It's crazy how none of these wacky Sci-Fi designs with their different species and detailed outfits have a sliver of the personality of, say, Scout from TF2. The guy who's literally only wearing a baseball cap, a tshirt and pants. Stylization is VERY important.
@@olianims TF2 is either at or rapidly approaching fifteen years old and entire swathes of modern games STILL haven't learned the lessons TF2 was teaching about distinctive silhouettes!
Scout also works because the game is closer to a cartoon, which makes the art style one of the interesting things about the character who is otherwise literally just some guy wearing normal clothes. The dude who lost his shoulderpad in lasertag would literally be scout from TF2 if he wasn't wearing whatever the fuck thriftstore cosplay armor he found and was wearing a baseball cap.
The designs feels like they meant to be cartoony and stylised like Team fortress or overwatch, but switched to realistic graphics last second, just imagine the same desgins but with the aesthetic of a cheesy old sci-fi comic from the 70s or 80s.
Thats EXACTLY what i thought. My first exposure to concord was a 2d animated trailer and i honestly thought the characters looked amazing and so fun... but realistically rendered it simply doesnt work so well😢
Yes. It's due to the half-commitment to the soldier look. He has a kevlar vest thing, headphones for not losing hearing in the heat of the battlefield, a cool gun, but... he is otherwise literally dressed casual. If only he could be wearing some kind of stylized military battledress like most outfits in Helldivers 2, it would be a believable soldier McShooty guy design.
Yes! That's it. That's the vibe he gave off that I couldn't figure out how to put into words. He looked like someone who kind of wandered into an actual fight but didn't belong there, but I wasn't sure exactly how to explain it. But he does look kind of like he showed up expecting laser tag but someone gave him a real gun.
This is exactly what I wanted to say as well. He literally looks like a normal dude that is just playing paintball. His armor looks like it's made of plastic to protect against paint pellets.
@@Aging_Casually_Late_Gamer Why not let you make YOUR OWN HERO then if you want the player to be represented??? Honestly I'd play a game like that, idk how you'd balance it but you would be UNIQUE instead of the 69th hero shooter.
soldier 76 is the most generic overwatch hero but you can tell that he is an old man keeping up with newer generation, seen serious combat, from the US, cares about looking "cool" .You can see his abilities easily. visor=autoaim, leg enhancements=sprint , big gun=gun All this reads without really even thinking
@@ajbXYZcool To be fair, he's sort of meant to be a Captain America style super soldier. He's got a comment with Ana about how "all that stuff they pumped into me" must have had an effect.
@@kevingriffith6011 Man he definitely doesn't look "super soldier" either. I was thinking it over a bit more, and I think it would communicate a lot easier about this "old man trying to keep up" scenario if he looked significantly "old-school" compared to everyone else. Like, trying to mix what you just told me with that idea, if he's some sort of super-solider from some old program from decades ago, he'd be in an older-style outfit, and his gear that he's more familiar with would be older-style as well. Also, I don't recall seeing any visor in the character art Skyen showed off, so...yeah
The non-human characters show some sort of creativity, but then they ruin it by having everyone go thrift shopping for their outfits then playing Spin the Wheel with the colors. So much wasted potential.
@@blushingralseiuwu2222 most bad designs are a lot closer to good designs than you might think. There are workable ideas on some of these characters. Just calling them bad doesn't really help anybody avoid these pitfalls or find ways to fix their characters that may suffer from the same problems.
I think its kinda weird that the aliens have normal human faces but some alien like characteristics id love to see a big monkey character re-design for Star Child, like the brutes from Halo
I think they kinda play too safe with the aliens. I mean the lizard guy looks like some guy wearing a cheap cosplay. The other aliens are a bit better though. Too bad they just bough their new clothes from Walmart dumpster
As a comment on another video about Concord perfectly described: "Why would you want to play or look at a bootleg Guardians of the Galaxy cast when you can just play as the actual Guardians in Rivals, where their designs actually rock?"
It would be fun to see Skyen talk about Marvel Rivals designs, honestly, I feel like they do a lot of good stuff. And I've heard a lot of nice things about Deadlock characters, but I haven't played it and don't know a lot of them so its hard to say.
@@leyagame583 The thing about Deadlock is that it's still in pre-alpha so a lot of the models are unfinished and some are even reused from other cancelled Valve games. But the ones that are closer to the game's intended aesthetic (Abrams, Haze, Infernus) are REALLY interesting. The game's basically going for like a detective/spy noir vibe mixed with paranormal and pagan imagery. It's kinda like Hellboy in a way.
It took me a bit to describe the vibes these designs give off collectively. But I think it can be best described as nameless background characters who are too close to the foreground to be faceless. They need details, but they can't be more interesting than the named characters that the story is happening too or it will divide the viewers' attention too much.
The way these characters contrast against the level design is also a problem. Some people have mentioned that these character designs blend into the background way too easily.
Yeah they make me think "MMO quest giver" The first character looks like they'd say something like "the spacewolves are eating our ration stores! go shoot 10 and report back to me."
Oh yeah the chick in pastel green armor should have been some kind of girly girl in full 80s blue eye and red lip make up, but she's armored up in this clearly contrasting, bulky armor. And one of her quotes could be "not the face!" when she's headshot. I think a really prissy tank could be hilarious lol.
80’s glam-rock warpaint would have given her more of a classic roller-derby aesthetic that could have been quite camp. I do think you would have to let the player apply some kind of decal to the armour if they went down that road.
@@GillfigGarstangoh absolutely, you go that route then there are sooooo many options for themed skins on the armor. Punk ruck style graffiti paint, crazy 90’s pastels, you could turn that thing into a canvas for all sorts of unlockables.
It's notable that no character is wearing any iconography either. No corporate logos, fashion brands, government seals, gang marks... except maybe the alien girl's belt buckle? It leaves a weird amount of blank space on the clothes and in the world building. Obviously slapping stickers on everything like racecar sponsors is too much but icons imply worldbuilding about factions and cultures. And I don't get the impression that concord has either of those things.
Good point. Even just geometric shapes as filler. The old lady kinda has some of that, and the robot with his little heart that looks like 2 dog tags glued together.
i heard someone describe these designs as "they look like the costumes from a bad live action adaptation of an anime" because of how the photo realism clashes with the attempt at stylised designs and i cant not see it whenever i look at concord
36:25 I can’t believe they have a green reptilian looking character (in a game that already has a lizard guy) that can “vanish” and they didnt just make her chameleon themed
Concord biggest problem is how the majority of their hero doesn't sell their fantasy. Very few tell you what they want to do in their design. Like for example the fat guy, did you know he heals people? Apparently so. Or how the grandma is supposed to be the speedster of the game? The idea of a speedy grandma is interesting, but you need to potray that she is fast from her design. Like for example, Apex have a weird speedster (disabled with prosthetic legs), but they made him to be unhinged and twitchy, so we know he is fast even with prosthetic legs. The grandma though??
Not even, The Merchant from RE4, Anna from Fire Emblem, Rodin from Bayonetta, Tom Nook from the Animal Crossing series, all of the numerous shopkeeper from Zelda like the bug girl or the baby. Every single one of these shopkeeper not only have far better designs, but also have actual personality and the best one like Rodin or the Mechant basically act as a microcosm of what the game or franchise is all about.
The working theory is that these designs were originally meant for something stylized (cell shaded maybe?). At some point there was a decision to push hyper-realistic fidelity and basically nobody's design survived the transition. Supposedly you can unlock lore snippets that are rendered in a cartoon-esq style that these designs work WAY better in.
I had a feeling that might've been the case, like traces of things that would look cool in a cartoonier style are there. What was that EA game that started out like a SAT AM energy shooter that got fully Modern Warfared?
If that is the case, that would explain the giant areas with no details on the characters' outfits. In this realistic lighting, all the highlights and shadows are flat and easily blend into one another, making those empty spaces stand out a lot more. Whereas if they went for a two-tone or three-tone stylized shading, those areas would look a lot more dynamic and interesting.
@@euroryder1978 Oh don't get me wrong, these character designs are still not great, but more interesting shading could offset that at least a little bit. In my mind, I was thinking about how in Part 3 of JJBA, most of the main characters dress pretty plainly, but still look really cool. Like, Joseph is basically just wearing a t-shirt and slacks, but he rocks that outfit. You could say Araki's art style is the main difference, but I specifically want to say that it's his way of shading that makes such ordinarily plain outfits much more interesting to look at. If Concord had gone with a more stylized approach instead of this odd photorealism, these designs would've been a teeny bit more engaging, and help distract from the huge, solid colors with no details.
They really feel like people wearing full cosplay and body paint, and like, not even doing a good job either! A lot of the gals look like they're wearing the most basic party city wig or just using their natural hair because they couldn't afford the wig for the character
Remember that Simpsons episode when Bart tries to enter a comic convention and in order to not pay the entrance he puts a mask on his face and calls it a "cosplay"? That's Concord character designs for you.
47:30 This guy gives off the impression that he was, at some point, meant to be a lot more alien in design and body shape, maybe something reptilian or silicone. But then some higher up smacked that down because he wouldn't be "relatable" enough, so he was turned into some dude that got spray painted swamp green and contracted hyper psoriasis.
@annekeener4119 Oh no, it totally looks like a life vest. My assumption would have been that it's there to signify that the dude can't swim. However, that would require the character designers to know anything about displaying character traits through clothing.
Teal tank lady also isn’t posed like a tough character. She’s hunched over, almost like she’s struggling to carry her gun or sheepishly trying not to be noticed. Compare with Zarya, who wears even less armor but still manages to look tough just because she lifts an enormous heavy weapon so confidently. Of course, she doesn’t fully commit to that either because if she did it might amount to an actual friggin personality.
I feel like proper posing would really help these character designs. It definitely wouldn't fix them, not by a long shot, but it would at least give a better idea of their personalities.
Somebody needs to make a comperhensive criticism about the lack of posing skills in modern games 😂 Mortal Kombat 1 is my favourite example. Poses can make and break a design
Or facial expressions! It boggles the mind how many characters are giving Blue-Steel-at-Gunpoint energy, just staring dead-eyed at the camera like even _they_ wish they were anywhere but in this game. Make some of the smile! Sneer! Smirk! ANYTHING!
@@fable23 That's a problem with the hyperrealistic graphics in general nowadays. The faces are always an uncanny valley. It looks like a human, but you know it's just a bunch of 1s and 0s
This feels like a prime example of why the realistic aesthetic doesn't really mesh well with hero shooters, you lose so much character when you move away from stylization
Hero shooters by necessity rely on distinct character designs to identify different heroes. You want people to look at someone and know who they are and their abilities. A bunch of non nondescript characters in muted colors matching the backgrounds is not going to work for this type of game.
