Ellen Page Nudity in Beyond: Two Souls Triggers Aggressive Sony Response

[Jingle Fett]

Not including them would be like spending dozens of hours making an anatomically correct marble statue, and then for whatever reason just not including the nipples and the rest of the stuff.

A sculptor is unlikely to spend extra time on detail that won't be shown. Painters don't generally paint fully-drawn boobs then cover them up.

We're not talking about assets that aren't included for "whatever reason." We're talking about ones that have no actual for the final product.

This would be roughly like then chiseling pants to cover up a statue's nipples and "the rest of the stuff" you've already carved.

Wrong. With the marble sculpture, if you want your sculpture to have clothes you have to sculpt it with the clothes on, like it were a single big object. But that's not the case with many next gen games like these.
A more accurate analogy would be if the sculptor made a sculpture of the person...and then made the shirt, watch, pants, necklace, hair, and everything else as separate individual sculptures.

With games like these, they often have one person modeling only the naked body and nothing else. Then they have someone else modeling only the shirts, the pants, the hair etc. separately. And then they combine them all later into what we actually see in the game. But each object still has to be made individually.

The sculptor is generally his own boss but as the game artist, you don't know what the director is going to want to show or not show, it's not up to you. Maybe the director wants the character in a sweater the whole game, or maybe the director wants a scene with transparent lingerie. Maybe it's a last minute change. So to be on the safe side, it's not at all unusual to just include everything, even if you don't think it will be shown. Just in case.

Again, millions of dollars are on the line. And like I said in my post, even if it won't be shown in this particular project, that doesn't mean a later project won't show it. Future proof.

 

[Lee Quitt]

I love everything to do with David Cage's games. They're always such clusterfucks of bad storytelling, poor design, and uninspired pseudo-occult bullshit. You're never bored with them! They're just too awful to be bored with. This is just the cherry on top of his latest Shit Sundae.

Honestly though, I'm not surprised by this. Seriously, not at all. Has everyone forgotten Cage's last nightmare of an "experience", Heavy Rain, where we're introduced to our female protagonist by ogling her in the shower for a disturbingly long time, and then we get to watch her get assaulted by a bunch of masked men and... frankly, possibly raped?

Spoiler

It's a dream sequence but that doesn't make the whole thing entirely disturbing, and NOT for the reasons the designers wanted it to be.

Given most consider Heavy Rain to be a fantastic game at least and even a masterpiece, perhaps you could moderate your insulting and condescending tone? WTF have you done recently? Watched a few Jim Sterling videos and had your mind made for you most probably. When was the last time you pushed the boundary's of an emerging art? Fucking never. Till then, how bout a bit of respect?

 

[CJ1145]

Given most consider Heavy Rain to be a fantastic game at least and even a masterpiece, perhaps you could moderate your insulting and condescending tone? WTF have you done recently? Watched a few Jim Sterling videos and had your mind made for you most probably. When was the last time you pushed the boundary's of an emerging art? Fucking never. Till then, how bout a bit of respect?

The best praise I've heard for the atomic bomb of ass that is Heavy Rain is that it has an "okay story for a video game", and that was from a film buff I occasionally tolerate at Subway. It hardly even deserves that much, though, considering the whole plot falls apart if you think like an actual human being. To say nothing of the piss-poor voice acting, or the hamtastic dialogue out of everyone but the Origami Killer, and sometimes him too! The bizarre control scheme, the awkward and unsettling romance, the sexist rapey undertones surrounding the female lead that genuinely make me fear allowing David Cage around the female sex! Or how about Normin JAYdin the completely out of place Doctor Who character?

I've never heard Heavy Rain called a masterpiece before, so thank you! I had a new experience thanks to you. Even if that experience is objectively wrong, my life is richer for having had it.

Oh, and just so we're clear, it's irrelevant if I've pushed the boundaries of art, because David Cage hasn't either. =)

 

[Dethenger]

Fuck that! Where's my Willem Dafoe nudity!?

Ask and ye shall receive. [http://vimeo.com/49333930]

Should I even bother mentioning that it's not safe for work?

 

[InfernalGrape]

God bless Quantic Dream then.

Coz i'm 22 and Ellen Page is 26.
That's why nude Jodie, who is ~21 at that scene is so good.
Wish they also did bikini teenager Jodie.

