The art for my intro, this video's thumbnail and title card was done by artist Azuma Yasuo. They have a Patreon as well, and you can find their links in the description!
Lol why do people keep saying Concord was trying to be Overwatch ? It doesn't actual look or play like overwatch. And Overwatch isn't the one & only hero shooter. It isn't even the first hero shooter. I do agree with Concord having character design issues
Concords characters lack any visual storytelling and their (art) director needs to be fired. I never saw such useless and bad design. It's not simply generic but RNG generated random mush mash without thought.
@luckyducky7819 I don't think the game is mid though. I think it's complete dog water as a video game. It does nothing new, everything it does do is done poorly and the only saving grace for the game is the character designs.
@@coltonwilkie241 1 time use shaders and it takes days to unlock the new character but the game is made for coomers so the complaints won't be heard. There was a time where 40 hours to unlock vader would get a company decimated, now it's a tuesday.
The character designs of Concord are so unbelievably non-sensical. They seem to be designed by a group of people who were given 3 word descriptions and were told "Design that".
It's what a bunch of terminally online people thinks looks cool with their circle of people which I guess it's fine, but the problem is that the game was made to appeal to the casual demographic who just wants generally cool and flashy designs which concord lacks.
Nah, good character designers can make somethinh good with just a 3 words description. These people are unable to make something good even with a detailed description
You miss a crucial one: Emari's shield. This is supposed to be a tank character, but compare her shield size to Reinhardt's shield size. Reinhardt's shield is wide enough to fit another Reinhardt on the left and the right side each. It's also a very transparent shield, perfectly enabling allies to hide behind and take shots from. Emari's shield is not only so narrow that it only fits herself, it's also not as transparent as Reinhardt's shield. It has wavy patterns and it FLASHES WHITE when it is hit. That's such a bad oversight for a simple character archetype as a tank.
Me too, and I believe this is deeply fascinating. Absolutely no assumptions you could make about this particular character are correct. I wonder if this was an intentional sociological experiment by some mischievous dev on the team.
Deadlock has a character that is literally supposed to be ugly because she's a gargoyle with Ivy, but Valve crafted her character to be such a cinnamon bun that gives her a great contrast between how she looks and how her personality is, that she has more fanart and rule34 than the entirety of Concord.
Valve are the masters of character design just look at any character from tf2 and you instantly know what they are about and that goes for not just the mercs but also tha Mann brother hale etc.
Deliberately ugly, strange or at least unusual characters have their audience (lewd stuff aside) . Rayman, for example. Abe, Munch and Stranger from Oddworld. More recently, Pseudo from Clash: Artifacts of Chaos-- and that guy is uncanny as all get-out. Dude looks like a sore, grumpy nail-less noseless thumb with an old man's armpit for a throat and a mandrake painted orange with traffic gridding bodypaint for a body. In terms of personality: He's a hermit, somewhat old guy (seems middle-aged but it's hard to tell with Zenos) that has a "get out there to get stuff done" attitude. Pseudo's got his old pains, not feeling like a whole person, but he doesn't let that factor into what he can do in the moment. He's got his moments of kindness, sass, humor, annoyance, anger, wisdom, and can even be outright menacing. I find Pseudo cool to the point that i don't want to say his personality contrasts with his design to make him more memorable, because i feel like it would state "he's cool despite his looks". But both his appearance and who he is elevate one another. Warmly recommend looking up that game.
the first shirtless flatchested female character in gaming. Larry Fink and Kim Belair in the board room like: "How is this possible?" with guns to their heads
What sucks is that Ivy is the least human character in the game, but I had to squint my eyes at her to tell. That's not the golden design people make it out to be. If her face was more clearly inhuman and more monsterous, I could understand.
They didn't want sexy characters, but lacked the talent and vision to make something cool and appealing without it. I honestly have never seen an uglier/more boring character roster.
Its not like they needed to be half naked too. I mean, look at SF6. Cammy was pretty much dressed casually yet people did TONS of art of her before the character was even announced!
@@sertiana2512Sexy=/half naked. If anything the sexiest characters are the ones dressed tastefully, not the ones running around with their birthday suit.
@@socriabbas454 even Roadhog and E. Honda has way more fans than whatever Concord's is. Even better, Deadlock's Ivy, who is a really ugly gargoyle girl, somehow gets the most art/rule34 made compared to the rest of Deadlock's roster.
Concord seemed so hellbent on avoiding objectifying and sexualising characters that it didn't realise that a sexualised character is not inherently objectified. A sexualised and objectified character has no personality or motives other than to be something the viewer ogles at. Think of the sterotypical damsel in distress that never contributes to the story, just exists to be seen and rescued. They are quite literally just an objective to achieve. A sexualised but non-objectified character is one who expresses agency in the story and influences the world around them directly. Think of a character like Bayonetta or Ada Wong, who drive the story forward and have their own motives and personality. Even when Ada becomes a "damsel in distress" in RE4, that doesn't retroactively remove the impact her actions had on the events of RE4. Your characters can be damn near nude for all I care as long as they are actually interesting characters.
@floofzykitty5072 True, even if there's nothing bad if a female character just wanted to look sexy without being a "strong woman" or having "manipulative behaviours". Objectifying happens when sexualization isn't justified from the character's point of view and interests. Btw even objectifying isn't that outrageous, as long as it doesn't become prevalent in the industry. Guys sometimes just want to look at sexy girls without any deeper meaning hehe.
Good point about Bayonnetta She's sexualized to the cahoots, but you never think she's helpless or a mere background character. She's a bitch ass boss that's beloved by women and men alike. And even when she's damn near nude, her silhouette, face, and personality are still the highlights of her design
Correct. The answer to objectifying sexualization of girls in video games is not full-on puritanism: make them strong, intelligent and proud of themselves. Also, balance them with equally hot guys.
I just wanna play characters that look cool or are sexy. Thats it, I don't want to play a character that looks like somebody you would see at a Seattle Wal-mart.
Game was also poorly Marketed, alot of top comments are people only just hearing about it. I think the game only had one major trailer and the beta wasn't really advertised.
- Horrible character design - Started development when hero shooters were a novelty, released when there's simply no more room for more games of the genre - $40 when the giants of the hero-shooter genre (Overwatch 2, Valorant, etc) are free to play - Overall just a mid game according to most critics - EDIT: tons of money sunk in boring story trailers that no one cares about. No one plays hero-shooters for the story.
@D4C_LoveTrain1 Something just click when you mention the trailer. The very first reveal of Overwatch shows the obvious villains and hero , and the player can play as either while the trailers' clips of Concord didn't show that. Just the freerunners. So, for some players that do care about a little bit of the world, they didn't got their attention. 🤔
i think there were many game killers lined up to kill Concord, but i really do think it was the character design that got them first and with such an extreme level of failure.
it bothers me how many people have said the issue is that it had a price tag, dude that doesn't matter. when people played early access no one was going "guys you gotta try this" none of the characters are appealing so no hype was drawn, its a game made by people marketing to an imaginary audience then being shocked when the actual audience of normal people weren't interested in it
It amazes me that nobody has made a hero shooter where all the characters are just hot chicks with bikini premium cosmetics, while having a fun gameplay loop and fairly passive monetization. Whoever does this first will be literally printing money.
no because you gotta make the work (or pay) for the bikini , if you give them the bikini too quickly they'll snap out of the trance and realize they can just watch porn instead
It's astounding how Daw has pretty much become a poster-child for what *NOT* to do when designing characters; everyone discussing the art failures of Concord has cited Daw as the worst. Nothing about his design says "I'm a medic"; were it not for the flavor text in the bottom right corner of the UI, you would never think he's anything but just a guy in a blue jacket.
