I was not sure where to put this topic, it has to do with story and characters, so I guessed the writing subforum would be the best place.

The Beyond Good and Evil 2 trailer from E3 got me thinking about a topic I was puzzled about before: why the hell are almost all the antropomorphic characters we get in non-cartoon games male? Why are their supporting femal main characters most of the time completly human?

As its a trailer, I guess there is not much to spoil... in any case, watch it if you haven't, the trailer looks amazing... actually missed the first game, but Ubisoft certainly got me interested in the series now. Fingers crossed Ubisoft does not F*** up like so often in the last few years and delivers a good, cohesive, FINISHED game.

Now, in the Trailer we see about 5 or so characters in any detail.... 3 of them female, 2 male(-ish). All the females look completly human. All the males are antropomorphic. One is a Monkey-man, one is a Pig-man (yes, antropomorphic means "Furry" in common net-speak, lets get that out of the way and never mention it again, thank you... nothing against you furries, if you are reading this, I just want to prevent this thread derailing into discussion of the Furry lifestyle).

Now I give the trailer extra points for featuring a black woman as one of the main protagonists. Cool to see more racial diversity in games. But I am a little bit puzzled as to why all the women are human?

Now I did check on the first game, its the same thing there. I have not played the games so know nothing about the story, maybe there IS a story reason as to why only male Antropomorphic creatures seem to feature in them. If there is, please let me know.

But I guess this has little to do with it making sense in the story, and more being a trend I have noticed for a long time in different media. Which is the topic I'd like to discuss... maybe people have different ideas, or some insight into why things are the way they are in many storys, be they games, movies or books.

Lets get the disclaimers out of way: I will discuss anime and japanese games. If you are so disgusted by even reading about this, this is your chance to bail from the topic. And no, I am no Furry. I just happen to like interesting fantasy creatures. Antropomorphic creatures, well done, can be FANTASTIC fantasy creatures. Well. I did mention it again. Oh well....

I will NOT go into the topic of diversity in games to deeply, and try to avoid it outside of the topic, which is antropomorphic creatures. While I would like to see a fat woman which is properly clad kick ass, or thin weak looking man not going totally dudebro on hordes of enemies from time to time, that is not what I want to discuss. And to avoid an often divisive topic in the discussions of games as a whole, lets not go there here.

Oh, and I will try to avoid spoilers. I will keep them for older games I'd like to discuss, but I will give a warning beforehand.

Now, lets roll in some evidence to build a case. Lets start with a positive example, that does fall short in some aspects, but at least delivers the female antropomorphs: Breath of Fire.

If you read through my posting history, I must sound like a broken record by now. I love the Breath of fire series! Not because the games are anything special mechanics wise (they are good JRPG, just nothing special compared to other JRPGs of the time), or the story is particularly good (well, it IS for BoF IV which has one of the best JRPG storys I have had the opportunity to expierience... generally, the story is rather run of the mill). What sets these games apart from others for me is the setting, the characters, the general visual presentation. For one, the graphics always have been quite beatiful. In a very colorful, bold way. More importantly, its a fantasy world that is distinctly non-tolkien... instead of elves or goblins you get antropomorphic creature as non-human intelligent species. The series managed to create and keep its very own, very distinct tone, up to the illfated last installment (which I am sure has its own cult following given it tried a lot of radical new ideas at the time).

Now, let me give you an introduction to the characters in the game (light spoiler alert):

The part 1 to 4 in the series play, more or less, in the same world, at different timelines. All of them recycle the player character, Ryu, and one of the other party characters, Nina. Which are pretty uninteresting characters save for Nina being what I see as a bad antropomorphic character, but I get to that later. Ryu on the other hand is your usual main player "Avatar"-character... the character that looks almost identical in all the JRPGs featuring such a player Avatar, which never talks and has most of the time a rather cliche backstory. Only in Part 4 he gets a more intersting story, but that would be quite a big spoiler and not relevant to the discussion.