24:28 oh god that "nope you're wrong she can build walls" had me laughing out loud in disbelief. i thought the exact same thing: purple, gold ornaments, cape=sorceress, she has to have some elemental magic (but explained away with "high tech") ability. unbelievable.
Caught me off guard too, my first through was like, “it’s looks like a golden age super hero or sci-fi space suit, maybe she like flys or jumps around or something? Or just generally some kinda physical enhancement?” NAH, WALLS
@@alextihor1190 Literally any OC donut steel character in deviantart back in the day. The sparkle dogs are crayon vomit but they are leagues more interesting to look at than these characters.
It's one of the reasons why humans cannot work design wise for me, because asthetically, humans are the most neutral creature there is. Just about anything else is better at being cute, cool, ugly, unique, bizarre, goofy, beautiful, etc. And, honestly, I can appreciate designs that are cute, cool, ugly, unique, bizarre, goofy, beautiful, etc. But the one kind of design I cannot stand... is a boring one, and honestly, that's what neutral is to me: boring.
One of my biggest issues with a lot of these designs are their colors. Putting aside their potential storytelling, the outfits themselves feel garish, disparate, and lacking in any appeal or intent. Some, like the regal gold, purple, and white robes of the wall lady or the flowing charcoal and red dress of the pyromancer are concise, cohesive, and evocative. But like… the green alien lady has like seven clashing colors, the pristinely bright and bulbous life jacket has an unwieldy contrast with the rough and ruddy jumpsuit and skin of spiky Chris Pratt, and the bright red face against the bright blue aliens is just unpleasant to look at. None of that is even mentioning all the pasty beiges thrown around.
@@EatSumMorChkin "Tough guys aren't nearly so sturdy as tough stains" Seriously, caustic cleaning chemicals could actually make for a brutally unhinged kit.
Finished it this morning and I have to say: Absolutely fantastic video. Dunking on bad character design is always fun, but the REAL fun for me is in analyzing WHY it went wrong. On the surface these all look like distinct unique characters but I had such a hard time putting into words why they were boring. I feel like I learned so much from this video to use in my own designs. Thank you!
It definitely gives me vibes that the art team isn’t even working in the same building as the others making the game, and on top of that they know nothing about it. And on top of that they were told “be very very very safe, don’t go crazy”. Beautiful rendering and crisp lines… they COULD have done something amazing it feels like. This looks like a bunch of characters made from a custom character screen
51:00 I feel this design could've easily been saved by color. You already mentioned the comedy of their helmet size, the inscrutablity of their facelessness, and the contradiction of their role and small frail body. These elements read as someone who's ment to be chaotic. The comedy represents their goofyness, the inscrutablity represents how unpredictable they are, and their fragility represents their recklessness. I can see this character fullfilling a similar role to Overwatch's Junkrat or TF2's Demo. Yet, this is damped by a dull white color scheme. Imagine them in bright reds, oranges, and yellows compliment by slivers of neon green. Or better, see them covered in spattered paint with a cute doodle scrawled onto the front of the helmet.
You mentioned it a little, but the majority of characters have really strange color pallets. Normally a character wearing garish colors together says something about their personality, but they’re all wearing mismatching pastels and beige.
I know nothing about this franchise either but orange shirt dude looks like he was working at Walmart half and hour ago but then the world ended and someone handed him a gun and shoved him into a war zone
Yet that's the literal background of all the Left4Dead Cast, and they all look better than any of these, and you can also have a good guess at their back stories (Except maybe Rochelle, even her dialogue doesn't mention her working for a TV crew much).
I like how John Concord looks super bored to be there. Like, he doesn’t want to be there, but he has to be, and he doesn’t want to wear an outfit, but he has to, so he slapped together a shitty outfit last second out of stuff he could find in his garage.
I thought she was going to be a hidden badass type. She'd hide in her cloak pretending to be an innocent old lady then start backflipping off walls schooling all the youngsters.
hmm but custom character has the ideals of the player in them giving it character (cutesy girl, holy knight, edgelord reaper etc etc). unless its some dude who dont care about looks and just want stats... but then THAT can be a custom characters identity.
Not really. Half of them look like generic goons, and the other half look like default-settings custom characters. Uncustomised customisable characters
Purple and Gold wizard looking wall building lady has a Sten gun and I can kinda see how that fits as an engineer/mechanic. The Sten gun was designed to be easy to build in random workshops with basic welding and only a handful of machined parts. So it has a certain vibe of a 'do it yourself' hands on work that fits with an engineer/mechanic rather than an 'off the shelf' weapon. Why she's dressed like a Roman Emperor I have no clue.
@@nopemcgee2831most people’s criticisms of this game have amounted to “ugly sweet baby inc game,” and that’s it. It’s more interesting to know *why* they don’t work as explained by someone with knowledge in character design.
26:17 I saw gold and purple and thought like royal friendly older woman like she's a knight or princess serving her queen on the field I guess but no she's in construction???
Thats my thought too. I thought she was some sort of royalty cuz purple was associated with royalty and along with the gold. I thought her role was the team leader who buffs everyone's attack.
@@Watchful049that's exactly what my thought process was, she looks like she would fall into a "commanding officer" kind of archetype who abilities are built around buffs and debuffs
He is either the blank slate protagonist that starts boring and makes you hope he becomes more interesting later... or the first extra to die in the story.
Nobody ever talks about the support guys gut and his under outfit. The little chest plate and the zipper line in the center of his suit makes him look like a guy wearing big pants pulled all the way up over his belly. He looks dumpy.
He looks like a joke character, to be honest. Like... a scene comes to mind that I've seen in more than one place where a character is trying to design a "battle suit" before they land on their iconic design, and this is the "We went for too much padding and now I can't move" version that's like the second in the montage.
I don't mind a big guy as s character, but oddly enough that weight seemed to be an afterthought to me. As in if he was a more older guy, you immediately get it that he's the team dad or the guy who likes to provide for his team. But everything together makes me go "oh, he's support? huh."
@@fluidthought42 I agree that the weight by itself isn't really a problem. It's a combination of the weight and the outfit. Part of the problem is that combination of chest-plate and jumpsuit with the jacket over-top. The parts of the jumpsuit we can see make it look more like a pair of pants pulled up to chest-level than a jumpsuit. Give the guy a belt and I think it looks better. Still not *great*, but better.
@@fluidthought42 His fat isn't my issue, it's the goofy outfit that looks like large breeches pulled up over his chest. It just sits out there forcing your eye to focus on his gut. They couldn't enlarge the chest plate so it goes down lower like a full breastplate?
Skyen, how dare you call me old and point out that people might not be familiar with HK-47 nowadays! The game he is from is only like 22 years old ... wait.
Someone on Twitter described them as "Walmart People" and that's a very apt descriptor imo. Personally I think many of these characters look like Trash Mob in either RPGs or old Third Person Shooter Games, especially that chick wearing full body armor and carrying a rocket launcher. Looks like a mass produced soldier that attacks you in a massive group in some Sci-Fi game.
All the Concord characters are basically C grade designs. They’re all technically *fine* and passable but not a smidge better than that. They all have the vibe of deviant art OC’s that are *definitely not this character from popular franchise* that got a very high gloss 3d redo from the initial notebook sketches.
I feel like there's also a dose of "you think this character is one thing but ooooo they're actually something else EXPECTATIONS SUBVERTED" without considering that communicating a character's abilities at a glance is really important in a COMPETITIVE SHOOTER
@@Mordrevious Well sometimes subverting expectations for the sake of subverting expectations isn't wise, those expectations are there for a reason and subverting those expectations without putting thought as to why you are subverting them you'll end up with something that's utterly unappealing and unclear. These designs all have hallmarks of trying to subvert expectations without trying to think what you're subverting them with. A true 0 effort design would be highly stereotypical as that's an easy way to do it make something that's 100% correct to those expectations and you're golden but none of these really look like that, they look like they wanted to do something different without figuring out what that "different" was.
This looks like Sims x Fortnite colab This looks like randomized City of Heroes character This looks like superhero OC of a guy who only reads newyorker comics This looks like I've made my barbies hero costumes from mom's office supplies
I remember when I saw Reaper and thought "damn he is so edgy, I love him". And Bastion was so cute, short circuit vibes. Mei was adorable, Mercy se beautiful. Winston was MONKE, all really great memorable designs. This...this ain't it.
Overwatch gets criticism for some of thier designs. But i can't deny the impact of those designs and how much they helped carry the game. Even when Blizzard fumbled. For better or worse rule34 helped carry Overwatch in popularity even during decline.
I kinda like the trash can robot character tho, I think he’s got a unique silhouette and he kinda gives “friendly workman bot that someone gave some combat augments to” vibe, defo better than most of the other characters
I like his design too, but TB’s points about the arms made me realize I’d probably like the design more if they did something interesting with his limbs instead of just giving him articulated action figure arms. Still the best character imo.
@@CrazyLikeUhFoxI kind of like the arms, they look convincingly like off the shelf parts originally developed for some kind of industrial robot that have been repurposed and made ‘friendly’ by housing them in a rounded, doll-like chassis complete with a cute heart on the front. Very much reminds me of the kind of industrial design language Greg Broadmore would use for one of his robot designs.
Why hasn’t anybody made ‘oops all friendly robots’, the hero shooter? This one faceless yellow thermos-robot had more personality than any of these other polar-express-looking losers.
25:00 If I had to guess her mechanics based on design, I wouldn't have gotten "walls", but rather "team buffs". With the cape, the violet and gold, the gray hair, uniform and what looks like a 20th century rifle, she looks like a general, or a team leader. As a result, I was thinking she had do-damage-to-charge-up, lead-from-the-front team buffs, like the Banners for the TF2 Soldier.
Right? The cape and the snarky smile reads to me as someone who's confident and someone whose not at the frontline. The old age contributes as someone with wisdom. Putting all of this it screams "leader character" or "tactician character".
@@warlocke1894that was my thought too. Purple is usually associated with medieval kings and queens and the gold trim also reinforces royalty so I thought she was a team leader who buffs the attack of the team
I was thinking either lasers/lightning magic because i thought her tattoos were like a gauntlet that would give her powers of some kind or some form of super hero ability because of the cape ( Honestly her design reminds me of super brainz from pvz lol )
You know it's funny. I put this on as audio while I was playing my Apex Legends dailies and taking in everything TB said and especially about character power sources in their design, I actually stopped playing and started looking over all the in game models for the characters default looks. They are much stronger than these designs in Concord and seeing hero shooter design done badly actually helped me spot and appreciate things I hadn't before.