I'd say he's the most immersion breaking thing in the whole game I've had one of the games defenders straight up tune out on me (in their own fucking words by the way) because I criticized Daw as being out of place in a game like this, simply because according to their logic, "You went on a weird tirade about Saw being unrealistic but then wanting a more reptilian design for Lennox", like, first off this is the kind of stuff you'd get punched in the face in high school for. If someone's trying to have a decent respectful conversation, and they tune out like that? Tell em to fuck off. Daw IS immersion breaking because he's out of shape fat. He's not strong fat like Roadhog, or athletic fat which exists. He's out of shape weak fat. In a game like Concord, he just looks completely ridiculous
@@angel_of_rust That too. His facial features are very soft-- so soft that a lot of people confused him for a girl. I get that not every guy will be some super chiseled manly man, but facial features as soft as Daw's either make him look like a girl or a young kid
People really underestimate how much other people stay playing simply because they like a character. Hell, fighting games work that way because someone might be gravitated towards a fighting style simply because they vibe with the fighter. It's not just for looking hot or cute. It's part of the personality of the game.
Masahiro Sakurai holding a small lecture on his TH-cam channel about character silhouettes a month prior to Concord bombing is a hilarious coincidence, almost for Sony to show "This is how *NOT* to do it."
Concord's designs are based on spite. They were far more concerned about sending whatever message they wanted against whom they considered "toxic male straight heyero gamers" blah blah blah, they thought that by DEFAULT their designs would be some sort of groundbreaking statement. This is the results; a bunch of characters who have proved to everyone they haven't played games from the last 4 decades if they think ANY of the ideas presented are 'firsts'.
Considering the people they are "spiteful" towards are racist, sexist, homophobic bigots who think they are the only people that should be pandered to, and that women should never be allowed to look average because women are not people: they are objects. Frankly, the spite cry-wokers recieved is deserved. Don't get me wrong, the designs in Concord are still awful, but cry-wokers are worse.
Well said 😂 Given how current western media are so fixated on making female and diverse characters ugly and with terrible personality, can we be blamed for not buying their stuff? Still confuses me as a Nigerian.
"Cosmetic microtransactions don't affect gameplay so they are ok to have." I'd love to hear these people come back and say something now because sure it didn't affect gameplay.... but they affected gaming as a whole.
show them a game from the 6th console gen where cosmetics and characters are simply unlockable by playing the game or entering cheat codes and they will disintegrate in real time
All true, even if cosmetic can also affect gameplay in multiplayer, since it can make more difficult to recognize characters on the fly due to the mess of available skins.
The character design in concord is basically corporate executives thinking that throwing random bright colors one word looking outfits is enough to be interesting. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it and some of them don’t even look like they belong in the game itself
You know what. I'm honna have to disagree. The designs I've gotten from AI are leagues better than anything in concord. AI is more creative than the empty vessels on the character design team.@@flamestoyershadowkill6400
I wish some people would stop conflating good design and oversexualization. Concord had neither. However, a character doesn't need to have hentai aesthetics to be visually appealing or well-designed. A lot of the Overwatch characters in this video are great examples.
Stop trying to talk sense into people. It doesn't work. Humans are neanderthals. They don't understand that a design that isn't sexy isn't automatically a bad one. :p
@@its__alvin Flavor of the month gooner shit Same thing happened with Lost Ark and now it's that Mecha Break or whatever Sexualization can only carry a mediocre gameplay for so long
@@its__alvinjust because gooner buy anything that looks like porn not means you should just put everyone in with only underwear, big example of this Bayonetta is she hot but stylish enough to make people like her.
Concord's characters look like you pressed "random" while creating a character in WWE or Soul Calibur. The photorealistic art style also makes it very uncanny.
the lesson i personally took from all this is, _everything_ about a character design should be communicating something to you. Down to the name. Pharah's name tells you that she's egyptian, the blue and bird motifs tell you she can fly, and you're supposed to have the idea she's basically wearing a fighter jet. McCree is a cowboy, as you can tell from the earthy tones, hat, poncho, and very visible revolver. And as compared to roka and lennox, like... Roka just looks like someone with a rocket launcher who bought the most boringly-colored unitard from a dance supply place and put a Destiny helmet over it, and Lennox's orange vest takes so much focus away from the revolvers. Also, he does not have a hat, which doesn't immediately tell you "this is the gunslinger." And their colors just... kinda _blah_, background colors at best.
I especially wanna put mention on the gunslinger part. Some people were saying to some redesigning artists that "Lennox isn't a cowboy, he's described as a gunslinger!" Like, do you fucking realize how little that narrows it down? Gunslinger is literally "guy with gun", what the fuck is Lennox then? A cop? A cowboy? A patrolman? A terrorist? I swear, Lennox is such a strange case where I feel like even the developers didn't like him. He's on the face of the cover yet he's so underwhelming in so many ways (have you seen his gameplay? Those revolvers do pitiful damage)
@@ARStudios2000I know, right? four shots to kill people with a revolver?! And those shots have crazy bullet magnetism? Wack. Also so many things about him just clash. The sharp edges on his arm, the rounded vest. Like you said, "do you fucking realize how little that narrows it down," and I'm gonna continue from that by saying he's just... full of ideas that don't work together. And also what... what is that color scheme. Orange, gray-blue, and baby-vomit green skin? Also apparently he's "really old" (146) but nothing about him looks old. Maybe... I dunno, make his outfit look antiquated in comparison by making it look like he has a raygun gothic bodysuit under a vest or something so he looks like a young guy in old man clothes. Or just make him look old.
@@fluffywolfo3663 yeah, it's so weird that they keep reminding people that Lennox is old. He look, dressed and act nothing like an old person. Unless the people at Firewalk somehow thought obsessing over hot sauce is considered an old person trait.
I'm a woman that plays games specifically geared towards women, and if you go on any social media site and look up the games I play you'll see women drooling over how attractive EVERY character is, both male and female. Everyone wants attractive characters except AAA devs.
Thank you. Someone finally said it. People like looking at attractive characters that is just a fact that is how we are geared we first judge a person through their appearance afterall and that is the same with fictional characters we judge them first by their design. Also lets say we head over to the LGBTQ community most of them would probably say they like looking at attractive people. Cause that is just how humans work.
True, male characters are also sexualized. Mainly by making them have absolutely gigantic muscles and a lot of the times walking around shirtless. And that is NOT a bad thing.
I waited until this video to finally see what Concord actually looked like and my god, there is almost nothing salvageable with most of these character designs.
Their character design got so close to caricatures that it made the already almost non-existent MoDeRn AuDiEnCe go MIA. I mean if you're part of the community and you see these characters you cannot seriously consider wanting to play one of them. All of the characters are closer to clowns in a circus than anything representing their target audience.
This is what you get when you depend on big AAA corporations for your representation instead of oh, I don't know, letting artists from diverse backgrounds use their skills to make what they want to see represented without being stifled by corporate tokenistic checklist style "diversity". While games like this are flopping, indes will be booming.
@@sarrakitty This game, Outlaws, and a couple others failing hard is good news for gamers in general. With releases such as Wukong and Space Marine 2 showing the way, I hope developers and publishers will have their eyes opened. Sadly I think they will double down first before that happens.
Who would have thought that making characters ugly and androgynous wouldn't work out well. Remember, sexy characters are completely fine and, in fact, will probably help.
Of course it sells games. That's one of the reasons Nintendo put special interest in Ocarina of Time's character designs. Not just Nintendo, that's why Sega kept redesigning Sonic to make him more appealing.
