'Body Aesthetics' and the Official Game

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Wed Oct 13, 2004 11:43 am

As I think, we have all noticed.. Besthesda did not exactly go out of its way to create attractive NPCs or player characters. The faces are often less than attractive, the bodies are somewhat wrinkled, and underneath the clothing one's character looks as though she, or he, is wearing a diaper.. Not to mention, that in most of the armour and clothing female characters often appear *completely* flat-chested

For those people who care about such matters, happily there are various mods that address these very issues. But, my question is... why did Besthesda, for the most part, opt to make the 'people' in Morrowind appear so dowdy?

Were they trying to get away from video game stereotypes and inject more realism? Did they simply spend more time developing the landscape graphics?

Thoughts, theories, comments?

moltovir · Post by **moltovir** » Wed Oct 13, 2004 12:04 pm

Compared to other games, Morrowind is HUGE. They probably needed so much time to make the landscape, script the quests, make items, meshes, textures, programming the AI, ..., that they didn't have enough time to make better faces and bodies or to add more unique dialogue. And they needed time to make those wonderful editing tools that allow fans like us to change the entire game at their will

Birdsfly · Post by **Birdsfly** » Thu Oct 14, 2004 1:12 pm

Well, it seems to me that they didn't really kill themself working on the trees.

The water is close to perfect, thought, totally realistc, it mirrors the sun, and most important: IT DOESN'T REFLECT THE SUN WHEN THERE IS NO SUN TO REFLECT! Mabye this has something to do with the HUGE masses of water in the playing area?

EDIT:
For the diaper part: I couldn't agree more! I hate taking of the clother of my character, no matter what, because the "underwear" of the Wood Elves look totally like a diaper made of... of... I can't remember the word! The brown stuff on the outside of the trees, outside the real wood!

Nobleheart · Post by **Nobleheart** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 9:16 pm

That would be called bark. Yes there wasn't much work put into the characters but sometimes thats the price you pay for a game that has no limits in sight. Although that is possible to change on the PC version, it is a thing X-Boxers have to live with at least until Oblivion.

Rookierookie · Post by **Rookierookie** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 12:41 am

Birdsfly, you shouldn't expect Morrowind to do something that not even Unreal II has done well.

lifeishell91 · Post by **lifeishell91** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 7:17 am

I think the body aesthetics are very good, and I hardly ever see the under garments so that doesn't bother me. When I play the game I usually think the body graphics are very good, except when I see them in screenshots.

giles337 · Post by **giles337** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 1:50 pm

Well, it seems to me that they didn't really kill themself working on the trees.

Do you know how much extra memoery it would take to create ONE realsitic tree? let alone 1 million!

As for the body athsetics..... im sitting on the fence..... they aren't paticularly beautiful..... but then again... is it really that vitally important! What do you guys want? Pixellated love?

moltovir · Post by **moltovir** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 1:59 pm

[QUOTE=giles337]Do you know how much extra memoery it would take to create ONE realsitic tree? let alone 1 million!

As for the body athsetics..... im sitting on the fence..... they aren't paticularly beautiful..... but then again... is it really that vitally important! What do you guys want? Pixellated love?

[/QUOTE]

Count the amount of nude and topless plugins and you'll know the answer

Scayde · Post by **Scayde** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 1:08 pm

The main reason is that due to the size of the game, and almost unlimited postures and placements of characters, the graphics had to be limited to larger polygons and fewer of them..the sky is a rather fixed object, so it could have smaller polygons, and the water is handled with applet technology, so there is not a huge issue there, but the characters would have posed a HUGE problem if they had been drawn with smaller polies...the pretty faces mod was a great developement but it pushed the envelope on what the game could hancle with out crashes...not so much a problem now with the newer faster machines, but in the early days of the game..this was a major pain on older machines. It was mainly a tradeoff between/game stability, and easthetics. When they came out with the x-box version, the 'Pretty Faces' mod was already installed. When Bethesda was asked about the 'underwear' and lack of form fitting women's attire, they said that it had been their intension that the game be G-rated for a wider global appeal. Seems they loosened up a bit for tribunal