The frustrating part isn't what's bad, it's what's GOOD. I honestly like some of these character designs and think they're actually well-made, for something other than a hero shooter where you need to identify who is who in the blink of the eye, or you'll die and have a team of angry people in your ear. They'd be a lot more memorable If they were in a coop or single player action shooter game with a focus on character writing like Half-life, Bioshock or Borderlands. These characters are giving me is the vibe that they're living life in survival mode and are determined on clawing out whimsy in whatever way they can. 11:40 The support sniper looks like she's been wearing the same top for years, which has fashion cuts on the sleeve but actual wear and tear damage on the trims. The way that it's all in a faded beige, but she still wears a bright blue cap, tells me she places more importance on the cap than the top. Why? I don't know. This is a hero shooter, not an action game with story. 31:40 The Pyromancer has a lot of east asian influences: Buddhist prayer beads (that's ohhh shiny golden), the archery grieves, the haircut the satin stitching in red (good luck for survival or a destined love via the red string of fate maybe?) She reminds me of some of the Hokkien Malay youth from about a decade ago, someone with more cultural knowledge than me that can probably point to an accurate reference for the whole character. It doesn't scream to me "I FUCKING LOVE FIRE LET'S BURN EVERYTHING!!!!!" to me though, it screams "I have all my own life and culture outside this scrim". Which is great! It's fantastic character design for someone you're not meant to shoot! BUT YOU ARE MEANT TO SHOOT HER! I hope it's obvious I'm cherry-picking my favourites with these examples. The others are not as strong. Occasionally you can see exactly where the inspiration is from. The teleporter pixie alien is a mix of Night Crawler and (IDK their name, double-double? The enbie shape-shifter from She-ra)? There's that one dude that looks like an A.I fusion of Vision from the MCU and The Beast from X-men, especially when the light hits his face just right. I liked some-guy alien, he looks like a goober with a taste in haircuts that I don't agree with. But then I saw him in motion, (I haven't even heard him speak, just saw the trailer muted in the background of something else), and I think: "Oh, with the jacket, he looks like a yellow Yondu that's LARP'ING as Starlord. He looks like a dude that stans ChrisP ratt for some reason". Then there are the ones that just look garish that make you wonder, "what is it that actually brings these people together? Why does the art direction for this game look so inconstant"? Before I knew more about the game, I thought it was because it these characters have their own lives outside of combat. Their own taste, culture and circumstances. But now I know, it's because the designs were rushed and were made for unrealistic lighting engine. Because if simulated light looks more life real life and less like a comic book, it's always better, right? Surely people like MCU more than Spiderverse right? Pokémon only got better going into 3D where you can really question where does the ground around Dugtrio comes from and say "wait, fish just float in the air? It wasn't stylised for youthful imagination, that's just how it works"? I don't know if the game deserved better, and I don't really care enough about hero shooters to find out. But I can't help but feel like at least some of these characters did. EDIT: Oh and John Concord. The fact that I had to edit in that John Concord exist is self explanatory.
24:07 My guess? She's a magic user. It doesn't fit the theme of the game but hey, maybe there's tech magic or something. Screw it, maybe she has magic that turns her opponents old for a few seconds, slowing them or making controls more difficult. A CC-Mage. Final Answer. [Edit] YOU ARE PULLING MY LEG. NO FLIPPIN' WAY. HOW IS SHE NOT A WITCH???
"A CC-Mage" so like someone that can summon walls of force and can cast a big AOE spell that damages and debuffs enemies? That sounds a lot like a CC Mage, actually
So there is a small batch of animated shorts that they’ve released before the launch of Concord that has a unique style to them. I feel like the devs switch gears, to a more realistic style because marketing said it would do better and shot themselves in the foot because of it
A majority of them just look like Bethesda's Starfield NPCs. They have that empty, plastic vibe to them, even the ones that are dressed up as if to say "aren't I so wacky". You can easily imagine the screen zooming in on their face as they stand stock still and exposit at you. And the first guy? Well, he specifically looks like an NPC that you can shoot and kill because he's non-essential.
A game that looks like a bad 70s sci fi movie would actually be cool, imagine your weapon shots looking like bad rotoscoped effects or like cheap pyrotechnics
My guess about reasoning for the bland character looks is that all of these are 'default' skins and therefore their primary purpose is to encourage players to BUY something different.
I watched a video that had all the little character select animations and voice lines and what struck me was that the characters didn’t feel like characters, they felt like people cosplaying as characters. It’s hard to put into words why, but they just didn’t feel genuine.
Looking at that robot feels so disappointing because the easiest way to give it something more appealing is to just double the number of "Eye cameras" that is has on top. Its round, its brightly colored, the "mouth" where its glowing eye is, just give it another camera on the top of its head and you have a frog looking, bulky robot. Hell, the handlebars on its top maybe can flap and bend to become "eye brows" if you wanna go further. The robot that comes to mind for me in the way it looks is Pacific Rim's Cherno Alpha. Both are bulky, rounder bots than their peers, but Cherno also has that double face deal: you initially see its two turbines and think that the top is its face, but then there's also the actual con-pod at its chest area and it makes you now see it as a hat. Just add an extra camera eye on the damn yellow robot and you have a similar (but weaker) effect.
Adding to that, their ability is basically vacuuming stuff, replace the bulky arms with floppy tubes, and give the color either more shine or a older used look (like new/well loved toys) and ya got a perf design This stuff ain't this hard
The fact that this is supposed to have a 70s space age retro-futurism look to it when Overwatch literally just released a character that perfectly encapsulates that is astounding to me.
The thing is, their designs aren't themed. Yes, there's the overal wacky retro theme, but neither character is fully themed. It's kinda like when you want to create a character by giving them everything you find cool and in the end it's just a mishmash of parts that don't click together.... And even when they kinda sorta do (the old lady works for me), the theme doesn't fit their character role - seriously, she isn't royal nor a sorceress?? It's exactly as you said it - a frustrating character design.
The more I look at these designs the more I think that they made them that way so they'd be easy to cosplay? I have nothing to back that up but yknow they just LOOK like they're going to Comic Con
There's a balance to be had in character design. On the one hand, it is **very** easy to swing too far into on-the-nose iconography/symbolism, like: _"I'm the 'mad scientist' character!! I have the singed hair, the lab coat & goggles, and I run around with a maniacal smile on my face and a bubbling potion in-hand!!!"_ That kind of design approach can make your characters feel generic and paint-by-numbers. For as loud and colorful as it can be, it can paradoxically make characters feel boring and lifeless. _And on the other extreme,_ you have Concord, which doesn't commit to any idea, to any degree, across the board. The characters look like they're in a vaguely 70's ~ 80's themed office airsoft party than anything else (which, hey, double-down on that and I think you have a fun aesthetic for a shooter. Could work really well as a skin line).
22:27 I feel like even though it would still be boring if this character was the flame thrower it would be WAY more interesting. Like most characters with flamethrowers have outfits to make sure they’re not gonna die but this character gives off a vibe of “why would I need to do that if I just never light myself on fire?” The outfit reads as either confident (probably overconfident) or just not giving a shit. It’s still not great but atleast it would tell us something
What's actually impressive about Concord, is how it is sold as a hero shooter with a narrative, but none of their character designs entice anyone to go play it, while at the same time saying nothing about the character's skills and background. Somehow they found the perfect design that says nothing and appeals to no one. You have to be trying to be this terrible.
@@genericcatgirl The worst part is that AI understand better what people like than the Concord's devs. If you ask for any good image generator to create a basic concept like "soldier man" or "female space pirate", it will create more interesting designs than concord.
I'm glad this video exists, trying to find a video that does respectful constructive criticism without being anti-queer/fatphobic is so difficult. I'm glad I'm not alone in feeling confused and frustrated with concord character design but I also want to support interesting different designs that represent a diverse group of people.
I don't think it's about the characters being queer. At least not for me. It's more that I think many other games do queer characters in a much more respectful and appealing way. For example Overwatch, Valorant, Apex etc all have queer character that actually look good and can draw people in quite well. I think Concord is a situation where it just feels a bit too shallow for my liking considering most of this is through the Bio and not through a more organic way
So much this. The character designs missed for pretty much everybody, and I like hearing people discuss why media failed to achieve its goal because there's a lot to learn in that. But in this case, the majority of criticism I've found on the Concord characters is "the designs suck because of WOKE" with no elaboration. Thank God Skyen is out here using his brain and getting to the real issues with the designs
Thank you. All the vids I could find were like THEY FAILED BECAUSE OF WOKE and it’s like. I would love to actually break down why these designs are awful
Writing this as I was going to bed (going to enjoy this video when I wake up, so Skyen could have covered this before I got to hear it), but wanted to share one thing I remembered back when Overwatch was in its hayday. I forgot what and when it was specifically but the idea behind Overwatch’s hero designs could be seen in the same way we view champs in LoL: Having a distinct design to them. The idea was that if you were to completely blackout a character and turn them into a shadow, your average player should be able to figure out who that character is from their silhouette. You see someone with a staff that can heal? That’s Mercy. Some guy with dual weilding guns? Reaper. An armored flyer with rockets? Pharah. So on and so forth. Overall, when you have so many distinct designs for your heroes, it can help players know who is who for both playing with them and playing against them. This is why the overall design of Concord’s characters kind of rubs me the wrong way since outside of the vacuum robot and other similar big body characters, a good chunk of the characters do blend in together a bit. In a sense, it runs into a similar problem with say Rainboe Six Siege, but at least there, one can argue that the similar looks are there for a reason, whereas here, it doesn’t feel like there were too many things to set them apart from each other. Still different, but you can still run into an issue identifying who is who exactly if they aren’t a giant character who would then stand out like a sore thumb. Overall, I’m in the camp that didn’t want to see Concord have a weak launch, but had a lot of concerns about the state the game would launch. And when you are launching with numbers that make Gollum look like the more engaging title in PC, that is a severe red flag. For a variety of reasons (between cost of entry, overall design work and from what I’ve heard, an approach to the gameplay design that left people scratching their head as to why they chose to do it the way they did. I believe Austin’s review of “not recommending Concord” did a nice summary for the game’s issues at launch in spite of it looking as polished as it is for a game eight years in the making). But yeah, the Hero Shooter Genre is cutthroat. You either need to hit the ground running with your concept or face getting terminated due to a lack of engagement. Hell, there’s a reason why Foamstars just recently announced it was going free to play in October and I feel like unless they go back to the drawing board (which does seem like it’s too late for that), Concord is likely going to go F2P in the same amount of time (and the weekly story cutscenes likely will close up when that happens).