Kiriko really is a money maker in OW2. I have a friend who will outright tell me how they didn't like a skin for her despite buying it and then perform some mental gymnastics when I asked why they got it in the first place since you didn't need to buy it to see how it looked with all the YT channels out there that showcase them.
There's one fascinating thing about character to design. We are constantly told not to judge a book by its cover to not stereotype anyone. But in good character design, this is basically what you do. Making sure that a character's look is meant to explain who that character is. Exceptions being the subversions of expectations
Daw's shirt and pants are nearly the exact same shade as cigarette packs are in Canada (and several other countries like Australia, i think), a shade that was deliberately chosen to be as unappealing as possible lmfao
The name Concord only for me being British of a certain age reminded me of the airliner and as the name of a game seems from my point of view an odd choice for a hero shooter. The points you made are very valid and well-thought-out regardless, and 2 weeks has to be a record for a game live service to be shut down. If I had not seen your video on it and someone mentioned this game to me would be thinking about how on earth is it named after an airliner that was caught in a serious tragedy and taken away from the world. Still back on track well thought out and your right Blizzard has always understood good character design. Obviously, Sony missed that memo...
With a more serious comment xd, I think another great example of character design is for the characters from Team Fortress 2. Tbh I was kind of surprised it wasn't brought up considering Overwatch and Team Fortress 2 were compared so heavily years ago.
So basically what cause concord to fail, is their lack of understanding (or inability due to ego) to understand the importance of the most basic rule of advertising/sales. That first impression is EVERYTHING.
after being away from this channel for a while, I’m absolutely blown away at how you’ve evolved, not only as a TH-camr but as a critic, absolutely phenomenal work that you’re doing and EVERYTHING you say, and how you explain it is perfect in every single way. hats off to you!
The worst character design was, I think, Lennox. That lizard man Yondu rip with a human face looking... thing. The very human face is off-putting enough against the green scaly skin with quills but then we get to his... hair? Quills? That odd looking Mohawk on top of his head which was accentuated by a tiny little man-bun at the back. That man-bun alone made my eyelids twitch with rage and fury.
Disagree with a few central points: 1. "Games with better gameplay will lose to inferior games with better income" -> There is not enough money in the world to keep companies happy. Greedy ones will always fail in the end. The only thing that matters is that your costs are lower than your income. Good gameplay tends to be cheaper than graphics or TripleAy design. See: Ubisoft. 2. "Single player games can't compete" -> Single player games have no costs beyond distribution. No servers. No multiplayer. The issue is lack of capital for these kinds of "boring" companies and approaches. That will change in the coming years and decades as boomers start dying off.
Having finished the Video, I could not agree more with the points given. Best Examples I can give are these: If you see the Outline of a Dinosaur standing over a cityscape, You Know that is Godzilla. Even if you have never seen one of the 40+ plus films and or animated Series, since he is the longest running Film Series in History. If you see a Bald Man with an Axe or Dual Swords in his hands, You know thats Kratos. Heck, If you see a Trible woman with a Bow and Huge Locks, you know thats Aloy. The Greatest personal example for a game pulling me in solely on its character design is Geralt of Rivia in the Witcher 3. I had no knowledge of the game in 2017 other than some good word. I saw it for sale for 20 Bucks at walmart and played it from roughly March of 2017, all the way to October when AC Origins came out. Even to today I still love and play The Witcher. That Character design enticed me that much.
What would you think of the character designs of Rayman, Pseudo from Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, Cherry from Cookie Cutter, Becky from Blud, Death and War from Darksiders, and Abe from Oddworld?
Concord felt slow to play though also. I think if the game had better movement and wasn't painfully slow people could've seen past these shit hero designs.
I think a more high-mobility take on hero shooters instead of just more moba shit, or whatever the fuck Concord was trying to do would find a good audience. Apex is kinda there already, but it's a battle Royale which is a huge turn off for an increasing amount of gamers.
Also the health on the characters. I saw beta footage and I was shocked at how slowly the characters health was going down despite them being hit by hundreds of bullets.
porn is a strong indicator of how popular a game/series/anime is, period, even if you hate the idea of it, even if you dont consume that porn. overwatch 2 only thing that keeps it going is the characters
the designs look like they don't know if they're cartoony or realistic. why have (realistic) impratical outfits if all their movements are still and lifeless? they end up looking like they're cosplaying themselves. seriously. I don't personally mind "ugly" characters but if there isn't even a personality behind a mediocre design, what is there to enjoy at all??
Yep, both game play & character design are important. For me personally, I can NEVER enjoy a game if I don't like the game main character. Not to mention if the game characters are ugly. 😆
TF2's initial design principle focused on the silhouette rule, making every class be distinguishable by their silhouette. Plus the color choices makes it instinctively clear who the enemy is and who is a teammate . I feel like with Overwatch, I'm shooting at the chaos, hoping I hit the enemy. But that's just me.
The character descriptions for Concord really paint a different picture, I really think that they had the characters already designed, then wrote the descriptions and chose which character was what/who. Like if you describe to me a character that was fast and agile who can take out a support or whatever and then dip, I imagine someone who is awfully skinny and has sport-ish clothes, not some chick with a detective-esque jacket, leather pants and what looks to be a very fashionable shirt. That shit doesn't scream "fast and agile", the game's gameplay might've been neat (from looking at videos I really thought it looked sluggish and very Destiny like) but in a world of hero shooters that have pretty cool looking characters that ooze charisma this wasn't gonna work honestly.
This was a great discussion about a game's lack of appeal and failure to gamers. Hell if you didnt tell me from a glance i would believe half the characters were ugly women. This is something people need to watch and learn from
The idea that graphics and cosmetics are not important has always sounded insane to me. If that was the case, there would not be a trillion dollars market for it. If pure gameplay was more important than attractive characters, the entire gacha genre would not have succeded. I've been playing games for more than 20 years now, customization has always been a huge part of gaming experience, from recolors in sprite based games, to the modern characters skins.
I wish these studios understand that the main appeals of video games in general is escapism. I don't wanna play as me, I wanna play as the cool dude that isn't me. And if I wanna play as me, I want me to be cool as heck. So if I'm fat IRL you bet I wanna play a buff and sexy version of myself or else I'm choosing somebody else lol.
To add to that Capcom did a survey to thousands of their players/customers and the no.2 element that players look for in their games is ... *DRUM ROLL* .. attractive and cool looking characters!
Forget "critics", try the actual people defending this game. They'll downplay the actual problems to focus on "hateful bigots", like, brother, if trolls and hateful bigots can crash your AAA game, then maybe it wasn't a AAA tier game to begin with, or it was a really shitty game
I remember picking up Overwatch when it first released and was instantly drawn to McCree and Reaper just because they looked sick. If there wasn't multiple badass characters to live out a fantasy as (I was 12 at the time) then I would never have begged my parents to get it for Christmas.