The other characters are specific to the game, even though characters from older games might make an appereance in later titles.

2 female antropomorphic characters stand out for me that show what I think are great antropomorphic character designs. Katt from BoF 2 and Ursula from BoF 4.

Katt is a woren (catmen) Fighter you pick up as a party member when you beat her in a colloseum match. I think she is a great character both from a visual design aspect as well as from her character backstory. She is an antropomorphic cat woman head to tail, including fur with proper tiger markings and all. Backstory wise she has gotten a cohesive, well thought out character which happens to match her cat influenced appeareance without being to cliche... she is a quite short tempered, a little bit simple minded fighter with brutish strength, but little magical abilities. this a little bit cliche characterization is softened by showing mutliple times that she has a big heart and is very loyal once someone has won her trust. A well round character IMO both visually and backstory wise.

Ursula is some kind of Fox woman who works as a military officer in the evil(-ish) empire which is the main antagonist at the beginning in BoF 4. Her antropomorphic traits cannot easely be attributed to any living animal creature, because she has a distinct old chinese aesthetic to her that go beyond her clothing and spread to her antropomorphic attributes. Still, she looks quite antropomorphic on the outside. And she is jsut such a cool character, cold and militaristic.

Momo from BoF 3 I don't care so much about, but at least visually she is also a positive example. A similar antropomorphic creature like Ursula, she looks more like a Dog woman.

Now all these female antropomorphic characters are great characters in their own right and are great antropomorphic hybrids... its just a little bit telling that compared to their male counterparts (with the exception of the male woren characters, which all have a rather human face), their faces are distinctively more human looking. Why not give them more dog like faces for example?

Then there are the bad examples in BoF too... Nina being the most prominent. Besides mostly being a boring character, her only antropomorphic traits are her wings. Now creating good looking Bird men that make sense from their physical appearance while still looking human enough to touch the reader/viewer certainly is not easy.

But this is the lame way out. The result is not an interesting Bird/Human hybrid... its a human with wings.

To be fair though, all the male members of her clan also are humans with wings. Nothing of interest added. So lets just dismiss that as a case of shoddy character design.

There is alos Bleu, a half human, half snake being. Now, I get that she is literal hal-half-deal, like with centaurs. Still, I would have wished for the antropomorphic design to be extended to her upper half. at least skin colors and scales, if nothing else.

On the other hand, the male antropomorphic characters, besides the catmen, are much more animalistic in looks...

For people wanting to read up on the BoF lore and see character pics: http://bof.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Lets move on. Lets get into anime, because the japanese seem to be generally more interested in antropomorphic designs outside of cartoonish settings.

I just lately started to watch this new anime series, Grimoire of Zero. Generally I find it a rather entertaining series, even if some things don't add up and not all characters are that interesting.

The important part is: out of the leading 4 characters 2 are antropomorphic. Both also are male. The female characters are not antropomorphic. Now, don't get me wrong, there are good story reasons for that, beastmen in this backstory are humans that have been turned into such hybrids by a curse. And with the female characters being witches which obviously seem to be imune to said curse... yeah, it makes sense.

But it just shows an unwillingness from the director and storywriters to make their female cast antropomorphic even in storys where it would make sense to do so.

Another Anime I have recently watched is Outbreak company. Well, its mostly interesting because it works with the same basic premise as that "JSDF ad" Gate, but then does something completly different (and somewhat better, thank god) with it. Besides the usual genre cliches (much too young protagonist, attractive women magically attracted to him, yaddayaddayadda), its an entertaining series.

What stood out to me is that while we have a male AND a female antropomorphic character in the protagonists "party", the female one looks again way more human than the male one. (Actually its a shame the male one, a fully blown lizardman, does not get more screen time. Given how he is portrayed as an intelligent man really going against the cliche of the stupid lizardman, he would have been a very cool character to see more of).