The character that Skyen shows at 45:55 feels like such a Yondu rip-off,: Scales, shit eating grin, even an alien item to mimic a mohawk. All he needed to fully steal Yondu's place was a needle like gun or ability.
I am not into these games but I was into overwatch years ago and I feel like the biggest thing is like... in overwatch you see a character and you almost immediately know if this character is cool or appealing to you or not. Discount their abilities from the equation, when I saw repear and how obnoxiously edgy he was I was sold cuz I love edge. Or when I saw sombra I could instantly go oohhh purple rgb hacker that is sick. And THEN their abilities feel more like they completel character rather than the opposite. Of course reaper teleports and turns into a ghost smoke he is the edgy skeleton mask dude. Of course sombra hacks people and turns invisible she would do that. I look at any of these characters and for only few I can go "okay you are clearly this" much less to think of what they could even do in combat. The example with the lady that builds walls is perfect for this because if I even liked that design never in a million years I'd go into a game and natrually figure out oh yeah I signed up for a building character.
This is why TF2's character design is so effective: Valve specifically designed them in a way that you can almost immediately recognize them via their silhouette. Even the characters with similar heights and sizes, like Soldier and Demoman, have different stances that you can immediately know what kind of threat is about to hit you. These designs are all so... middle of the road. Any one of them could be anything and in a hero shooter, most people can't do fuckin calculus to try and divine what threat, if any, is coming your way at a glance.
TF2 is great in that regard because you can put so many cosmetics on top of the characters and still be able to recognize them easily, allowing for a huge variety of customization while still maintaining visual clarity.
Valve also spent a long time over nine years trying to get TF 2 right. People forget but it was announced in 1998, made an appearance at E3 1999 then went radio silent till 2006 when they showed the game had gone through a complete art style overhaul from a "serious tactical military" art and design style to a "goofy 1960's spy comedy" style so it could fit the new design philosophy of making the game much more "Readable" and fun to play. Valve even spoke about how they deliberately designed the game to be recognisable in the developer commentaries that shipped with the game so it's not even super secret confidential game dev knowledge. It's just insane how Valve showed everyone how to design a "hero shooter" nearly 20 years ago and yet we still end up with something as intensely bland and tame as Concord
@@WarAndPosting TBF, Valve didn't originally make Team Fortress. Team Fortress, was originally a mod of Half Life, that then became an official game mode. It was never really a separate game on its own. TF2, by contrast, was very much done as a fully standalone product.
@@SiphonRayzar TF 1 was originally a Quake mod released in 1996. Valve liked it so much that they hired the developers and remade it into Team Fortress Classic. An officially supported and distributed HL1 mod while announcing in 1998 that TF2 was in development and would be its own stand-alone project.
It goes even further than the silhouettes; I remember seeing an artist on twitter analyze the genius of tf2 character designs which involve different colors and elements that are supposed to draw attention to other factors such as orientation of the character, where on their body to shoot(the game mostly redirects the player's glance to the torso area using contrast in colors), and what weapon they're holding Edit: if anyone is interested, I found it: search up Character Readability in Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch by Xavier Coelho-Kostolny on medium
Really well put together video! Very informative. I was never that interested in character design but this discussion is really inspiring all of a sudden (makes the mind wander with ideas of how all of these designs could be improved- with the talk of how elements are in contrast between each other or what i lacking. And makes one appreciate all those old examples of designs that worked). It feels like they were made with the objective of being a generic person in the setting, without thought of the role they would've had in game, and then were handled to the gameplay team who had to make work with what they had.
In a game that took so long and required so many resources to make, I'd love to know how these character designs ended up being the final versions when they are obviously so rough. Did the character design process only have time for one draft? Horrific game engine failure requiring starting over? The worst focus testing groups possible? We'll probably never know
John Concord, suburban dad and paintball enthusiast.
@@zogwort1522 He got shot in that eye with a paintball pellet
and the entire game is based on that one time John tried shrooms before the paintball tournament
It's crazy how none of these wacky Sci-Fi designs with their different species and detailed outfits have a sliver of the personality of, say, Scout from TF2. The guy who's literally only wearing a baseball cap, a tshirt and pants.
Stylization is VERY important.
Scout's facial expressions and posing are great for conveying his personality
@@olianims TF2 is either at or rapidly approaching fifteen years old and entire swathes of modern games STILL haven't learned the lessons TF2 was teaching about distinctive silhouettes!
-Ayo, Bostoners still count as a different species.-
Scout also works because the game is closer to a cartoon, which makes the art style one of the interesting things about the character who is otherwise literally just some guy wearing normal clothes. The dude who lost his shoulderpad in lasertag would literally be scout from TF2 if he wasn't wearing whatever the fuck thriftstore cosplay armor he found and was wearing a baseball cap.
TF2 also makes everyone unique, while their uniforms show they belong to a team and what role they play in it.
I know we like to joke about "John [Last name]" but Christ on a cross that dude really just is John Concord isn't he.
I'm sorry, Joncord...
the best part is when john said "it's concordin' time" and proceeded to concord all over the enemy team
@@KA-vs7nl He then proceeds to sap 200 Concordillion dollars and peaced out like the John he is.
I'd much rather play a game with John Chaser or John Chrome over John Concord.
Which is a contrast considering how weird the rest of the designs are.
Some *almost* work, it’s frustrating.
The designs feels like they meant to be cartoony and stylised like Team fortress or overwatch, but switched to realistic graphics last second, just imagine the same desgins but with the aesthetic of a cheesy old sci-fi comic from the 70s or 80s.
Still would look weird and boring
@@szymonlewandowski9690 would be a 5000% improvement tho
Thats EXACTLY what i thought. My first exposure to concord was a 2d animated trailer and i honestly thought the characters looked amazing and so fun... but realistically rendered it simply doesnt work so well😢
That's exactly the vibe I get from these characters. Live-Action Netflix Adaptation.
That would be an improvement over what we got
3:43 less than Shooty McSoldierguy, he looks like he's about to partake in a rousing game of paintball or lasertag.
Yes. It's due to the half-commitment to the soldier look. He has a kevlar vest thing, headphones for not losing hearing in the heat of the battlefield, a cool gun, but... he is otherwise literally dressed casual. If only he could be wearing some kind of stylized military battledress like most outfits in Helldivers 2, it would be a believable soldier McShooty guy design.
Yes! That's it. That's the vibe he gave off that I couldn't figure out how to put into words. He looked like someone who kind of wandered into an actual fight but didn't belong there, but I wasn't sure exactly how to explain it. But he does look kind of like he showed up expecting laser tag but someone gave him a real gun.
This is exactly what I wanted to say as well. He literally looks like a normal dude that is just playing paintball. His armor looks like it's made of plastic to protect against paint pellets.
John concord
Yeah but please no screaming, he has tinnitus.
>Tries to guess the character personalities from the design
>The characters have no personality to begin with
You summarized the entire video, genuine applause 👏 👏 👏
exactly!
That's because they weren't supposed to have their own. They are supposed to be "representations" of the player themselves. To "identify" with.
@@Aging_Casually_Late_Gamer That... completely defeats the entire point of a hero shooter.
@@Aging_Casually_Late_Gamer Why not let you make YOUR OWN HERO then if you want the player to be represented??? Honestly I'd play a game like that, idk how you'd balance it but you would be UNIQUE instead of the 69th hero shooter.
soldier 76 is the most generic overwatch hero but you can tell that he is
an old man keeping up with newer generation, seen serious combat, from the US, cares about looking "cool" .You can see his abilities easily. visor=autoaim, leg enhancements=sprint , big gun=gun
All this reads without really even thinking
Also, his red, white, and blue jacket with the number "76" on the back helps infer why he's called that.
He didn't look old though.
@@ajbXYZcool To be fair, he's sort of meant to be a Captain America style super soldier. He's got a comment with Ana about how "all that stuff they pumped into me" must have had an effect.
@@kevingriffith6011 Man he definitely doesn't look "super soldier" either.
I was thinking it over a bit more, and I think it would communicate a lot easier about this "old man trying to keep up" scenario if he looked significantly "old-school" compared to everyone else. Like, trying to mix what you just told me with that idea, if he's some sort of super-solider from some old program from decades ago, he'd be in an older-style outfit, and his gear that he's more familiar with would be older-style as well.
Also, I don't recall seeing any visor in the character art Skyen showed off, so...yeah
@ajbXYZcool Whym "art that Skyen showed"? There wasn't a single image of Soldier76 in this video, lol. Only verbal discussions.
The non-human characters show some sort of creativity, but then they ruin it by having everyone go thrift shopping for their outfits then playing Spin the Wheel with the colors. So much wasted potential.
Really? Which one? mushroom alien who poison people? Or the big purple guy who tank? That is not sign of creativity, more like lack of it 😂
@@blushingralseiuwu2222 most bad designs are a lot closer to good designs than you might think. There are workable ideas on some of these characters. Just calling them bad doesn't really help anybody avoid these pitfalls or find ways to fix their characters that may suffer from the same problems.
I think its kinda weird that the aliens have normal human faces but some alien like characteristics
id love to see a big monkey character re-design for Star Child, like the brutes from Halo
@@Shiftarus I'm not calling them bad, I'm calling it lack of creativity. Or in other word, boring and uninspired
I think they kinda play too safe with the aliens. I mean the lizard guy looks like some guy wearing a cheap cosplay. The other aliens are a bit better though. Too bad they just bough their new clothes from Walmart dumpster
As a comment on another video about Concord perfectly described:
"Why would you want to play or look at a bootleg Guardians of the Galaxy cast when you can just play as the actual Guardians in Rivals, where their designs actually rock?"
Or play their standalone single player game?
@@bthsr7113 exactly
It would be fun to see Skyen talk about Marvel Rivals designs, honestly, I feel like they do a lot of good stuff. And I've heard a lot of nice things about Deadlock characters, but I haven't played it and don't know a lot of them so its hard to say.
For Deadlock characters I should say that their designs are unfinished but at the same time they have all the needed visual keys @@leyagame583
@@leyagame583 The thing about Deadlock is that it's still in pre-alpha so a lot of the models are unfinished and some are even reused from other cancelled Valve games.