Since I am a 3D modeler, I have done a lot of learning. Although I did not go to college, I still took art courses. Usually, to build a character, you need to start with an idea, then find corresponding elements and pile them together. In this process, you will find many references. Then put different shapes together. Before giving the shape meaning, it must be the meaning of the character. For example, where the character comes from and what characteristics it has. Characters need to highlight their functionality and main features. In a character shape, characteristic shapes account for the majority. These characteristic shapes may be wings, mechanical hard edges, or biological shapes. But they still need to highlight the characteristics of the character. Otherwise, the shape will lose its original meaning. This is the same whether it is 3D or not. The most wrong idea is to pile the same shapes together. The best details are made up of large shapes and small details. The best artists in this regard can refer to those gunpla modelers who use custom shapes and transform details. The artistic effect in this regard is the same in any art field. Music, animation, there is a theme, and the character design is the same. Concord lacks such design and lacks character characteristics. Obviously, they did the opposite in character design. Even if you want to make a homosexual, you can first make a normal human, then think about what shapes homosexuality fits, and then add them. Homosexuality is usually not revealed in appearance, so this part can be placed on the character background, not on the character design. If you want to add such elements, only a few related to clothing, etc. It can't occupy all. A human will not have only one element. For example, the original idea is that this person is a cowboy, wearing a cowboy hat and holding a revolver. On this basis, you can add that he is a homosexual in the background story. Then the element of homosexuality still exists. But it exists in another place. Because I have been modeling for a long time, I still don't like the current AI design. AI lacks the perception of shape. AI will blend shapes together because AI doesn't understand what it is doing. AI is just executing code. This will bring great difficulties to modelers. Because they don't understand what the shape is, they are confused. Even if human designers don't have the best painting skills, humans know very well what shapes they want. This is why when I look for design references, I will avoid any AI drawings. I need those original design drafts. This is the same as early designs. Human painters are very capable and they understand the meaning of shapes.
Character design is like #2 or #3. Personally, story is noble, gameplay is king, engagement is emperor. Engagement isn't just gameplay or story, or interest, but the combination of aspects to be more than their sum.
I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm subscribing to the idea that the senior developers left for another job and everyone else (inexperienced or concerned about ability to get a job) decided to stay and keep their mouths shut, because the higher-ups refused to accept any sort of criticism anywhere.
I feel like whoever designed the concord characters wanted to avoid stereotyping, which not only ruins them but also ruins the connection players have w/ said characters even if they obviously aren’t like them
Well for trying to avoid stereotypes, they sure as hell made several themselves especially for the black characters. Bazz looks like freaking Thugnificent crossed with a disco wizard. Jabali and Bazz both wear the Morpheus shades, Jabali and Vale both do the braid things (despite wearing hats that would make those braids uncomfortable and ruin them especially in Vales case)
I wonder if the ugly colors were forced by management to sell paid skins. I just refuse to believe there wasnt anyone in the team after 8 years of development that didnt call this out. The characters are actually repulsive to look at and imo thats because of the colors, mostly.
The art for my intro, this video's thumbnail and title card was done by artist Azuma Yasuo. They have a Patreon as well, and you can find their links in the description!
You introduced me to AY, for which I greatly appreciate. The art they've made me are some if my favorite.
DX is back guys.😂
Hey! Want to check out my Characters, Review them in their own Video, and then Compare them to the Concord Characters?
Lol why do people keep saying Concord was trying to be Overwatch ? It doesn't actual look or play like overwatch. And Overwatch isn't the one & only hero shooter. It isn't even the first hero shooter.
I do agree with Concord having character design issues
Concords characters lack any visual storytelling and their (art) director needs to be fired. I never saw such useless and bad design. It's not simply generic but RNG generated random mush mash without thought.
Concord's character design was so bad it had defeated the Rule 34. Probably the only time a hero shotter ever did that. The game stood no chance.
You know something is ugly if even rule34 dont touch it xD
Yeah gargoyle girl from deadlock have more rule 34 than concord, the funny thing is the gargoyle girl original design isn't even s3xy to begin with.
There is sadly around 36 posts now most of them however redesign the characters
@Acacius1992 fr like, theres ton of fetishes exist out there and concord served none of them
Its battleborn all over again
@@3takoyakis it-z can be a fetish for some very weird people
the fact that people were willing to play the first descendant really speaks to how much character design means lol
And The First Descendant is terrible. It's carried by Ultimate Bunny.
@@coltonwilkie241 I don't think its that bad. It is a bog standard looter shooter, but I think people confuse "mid" with "bad" too often.
@@luckyducky7819Just another wannabe Destiny/Warframe/Division
@luckyducky7819 I don't think the game is mid though. I think it's complete dog water as a video game. It does nothing new, everything it does do is done poorly and the only saving grace for the game is the character designs.
@@coltonwilkie241 1 time use shaders and it takes days to unlock the new character but the game is made for coomers so the complaints won't be heard.
There was a time where 40 hours to unlock vader would get a company decimated, now it's a tuesday.
The character designs of Concord are so unbelievably non-sensical. They seem to be designed by a group of people who were given 3 word descriptions and were told "Design that".
I think one of the devs tweeted that the game was designed in committees, like that was a good thing
Its actually impressive how they made basically all their characters look cringe and unsettling
It's what a bunch of terminally online people thinks looks cool with their circle of people which I guess it's fine, but the problem is that the game was made to appeal to the casual demographic who just wants generally cool and flashy designs which concord lacks.
Nah, good character designers can make somethinh good with just a 3 words description.
These people are unable to make something good even with a detailed description
@@rykehuss3435 That doesn't surprise me given how one of the devs though a hissy fit over people calling the characters ugly LOL
The fact that he put a sexy woman in his thumbnail is proof enough, Im here watching the full video.
Me too 😂
Turn off your brain
Turn off your brain
Turn off your brain
Turn off your brain
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
scrub. real people click when they see the word "C*nc*rd" on the thumbnail because they will know EXACTLY what kind of video they'll be watching.
"FORTIFY YOUR MEIND!"
Coomer
You miss a crucial one: Emari's shield. This is supposed to be a tank character, but compare her shield size to Reinhardt's shield size. Reinhardt's shield is wide enough to fit another Reinhardt on the left and the right side each. It's also a very transparent shield, perfectly enabling allies to hide behind and take shots from. Emari's shield is not only so narrow that it only fits herself, it's also not as transparent as Reinhardt's shield. It has wavy patterns and it FLASHES WHITE when it is hit. That's such a bad oversight for a simple character archetype as a tank.
I played Emari once and it was like playing the game in slow motion. Great catch on her shield. Such terrible design all around.
SHE HAS A SHIELD!?
@@LuvzToLol21 Had*
I 100% thought Daw was a woman until now
Me too, and I believe this is deeply fascinating. Absolutely no assumptions you could make about this particular character are correct. I wonder if this was an intentional sociological experiment by some mischievous dev on the team.
because megamind devs made all characters in that game to look like trans or gays
that's what woke people look like in a nutshell.
Bro so did I, which furthers DX's point on readable character design.
Fupa
Deadlock has a character that is literally supposed to be ugly because she's a gargoyle with Ivy, but Valve crafted her character to be such a cinnamon bun that gives her a great contrast between how she looks and how her personality is, that she has more fanart and rule34 than the entirety of Concord.
Valve are the masters of character design just look at any character from tf2 and you instantly know what they are about and that goes for not just the mercs but also tha Mann brother hale etc.
Deliberately ugly, strange or at least unusual characters have their audience (lewd stuff aside) . Rayman, for example. Abe, Munch and Stranger from Oddworld. More recently, Pseudo from Clash: Artifacts of Chaos-- and that guy is uncanny as all get-out. Dude looks like a sore, grumpy nail-less noseless thumb with an old man's armpit for a throat and a mandrake painted orange with traffic gridding bodypaint for a body.
In terms of personality: He's a hermit, somewhat old guy (seems middle-aged but it's hard to tell with Zenos) that has a "get out there to get stuff done" attitude. Pseudo's got his old pains, not feeling like a whole person, but he doesn't let that factor into what he can do in the moment.
He's got his moments of kindness, sass, humor, annoyance, anger, wisdom, and can even be outright menacing.
I find Pseudo cool to the point that i don't want to say his personality contrasts with his design to make him more memorable, because i feel like it would state "he's cool despite his looks".
But both his appearance and who he is elevate one another.
Warmly recommend looking up that game.
