Paladins, Fanservice, and Waifus

First up, the line “I’m afraid it’s gonna attract horny 13 year olds” is hilarious. Not only are there much better games for that out there on Steam, the fact that said 13 year olds clearly have access to the Internet means that they should have access to much better sources of satisfaction if that is what they are after.

But yes, this is a somewhat valid topic about Paladins. The female characters in the game are rather, erm, well-equipped if you see what I mean. Not to mention, going by the way they dress you would’ve assumed that the game takes place somewhere in the tropics. If you want a good example of this, looks at Seris.

Compared to other similar games, Paladins’ female characters are a lot more fan-service-y. Not to mention, some of the skins does a lot to accentuate certain physical attractions on the characters. I mean, there are enough of them for me to throw together a quick collage. Aside from that, some of the animations really bring out the female characters’ curves.

I am not complaining about this, and I sincerely don’t think that anyone that disapproves of this is a harrumphing moral guardian type who’s trying to impose his on her outdated, overly restrictive views on others. But to put in so much fanservice will make people uncomfortable. I mean, playing a game with so many sexualised characters running about flaunting their goods probably isn’t something you want to share with your parents or your kids. I for one will never play any of the Saints Row games in front of my family members. And I don’t even want them to know that I play that.

And speaking of animation, I just want to point out that all of the better-endowed female characters in the game has jiggle physics. In fact, when I look at the ported models from Paladins in SFM, there is actually an animation control for their boobs, which allows animators to control every swing and and jiggle. When I first found out about this, I was genuinely annoyed. Back then, Paladins’ hitboxes are as loose as a 200-pound man’s shirt on a toddler. And the fact that they implemented jiggle physics before fixing a rather important part of gameplay struck me as a rather dumb move. What happened to priorities, man?

Although now that I think of it, the jiggle physics are most likely done by the art team, which has absolutely nothing to do with gameplay mechanics, so that’s probably not anyone’s fault.

So yes, fanservice is plentiful in the realm. But I’ll be honest, I don’t think Hi-Rez is really out to get the 13-year-old teenage male demographic. And I have a few reasons to believe that. Six reasons, in fact.

I really doubt that Hi-Rez is hypersexualising the Paladins cast for cheap sex appeal, no. Personally, I’ll say Hi-Rez is designing characters to be interesting. And I do not mean interesting in that sense.

In general, when people pick a character to play, they would like to play as someone (or something) attractive, gruesome, cool, powerful-looking, or funny. In short, they want to play as someone that looks interesting and not what we will come into contact with in our day-to-day lives. For example, look at the Mortal Kombat cast. Even the characters from Earth don’t look like some random person you’ll meet on the street.

So when designing the cast of Paladins, care is taken to ensure that each character stands out. While some stood out in rather … unfortunate directions, it generally adheres to the rule that each character has a distinctive and interesting look.

People are drawn to characters that looks attractive, and whether it is through having the characters look unique or beautiful doesn’t matter, since it’s different strokes for different folks, after all. But in general, the characters look beautiful, and what is wrong with that? Who in this world can’t appreciate something pretty? The additional sex appeal isn’t exactly for cheap attraction. It is, after all, a part of beauty. That is the same reason why comic book superheroes and movie stars are, for the most part, conventionally attractive and good-looking.

So no, I don’t really think Hi-Rez is just after cheesecake sex appeal. And … wait.

Hi-Rez, I think you should consider toning down a bit. What next, a fully nude champion? Think of the children!

… dammit Hi-Rez.