Alright, so I was having a...debate to be diplomatic the other night over character design in games with a friend. It started off on Street Fighter and eventually wound up in League of Legends. The part where we left off and had some disagreement was over Sona's design intention and place in the character flavor of the game. To understand the question though, a little background;
Character design in games is supposed to inform you a great deal about you're supposed to feel about a character and what a character is all about. Two characters with the same body type for instance can be portrayed in very different ways to get different effects.
Human Female characters in League typically fall into one of three "flavors" (I'll use the terms we used to describe them);
Lust - EX: Akali, Ahri, Miss Fortune, Morgana
Beauty - EX: Leona, Diana, Lissandra, Kayle
"Average/Reality" - EX: Lux, Taliyah, Riven
I feel like the categories should be relatively self-explanatory.
The sticking point was with Sona; she is presented as, dressed as and acts like the typical "Beauty" character - not someone to be lusted after, but a woman to be admired and stood in awe of, like a work of art (a good comparison is to how Princesses/Queens/Empresses are typically described/ascribed traits in fiction).
But then Sona also has the body of AND dress of someone supposed to uh, get the blood flowing.
Between us, it was a bit of a stalemate - I think that her overall demeanor puts her away from characters mainly meant to be lusted after, while my friend argued that you can't give a character a body and dress like that and not mean for them to a lust object.
REFERENCE MATERIAL
Character design in games is supposed to inform you a great deal about you're supposed to feel about a character and what a character is all about. Two characters with the same body type for instance can be portrayed in very different ways to get different effects.
Human Female characters in League typically fall into one of three "flavors" (I'll use the terms we used to describe them);
Lust - EX: Akali, Ahri, Miss Fortune, Morgana
Beauty - EX: Leona, Diana, Lissandra, Kayle
"Average/Reality" - EX: Lux, Taliyah, Riven
I feel like the categories should be relatively self-explanatory.
The sticking point was with Sona; she is presented as, dressed as and acts like the typical "Beauty" character - not someone to be lusted after, but a woman to be admired and stood in awe of, like a work of art (a good comparison is to how Princesses/Queens/Empresses are typically described/ascribed traits in fiction).
But then Sona also has the body of AND dress of someone supposed to uh, get the blood flowing.
Between us, it was a bit of a stalemate - I think that her overall demeanor puts her away from characters mainly meant to be lusted after, while my friend argued that you can't give a character a body and dress like that and not mean for them to a lust object.
REFERENCE MATERIAL
Lust Designs
Ahri
Miss Fortune
Beauty Designs
Leona
Lissandra
Average/Regular Designs
Taliyah
Riven
Sona's Design and Splash Art
Ahri
Miss Fortune
Beauty Designs
Leona
Lissandra
Average/Regular Designs
Taliyah
Riven
Sona's Design and Splash Art