@@jurtheorc8117 Looked him up and liked his design,just uh.....unfortunate that his neck resemble something else.
the first shirtless flatchested female character in gaming. Larry Fink and Kim Belair in the board room like: "How is this possible?" with guns to their heads
What sucks is that Ivy is the least human character in the game, but I had to squint my eyes at her to tell. That's not the golden design people make it out to be. If her face was more clearly inhuman and more monsterous, I could understand.
They didn't want sexy characters, but lacked the talent and vision to make something cool and appealing without it. I honestly have never seen an uglier/more boring character roster.
Its not like they needed to be half naked too. I mean, look at SF6. Cammy was pretty much dressed casually yet people did TONS of art of her before the character was even announced!
Yeah, you can create a modestly dressed character who still has appeal
Because they themselves doesnt know what "cool" is. Junkrat in OW is not sexy as Cassidy or Hanzo but HE'S COOL to look at.
@@sertiana2512Sexy=/half naked. If anything the sexiest characters are the ones dressed tastefully, not the ones running around with their birthday suit.
@@socriabbas454 even Roadhog and E. Honda has way more fans than whatever Concord's is. Even better, Deadlock's Ivy, who is a really ugly gargoyle girl, somehow gets the most art/rule34 made compared to the rest of Deadlock's roster.
I can’t believe a game somehow generated character designs that not only suck on their own, but just make people want to gouge their eyes out.
I totally agree with the part about the intestines on the clothes 🤢🤮
2:35
"Who's that Pokemon?!?!"
"IT'S PIKACHU!!!"
"It's Clefairy!"
"FUUUUU-"
Classic
"Who's that Pokemon?!?!"
"IT'S SNORLAX!!!!"
"It's Daw!"
"Close enough, I understand"
As Fleekazoid said "Sex sales and budget cuts bankrupt" make attractive character and the players will go to you
I've said it before and I'll say it once more: Women are objects, NOT people. Gamers want you to treat them as such.
Do I see another Pimperor?
It stuns me that the designers managed to make the heavy machine gun character look so goofy and non-threatening. Emari looks like a giant toddler
Her silhouette looks like the Michelin tire man or Pilsbury Doughboy
Remove armour and padding and realise Emari is about at flat as Itz. Someone obviously failed a biology and anatomy class.
Concord seemed so hellbent on avoiding objectifying and sexualising characters that it didn't realise that a sexualised character is not inherently objectified.
A sexualised and objectified character has no personality or motives other than to be something the viewer ogles at. Think of the sterotypical damsel in distress that never contributes to the story, just exists to be seen and rescued. They are quite literally just an objective to achieve.
A sexualised but non-objectified character is one who expresses agency in the story and influences the world around them directly. Think of a character like Bayonetta or Ada Wong, who drive the story forward and have their own motives and personality. Even when Ada becomes a "damsel in distress" in RE4, that doesn't retroactively remove the impact her actions had on the events of RE4.
Your characters can be damn near nude for all I care as long as they are actually interesting characters.
for the last point, Conan the Barbarian!
@floofzykitty5072
True, even if there's nothing bad if a female character just wanted to look sexy without being a "strong woman" or having "manipulative behaviours". Objectifying happens when sexualization isn't justified from the character's point of view and interests.
Btw even objectifying isn't that outrageous, as long as it doesn't become prevalent in the industry. Guys sometimes just want to look at sexy girls without any deeper meaning hehe.
Quiet from mgs5
Good point about Bayonnetta
She's sexualized to the cahoots, but you never think she's helpless or a mere background character. She's a bitch ass boss that's beloved by women and men alike.
And even when she's damn near nude, her silhouette, face, and personality are still the highlights of her design
Correct. The answer to objectifying sexualization of girls in video games is not full-on puritanism: make them strong, intelligent and proud of themselves. Also, balance them with equally hot guys.
Character designs certainly sold Overwatch! Just look at all of the fan art for Tracer and Widowmaker even if its of the lewd variety!
the gooners always win in the end
As is the case for Nikke and Stellar Blade, if you know what I mean...
Overwatch at this point is immortal in a way, even if the game fails there will still be people making art of the characters.
The R34 artists were out here setting world records for how fast they got the Juno artwork out after the first trailer 😂
I mean, sexappeal has been shown to work a billion times in the past. From Street Fighter to Tomb Raider. Not to mention the movie and music industry.
I just wanna play characters that look cool or are sexy. Thats it, I don't want to play a character that looks like somebody you would see at a Seattle Wal-mart.
Me too I prefer to play attractive/average good-looking characters just to escape reality and have fun.
You guys are incredibly shallow if all you care about is having characters to fap to.
seattle wallmart XD
dude the game is already dead you don't have to kill it like that XD
Concord's failure was really hard to pinpoint. Character design was definitely one of many reasons why.
Game was also poorly Marketed, alot of top comments are people only just hearing about it.
I think the game only had one major trailer and the beta wasn't really advertised.
- Horrible character design
- Started development when hero shooters were a novelty, released when there's simply no more room for more games of the genre
- $40 when the giants of the hero-shooter genre (Overwatch 2, Valorant, etc) are free to play
- Overall just a mid game according to most critics
- EDIT: tons of money sunk in boring story trailers that no one cares about. No one plays hero-shooters for the story.
@D4C_LoveTrain1 Something just click when you mention the trailer. The very first reveal of Overwatch shows the obvious villains and hero , and the player can play as either while the trailers' clips of Concord didn't show that. Just the freerunners. So, for some players that do care about a little bit of the world, they didn't got their attention. 🤔
@@CidGuerreiro1234 adding to the fact that the story trailers didn't really have a story that developed
i think there were many game killers lined up to kill Concord, but i really do think it was the character design that got them first and with such an extreme level of failure.
Concord failed so youtubers could thrive
Concord's designs were so bad that I couldn't even guess their genders correctly, let alone their roles.
I guess that's their intenton behind the design and they nailed it perfectly seeing how your reaction is.
Took a while to dig down. Every one except the mushroom xenomorph Lark is male. They run like sissies yet bone structure is teen boy size adjusted.
lmaoo
My brother, that was their intention.
You know your game fucked up when the R34 artists don't want to go anywhere near your characters
@@TheDoomMaster Even they have left some standards
@@Acacius1992that’s the true surprise for me, that fricking R34 doesn’t even want to get near this pile of garbage
every single one of these characters can be improved by 1 single input with chat gpt. But no they needed 100 white liberal female devs
it bothers me how many people have said the issue is that it had a price tag, dude that doesn't matter. when people played early access no one was going "guys you gotta try this" none of the characters are appealing so no hype was drawn, its a game made by people marketing to an imaginary audience then being shocked when the actual audience of normal people weren't interested in it
7:29 I think someone called this character a Monster’s Inc. scream canister.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Now that you mention it yeah I can see it
It amazes me that nobody has made a hero shooter where all the characters are just hot chicks with bikini premium cosmetics, while having a fun gameplay loop and fairly passive monetization. Whoever does this first will be literally printing money.
I don't think we are too far away from what you describe.
That is NIKKE, and each character cost up to three times the price of Concord.
no because you gotta make the work (or pay) for the bikini , if you give them the bikini too quickly they'll snap out of the trance and realize they can just watch porn instead
@@lumirairazbyte9697 really? pretty sure you still get decent amount of premium character even being casual f2p player.
@@srt7248 You don’t have the ability to chose the character you want. In the worst case, you have the character after 200 pulls.