Way back more than a decade ago I read a quite good Manga series... cannot remember the name for the life of me. Besides some slip ups it was a really good, epic story about a world engulfed in war, filled by antropomorphic species. What stood out negatively to me was that the main cast had 2 female characters (actually with quite cool stories), but their only antropomorphic trait was some horns... while their male fellows (and lover, in one case) where fully blown antropomorphic creatures with fur, tails, and partially animal faces.

What is it about female antropomorphic characters that seems to make them such a risk to a wide range of artists, directors and writers? Why do they always seem to go light on antropomorphic traits added to females or shying away from making femal characters antropomorphic in the first place, when they show little such restraint with the male characters (sometimes with goofy results, but often enough with very good results when done well)?

Is it because there is a fine line from when an antropomorphistic character design no longer looks like an exotic beauty when more and more antropomorphic traits are added? Is it that directors, writers and artist think their female cast HAVE to look pleasing to the eye?

Is it the intended audience which in the devs mind does react negatively to that (which, given I am not the only male fan of such fantasy world wishing for more antropomorphic females and less restraint when designing them, is obviously misrepresented in their focus tests and market data)?

Or do you see an actual reason for this trend that has nothing to do with devs trying to cater to an audience?

Am I interpreting too much into this?

There isn't one thing, that makes a designer turn a anthropomorphic character to a more human one.

Contrary to popular believe sex appeal isn't even the main reason here.

Among the young adults of today there is a much larger acceptance of anthropomorphic characters in a sexual setting than before, they also don't have this honed "Furry is wrong" idea.

If you want evidence of how much sex appeal anthropomorphic characters have, then just look at the most successful sexual games at the moment.

Soft appeal is more of a problem with anthropomorphic characters, it's more difficult to get the Player, viewer or reader to know the role of the character.

Let's take a male protagonist, with a male dog anthropomorphic character. Most of the audience will immediately realize this character is intended to be the friend of the protagonist.

So if we had a male protagonist, with a female dog anthropomorphic character, there suddenly is a question to the relationship between the two.

You can give a character a lot of soft appeal by just making there role in the story clear, gender can have a effect here, so male characters are used most of the time.

More reasons:

Giving a anthropomorphic any kind of sex appeal is difficult, for that reason the sexier the creator wants you to see them as the closer to human they get. Fran from Final fantasy XII, is a good example.

Animals work different than humans, making it clear that the character is indeed female is difficult. Most animals don't have breast, so if you want that as a way of defining a female you need the character to be more human than animal.

Also a body type can make it clear if a character is male or female, applying that to anthropomorphic type will cause them to look more human.

So in the end the way an artist learns to make humans also have a huge effect on how human female anthropomorphic characters look. Because when it isn't clear to us if a character is male or female, we assume male until proven otherwise; especially if it's a animal.

Wooh, while typing this I remembered one other female full antropomorph: titan A.E.s Stith.

All the females look completly human. All the males are antropomorphic. One is a Monkey-man, one is a Pig-man… I am a little bit puzzled as to why all the women are human?

It's not complicated or deep. The game was probably created by and for a primarily male, primarily heterosexual, audience. Male players (and that includes male developers) may identify with the monkey man or the pig man, but they are not interested in (nor attracted to) monkey women or pig women. There's no need to over-think it (I don't mean to discourage social scientists and those who study psychology, whose job it is to over-think this sort of thing).

That would be my first reaction... its the straight forward answer to the problem, and probably the right one in many circumstances. I am not sure that holds true for ALL the games and movies and comics mentioned. I mean, most have been created for a male audience... but are really all female characters in these games created as "Waifu material"? After all, we have Lucca from Chrono cross, who clearly has NOT been created as waifu material, given she is not overly girlish, and actually is introduced as a childhood friend, and never gets any "love interest story"... instead, she gets her very own story that is pretty independent from the main character often.

Now not saying that has also been true for BoF, but then at least in one of the animes mentioned we get a tomboyish girl which clearly is not intended as waifu material.

