All game avatars are the same...

[Gramzamber]

Well the female Sheppard in Mass Effect not only has small breasts but what you'd call an average figure too.
Well, it looks fit of course befitting her status as a marine.
This led to complaints among immature idiots who wanted a supermodel to jerk off to.

As for outright ugly there are several ways to make both the female and male protagonists in Fable II hideous, not through character customisation exactly but through in game effects (you can make them fat, demonic, far too tall, etc.).

[Vendetta]

As for outright ugly there are several ways to make both the female and male protagonists in Fable II hideous, not through character customisation exactly but through in game effects (you can make them fat, demonic, far too tall, etc.).

Just level up enough and you'll end up with an unholy freak of a character, and there is no avoiding that if you want to be any good at anything.

For a game which supposedly represents "you", it does a pretty pisspoor job of letting you be what you want to be.

Oh, right, Peter Molyneux.

Forgot.


Quite frankly, all game designers who have ever implemented a character customisation system should be slapped around the face with a copy of Saints Row 2.

[Oskuro]

I personally found the females in Fallout 3 to be pretty average, but then again, I couldn't find human characters in that game appealing at all.

One of my complaints about character generators is the inability to create fat people. You can more often than not create total aberrations with cunts for eyes and the like, but they always have perfectly fit bodies. I so wanted to create a morbidly obese hero for CO.

[Jaepheth]

They forgot one:

[Crossroads Inc.]

The Mass Effect character creation process was pretty retarded, anyway. It was way too easy to create some malformed dork, and literally any facial variation on the female face will create a freakish abomination. In any case all my efforts default to black dude with pornstache, so ...

you must provide screen caps now

[General Zod]

LOL at the people who think that "not having gigantic breasts"="average looking female". Honestly how is that female character from Eternal Darkness any less good looking than digital representations of Lara Croft for example? Unless you are huge tit fetishist that is.

I'm not sure what country you're from but I see tons of girls with a similar build all the time. People asked for "average" looking, you're just nitpicking at this point.

[Edi]

Ah yes, the video game character archetype look I hate.
Well. I have always liked Big Boss/Solid Snake's look, there is some degree of rugged uniqueness there (plus the mullet > all).
I absolutely unequivocally despise the default male Sheppard/Nico Bellic/Starkiller neo nazi skinhead look and wish it would die a painful death in the pits of obscurity.

There's a reason that look persists and isn't even too unrealistic: In the military it's a lot easier to just shave your hair off than try to maintain it and if you're in the field for any length of time (just days will do), you get a kind of scruffiness on top of it.

For this reason it doesn't bother me at all, whereas the ones where the character is supposedly military and then has all kinds of mullet, mustache etc, those just don't fit.

[Ford Prefect]

Just level up enough and you'll end up with an unholy freak of a character, and there is no avoiding that if you want to be any good at anything.

For a game which supposedly represents "you", it does a pretty pisspoor job of letting you be what you want to be.

I'm not so sure about that. It's not exactly hard to make sure your character develops in a certain way.

you must provide screen caps now

There is some sort of magic to taking screenshots on a console, a magic I have not mastered.

[Oskuro]

There is some sort of magic to taking screenshots on a console, a magic I have not mastered.

Hasn't the internet proven that using a camera to record your TV is a perfectly valid means of doing so? (I so hate those fucking Youtube videos, not because of the horrid TVs being recorded, but because you can't hear a damm thing)

[Tritio]

Well, even the female characters in 10 Video Game Women Who Don’t Use Sex to Sell still have above average looks.

But all is not lost! Introducing... *drumroll* The Fat Princess! Yes! She is your princess! And you feed her cake to make her so fat that the opposing team cannot carry her off.

[Vendetta]

Why do those lists always have Alyx on? There's a reason she wears very tight jeans and always runs off in front you know.

[Ford Prefect]

There's a reason she wears very tight jeans and always runs off in front you know.

She's an athletic college student and Gordon Freeman is some scientist dude in his thirties? More seriously, there's a difference between 'having sex appeal' and 'being for sex appeal'. I would be incredulous of putting Sheva Alomar from Resident Evil 5 on this sort of list (and not just because of the gratuitous ass shot at the beginning of the game), but I'm not convinced that Alyx is some sort of evidence for 'sex sells' in Half-Life 2.