Yeltsu · Post by **Yeltsu** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 3:26 pm

[QUOTE=Scayde]The main reason is that due to the size of the game, and almost unlimited postures and placements of characters, the graphics had to be limited to larger polygons and fewer of them..the sky is a rather fixed object, so it could have smaller polygons, and the water is handled with applet technology, so there is not a huge issue there, but the characters would have posed a HUGE problem if they had been drawn with smaller polies...the pretty faces mod was a great developement but it pushed the envelope on what the game could hancle with out crashes...not so much a problem now with the newer faster machines, but in the early days of the game..this was a major pain on older machines. It was mainly a tradeoff between/game stability, and easthetics. When they came out with the x-box version, the 'Pretty Faces' mod was already installed. When Bethesda was asked about the 'underwear' and lack of form fitting women's attire, they said that it had been their intension that the game be G-rated for a wider global appeal. Seems they loosened up a bit for tribunal

[/QUOTE]

You probably mean "Rhedd's Heads right? Well nearly all of his models weighs less than the originals from Bethesta

Mad Loco · Post by **Mad Loco** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 4:02 pm

You have to think of it this way, would you prefer better graphics on a game that would skip frames and even crash on your machine or go with a game that has some good graphics and the rest adequate with the satisfaction of very few crashes to your computer.

The NPC's aren't horribly terrible, I admit Bethesda could have done better with joining the parts together but on PC there's a mod which does that. The game already crashes without mods on the PC for some if not most players and on the Xbox you will come up with the DDE (Dirty Disc Error) if played for to long.

The game is big, it's not massive but it's big, and as such certain sacrifices have to be made in order to keep it that way, I mean think of the thousands of ways you can complete a mission..perhaps no 2 ways are the same, how many ways are there to get to Balmora..or how many ways to get to Dagon Fel, or Tel Naga, some things have to be decreased to a certain extent to allow that to be possible.

dragon wench · Post by **dragon wench** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 4:34 pm

[QUOTE=Scayde]The main reason is that due to the size of the game, and almost unlimited postures and placements of characters, the graphics had to be limited to larger polygons and fewer of them..the sky is a rather fixed object, so it could have smaller polygons, and the water is handled with applet technology, so there is not a huge issue there, but the characters would have posed a HUGE problem if they had been drawn with smaller polies...the pretty faces mod was a great developement but it pushed the envelope on what the game could hancle with out crashes...not so much a problem now with the newer faster machines, but in the early days of the game..this was a major pain on older machines. It was mainly a tradeoff between/game stability, and easthetics. When they came out with the x-box version, the 'Pretty Faces' mod was already installed. When Bethesda was asked about the 'underwear' and lack of form fitting women's attire, they said that it had been their intension that the game be G-rated for a wider global appeal. Seems they loosened up a bit for tribunal

[/QUOTE]

That makes a lot of sense, for some reason I always seem to home in on the abstract possibilities and entirely miss the obvious...

Regarding the G-rating they were trying to achieve....
er... whomever did the scripting for "Uncle Crassius" must have missed that particular staff meeting..

Scayde · Post by **Scayde** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 6:23 pm

[QUOTE=dragon wench]
Regarding the G-rating they were trying to achieve....
er... whomever did the scripting for "Uncle Crassius" must have missed that particular staff meeting..

[/QUOTE]

LOL..Hey, I was paraphrasing Bathesda's own statement, I take no responsiblity for any sick humor on the part of the developers

Rookierookie · Post by **Rookierookie** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 2:42 am

And the Lusty Argonian Maid... and the Real Barzeniah...and...

I guess I shouldn't go there.

Grandpa · Post by **Grandpa** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:13 pm

This game is beautiful.