So, even if all these games and movies think they need to deliver on the waifu front, at least some of them do not make all the female characters into waifus. Yet none of these non-waifus and tomboys is made into a full antropomorph.

Oh, and most probably I am overthinking it... I tend to do that ;)

There isn't one thing, that makes a designer turn a anthropomorphic character to a more human one.

Contrary to popular believe sex appeal isn't even the main reason here.

Among the young adults of today there is a much larger acceptance of anthropomorphic characters in a sexual setting than before, they also don't have this honed "Furry is wrong" idea.

If you want evidence of how much sex appeal anthropomorphic characters have, then just look at the most successful sexual games at the moment.

Soft appeal is more of a problem with anthropomorphic characters, it's more difficult to get the Player, viewer or reader to know the role of the character.

Let's take a male protagonist, with a male dog anthropomorphic character. Most of the audience will immediately realize this character is intended to be the friend of the protagonist.

So if we had a male protagonist, with a female dog anthropomorphic character, there suddenly is a question to the relationship between the two.

You can give a character a lot of soft appeal by just making there role in the story clear, gender can have a effect here, so male characters are used most of the time.

More reasons:

Giving a anthropomorphic any kind of sex appeal is difficult, for that reason the sexier the creator wants you to see them as the closer to human they get. Fran from Final fantasy XII, is a good example.

Animals work different than humans, making it clear that the character is indeed female is difficult. Most animals don't have breast, so if you want that as a way of defining a female you need the character to be more human than animal.

Also a body type can make it clear if a character is male or female, applying that to anthropomorphic type will cause them to look more human.

So in the end the way an artist learns to make humans also have a huge effect on how human female anthropomorphic characters look. Because when it isn't clear to us if a character is male or female, we assume male until proven otherwise; especially if it's a animal.

Lots of interesting points. I have read about others struggling with it and struggled with the right mixture of human and animalistic traits before. Guess you have a good point there. When we look at Disneys female protagonists, we see not much defining characteristics besides eye lashes, lipstick and female clothing. Take these away and you couldn't tell Daisy and Donald apart. Which is technically surprisingly realistic.

I would guess both of you have a good point in that the full antropomorph with animalistic faces are male only because the gender would become hard to tell, and because all female characters have to at least be viable love interest material even if the story does no go into that.

Raising the question as to why that is. I mean I get why a good portion of the younger male audience wants their Waifus in the stories. But given how burnt out on Harem stories almost everyone you ask is, why is one or two sexy love interests not enough? Why are the Luccas, the Stiths and similar characters so rare? Well, I guess we get into the diversity discussion here.... Still, I find it sad when a "friend" character has to be male because a male/female friendship confuses the audience. I am curious if that is an actual fact or if some writers / artists / directors just are playing it safe?

On that note, while I guess what has been said lays to rest the question why the fully blown female antropomorphs with animalistic faces are so rare, that still does not explain why the more human ones, which CAN be sexy and definitely show more than enough gender traits, are also seldom used, even in stories where there are more than enough male antropomorphic characters.

I mean... am I a weirdo when I confess that I think katt was the sexiest character ever in BoF, not that snoozefest Nina which seems to have been the default love interest for the whole series? Is there an overwhelming majority in the audience that is turned off by animalistic traits on a "sexy character"?

Guess there is no hard study on this, still, would be interesting to hear. In the end, the guys producing these stories and games must have had a reason to play it safer for their female cast when it came to antropomorphic features.

why is one or two sexy love interests not enough?

This can have a lot to do with marketing, although most of the time it is the writer who decides the characters. Why they decide on the ones they do is there own reasons.

As for why the female ones are all sexy, that is how people imagine characters. If I asked you to think of a female character right now, the chances are that she was indeed attractive.

Attractive characters is the default, it's the same for male characters. The opposite is true for villainous characters, where the default is to make them ugly. The reason behind this is media itself and is done for the same reason FPS games use WASD keys.

