Last weekend, the action-adventure game Sword Star (also known as Star Blade), launched by Sony Interactive Entertainment and Shift Up, opened its first demo. Through this actual experience, players have a deeper understanding of the worldview, battle scenes and systems presented in the game.
Since the release of the first trailer, the exquisite character modeling unique to Korean games and the art style of producer Kim Hyung-tae (who participated in the development of Nikki and Sword Spirit) have been hotly discussed. This demo of "Sword Star" comes from the evaluation of the industry media, which has led everyone's attention to a new direction.
France's IGN recently released a preliminary evaluation of "Sword Star", and some of the wording used in it is quite sharp:
"Some games have chosen to highlight the strengths of female characters, but when Bayonetta stands out with its iconic character designs, and 2B from NieR: Automata inspires an entire generation of cosplayers, Eve from Starblade is bland and unremarkable, an overly sexualized doll made by someone who has never seen a woman"
The remarks caused an uproar, but players were almost overwhelmingly supportive of the character design in the game and the game's developers. Some netizens complained that IGN attacked the game maker because the character image in the game was not ugly enough.
Some people feel that this is jealousy of "true beauty".
Someone even posted a photo of Kim Hyung-tae's wife to refute the above statement that the game's creator "has never seen a woman". It should be mentioned that Kim Hyung-tae's wife is also an industry worker in charge of art work. For example, many of the emojis and original paintings of South Korea's "Overwatch", "StarCraft" and "World of Warcraft" are from her.
So far, the most aggressive is this picture made by netizens. They thought that if the game was modeled by IGN, it would probably look like this-
In the past, when evaluating European and American games and Asian games, players tended to distinguish between them based on their gameplay characteristics. But in recent years, because European and American manufacturers have been constrained by the zzzq factor, many times everyone has been able to draw conclusions from the aspects of casting and character modeling.
Players complain about this situation, and often have to "wash their eyes" by playing Asian games. Not long ago, the appearance of several female characters in "Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth" sparked another wave of discussion, and European and American players have reflected on why their studios can't make beautiful women?
As public opinion on the Internet intensified, the French IGN subsequently revised the wording. The most controversial phrase "she was made by someone who has never seen a woman" actually says "she is portrayed as a woman you think she has never seen." "But at this point, all explanations have pale in disguise.
Now that there is still some time before the official launch of "Sword Star", it is certain that this will not be the last controversy caused by the appearance of the characters. Fortunately, the opinions of players and market feedback are the key to determining whether the aesthetics of such game characters can be continued.
So do you recognize the character modeling shown in "Sword Star" that is different from that in European and American games?