According to developer Fallen Earth LLC, players thought that the female characters in the post-apocalyptic MMO, which just launched yesterday, should have physiological qualities typically associated with women.
"Fallen Earth has never been about the sexiness of its females," said product manager Jessica Orr, "but after some comments from fans and a hard look at the female faces, we decided some changes were in order."
That meant having the game's artist, Chris Allen, make adjustments to the facial models in order to differentiate the females more from the male character models. The changes, implemented in a recent patch, included removing "excess skin" from under the chins, raising the cheekbones, softening the jawline, thinning the bridge of the noses and tweaking the shape and placement of the eyebrows.
Allen also raised the corners of the mouth to make the women have "less of a scowl and more of a neutral expression," Orr said. The result is what Fallen Earth LLC sees as "more feminine models that steer clear of the characteristic 'babes,'" allowing players to focus more on the game itself.
Orr also answered a few more questions regarding the look of the female models and provided us with more comparison shots below. What do you think of the changes?
What kind of feedback, specifically, did users give on the female character models?
Some of our testers told us that they would like to see more differentiation between the male and female facial features. They expressed that they didn't see very much difference in some of the models and that they would like to see more customization in that area.
Was the feedback from mostly males or a mix of both genders?
The feedback was actually offered from both genders. We had also heard that many people appreciated the fact that we didn't put an emphasis on the sexuality of the female characters to the point of making them unrealistic. Keeping both sets of comments in mind, our job was to improve the femininity of the female characters somewhat without sacrificing the elements of realism and individuality we'd worked to achieve.
Do you think the women look less or more like real women? And do you think it matters if the characters look realistic or not?
The women look more like real women in that the facial features and structures are more feminine. While Fallen Earth is a game and we can take some liberties with creating characters, it was important for us to create models of characters that players can identify with, since all players come into the game as humanoids.