I find it sad when a "friend" character has to be male because a male/female friendship confuses the audience. I am curious if that is an actual fact or if some writers / artists / directors just are playing it safe?

The audience don't really get confused, it's just that it distracts from the important part of the story.

It is indeed a fact, it has to do with how we summarize a person. If we see two people we often group them by there relationship.

Many characters in stories are simply known for there relationship to the protagonist, it's one of the first things a audience looks for, making it clear who a character is to the protagonist is a good way of grounding them.

If a male protagonist has a female friend at some point the audience is going to wonder if there is more to it than just friendship; Just like how in real life if a male and female colleagues are friendly people speculate on the nature of the relationship.

Ironically thanks to how media the treats female characters, if a female protagonist has a female friend the audience will speculate on the relationship as much as with any male character.

Guess there is no hard study on this,

There absolutely is. Character creation is a huge part of many creators lives, obviously they spend a lot of effort finding out what they could.

Just look into "Studies on furry characters", check the References on wiki pages; there are tons of research on the subject from both people who like and dislike anthropomorphic characters.

Any subject that people make a living from, will have research related to it.

There absolutely is. Character creation is a huge part of many creators lives, obviously they spend a lot of effort finding out what they could. Just look into "Studies on furry characters", check the References on wiki pages; there are tons of research on the subject from both people who like and dislike anthropomorphic characters.

Holy moly, you are right: https://sites.google.com/site/anthropomorphicresearch/home

Don't know how legit this bunch is, but indeed the google search returned tons of links on the subject. Eh, guess something to read for the next week. Maybe one or two pages actually do go into that subject more indepth.

Interesting thoughts about the relationship as the lens people see characters through. Never thought about it... must pay attention if that might actually also be true for myself. If true indeed, that could not only be a useful tool to leverage (by using it to surprise the audience), but could probably also used to solve this issue (for example for actually breaking the conventions without confusing the audience by supplying additional relational information that answer the question right away (by making the character blood relatives, or making it clear they already have spouses)).

Well, Jade is technically DomZ (spoiler alert, it's still murky after end of the first game though), stolen and turned human (?).

There is a female catgirl (that's an extra downside for any f*rry haters I guess ), only of her species, present as part of IRIS, she is impossible to miss unless you are blind because she is your point of contact through voicemails, introduced in one cutscene along with all others, present in the end cutscene briefly and saving Double H with anti-DomZ injection in yet another cutscene: http://beyondgoodandevil.wikia.com/wiki/Meï

One of the goat orphans at the lighthouse is also a girl but if you ignore the kids it's easy to miss that: http://beyondgoodandevil.wikia.com/wiki/Oumi

The unseen owner of Mammago garage that is ran by her 3 rhino sons is probably a Rhino as well (it's never established how breeding works in that world and Pey'j is an adoptive/friend uncle for Jade, and it's not like Jade is a real human anyway): http://beyondgoodandevil.wikia.com/wiki/Mamma

So the total tally: is 1 DomZ Jade, 2 real deals and 1 unseen presumed real deal.

On the male side we have a cow bartender, a bird news vendor, a pig (all one of their kind) and then 2 sharks at Akuda, two (I think) Chinese walruses, few Latino rhinos, goat boy orphan at the lighthouse.

It's a really small game, look at characters page, like half are kids at the lighthouse themselves.

Among main characters it's actually 1 to 1 with Mei and Pey'j and 3 females to 6 males on main IRIS guys. The ethnicity among both animals and humans is kinda varied too, the governor is black, Jade is vaguely Asian-ish or mixed and is doing some Tai Chi or Aikido or similar at the start of the game and the races are clearly Spanish, Akuda Bar I have no idea but I think Propaganda song in there includes Bulgarian..? It's a crazy varied game no matter your standard and I loved it, it's one of the best I ever played for atmosphere.

http://beyondgoodandevil.wikia.com/wiki/Characters

The game is more like humans being in the majority (with males slightly outnumbering the females I guess) and animals of both genders in minority (with way more males than females but it's like 5 to 1, not totally females). There is never plot reason given for any of this or where these species even come from or anything about their biology (i.e. does Mei enjoy pats behind her ears?!!??... I'm sorry.. I'll show myself out.. ).