It's astounding how Daw has pretty much become a poster-child for what *NOT* to do when designing characters; everyone discussing the art failures of Concord has cited Daw as the worst. Nothing about his design says "I'm a medic"; were it not for the flavor text in the bottom right corner of the UI, you would never think he's anything but just a guy in a blue jacket.
nothing about him even says "him"
almost everyone thought he was female until they saw his pronouns
I'd say he's the most immersion breaking thing in the whole game
I've had one of the games defenders straight up tune out on me (in their own fucking words by the way) because I criticized Daw as being out of place in a game like this, simply because according to their logic, "You went on a weird tirade about Saw being unrealistic but then wanting a more reptilian design for Lennox", like, first off this is the kind of stuff you'd get punched in the face in high school for. If someone's trying to have a decent respectful conversation, and they tune out like that? Tell em to fuck off.
Daw IS immersion breaking because he's out of shape fat. He's not strong fat like Roadhog, or athletic fat which exists. He's out of shape weak fat. In a game like Concord, he just looks completely ridiculous
@@angel_of_rust That too. His facial features are very soft-- so soft that a lot of people confused him for a girl.
I get that not every guy will be some super chiseled manly man, but facial features as soft as Daw's either make him look like a girl or a young kid
@@SmithOfGear92 would have been cool if they designed Daw as a veteran space war field medic, instead of... whatever that is...
He looks like a random guy I'd see in shopping mall.
People really underestimate how much other people stay playing simply because they like a character. Hell, fighting games work that way because someone might be gravitated towards a fighting style simply because they vibe with the fighter. It's not just for looking hot or cute. It's part of the personality of the game.
Masahiro Sakurai holding a small lecture on his TH-cam channel about character silhouettes a month prior to Concord bombing is a hilarious coincidence, almost for Sony to show "This is how *NOT* to do it."
Concord's designs are based on spite. They were far more concerned about sending whatever message they wanted against whom they considered "toxic male straight heyero gamers" blah blah blah, they thought that by DEFAULT their designs would be some sort of groundbreaking statement.
This is the results; a bunch of characters who have proved to everyone they haven't played games from the last 4 decades if they think ANY of the ideas presented are 'firsts'.
Considering the people they are "spiteful" towards are racist, sexist, homophobic bigots who think they are the only people that should be pandered to, and that women should never be allowed to look average because women are not people: they are objects. Frankly, the spite cry-wokers recieved is deserved. Don't get me wrong, the designs in Concord are still awful, but cry-wokers are worse.
I'd argue the core mission for most of the activists in game development and media is spite against the actual players.
They did everything in their power to make a game for people that don't actually play the games, yet spend all their time trying to change them.
Well said 😂 Given how current western media are so fixated on making female and diverse characters ugly and with terrible personality, can we be blamed for not buying their stuff? Still confuses me as a Nigerian.
nonsensical straw-manning
"Cosmetic microtransactions don't affect gameplay so they are ok to have." I'd love to hear these people come back and say something now because sure it didn't affect gameplay.... but they affected gaming as a whole.
show them a game from the 6th console gen where cosmetics and characters are simply unlockable by playing the game or entering cheat codes and they will disintegrate in real time
@@angel_of_rust they can't imagine having to actually play a game to unlock stuff.
All true, even if cosmetic can also affect gameplay in multiplayer, since it can make more difficult to recognize characters on the fly due to the mess of available skins.
Because they could not see how vile they would be with it.
@@phaolo6 yeah there's a chance that can happen in competitive games.
it's not only design but the attitude
The character design in concord is basically corporate executives thinking that throwing random bright colors one word looking outfits is enough to be interesting. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it and some of them don’t even look like they belong in the game itself
The designs fe3l AI generated
You know what. I'm honna have to disagree. The designs I've gotten from AI are leagues better than anything in concord. AI is more creative than the empty vessels on the character design team.@@flamestoyershadowkill6400
They feel like corporate art if it was rendered realistically 3D
Daw even makes Heavy from TF2 look fit and healthy.
Now that's just unfair comparison. Heavy might look fat but he is still an athlete
@@JeanneHamada He's literally called "fat" in some localizations.
I wish some people would stop conflating good design and oversexualization. Concord had neither. However, a character doesn't need to have hentai aesthetics to be visually appealing or well-designed. A lot of the Overwatch characters in this video are great examples.
Stop trying to talk sense into people. It doesn't work. Humans are neanderthals. They don't understand that a design that isn't sexy isn't automatically a bad one. :p
It doesn't have to be...look at the first descendant and tell me why that game still sold twice as this despite having mediocre gameplay
@@its__alvin Flavor of the month gooner shit
Same thing happened with Lost Ark and now it's that Mecha Break or whatever
Sexualization can only carry a mediocre gameplay
for so long
@@its__alvin You mean The First ASScendant?
@@its__alvinjust because gooner buy anything that looks like porn not means you should just put everyone in with only underwear, big example of this Bayonetta is she hot but stylish enough to make people like her.
Concord's characters look like you pressed "random" while creating a character in WWE or Soul Calibur. The photorealistic art style also makes it very uncanny.
my 16 years old mind was blown after OW "Dragons" cinematic trailer, i can be a cyborg ninja with big dragon katana ?
the lesson i personally took from all this is, _everything_ about a character design should be communicating something to you. Down to the name. Pharah's name tells you that she's egyptian, the blue and bird motifs tell you she can fly, and you're supposed to have the idea she's basically wearing a fighter jet. McCree is a cowboy, as you can tell from the earthy tones, hat, poncho, and very visible revolver.
And as compared to roka and lennox, like... Roka just looks like someone with a rocket launcher who bought the most boringly-colored unitard from a dance supply place and put a Destiny helmet over it, and Lennox's orange vest takes so much focus away from the revolvers. Also, he does not have a hat, which doesn't immediately tell you "this is the gunslinger." And their colors just... kinda _blah_, background colors at best.
I especially wanna put mention on the gunslinger part.
Some people were saying to some redesigning artists that "Lennox isn't a cowboy, he's described as a gunslinger!"
Like, do you fucking realize how little that narrows it down? Gunslinger is literally "guy with gun", what the fuck is Lennox then? A cop? A cowboy? A patrolman? A terrorist?
I swear, Lennox is such a strange case where I feel like even the developers didn't like him. He's on the face of the cover yet he's so underwhelming in so many ways (have you seen his gameplay? Those revolvers do pitiful damage)
@@ARStudios2000I know, right? four shots to kill people with a revolver?! And those shots have crazy bullet magnetism? Wack.
Also so many things about him just clash. The sharp edges on his arm, the rounded vest. Like you said, "do you fucking realize how little that narrows it down," and I'm gonna continue from that by saying he's just... full of ideas that don't work together. And also what... what is that color scheme. Orange, gray-blue, and baby-vomit green skin?
Also apparently he's "really old" (146) but nothing about him looks old. Maybe... I dunno, make his outfit look antiquated in comparison by making it look like he has a raygun gothic bodysuit under a vest or something so he looks like a young guy in old man clothes. Or just make him look old.
@@fluffywolfo3663 yeah, it's so weird that they keep reminding people that Lennox is old. He look, dressed and act nothing like an old person. Unless the people at Firewalk somehow thought obsessing over hot sauce is considered an old person trait.
@@polker8380 it was delivered as close to “as you know” as you can be without saying those exact words.
I'm a woman that plays games specifically geared towards women, and if you go on any social media site and look up the games I play you'll see women drooling over how attractive EVERY character is, both male and female. Everyone wants attractive characters except AAA devs.
Thank you. Someone finally said it. People like looking at attractive characters that is just a fact that is how we are geared we first judge a person through their appearance afterall and that is the same with fictional characters we judge them first by their design. Also lets say we head over to the LGBTQ community most of them would probably say they like looking at attractive people. Cause that is just how humans work.
