We only know a character in a video game is fat because they’re made to Look at the pictures below. or “act” fat, but this is just a presentational layer we throw on top of digital skeletons. Video game fatness is entirely a thing we use like a costume or a coat of paint: an aesthetic we drape over things so that they’re read a certain way. Capcom has decided to make the game fatter. SF6 that the coat of paint didn’t really matter for World Tour; what was important was letting players “be themselves” and play the type of person they wanted to play.

Fergusson (or developers operating on the same wavelength), meanwhile, would have us believe that it’s just not appropriate for a Necromancer to be a little bit hefty, or for a Barbarian to be toned and taut instead of heavily muscled — but SF6This is proof of the absurdity of those ideas. Why is it so difficult for someone to learn how to do something? Shoot blood and control undead fingersCould you be a bit fatter? It’s not as if you can say “Well, real-life Necromancers just aren’t like that,” for one, and for two, even if you could, that’s irrelevant, because a video game is a world where the very fabric of the universe — the laws of physics and how You can also find out more about us. works — are made from the ground up by the developers.

I’m not necessarily trying to excoriate Blizzard or the Diablo 4Here’s the team. I think it’s much more likely that you can’t play a fat Necromancer or a thin Druid because the art team wanted Necromancers to look emaciated and “wasted away,” and they wanted Druids to look burly and “bearlike,” and that’s fine! It’s OK to make that artistic choice. I think it’s a little The following are some examples of the use ofThe following are some examples of how to get started: You can expect to receive a response within the next few days. (OK, I’m excoriating Blizzard a little bit), but it’s not exactly evil. My Druid looks just like an Avon saleswoman before she embraced the Old Faith. It is true that she’s one of Blizzard’s best attempts at creating a fat- or chubby-looking character.

The writer’s redhead Druid character, holding up a torch in the dark wilderness of Diablo 4. This is a cutscene zoomed in on the character’s frustrated face in the torchlight. The dialogue text at the bottom of the image reads “(frustrated sigh)” under the character’s name, which is Fox

It’s frustrating, however, to hear Fergusson say that “a fat Necromancer just wouldn’t make sense,” because it feels like trying to avoid admitting that the team just wanted Necros to look the way they look. It’s a claim that argues there’s a naturalness, or an inevitability, for certain body types and certain “class fantasies” to sync up, when that just isn’t true, and the choices the Diablo 4The team make is consistent with the way fantasy media have portrayed different body types over many years.

The fat and the acrobatic SF6 World Tour character is proof that the idea that some bodies are only “appropriate” for certain in-game fantasies or styles is silly and outdated. I’m all for class fantasies and designing to fit them, but I think saying “a fat Necromancer or thin Druid breaks my immersion” just makes the design team’s biases obvious. There is nothing natural or necessary about the connection between body type and character fantasy, and until we accept that and start moving beyond it, it’s likely that character design in games will keep retreading old, used ground, rather than moving forward into something new and better.

#Diablo #character #creator #shows #Blizzards #problems #body #types