Wildstar has gotten a lot of press lately, and while I’m keeping an eye on the game there’s a lot that puts me off it too. One of the biggest concerns I have is about the character models we’ve seen so far. They’re just.. not.. interesting. Take a look:
Humans
Pretty standard. Chick, broad-chested dude. I never play humans in MMOs.. they just seem too mundane given the option of creatures and elves and things.
Granok
Eh, the stone lady is okay. Also, another broad-chested dude.
Aurin
Ah ha haha. Playboy Bunny. Broad-chested rabbit dude. This is the class your little brother will play.
Cassian
Look, I will give Wildstar credit where it’s due — this woman looks like she’s ready to kick some ass. Also, older broad-chested dude with an enormous glass of wine!
Drakin
Oh THERE’S the bikini plate. The demon guy is clearly Wildstar’s answer to WoW’s trolls. $10 says he talks with a weird accent.
Mechari
So to be fair it’s from pre-game art but seriously. For what possible reason does this robot have giant metal robot boobs? I just.. I don’t.. I don’t understand. Anyway, last but not least we have a broad-chested robot.
There are two races yet to be announced, so this is all still up in the air, but at this point I’m not really interested in what I see. All the models have really similar silhouettes, and at least in these examples virtually all of the organic characters are white. Otherwise, there are only minor differences: It’s humans, but with bunny ears! No, humans as robots! No, humans as.. evil humans!
I wanna get excited about Wildstar because I like being part of a good old fashioned groundswell, but so far the character models just aren’t helping.
(Thanks to Teerack of the Something Awful forum for putting these images together.)
Herding Cats is the blog of Liore, known in the real world as Jessica Cook. She writes mostly about MMOs and RPGs, and believes in 
What’s with all the freaking broad-chested dudes? Broad chested robots? What the heck. I don’t mind the comic style at all, they look colorful and vaguely fun. I wish they would have skipped the comic tropes though.
The playboy bunny made me roll my eyes very hard. :P
Kadomi´s last post: [Books] January Reviews
If this game was a band, you’d say it had a distinctive style (aka “all the songs sound the same.”)
I hate the playboy bunny, it put me off the game the first time I saw it also. The demon lady would actually be cool if she wasn’t wearing a plate bikini — the boobs do not look demonic.
spinks´s last post: Bungie unveils Destiny: Shared World Shooter
I’m not really feeling anything about wildstars direction.. its all so generic just with a cutesy artstyle. It looks a bit tooo themepark for my tastes as well.
j3w3l´s last post: Firefall and Exploration
Agree woth this assessment, I’m not that impressed. They may be ising a similar cartoony style to WoW but the racial variety is missing. That’s something Blizzard have done well. Also as you point out just how much Tera-style over sexualisation does this game need?
Telwyn´s last post: WoW: the Grummle guilt trip
Not great, but not Terra-bad. If the Humans, Aurin and Cassian come with brown skin options, I will give this game a trial at least.
Haha, wow… broad chests and boobs for everyone! I feel like they all might have started out as interesting racial options and then they had a design meeting where someone was like “NOT ENOUGH BROAD-CHESTS AND BOOBS” and now we have this.
Also, is there even a difference between the Cassians and the Humans? And with the male and female Drakin it’s hard to believe they’re even the same race because they look so different. The pose that the lady robot is standing in is the worst. My back hurts just looking at it!
I can only hope there will be chest and boob sliders
The Cassians are humans. Both sides were deliberately given humans as a race.
Rohan´s last post: The Pandaren Starting Zone
Geezer with a drink? I’m all set. Robot boobs are a bit hard to understand. Perhaps they put a weapon in there?
The robot boobs kind of look like the nose-cones of some sort of rocket propelled grenade. If RPG-boobs were in fact the Mechari female racial talent, that would be more awesome than I could handle, but since it’s probably not, um, yeah, I dunno.
“broad-chested” what is your problem with that ?
I don’t have a problem with broad chests, I have a problem with every character model for every race looking the same.
…. they look the same because of the broad chests?? seriously?
Indeed, that is why I wrote this post and stuff!
The models, with the possible exception of Hunchy McGee up there, all have upper bodies that look like inverted triangles of roughly the same angle. Now look at something like the TF2 characters: http://gamecareerguide.com/db_area/images/item_images/100520/image005.png.
Notice how there are some inverted triangles, but there are also models with barely any shoulders, and ones who are wider in the lower body, or square all the way through. This helps to create diversity in character models.
The male character models in these images all have the same body type. I find it boring. Seriously.
I think it’s a little early to be judging the game based on its characters alone. I do agree that the races look bland at this stage, but character creation and customization is one of the games features that Carbine seems to be very secretive about; chances are they won’t show off the full customization until later in the development.
My only real concern is the lack of moral balance between the two factions. On the right you have the evil Dominion who act like the empire from star wars, and on the left you have The Exiles who are refugees fighting back. The concept of separating factions by making one good and one evil is getting a little old.
It’s never too early to start judging things!! Hah, yes, I understand your point. Things can change later, and as with all info about new games nothing is set until it launches.
I agree that good vs evil is pretty played out. I suspect everyone is going to go Dominion.
This pictures helps illustrate how the silhouettes for reach race are very different. Exile http://i.imgur.com/5CtmblR.jpg?1 and Dominions http://i.imgur.com/4wIagLQ.jpg?1 .Also the Aurin are not a bunny race…the bunny ears is just one of many different ear types which include Bat, Mouse and various others.
Very interesting, thanks Yowser! (I updated the Exile link in your comment.) I hope they follow through with these differences — I know RIFT and SWTOR also had problems with boring races at launch, so it’s a pretty common issue. And true that the Aurin are not a pure bunny race, but you see a lot more bunny ladies than bat ladies (have we ever seen a bat lady?) in advertising so far, particularly a few months ago when I wrote this.