True, male characters are also sexualized. Mainly by making them have absolutely gigantic muscles and a lot of the times walking around shirtless.
And that is NOT a bad thing.
When you start a DX video, you know, you're gonna get something special
I waited until this video to finally see what Concord actually looked like and my god, there is almost nothing salvageable with most of these character designs.
Their character design got so close to caricatures that it made the already almost non-existent MoDeRn AuDiEnCe go MIA. I mean if you're part of the community and you see these characters you cannot seriously consider wanting to play one of them. All of the characters are closer to clowns in a circus than anything representing their target audience.
This is what you get when you depend on big AAA corporations for your representation instead of oh, I don't know, letting artists from diverse backgrounds use their skills to make what they want to see represented without being stifled by corporate tokenistic checklist style "diversity". While games like this are flopping, indes will be booming.
they look just about the right for the woke modern audience. you have no idea how ugly IRL they/thems are.
@@sarrakitty This game, Outlaws, and a couple others failing hard is good news for gamers in general. With releases such as Wukong and Space Marine 2 showing the way, I hope developers and publishers will have their eyes opened. Sadly I think they will double down first before that happens.
im gonna be honest, i deadass thought daw was a woman at first
I thought the same too
Who would have thought that making characters ugly and androgynous wouldn't work out well. Remember, sexy characters are completely fine and, in fact, will probably help.
The marketing for concord was 5 years too late. People didn't want more MCU humour. The trailer aged like milk before it came out. Just adding this
Of course it sells games. That's one of the reasons Nintendo put special interest in Ocarina of Time's character designs. Not just Nintendo, that's why Sega kept redesigning Sonic to make him more appealing.
Randomly recommended your channel, but I remember I used to watch your "I f*cking hate" series back in the day. Powerful thumbnail
ooooh, so that WAS him, i thought i was triping here
@@driguesbarcellosgood times...oh the SAO video....yah Kiritos foundation got a lit from those videos😂.
He??? They couldn't even concisely convey their character's gender, let alone what they can do in gameplay.
Kiriko really is a money maker in OW2. I have a friend who will outright tell me how they didn't like a skin for her despite buying it and then perform some mental gymnastics when I asked why they got it in the first place since you didn't need to buy it to see how it looked with all the YT channels out there that showcase them.
There's one fascinating thing about character to design. We are constantly told not to judge a book by its cover to not stereotype anyone.
But in good character design, this is basically what you do. Making sure that a character's look is meant to explain who that character is. Exceptions being the subversions of expectations
Daw's shirt and pants are nearly the exact same shade as cigarette packs are in Canada (and several other countries like Australia, i think), a shade that was deliberately chosen to be as unappealing as possible lmfao
DX calmly and casually roasting Concord.
Great work man😂😊
The name Concord only for me being British of a certain age reminded me of the airliner and as the name of a game seems from my point of view an odd choice for a hero shooter. The points you made are very valid and well-thought-out regardless, and 2 weeks has to be a record for a game live service to be shut down. If I had not seen your video on it and someone mentioned this game to me would be thinking about how on earth is it named after an airliner that was caught in a serious tragedy and taken away from the world.
Still back on track well thought out and your right Blizzard has always understood good character design. Obviously, Sony missed that memo...
I mean, just look at how they market their WoW x Overwatch crossover. Widowmaker "Sylvanas" is cleary based on the original, chainmail bikini model.
I was very surprised they actually brought back the Sylvanas midriff after it was deemed "too sexy" by Chris Metzen and they covered her up.
With a more serious comment xd, I think another great example of character design is for the characters from Team Fortress 2. Tbh I was kind of surprised it wasn't brought up considering Overwatch and Team Fortress 2 were compared so heavily years ago.
So basically what cause concord to fail, is their lack of understanding (or inability due to ego) to understand the importance of the most basic rule of advertising/sales. That first impression is EVERYTHING.
I asked my computer what he thought about char design and it answered with "80085"
Hard agree tbh
Imagine if Concord cast was all the First Descendant characters.
What an L. Ugly maxing
after being away from this channel for a while, I’m absolutely blown away at how you’ve evolved, not only as a TH-camr but as a critic, absolutely phenomenal work that you’re doing and EVERYTHING you say, and how you explain it is perfect in every single way. hats off to you!
Whenever I see Daw, I just think "Homeless Mei".
The worst character design was, I think, Lennox. That lizard man Yondu rip with a human face looking... thing. The very human face is off-putting enough against the green scaly skin with quills but then we get to his... hair? Quills? That odd looking Mohawk on top of his head which was accentuated by a tiny little man-bun at the back. That man-bun alone made my eyelids twitch with rage and fury.
They have no understanding of anatomy. As an artist, this is just embarrassing.
Disagree with a few central points:
1. "Games with better gameplay will lose to inferior games with better income"
-> There is not enough money in the world to keep companies happy. Greedy ones will always fail in the end. The only thing that matters is that your costs are lower than your income. Good gameplay tends to be cheaper than graphics or TripleAy design. See: Ubisoft.
2. "Single player games can't compete"
-> Single player games have no costs beyond distribution. No servers. No multiplayer.
The issue is lack of capital for these kinds of "boring" companies and approaches. That will change in the coming years and decades as boomers start dying off.
Having finished the Video, I could not agree more with the points given.
Best Examples I can give are these: If you see the Outline of a Dinosaur standing over a cityscape, You Know that is Godzilla. Even if you have never seen one of the 40+ plus films and or animated Series, since he is the longest running Film Series in History.
If you see a Bald Man with an Axe or Dual Swords in his hands, You know thats Kratos.
Heck, If you see a Trible woman with a Bow and Huge Locks, you know thats Aloy.
The Greatest personal example for a game pulling me in solely on its character design is Geralt of Rivia in the Witcher 3. I had no knowledge of the game in 2017 other than some good word. I saw it for sale for 20 Bucks at walmart and played it from roughly March of 2017, all the way to October when AC Origins came out. Even to today I still love and play The Witcher. That Character design enticed me that much.
@@southernlocust you see a woman posing in the air like she is falling up, that's kat from gravity rush.
What would you think of the character designs of Rayman, Pseudo from Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, Cherry from Cookie Cutter, Becky from Blud, Death and War from Darksiders, and Abe from Oddworld?
>aloy
spoken like a true snoy
Concord felt slow to play though also. I think if the game had better movement and wasn't painfully slow people could've seen past these shit hero designs.
I think a more high-mobility take on hero shooters instead of just more moba shit, or whatever the fuck Concord was trying to do would find a good audience. Apex is kinda there already, but it's a battle Royale which is a huge turn off for an increasing amount of gamers.
Also the health on the characters. I saw beta footage and I was shocked at how slowly the characters health was going down despite them being hit by hundreds of bullets.
most people never touched the gameplay. People did not see past the character designs to even attempt gameplay.
you can't "see past these shit hero designs". these shit hero designs are literally what you have to look at on your screen.
@@ttrev007 and it was still mid anyway. this is an 8 year game buddy.
I thought daw was a dps character
He does tons of damage per second to any food items around him
I thought he was some kind of trap-based defensive class because I saw the "healing ring"
I thought he was woman
He deals massive amounts of damage to the floor
porn is a strong indicator of how popular a game/series/anime is, period, even if you hate the idea of it, even if you dont consume that porn. overwatch 2 only thing that keeps it going is the characters
I didn't even read the title, I just saw Big Budget Character Design
Would you happen to be the watchers of a fellow pimp?
the designs look like they don't know if they're cartoony or realistic. why have (realistic) impratical outfits if all their movements are still and lifeless? they end up looking like they're cosplaying themselves. seriously. I don't personally mind "ugly" characters but if there isn't even a personality behind a mediocre design, what is there to enjoy at all??