But the ones that are closer to the game's intended aesthetic (Abrams, Haze, Infernus) are REALLY interesting.
The game's basically going for like a detective/spy noir vibe mixed with paranormal and pagan imagery. It's kinda like Hellboy in a way.
It took me a bit to describe the vibes these designs give off collectively. But I think it can be best described as nameless background characters who are too close to the foreground to be faceless. They need details, but they can't be more interesting than the named characters that the story is happening too or it will divide the viewers' attention too much.
The way these characters contrast against the level design is also a problem. Some people have mentioned that these character designs blend into the background way too easily.
Yeah they make me think "MMO quest giver"
The first character looks like they'd say something like "the spacewolves are eating our ration stores! go shoot 10 and report back to me."
They're Starfield NPCs
@@asdadsgsaadasf6043 That is literally what I came to this comment section to say!
They give off vendor/quest giver vibes from an mmo, they all look like borderlands npcs to me lol
Oh yeah the chick in pastel green armor should have been some kind of girly girl in full 80s blue eye and red lip make up, but she's armored up in this clearly contrasting, bulky armor. And one of her quotes could be "not the face!" when she's headshot. I think a really prissy tank could be hilarious lol.
Why does that give me an Ivankov "Make-up so thick it can stop a bullet" vibe?
Your comment has more creativity than all these character designs combined
80’s glam-rock warpaint would have given her more of a classic roller-derby aesthetic that could have been quite camp. I do think you would have to let the player apply some kind of decal to the armour if they went down that road.
"THIS ARMOR WAS A RENTAL!"
@@GillfigGarstangoh absolutely, you go that route then there are sooooo many options for themed skins on the armor. Punk ruck style graffiti paint, crazy 90’s pastels, you could turn that thing into a canvas for all sorts of unlockables.
It's notable that no character is wearing any iconography either. No corporate logos, fashion brands, government seals, gang marks... except maybe the alien girl's belt buckle? It leaves a weird amount of blank space on the clothes and in the world building. Obviously slapping stickers on everything like racecar sponsors is too much but icons imply worldbuilding about factions and cultures. And I don't get the impression that concord has either of those things.
Good point. Even just geometric shapes as filler. The old lady kinda has some of that, and the robot with his little heart that looks like 2 dog tags glued together.
Exactly! There is no distinct shape language, no color palettes, no nothing
maybe they wanted to sell those decals separately
i heard someone describe these designs as "they look like the costumes from a bad live action adaptation of an anime" because of how the photo realism clashes with the attempt at stylised designs and i cant not see it whenever i look at concord
36:25 I can’t believe they have a green reptilian looking character (in a game that already has a lizard guy) that can “vanish” and they didnt just make her chameleon themed
At a guess, because they were looking over their shoulders at Riot's lawyers - it's two steps away from being a bargain-basement Neeko cosplay.
If they had any original ideas they could’ve made her more aquatic to make her unique… but that’s not what we’re working with here.
Concord biggest problem is how the majority of their hero doesn't sell their fantasy. Very few tell you what they want to do in their design. Like for example the fat guy, did you know he heals people? Apparently so. Or how the grandma is supposed to be the speedster of the game?
The idea of a speedy grandma is interesting, but you need to potray that she is fast from her design. Like for example, Apex have a weird speedster (disabled with prosthetic legs), but they made him to be unhinged and twitchy, so we know he is fast even with prosthetic legs. The grandma though??
If you are on about Duchess she is not a "Speedster" type, she has Mei walls which you can walk through and a big AOE which does damage and debuffs.
That big healer guy gave me some kind of a Baymax at jome vibe.
@@rakse3543 dang, you're right!
@@vxicepickxvBaymax at jeans home
@@blushingralseiuwu2222 fails so hard at selling the fantasy people mix up the roles of the characters
Concord feels like a spin off game where you play as the vendors from a better game
Bullshit. Morshu vs Grillby would be infinite times more engaging than Concord.
@@joby5838Chester(Shovel Knight) beats them both
Not even, The Merchant from RE4, Anna from Fire Emblem, Rodin from Bayonetta, Tom Nook from the Animal Crossing series, all of the numerous shopkeeper from Zelda like the bug girl or the baby. Every single one of these shopkeeper not only have far better designs, but also have actual personality and the best one like Rodin or the Mechant basically act as a microcosm of what the game or franchise is all about.
Grillby is cool, but it would be more wise to add Muffet too.
You're all wrong, the Bazaar owner from Ocarina of Time would mop the floor with the Concord cast
The working theory is that these designs were originally meant for something stylized (cell shaded maybe?). At some point there was a decision to push hyper-realistic fidelity and basically nobody's design survived the transition.
Supposedly you can unlock lore snippets that are rendered in a cartoon-esq style that these designs work WAY better in.
I had a feeling that might've been the case, like traces of things that would look cool in a cartoonier style are there. What was that EA game that started out like a SAT AM energy shooter that got fully Modern Warfared?
If that is the case, that would explain the giant areas with no details on the characters' outfits.
In this realistic lighting, all the highlights and shadows are flat and easily blend into one another, making those empty spaces stand out a lot more.
Whereas if they went for a two-tone or three-tone stylized shading, those areas would look a lot more dynamic and interesting.
They might look better in stylized shading, but they would still be pretty bad.
@@euroryder1978 Oh don't get me wrong, these character designs are still not great, but more interesting shading could offset that at least a little bit.
In my mind, I was thinking about how in Part 3 of JJBA, most of the main characters dress pretty plainly, but still look really cool. Like, Joseph is basically just wearing a t-shirt and slacks, but he rocks that outfit.
You could say Araki's art style is the main difference, but I specifically want to say that it's his way of shading that makes such ordinarily plain outfits much more interesting to look at. If Concord had gone with a more stylized approach instead of this odd photorealism, these designs would've been a teeny bit more engaging, and help distract from the huge, solid colors with no details.
It still fails the basic look test. Can you guess what the character does without looking at the weapon? Everyone is bland and has no theme.
30:10 I think this sentence is the best way to describe Concord character design "this is just a person wearing clothes"
They really feel like people wearing full cosplay and body paint, and like, not even doing a good job either! A lot of the gals look like they're wearing the most basic party city wig or just using their natural hair because they couldn't afford the wig for the character
Remember that Simpsons episode when Bart tries to enter a comic convention and in order to not pay the entrance he puts a mask on his face and calls it a "cosplay"? That's Concord character designs for you.
47:30 This guy gives off the impression that he was, at some point, meant to be a lot more alien in design and body shape, maybe something reptilian or silicone. But then some higher up smacked that down because he wouldn't be "relatable" enough, so he was turned into some dude that got spray painted swamp green and contracted hyper psoriasis.
Like if someone filed the edges off of Garrus from Mass Effect
He looks like some C list actor who's name I cannot remember for the life of me
@@negative6442the guy who played Star Lord's dad in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Is it wrong I look at his jacket and see a futuristic safety vest or life preserver. The vest makes me think either sailor or construction worker.
@annekeener4119 Oh no, it totally looks like a life vest. My assumption would have been that it's there to signify that the dude can't swim. However, that would require the character designers to know anything about displaying character traits through clothing.
Teal tank lady also isn’t posed like a tough character. She’s hunched over, almost like she’s struggling to carry her gun or sheepishly trying not to be noticed. Compare with Zarya, who wears even less armor but still manages to look tough just because she lifts an enormous heavy weapon so confidently.
Of course, she doesn’t fully commit to that either because if she did it might amount to an actual friggin personality.
All the characters look like randomly generated cyberpunk 2077 pedestrians is how i see them
Accurate
*starfield
Nah I've seen better designed 2077 pedestrians lmfao
Accurate
They look worse
I feel like proper posing would really help these character designs. It definitely wouldn't fix them, not by a long shot, but it would at least give a better idea of their personalities.
Somebody needs to make a comperhensive criticism about the lack of posing skills in modern games 😂 Mortal Kombat 1 is my favourite example. Poses can make and break a design
And not being ridiculous and hideous
@@Wabbelpaddel Yeah moreso this
Or facial expressions! It boggles the mind how many characters are giving Blue-Steel-at-Gunpoint energy, just staring dead-eyed at the camera like even _they_ wish they were anywhere but in this game. Make some of the smile! Sneer! Smirk! ANYTHING!
@@fable23 That's a problem with the hyperrealistic graphics in general nowadays. The faces are always an uncanny valley. It looks like a human, but you know it's just a bunch of 1s and 0s
This feels like a prime example of why the realistic aesthetic doesn't really mesh well with hero shooters, you lose so much character when you move away from stylization
This is not even realistic, even armies irl have more drip.
@@ArmoredNeko My husband is in the military and I can confirm this is true
@@cynthiahembree3957this is true, Marine formal Wear is clean.
@@ArmoredNekoyeah, a hero shooter where every character is just a normal soldier from a different country would have more readable designs
Hero shooters by necessity rely on distinct character designs to identify different heroes. You want people to look at someone and know who they are and their abilities. A bunch of non nondescript characters in muted colors matching the backgrounds is not going to work for this type of game.
24:28 oh god that "nope you're wrong she can build walls" had me laughing out loud in disbelief. i thought the exact same thing: purple, gold ornaments, cape=sorceress, she has to have some elemental magic (but explained away with "high tech") ability. unbelievable.
Caught me off guard too, my first through was like, “it’s looks like a golden age super hero or sci-fi space suit, maybe she like flys or jumps around or something? Or just generally some kinda physical enhancement?”
NAH, WALLS
This feels like an art professor grading a 1st years work in complete disappointment.
Now I’m imagining a killer robot who pretends to be a big, happy good friend style of robot.
But it fools absolutely nobody.
That's a cool concept and definitely work better than whatever concord is doing
i have a pink Terminator with hearts on it in mind
Like the pink bumblebee form is laserbeak from the transformer movie?
"nnnnnhhhhhgggg I'm a thirsty little flower.... you have to water me... you have to use your blood..."
Nash from LawBreakers.
I personally find a 'boring' character design to be worse than a 'bad' one.
Unfortunately, Concord characters are both.
Boring designs are almost always bad designs, there is a thin line. I would be curious what you consider a bad design
@@alextihor1190 Literally any OC donut steel character in deviantart back in the day. The sparkle dogs are crayon vomit but they are leagues more interesting to look at than these characters.
@alextihor1190 all the meme oc, they are memorable, but by design they are bad.