[Stofsk]

I don't understand people (that's you, Stofsk, in case you didn't realise) who use the default Mass Effect male character face. They provide you with a tool to give the character whatever face you want - why use a poncy face derived from some Dutch male model?

It's his canonical look.

I used the tool to create my female Shepherd though. And I'll use it again when I do my third playthrough. (still need to do the renegade Biotic to get all the achievements.)

[Gramzamber]

That list is hardly definitive, for example where's Chris Lightfellow?

[Bellator]

Nico Bellic is pretty average looking. His face is nothing special, he doesn't have a buff body (in fact, he has a bit of a gut), and he's dressed like a hobo.

[SAMAS]

That list is hardly definitive, for example where's Chris Lightfellow?

Because they only had room for 10?

[Adrian Laguna]

In the military it's a lot easier to just shave your hair off than try to maintain it and if you're in the field for any length of time (just days will do), you get a kind of scruffiness on top of it.

For this reason it doesn't bother me at all, whereas the ones where the character is supposedly military and then has all kinds of mullet, mustache etc, those just don't fit.

Real life special forces are given a bit of leeway with their hair, or at least American ones are. I've seen pictures of long-haired Navy SEALs and three out of four guys in this picture have mustaches.

[Zixinus]

That list is hardly definitive, for example where's Chris Lightfellow?

I would remove the Female Spartans bit. First off, I don't think that they're anywhere aside the fluff (although I admit that I didn't play Halo 3 or Dead or Alive). Even if they were, its impossible to tell trough the armor, which kind of makes telling that they're female a bit moot. The list should be made for female characters that could have been oversexed but the designers decided to avoid going that way. For this reason I would also remove Princess Peach.

[Ford Prefect]

Even if they were, its impossible to tell trough the armor, which kind of makes telling that they're female a bit moot.

Actually, you can tell. The fact I can say that actually worries me, but if you compare the Master Chief's design to Nicole-458, it's pretty obvious she has sizeable breasts (she is in Dead or Alive after all).

[Edi]

In the military it's a lot easier to just shave your hair off than try to maintain it and if you're in the field for any length of time (just days will do), you get a kind of scruffiness on top of it.

For this reason it doesn't bother me at all, whereas the ones where the character is supposedly military and then has all kinds of mullet, mustache etc, those just don't fit.

Real life special forces are given a bit of leeway with their hair, or at least American ones are. I've seen pictures of long-haired Navy SEALs and three out of four guys in this picture have mustaches.

Obviously it varies with the objectives and mission requirements (the need to blend in to a local population, for example).

[loomer]

The lessened grooming standards of spec-ops troops does explain away a lot of the 'military guy with mullet!' stuff you tend to get - most modern military FPSes tend to focus on spec-ops troops (with reason. It's just a lot more fun to be The Guy sometimes.) so it's not really a damning thing.

I am rather tired of the generic designs for avatars in sci-fi games though. They're nearly all the same in terms of basic armour and appearance.

[SylasGaunt]

Actually, you can tell. The fact I can say that actually worries me, but if you compare the Master Chief's design to Nicole-458, it's pretty obvious she has sizeable breasts (she is in Dead or Alive after all).

Really? It's been a while since I played DOA4 but I took a look on the internet and haven't een able to spot one in any of the pictures I checked.

[Zixinus]

Actually, you can tell. The fact I can say that actually worries me, but if you compare the Master Chief's design to Nicole-458, it's pretty obvious she has sizeable breasts (she is in Dead or Alive after all).

And you have to compare the two units. Again, my point: its more worthwhile to compare female game characters that the game designers could have easily oversexed but did not do so. If it would actually take more effort to oversexualize a character than not, I don't think that should count.

[Gramzamber]

While not characters in a sense, I have to mention the clothing and armors for female characters in Demon's Souls as an example of deliberate non-sexualisation.
I haven't come across a single item that doesn't completely cover up the female PCs, oftentimes the armor suits are more bulky looking than the male versions.
It's actually quite refreshing as opposed to the bikini armors usually found in these medieval fantasy settings.

[Ford Prefect]

Really? It's been a while since I played DOA4 but I took a look on the internet and haven't een able to spot one in any of the pictures I checked.

To be honest you can pretty much tell with out comparison (and I don't think there are any comparison pictures). I just don't want to admit that I noticed.