Yep, both game play & character design are important. For me personally, I can NEVER enjoy a game if I don't like the game main character. Not to mention if the game characters are ugly. 😆
It feels like the designs got approved by someone closing their eyes and just heard what the art style is.
TF2's initial design principle focused on the silhouette rule, making every class be distinguishable by their silhouette. Plus the color choices makes it instinctively clear who the enemy is and who is a teammate . I feel like with Overwatch, I'm shooting at the chaos, hoping I hit the enemy. But that's just me.
Nah I feel ya on that
ironically my favorite design is the generic soldier white guy
Alternative Title - Why Character Design is EVERYTHING - The Overwatch Theorem
Nice video man
The character descriptions for Concord really paint a different picture, I really think that they had the characters already designed, then wrote the descriptions and chose which character was what/who.
Like if you describe to me a character that was fast and agile who can take out a support or whatever and then dip, I imagine someone who is awfully skinny and has sport-ish clothes, not some chick with a detective-esque jacket, leather pants and what looks to be a very fashionable shirt.
That shit doesn't scream "fast and agile", the game's gameplay might've been neat (from looking at videos I really thought it looked sluggish and very Destiny like) but in a world of hero shooters that have pretty cool looking characters that ooze charisma this wasn't gonna work honestly.
Man, I am suprised the intestinal aesthetic in the design of Concord wasn't causing layoffs at Firewalk Studios.
This was a great discussion about a game's lack of appeal and failure to gamers.
Hell if you didnt tell me from a glance i would believe half the characters were ugly women.
This is something people need to watch and learn from
It genuinely shocked me blueberry guy was a healer. I was convinced he was a tank and/or an explosives based character
The idea that graphics and cosmetics are not important has always sounded insane to me. If that was the case, there would not be a trillion dollars market for it. If pure gameplay was more important than attractive characters, the entire gacha genre would not have succeded. I've been playing games for more than 20 years now, customization has always been a huge part of gaming experience, from recolors in sprite based games, to the modern characters skins.
I wish these studios understand that the main appeals of video games in general is escapism. I don't wanna play as me, I wanna play as the cool dude that isn't me. And if I wanna play as me, I want me to be cool as heck. So if I'm fat IRL you bet I wanna play a buff and sexy version of myself or else I'm choosing somebody else lol.
To add to that Capcom did a survey to thousands of their players/customers and the no.2 element that players look for in their games is ... *DRUM ROLL* .. attractive and cool looking characters!
Comparing Giger to this malignance is like drop-kicking a frail puppy with style
'Character Design' and that picture of Widowmaker is saying more than words here.
Using Widowmaker in your thumbnail ? You're a man of culture.
It's impressive how "blind" all the critics are to the horrible characters
Critics never have any strong opinions about AAA games backed by huge companies. They don't want to get blacklisted.
Forget "critics", try the actual people defending this game. They'll downplay the actual problems to focus on "hateful bigots", like, brother, if trolls and hateful bigots can crash your AAA game, then maybe it wasn't a AAA tier game to begin with, or it was a really shitty game
I remember picking up Overwatch when it first released and was instantly drawn to McCree and Reaper just because they looked sick. If there wasn't multiple badass characters to live out a fantasy as (I was 12 at the time) then I would never have begged my parents to get it for Christmas.
I like that your explanations go far beyond the “diverse designs bad” of other people. Good video!
Concord looks barely diverse
I was looking at the lineup on the time
It felt so generic like generic models
Concord really made designs in form of watching paint dry.
Since I am a 3D modeler, I have done a lot of learning. Although I did not go to college, I still took art courses. Usually, to build a character, you need to start with an idea, then find corresponding elements and pile them together. In this process, you will find many references. Then put different shapes together. Before giving the shape meaning, it must be the meaning of the character. For example, where the character comes from and what characteristics it has. Characters need to highlight their functionality and main features. In a character shape, characteristic shapes account for the majority. These characteristic shapes may be wings, mechanical hard edges, or biological shapes. But they still need to highlight the characteristics of the character. Otherwise, the shape will lose its original meaning. This is the same whether it is 3D or not. The most wrong idea is to pile the same shapes together. The best details are made up of large shapes and small details. The best artists in this regard can refer to those gunpla modelers who use custom shapes and transform details. The artistic effect in this regard is the same in any art field. Music, animation, there is a theme, and the character design is the same. Concord lacks such design and lacks character characteristics. Obviously, they did the opposite in character design. Even if you want to make a homosexual, you can first make a normal human, then think about what shapes homosexuality fits, and then add them. Homosexuality is usually not revealed in appearance, so this part can be placed on the character background, not on the character design. If you want to add such elements, only a few related to clothing, etc. It can't occupy all. A human will not have only one element. For example, the original idea is that this person is a cowboy, wearing a cowboy hat and holding a revolver. On this basis, you can add that he is a homosexual in the background story. Then the element of homosexuality still exists. But it exists in another place. Because I have been modeling for a long time, I still don't like the current AI design. AI lacks the perception of shape. AI will blend shapes together because AI doesn't understand what it is doing. AI is just executing code. This will bring great difficulties to modelers. Because they don't understand what the shape is, they are confused. Even if human designers don't have the best painting skills, humans know very well what shapes they want. This is why when I look for design references, I will avoid any AI drawings. I need those original design drafts. This is the same as early designs. Human painters are very capable and they understand the meaning of shapes.
What is the most important part of a game? Being fun.
whats the most important part of getting people to try the game? looking cool
the characters arent fun to look at in any context.
Character design is like #2 or #3.
Personally, story is noble, gameplay is king, engagement is emperor. Engagement isn't just gameplay or story, or interest, but the combination of aspects to be more than their sum.
"Focus on HIS outline".... HAHAHA, sure buddy. :D
my man became DXFromOW just to prove how shit the fastest flop of 2024 was. great video as always.
3:00 ITS DIGLET! "here's the xenomorph" awwwwww...damnit...
>TFW they spent 8 YEARS and >$100M on this game, and never considered on at LEAST redesign the characters.
I think, realistically, they "only" spent 4 years on this project. But that's still pretty bad.
@@DXFromYT Oof, but still.
I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm subscribing to the idea that the senior developers left for another job and everyone else (inexperienced or concerned about ability to get a job) decided to stay and keep their mouths shut, because the higher-ups refused to accept any sort of criticism anywhere.
This video was actually a spy op to make me buy RKGK from the ending segment
I feel like whoever designed the concord characters wanted to avoid stereotyping, which not only ruins them but also ruins the connection players have w/ said characters even if they obviously aren’t like them
Well for trying to avoid stereotypes, they sure as hell made several themselves especially for the black characters.
Bazz looks like freaking Thugnificent crossed with a disco wizard. Jabali and Bazz both wear the Morpheus shades, Jabali and Vale both do the braid things (despite wearing hats that would make those braids uncomfortable and ruin them especially in Vales case)
Blizzard made a lot if things wrong, but their art and design departments are not among these things
every time i forget about this channels existence i get recommended a new video
As a fellow artist (character modeller) I think you did a fantastic job explaining design principles. Have a sub and hopefully you'll get many more :)
If you don't wanna make "sexy" character's atleast give them a little personality they are as lively as a loaf of bread 🍞
I wonder if the ugly colors were forced by management to sell paid skins. I just refuse to believe there wasnt anyone in the team after 8 years of development that didnt call this out. The characters are actually repulsive to look at and imo thats because of the colors, mostly.
"Slop culture" personified in a game