It's one of the reasons why humans cannot work design wise for me, because asthetically, humans are the most neutral creature there is. Just about anything else is better at being cute, cool, ugly, unique, bizarre, goofy, beautiful, etc. And, honestly, I can appreciate designs that are cute, cool, ugly, unique, bizarre, goofy, beautiful, etc. But the one kind of design I cannot stand... is a boring one, and honestly, that's what neutral is to me: boring.
One of my biggest issues with a lot of these designs are their colors. Putting aside their potential storytelling, the outfits themselves feel garish, disparate, and lacking in any appeal or intent. Some, like the regal gold, purple, and white robes of the wall lady or the flowing charcoal and red dress of the pyromancer are concise, cohesive, and evocative. But like… the green alien lady has like seven clashing colors, the pristinely bright and bulbous life jacket has an unwieldy contrast with the rough and ruddy jumpsuit and skin of spiky Chris Pratt, and the bright red face against the bright blue aliens is just unpleasant to look at. None of that is even mentioning all the pasty beiges thrown around.
They work way better in the concept arts, but also it's not as realistic as the game
I applauding the ones who designed the pyromancer not putting any reds and oranges on her.
“Janitors of the Solar System”
A genuine attempt at a janitor character might be cooler than anything here, mop bucket zone control
(They do it for free)
DustForce in space would’ve been way cooler…
@@EatSumMorChkin "Tough guys aren't nearly so sturdy as tough stains"
Seriously, caustic cleaning chemicals could actually make for a brutally unhinged kit.
I'm Scruffy... the Janitor. My job. Toilets 'n boilers, boilers 'n toilets. Plus that one boilin' toilet. Fire me if'n you dare.
Finished it this morning and I have to say: Absolutely fantastic video. Dunking on bad character design is always fun, but the REAL fun for me is in analyzing WHY it went wrong. On the surface these all look like distinct unique characters but I had such a hard time putting into words why they were boring. I feel like I learned so much from this video to use in my own designs. Thank you!
It definitely gives me vibes that the art team isn’t even working in the same building as the others making the game, and on top of that they know nothing about it. And on top of that they were told “be very very very safe, don’t go crazy”. Beautiful rendering and crisp lines… they COULD have done something amazing it feels like. This looks like a bunch of characters made from a custom character screen
Feels like somebody asked an ai art generator to make characters for an fps
51:00 I feel this design could've easily been saved by color. You already mentioned the comedy of their helmet size, the inscrutablity of their facelessness, and the contradiction of their role and small frail body. These elements read as someone who's ment to be chaotic. The comedy represents their goofyness, the inscrutablity represents how unpredictable they are, and their fragility represents their recklessness. I can see this character fullfilling a similar role to Overwatch's Junkrat or TF2's Demo.
Yet, this is damped by a dull white color scheme. Imagine them in bright reds, oranges, and yellows compliment by slivers of neon green. Or better, see them covered in spattered paint with a cute doodle scrawled onto the front of the helmet.
You mentioned it a little, but the majority of characters have really strange color pallets. Normally a character wearing garish colors together says something about their personality, but they’re all wearing mismatching pastels and beige.
They feel like designd made by AI tbh. The clutter, mismatched designs and garish colors scream AI
@@SomnusLucisCaelum it's just that they would have been designed like 8 years ago. this is a human's bad work
Random colour generator
I know nothing about this franchise either but orange shirt dude looks like he was working at Walmart half and hour ago but then the world ended and someone handed him a gun and shoved him into a war zone
Yet that's the literal background of all the Left4Dead Cast, and they all look better than any of these, and you can also have a good guess at their back stories (Except maybe Rochelle, even her dialogue doesn't mention her working for a TV crew much).
@@jampine8268 Also Ash's backstory from Evil Dead, and his design is also way better
The alien designs in this game has made me realize that I have been under appreciating the aliens in Star trek and Star wars.
"Fursona of the joe rogan podcast" made me spit out my drink.
It’s probably a good thing this game was already dead. If not someone would have called the cops on him for murdering this game with that line.
I like how John Concord looks super bored to be there. Like, he doesn’t want to be there, but he has to be, and he doesn’t want to wear an outfit, but he has to, so he slapped together a shitty outfit last second out of stuff he could find in his garage.
The purple and gold woman really seemed to me like a superhero. The cape convinced me her thing was gonna be flying
I thought she was going to be a hidden badass type. She'd hide in her cloak pretending to be an innocent old lady then start backflipping off walls schooling all the youngsters.
@@daithiluck8749i can agree tothid reading.
Perfect sarcasm
If she's a builder, then maybe an architect vibe could've worked, but she's just too heroically coded and sorta "royal" looking to do that
I agree that she gives off a strong comic book superhero vibe. It would have been awesome if she flew around punching people and shooting eye beams
I think the vibe your looking for is custom character. Thats what they look like
They look like an early level MMO character.
I'd say mostly CCs are more interesting rather they all look like non-important NPCs.
hmm but custom character has the ideals of the player in them giving it character (cutesy girl, holy knight, edgelord reaper etc etc). unless its some dude who dont care about looks and just want stats... but then THAT can be a custom characters identity.
Not really. Half of them look like generic goons, and the other half look like default-settings custom characters. Uncustomised customisable characters
They are custom characters where the player shrugged their shoulders halfway through and said well that's good enough I guess
Purple and Gold wizard looking wall building lady has a Sten gun and I can kinda see how that fits as an engineer/mechanic. The Sten gun was designed to be easy to build in random workshops with basic welding and only a handful of machined parts. So it has a certain vibe of a 'do it yourself' hands on work that fits with an engineer/mechanic rather than an 'off the shelf' weapon.
Why she's dressed like a Roman Emperor I have no clue.
Finally, an analysis of the character design instead of just hate. I’ve wanted a video like this for a while now.
Because you wanna live in Copeland.
@@nopemcgee2831no, because some people actually want to think with their brains and not hate like troglodytes
@@nopemcgee2831most people’s criticisms of this game have amounted to “ugly sweet baby inc game,” and that’s it.
It’s more interesting to know *why* they don’t work as explained by someone with knowledge in character design.
@@nopemcgee2831some people want actual critic instead "woke hate farm
@@nopemcgee2831 because hearing "woke sbi dei garbage" for 10000 time as a criticism is boring.
26:17 I saw gold and purple and thought like royal friendly older woman like she's a knight or princess serving her queen on the field I guess but no she's in construction???
Thats my thought too. I thought she was some sort of royalty cuz purple was associated with royalty and along with the gold. I thought her role was the team leader who buffs everyone's attack.
@@Watchful049that's exactly what my thought process was, she looks like she would fall into a "commanding officer" kind of archetype who abilities are built around buffs and debuffs
I thought lightning wizard/speedester
I was thinking teammate boosting abilities with the confident pose and colors, plus old warm grandma type would lend well to team support
Exactly my thoughts
Me at Shooty McShootface:"Go, white boy, give us nothing!"
He is either the blank slate protagonist that starts boring and makes you hope he becomes more interesting later... or the first extra to die in the story.
You could tell me this guy has a very boring normal name like Steve and I would believe you.
He just looks like he just wandered in from a paintball game and got lost in Concord
@@vxicepickxvI think his name is Ted so you’re not far off lmao
@@CrazyLikeUhFox Teo but he looks more like a Ned or Fred.
The first guy looks like he's on an airsoft team in another 100 years.
Airsoft Andrew
Nobody ever talks about the support guys gut and his under outfit. The little chest plate and the zipper line in the center of his suit makes him look like a guy wearing big pants pulled all the way up over his belly. He looks dumpy.
He looks like a joke character, to be honest. Like... a scene comes to mind that I've seen in more than one place where a character is trying to design a "battle suit" before they land on their iconic design, and this is the "We went for too much padding and now I can't move" version that's like the second in the montage.
i thought it was a woman until this video lol
I don't mind a big guy as s character, but oddly enough that weight seemed to be an afterthought to me. As in if he was a more older guy, you immediately get it that he's the team dad or the guy who likes to provide for his team. But everything together makes me go "oh, he's support? huh."
@@fluidthought42 I agree that the weight by itself isn't really a problem. It's a combination of the weight and the outfit. Part of the problem is that combination of chest-plate and jumpsuit with the jacket over-top. The parts of the jumpsuit we can see make it look more like a pair of pants pulled up to chest-level than a jumpsuit. Give the guy a belt and I think it looks better. Still not *great*, but better.
@@fluidthought42 His fat isn't my issue, it's the goofy outfit that looks like large breeches pulled up over his chest. It just sits out there forcing your eye to focus on his gut. They couldn't enlarge the chest plate so it goes down lower like a full breastplate?
Skyen, how dare you call me old and point out that people might not be familiar with HK-47 nowadays! The game he is from is only like 22 years old ... wait.
OLD Republic, indeed...
Someone on Twitter described them as "Walmart People" and that's a very apt descriptor imo. Personally I think many of these characters look like Trash Mob in either RPGs or old Third Person Shooter Games, especially that chick wearing full body armor and carrying a rocket launcher. Looks like a mass produced soldier that attacks you in a massive group in some Sci-Fi game.
They are side characters, like, some pretty good passerby energy, they mix quite well with...the background
All the Concord characters are basically C grade designs. They’re all technically *fine* and passable but not a smidge better than that. They all have the vibe of deviant art OC’s that are *definitely not this character from popular franchise* that got a very high gloss 3d redo from the initial notebook sketches.
I feel like there's also a dose of "you think this character is one thing but ooooo they're actually something else EXPECTATIONS SUBVERTED" without considering that communicating a character's abilities at a glance is really important in a COMPETITIVE SHOOTER
C _at best_
A good number of these are worse than that
@@TheGallantDrake gonna be honest, I think the idea that they were trying to subvert expectations is giving them too much credit lol
@@Mordrevious Well sometimes subverting expectations for the sake of subverting expectations isn't wise, those expectations are there for a reason and subverting those expectations without putting thought as to why you are subverting them you'll end up with something that's utterly unappealing and unclear.
These designs all have hallmarks of trying to subvert expectations without trying to think what you're subverting them with. A true 0 effort design would be highly stereotypical as that's an easy way to do it make something that's 100% correct to those expectations and you're golden but none of these really look like that, they look like they wanted to do something different without figuring out what that "different" was.
What's worse than this?
They all look like you hit random on character creation....
Nah, they look too bland to even be that
They all look like the type of ppl you run into at Walmart
Nah, those would have some kind of edge
This looks like Sims x Fortnite colab
This looks like randomized City of Heroes character
This looks like superhero OC of a guy who only reads newyorker comics
This looks like I've made my barbies hero costumes from mom's office supplies
wild to see a city of heroes mention omg
... My god, they're dead already, don't kill them more... XD
Oh God City of Heroes, I wish I can play that game.