As for the intended audience, the game was heralded by famous feminist game critic Anita Sarkeesian as a great example of a feminist game (as in - not male power fantasy, with good female and minority characters, etc.), so make of that what you may.

You should play the game by the way, it's really fun and quite short, you'll be done in two evenings.

3 hours ago, FRex said:

Well, Jade is technically DomZ (spoiler alert, it's still murky after end of the first game though), stolen and turned human (?).

There is a female catgirl (that's an extra downside for any f*rry haters I guess ), only of her species, present as part of IRIS, she is impossible to miss unless you are blind because she is your point of contact through voicemails, introduced in one cutscene along with all others, present in the end cutscene briefly and saving Double H with anti-DomZ injection in yet another cutscene: http://beyondgoodandevil.wikia.com/wiki/Meï

One of the goat orphans at the lighthouse is also a girl but if you ignore the kids it's easy to miss that: http://beyondgoodandevil.wikia.com/wiki/Oumi

The unseen owner of Mammago garage that is ran by her 3 rhino sons is probably a Rhino as well (it's never established how breeding works in that world and Pey'j is an adoptive/friend uncle for Jade, and it's not like Jade is a real human anyway): http://beyondgoodandevil.wikia.com/wiki/Mamma

So the total tally: is 1 DomZ Jade, 2 real deals and 1 unseen presumed real deal.

On the male side we have a cow bartender, a bird news vendor, a pig (all one of their kind) and then 2 sharks at Akuda, two (I think) Chinese walruses, few Latino rhinos, goat boy orphan at the lighthouse.

It's a really small game, look at characters page, like half are kids at the lighthouse themselves.

Among main characters it's actually 1 to 1 with Mei and Pey'j and 3 females to 6 males on main IRIS guys. The ethnicity among both animals and humans is kinda varied too, the governor is black, Jade is vaguely Asian-ish or mixed and is doing some Tai Chi or Aikido or similar at the start of the game and the races are clearly Spanish, Akuda Bar I have no idea but I think Propaganda song in there includes Bulgarian..? It's a crazy varied game no matter your standard and I loved it, it's one of the best I ever played for atmosphere.

http://beyondgoodandevil.wikia.com/wiki/Characters

The game is more like humans being in the majority (with males slightly outnumbering the females I guess) and animals of both genders in minority (with way more males than females but it's like 5 to 1, not totally females). There is never plot reason given for any of this or where these species even come from or anything about their biology (i.e. does Mei enjoy pats behind her ears?!!??... I'm sorry.. I'll show myself out.. ).

 

As for the intended audience, the game was heralded by famous feminist game critic Anita Sarkeesian as a great example of a feminist game (as in - not male power fantasy, with good female and minority characters, etc.), so make of that what you may.

You should play the game by the way, it's really fun and quite short, you'll be done in two evenings.

 

Okay, seems the wiki pages I have read ("read" = skimmed... my bad) about the first part and the trailer for the second did a poor job on showing of the diversity of the cast. Which is fair enough, given I did only skim the information on the first part, and the trailer on the second was rather short and action oriented.

True, I should play the games before jumping to conclusions... given the trailer of the second game seemed very interesting, I might just do that with the first one. Thanks on telling me its a short game, that is usually my problem with games. Even the ones that seem interesting I tend to give up on after some weeks because a more interesting game comes along, and I just never have enough time to play all the games I would like to. As much as I like sprawling 30 hour epics, they are not intended for people with a job, a relationship and other timeconsuming hobbies like game development

Well, I might have overstated how short it is, I guess it could be done under 10 hours.. parts of the game are locked because you must collect pearls to purchase items to destroy the locks, that can get time confusing and is a bit of a collectathon. The game is small and short but feels big and long. The collectathon elements is really well done and interesting, especially with animal and pearl detectors to guide you. Some photos and pearls are actual puzzles.