@@leetorry you can! the source code leaked a few years ago, now there are several community-hosted servers. I play on "Rebirth".
I remember when I saw Reaper and thought "damn he is so edgy, I love him". And Bastion was so cute, short circuit vibes. Mei was adorable, Mercy se beautiful. Winston was MONKE, all really great memorable designs. This...this ain't it.
Overwatch gets criticism for some of thier designs.
But i can't deny the impact of those designs and how much they helped carry the game. Even when Blizzard fumbled.
For better or worse rule34 helped carry Overwatch in popularity even during decline.
14:23 First thought came to mind, "trash bin". It looks like a trash bin with arms.
My first thought was monsters inc scream canister
@@thealdocoh my god you’re right
i thought he looks like a rice cooker
He looks like a rain water collector, i literally could flush my toilet to him
And as other people have said it's probably the best design because he's a reprogramed vacuum cleaner
I kinda like the trash can robot character tho, I think he’s got a unique silhouette and he kinda gives “friendly workman bot that someone gave some combat augments to” vibe, defo better than most of the other characters
That's because it's blessed with being a robot, you have to really try to mess up a robot character design.
I like his design too, but TB’s points about the arms made me realize I’d probably like the design more if they did something interesting with his limbs instead of just giving him articulated action figure arms. Still the best character imo.
@@CrazyLikeUhFoxI kind of like the arms, they look convincingly like off the shelf parts originally developed for some kind of industrial robot that have been repurposed and made ‘friendly’ by housing them in a rounded, doll-like chassis complete with a cute heart on the front.
Very much reminds me of the kind of industrial design language Greg Broadmore would use for one of his robot designs.
Why hasn’t anybody made ‘oops all friendly robots’, the hero shooter? This one faceless yellow thermos-robot had more personality than any of these other polar-express-looking losers.
I just get the vibe that I'm looking at a boiler, really, or any pressure vessel.
It has arms but I can't figure out why.
25:00 If I had to guess her mechanics based on design, I wouldn't have gotten "walls", but rather "team buffs". With the cape, the violet and gold, the gray hair, uniform and what looks like a 20th century rifle, she looks like a general, or a team leader. As a result, I was thinking she had do-damage-to-charge-up, lead-from-the-front team buffs, like the Banners for the TF2 Soldier.
Right? The cape and the snarky smile reads to me as someone who's confident and someone whose not at the frontline. The old age contributes as someone with wisdom. Putting all of this it screams "leader character" or "tactician character".
@@warlocke1894that was my thought too. Purple is usually associated with medieval kings and queens and the gold trim also reinforces royalty so I thought she was a team leader who buffs the attack of the team
Same here
Impression i got was, lazers, idk why
I was thinking either lasers/lightning magic because i thought her tattoos were like a gauntlet that would give her powers of some kind or some form of super hero ability because of the cape ( Honestly her design reminds me of super brainz from pvz lol )
You know it's funny. I put this on as audio while I was playing my Apex Legends dailies and taking in everything TB said and especially about character power sources in their design, I actually stopped playing and started looking over all the in game models for the characters default looks. They are much stronger than these designs in Concord and seeing hero shooter design done badly actually helped me spot and appreciate things I hadn't before.
These are the "Hero's" of the game!? They look like NPC Quest givers that the real M.C. would talk, too.
The frustrating part isn't what's bad, it's what's GOOD. I honestly like some of these character designs and think they're actually well-made, for something other than a hero shooter where you need to identify who is who in the blink of the eye, or you'll die and have a team of angry people in your ear. They'd be a lot more memorable If they were in a coop or single player action shooter game with a focus on character writing like Half-life, Bioshock or Borderlands. These characters are giving me is the vibe that they're living life in survival mode and are determined on clawing out whimsy in whatever way they can. 11:40 The support sniper looks like she's been wearing the same top for years, which has fashion cuts on the sleeve but actual wear and tear damage on the trims. The way that it's all in a faded beige, but she still wears a bright blue cap, tells me she places more importance on the cap than the top. Why? I don't know. This is a hero shooter, not an action game with story. 31:40 The Pyromancer has a lot of east asian influences: Buddhist prayer beads (that's ohhh shiny golden), the archery grieves, the haircut the satin stitching in red (good luck for survival or a destined love via the red string of fate maybe?) She reminds me of some of the Hokkien Malay youth from about a decade ago, someone with more cultural knowledge than me that can probably point to an accurate reference for the whole character. It doesn't scream to me "I FUCKING LOVE FIRE LET'S BURN EVERYTHING!!!!!" to me though, it screams "I have all my own life and culture outside this scrim". Which is great! It's fantastic character design for someone you're not meant to shoot! BUT YOU ARE MEANT TO SHOOT HER!
I hope it's obvious I'm cherry-picking my favourites with these examples. The others are not as strong. Occasionally you can see exactly where the inspiration is from. The teleporter pixie alien is a mix of Night Crawler and (IDK their name, double-double? The enbie shape-shifter from She-ra)? There's that one dude that looks like an A.I fusion of Vision from the MCU and The Beast from X-men, especially when the light hits his face just right. I liked some-guy alien, he looks like a goober with a taste in haircuts that I don't agree with. But then I saw him in motion, (I haven't even heard him speak, just saw the trailer muted in the background of something else), and I think: "Oh, with the jacket, he looks like a yellow Yondu that's LARP'ING as Starlord. He looks like a dude that stans ChrisP ratt for some reason". Then there are the ones that just look garish that make you wonder, "what is it that actually brings these people together? Why does the art direction for this game look so inconstant"? Before I knew more about the game, I thought it was because it these characters have their own lives outside of combat. Their own taste, culture and circumstances. But now I know, it's because the designs were rushed and were made for unrealistic lighting engine. Because if simulated light looks more life real life and less like a comic book, it's always better, right? Surely people like MCU more than Spiderverse right? Pokémon only got better going into 3D where you can really question where does the ground around Dugtrio comes from and say "wait, fish just float in the air? It wasn't stylised for youthful imagination, that's just how it works"?
I don't know if the game deserved better, and I don't really care enough about hero shooters to find out. But I can't help but feel like at least some of these characters did.
EDIT: Oh and John Concord. The fact that I had to edit in that John Concord exist is self explanatory.
Man, I really hope someone has the behind-the-scenes information to make a documentary on Concord. I would love to see how this happened.
24:07 My guess? She's a magic user. It doesn't fit the theme of the game but hey, maybe there's tech magic or something. Screw it, maybe she has magic that turns her opponents old for a few seconds, slowing them or making controls more difficult. A CC-Mage. Final Answer.
[Edit] YOU ARE PULLING MY LEG. NO FLIPPIN' WAY. HOW IS SHE NOT A WITCH???
"A CC-Mage" so like someone that can summon walls of force and can cast a big AOE spell that damages and debuffs enemies? That sounds a lot like a CC Mage, actually
@@jameswilliams2467 Yeah but no Jane the builder, more fancy Toph from ATLA but this one is just Jane the builder that dress like shittier Toph.
So there is a small batch of animated shorts that they’ve released before the launch of Concord that has a unique style to them.
I feel like the devs switch gears, to a more realistic style because marketing said it would do better and shot themselves in the foot because of it
If only we could see that marketing drone's face after the numbers started coming in.
I feel the marketing team are the same people what would give thumps up to Sonic's original design from the movie.
The alien guy with the vest makes me think of Marty McFly.
Mostly because the vest looks like Marty’s life-preserver looking jacket to me.
"Fursona of the Joe Rogan Podcast" was not a phrase I was ready to be gagged by but now I feel it in my BONES.
A majority of them just look like Bethesda's Starfield NPCs. They have that empty, plastic vibe to them, even the ones that are dressed up as if to say "aren't I so wacky". You can easily imagine the screen zooming in on their face as they stand stock still and exposit at you. And the first guy? Well, he specifically looks like an NPC that you can shoot and kill because he's non-essential.
He looks like a default character
A game that looks like a bad 70s sci fi movie would actually be cool, imagine your weapon shots looking like bad rotoscoped effects or like cheap pyrotechnics
The first guy just looks like a Techbro at a Lasertag.
My guess about reasoning for the bland character looks is that all of these are 'default' skins and therefore their primary purpose is to encourage players to BUY something different.
I hate how much sense this makes
That implies there would be anyone to buy them though, but yeah it makes sense
It would make more sense for a free game.
That is so shit. When TF2 characters look iconic.
mr shooty mcsoldier guy absolutely feels like a modern mcdonalds employee honestly
it's the orange in the shirt and the headphones
This just feels like a collection of people grabbing things from their homes to dress up at a sci-fi themed costume party in the 80s.
I watched a video that had all the little character select animations and voice lines and what struck me was that the characters didn’t feel like characters, they felt like people cosplaying as characters. It’s hard to put into words why, but they just didn’t feel genuine.
Looking at that robot feels so disappointing because the easiest way to give it something more appealing is to just double the number of "Eye cameras" that is has on top. Its round, its brightly colored, the "mouth" where its glowing eye is, just give it another camera on the top of its head and you have a frog looking, bulky robot. Hell, the handlebars on its top maybe can flap and bend to become "eye brows" if you wanna go further.
The robot that comes to mind for me in the way it looks is Pacific Rim's Cherno Alpha. Both are bulky, rounder bots than their peers, but Cherno also has that double face deal: you initially see its two turbines and think that the top is its face, but then there's also the actual con-pod at its chest area and it makes you now see it as a hat. Just add an extra camera eye on the damn yellow robot and you have a similar (but weaker) effect.
Adding to that, their ability is basically vacuuming stuff, replace the bulky arms with floppy tubes, and give the color either more shine or a older used look (like new/well loved toys) and ya got a perf design
This stuff ain't this hard
This is like when someone who doesn’t know how to style clothing goes into a thrift store and really tried
its extremely funny seeing people try to guess what the characters role is and always getting it wrong
the sewege bot should of had tube arms, you made a goofy bot you should commit to it all the way.
The fact that this is supposed to have a 70s space age retro-futurism look to it when Overwatch literally just released a character that perfectly encapsulates that is astounding to me.
What character?
@@stegosandrosos1291 they might mean Juno
29:12 Very demure. Very mindful. I don't go to war with a full suit of power armor.