Still though, female f*rs exist on Hyllis! And she is a cute feline too..

I have no idea what the f*ck happened with the trailer for the second game (the E3 one from 2017, not teaser from few years back that shown a pig like Pey'j working on a car near some Jade-like woman in a chair on a desert) with all the swearing and sexual undertones. In the first game the word fuck never appeared and in the trailer it's said like 5 times, "bang bang motherfuckers" is said once, Switzerland is mentioned (there was 0 mention of Earth or anything Earthly in the first game, Hyllis is totally unrelated planet is some system, bla-bla-bla, Star Wars style - Earth doesn't exist in that world), the pig's assistant stores a CD between her breasts (?!) and the black girl tells the monkey to grab her 'chassis'. Then the woman at the end has green eyes so yaaay it's a beyond game after all.. yeah.

First Beyond is really unique with how it mixes action and tranquility and happiness and hope and sadness, it's great. You should try it, even for a few minutes. Feel free to shoot me a PM if you get stuck or something, I actually collected most pearls and all animals in the game and I remember it really well still.

1 hour ago, FRex said:

Well, I might have overstated how short it is, I guess it could be done under 10 hours.. parts of the game are locked because you must collect pearls to purchase items to destroy the locks, that can get time confusing and is a bit of a collectathon. The game is small and short but feels big and long. The collectathon elements is really well done and interesting, especially with animal and pearl detectors to guide you. Some photos and pearls are actual puzzles.

 

Still though, female f*rs exist on Hyllis! And she is a cute feline too..

I have no idea what the f*ck happened with the trailer for the second game (the E3 one from 2017, not teaser from few years back that shown a pig like Pey'j working on a car near some Jade-like woman in a chair on a desert) with all the swearing and sexual undertones. In the first game the word fuck never appeared and in the trailer it's said like 5 times, "bang bang motherfuckers" is said once, Switzerland is mentioned (there was 0 mention of Earth or anything Earthly in the first game, Hyllis is totally unrelated planet is some system, bla-bla-bla, Star Wars style - Earth doesn't exist in that world), the pig's assistant stores a CD between her breasts (?!) and the black girl tells the monkey to grab her 'chassis'. Then the woman at the end has green eyes so yaaay it's a beyond game after all.. yeah.

First Beyond is really unique with how it mixes action and tranquility and happiness and hope and sadness, it's great. You should try it, even for a few minutes. Feel free to shoot me a PM if you get stuck or something, I actually collected most pearls and all animals in the game and I remember it really well still.

Well, I think everyone was puzzled by that. I mean I get it that publishers try to be edgy sometimes (when being edgy becomes the fad of the week because family friendly has been overdone last week), but one or two F-words alone would probably have served the purpose.

When the whole reaction video from Jim Sterling talks more about the usage of the F-Word than about what the trailer could mean for a game he seems to be excited for, you know something is wrong. Jim really likes to use every ooopsie a dev or publisher does for his jokes and to squeeze some more content out of it, but usually goes easy on things he likes.

And apart from that, its not like the trailer needed it. It was fantastically done, well paced, and actually quite interesting. Puzzles me why the creators felt it needed more edge.

no worries, I tend to react to collectathlones by employing the help of a walkthrough to speed up the process, so that does not worry me enough to not try the game. I am not "comp1337ionist" enough to care about having had to use outside help to find the most obscure collectables in a game

I am also not ashamed that I bought the ingame guides to finding all the collectables in Horizon:Zero Dawn, and use the full quest marker system. Kinda diminishes the point in hiding collectables in a game, but meeeh, I wouldn't have found some of the more hidden brave trails, so it is a tremendous help.