The thing is, their designs aren't themed. Yes, there's the overal wacky retro theme, but neither character is fully themed. It's kinda like when you want to create a character by giving them everything you find cool and in the end it's just a mishmash of parts that don't click together.... And even when they kinda sorta do (the old lady works for me), the theme doesn't fit their character role - seriously, she isn't royal nor a sorceress??
It's exactly as you said it - a frustrating character design.
The more I look at these designs the more I think that they made them that way so they'd be easy to cosplay? I have nothing to back that up but yknow they just LOOK like they're going to Comic Con
They look like amateurs doing low-budget cosplay of themselves.
"Is she a spy or an assassin character? I don't know". Just look at the Spy from Team Fortress 2, that's the design of a spy character
Ahahah - yea I had a friend ask "which one is Spy?" While looking at a cast Pic. "Look at that and tell me" "...oh yea that was a dumb question"
There's a balance to be had in character design. On the one hand, it is **very** easy to swing too far into on-the-nose iconography/symbolism, like:
_"I'm the 'mad scientist' character!! I have the singed hair, the lab coat & goggles, and I run around with a maniacal smile on my face and a bubbling potion in-hand!!!"_
That kind of design approach can make your characters feel generic and paint-by-numbers. For as loud and colorful as it can be, it can paradoxically make characters feel boring and lifeless.
_And on the other extreme,_ you have Concord, which doesn't commit to any idea, to any degree, across the board. The characters look like they're in a vaguely 70's ~ 80's themed office airsoft party than anything else (which, hey, double-down on that and I think you have a fun aesthetic for a shooter. Could work really well as a skin line).
I thought that granny in jumpsuit is some kind of hacker - these gold tattoos look a bit like that schemes on motherboard. But walls......
The characters scavenged their gear from a mall. That’s what it feels like. Dead Rising in space.
22:27 I feel like even though it would still be boring if this character was the flame thrower it would be WAY more interesting. Like most characters with flamethrowers have outfits to make sure they’re not gonna die but this character gives off a vibe of “why would I need to do that if I just never light myself on fire?” The outfit reads as either confident (probably overconfident) or just not giving a shit. It’s still not great but atleast it would tell us something
45:52 "And speaking of aliens, this fuckin' guy--" kills me
What's actually impressive about Concord, is how it is sold as a hero shooter with a narrative, but none of their character designs entice anyone to go play it, while at the same time saying nothing about the character's skills and background.
Somehow they found the perfect design that says nothing and appeals to no one. You have to be trying to be this terrible.
It's like the game devs spent years perfecting how to make their characters look like they were generated by AI. It's quite imporessive lol.
@@genericcatgirl The worst part is that AI understand better what people like than the Concord's devs.
If you ask for any good image generator to create a basic concept like "soldier man" or "female space pirate", it will create more interesting designs than concord.
@@Left4Coragem That's actually so sad and true
I'm glad this video exists, trying to find a video that does respectful constructive criticism without being anti-queer/fatphobic is so difficult.
I'm glad I'm not alone in feeling confused and frustrated with concord character design but I also want to support interesting different designs that represent a diverse group of people.
As hated as Overwatch is nowadays, that is something they did pretty well and made you interested in actually playing the game.
I don't think it's about the characters being queer. At least not for me. It's more that I think many other games do queer characters in a much more respectful and appealing way. For example Overwatch, Valorant, Apex etc all have queer character that actually look good and can draw people in quite well. I think Concord is a situation where it just feels a bit too shallow for my liking considering most of this is through the Bio and not through a more organic way
Deadlock has excellent character designs with pretty good variety. They also actually look professionally made and not just like someones OCs lmao
So much this. The character designs missed for pretty much everybody, and I like hearing people discuss why media failed to achieve its goal because there's a lot to learn in that. But in this case, the majority of criticism I've found on the Concord characters is "the designs suck because of WOKE" with no elaboration. Thank God Skyen is out here using his brain and getting to the real issues with the designs
Thank you. All the vids I could find were like THEY FAILED BECAUSE OF WOKE and it’s like. I would love to actually break down why these designs are awful
Writing this as I was going to bed (going to enjoy this video when I wake up, so Skyen could have covered this before I got to hear it), but wanted to share one thing I remembered back when Overwatch was in its hayday.
I forgot what and when it was specifically but the idea behind Overwatch’s hero designs could be seen in the same way we view champs in LoL: Having a distinct design to them. The idea was that if you were to completely blackout a character and turn them into a shadow, your average player should be able to figure out who that character is from their silhouette. You see someone with a staff that can heal? That’s Mercy. Some guy with dual weilding guns? Reaper. An armored flyer with rockets? Pharah. So on and so forth. Overall, when you have so many distinct designs for your heroes, it can help players know who is who for both playing with them and playing against them.
This is why the overall design of Concord’s characters kind of rubs me the wrong way since outside of the vacuum robot and other similar big body characters, a good chunk of the characters do blend in together a bit.
In a sense, it runs into a similar problem with say Rainboe Six Siege, but at least there, one can argue that the similar looks are there for a reason, whereas here, it doesn’t feel like there were too many things to set them apart from each other. Still different, but you can still run into an issue identifying who is who exactly if they aren’t a giant character who would then stand out like a sore thumb.
Overall, I’m in the camp that didn’t want to see Concord have a weak launch, but had a lot of concerns about the state the game would launch. And when you are launching with numbers that make Gollum look like the more engaging title in PC, that is a severe red flag. For a variety of reasons (between cost of entry, overall design work and from what I’ve heard, an approach to the gameplay design that left people scratching their head as to why they chose to do it the way they did. I believe Austin’s review of “not recommending Concord” did a nice summary for the game’s issues at launch in spite of it looking as polished as it is for a game eight years in the making).
But yeah, the Hero Shooter Genre is cutthroat. You either need to hit the ground running with your concept or face getting terminated due to a lack of engagement. Hell, there’s a reason why Foamstars just recently announced it was going free to play in October and I feel like unless they go back to the drawing board (which does seem like it’s too late for that), Concord is likely going to go F2P in the same amount of time (and the weekly story cutscenes likely will close up when that happens).
The character that Skyen shows at 45:55 feels like such a Yondu rip-off,: Scales, shit eating grin, even an alien item to mimic a mohawk. All he needed to fully steal Yondu's place was a needle like gun or ability.
he's Yondu with Star Lord's personality. it's very odd.
I am not into these games but I was into overwatch years ago and I feel like the biggest thing is like... in overwatch you see a character and you almost immediately know if this character is cool or appealing to you or not. Discount their abilities from the equation, when I saw repear and how obnoxiously edgy he was I was sold cuz I love edge. Or when I saw sombra I could instantly go oohhh purple rgb hacker that is sick. And THEN their abilities feel more like they completel character rather than the opposite. Of course reaper teleports and turns into a ghost smoke he is the edgy skeleton mask dude. Of course sombra hacks people and turns invisible she would do that.
I look at any of these characters and for only few I can go "okay you are clearly this" much less to think of what they could even do in combat. The example with the lady that builds walls is perfect for this because if I even liked that design never in a million years I'd go into a game and natrually figure out oh yeah I signed up for a building character.
This is why TF2's character design is so effective: Valve specifically designed them in a way that you can almost immediately recognize them via their silhouette. Even the characters with similar heights and sizes, like Soldier and Demoman, have different stances that you can immediately know what kind of threat is about to hit you.
These designs are all so... middle of the road. Any one of them could be anything and in a hero shooter, most people can't do fuckin calculus to try and divine what threat, if any, is coming your way at a glance.
TF2 is great in that regard because you can put so many cosmetics on top of the characters and still be able to recognize them easily, allowing for a huge variety of customization while still maintaining visual clarity.
Valve also spent a long time over nine years trying to get TF 2 right. People forget but it was announced in 1998, made an appearance at E3 1999 then went radio silent till 2006 when they showed the game had gone through a complete art style overhaul from a "serious tactical military" art and design style to a "goofy 1960's spy comedy" style so it could fit the new design philosophy of making the game much more "Readable" and fun to play. Valve even spoke about how they deliberately designed the game to be recognisable in the developer commentaries that shipped with the game so it's not even super secret confidential game dev knowledge.
It's just insane how Valve showed everyone how to design a "hero shooter" nearly 20 years ago and yet we still end up with something as intensely bland and tame as Concord
@@WarAndPosting TBF, Valve didn't originally make Team Fortress. Team Fortress, was originally a mod of Half Life, that then became an official game mode. It was never really a separate game on its own. TF2, by contrast, was very much done as a fully standalone product.
@@SiphonRayzar TF 1 was originally a Quake mod released in 1996. Valve liked it so much that they hired the developers and remade it into Team Fortress Classic. An officially supported and distributed HL1 mod while announcing in 1998 that TF2 was in development and would be its own stand-alone project.
It goes even further than the silhouettes; I remember seeing an artist on twitter analyze the genius of tf2 character designs which involve different colors and elements that are supposed to draw attention to other factors such as orientation of the character, where on their body to shoot(the game mostly redirects the player's glance to the torso area using contrast in colors), and what weapon they're holding
Edit: if anyone is interested, I found it: search up Character Readability in Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch by Xavier Coelho-Kostolny on medium
I absolutely LOVE that I got the notification for this the day before they shut down the goddamn game
The first guy looks like an airsoft instructor lmfaaaaaao
45:56 He looks like the "asshole lifeguard in a pool" character
He jumps in the pool and his spikes immediately pop the life vest he's wearing.
Lifeguard too busy hitting on teenage girls to notice the kid struggling in the wave pool energy.
Really well put together video! Very informative. I was never that interested in character design but this discussion is really inspiring all of a sudden (makes the mind wander with ideas of how all of these designs could be improved- with the talk of how elements are in contrast between each other or what i lacking. And makes one appreciate all those old examples of designs that worked).
It feels like they were made with the objective of being a generic person in the setting, without thought of the role they would've had in game, and then were handled to the gameplay team who had to make work with what they had.
Gee, can't imagine why this video would be back in my recommends again today of all days
The rocket launcher helmet person could work with a recolor and some comically large boots to show off the whole jump-stomp thing.
In a game that took so long and required so many resources to make, I'd love to know how these character designs ended up being the final versions when they are obviously so rough. Did the character design process only have time for one draft? Horrific game engine failure requiring starting over? The worst focus testing groups possible? We'll probably never know
the meritocracy doesn't exist and Concord is proof
Every design in this game feels like a character from a fake video game inside a tv show
Concords lack of appeal really highlights how important character design is to a hero shooter’s success. It’s the single most important part.