 

[Something Amyss]

Wrong. With the marble sculpture, if you want your sculpture to have clothes you have to sculpt it with the clothes on, like it were a single big object. But that's not the case with many next gen games like these.

It's not my fault you chose a bad medium for your own analogy.

The sculptor is generally his own boss but as the game artist, you don't know what the director is going to want to show or not show, it's not up to you.

Yes, if only there was some way to figure out whether the major game you were working on needed nipples.

 

[Something Amyss]

And that never set off any alarm bells that maybe this guy was a creepy old man who harbored some explicit fantasies that could potentially show up in his game, especially when it's made extremely clear that the character is basically Ellen Page?

Honestly, it sounds more like he wouldn't want to share her with the world.

 

[Jingle Fett]

Wrong. With the marble sculpture, if you want your sculpture to have clothes you have to sculpt it with the clothes on, like it were a single big object. But that's not the case with many next gen games like these.

It's not my fault you chose a bad medium for your own analogy.

The sculptor is generally his own boss but as the game artist, you don't know what the director is going to want to show or not show, it's not up to you.

Yes, if only there was some way to figure out whether the major game you were working on needed nipples.

Yes, if only there was. It's too bad directors have been known to be undecided or change their minds at the last minute about things like this, and as a result want to keep their options open. It's too bad that sometimes when making games (or movies), the only way to tell if something actually works is by seeing it in action. It's too bad they don't know exactly what their next project is going to be about, and want to future-proof their assets so they don't have to do the work twice. It's too bad the director doesn't always have the time to micromanage each individual artist, of which there may be dozens or hundreds across multiple companies.

Hell, like -Axle- mentioned not long after my first post, even the cave troll from Lord of the Rings has genitals, even though its never shown.

And I didn't choose a bad medium for my analogy, it holds up in both posts. In your example, you're talking about sculpting the character as one big object, clothes and all (which, again, is often not how next gen games like this do it). In my examples, I was talking about sculpting individual objects (in my first post there is one object, in my second post there are multiple objects, but the only difference is the number of objects). Note that in my first post, I made no mention of clothes or other accessories, I only mentioned an anatomically correct human model. Next gen games like this often take this approach partly because it allows them more flexibility in the long run.

 

[Altorin]

Seriously? They put her head on a nude character model that was er..."Anatomically Correct" for a shower scene that didn't show any jiggly bits? WHY?! Why not make it like a doll if those "parts" weren't needed for the game? It takes someone going full retard to put that into a game's files and not expect someone to find it.

iirc, there was 3d modeled vajayjay in one of the Metro Games. On a character model that was locked behind a door with a frosted glass window, sitting in a bathtub.

I guess game devs just... go for authenticity?

or are just freaky sex perverts. probably the latter - everyone kind of is.

 

[putowtin]

Ellen Page Triggers Aggressive Responses in Me.....

But you don't see me taking legal action!

Note to Sony, don't put something in a game that you don't want people to share... you put an atomically correct nude in a game, people are gonna share it.

 

[Schadrach]

*googled* Bit too young looking for my tastes but whatever.

I got nothing against showing a nude showering scene but do think it's not right to have been done without the actresses permission though.

She mocapped it, so we can assume she was aware the scene existed. What she probably wasn't aware of though was that someone would unlock dev tools that weren't supposed to be accessible to players and included full camera control and proceed to use said full camera control in a scene in which the character's nudity is mostly concealed by the choice of camera angle.

Wait they actually bothered to create nipples and a vagina on the model? I'd have thought it'd be like the Sims where if you get past the obstruction it's a Barbie doll.

I imagine the nipples are probably actually useful when hanging clothing on the model, as far as gauging where things go and how they are supposed to fit. Rather like a navel in that regard -- a useful anatomical landmark. The vagina makes less sense from that perspective but I guess if you're going to go that far, you might as well go the rest of the way. Does the model have a vagina? I've only seen a couple of pics on reddit from this and it wasn't exactly visible on them.

 

[Chemical Alia]

Wait they actually bothered to create nipples and a vagina on the model? I'd have thought it'd be like the Sims where if you get past the obstruction it's a Barbie doll.

I imagine the nipples are probably actually useful when hanging clothing on the model, as far as gauging where things go and how they are supposed to fit. Rather like a navel in that regard -- a useful anatomical landmark. The vagina makes less sense from that perspective but I guess if you're going to go that far, you might as well go the rest of the way. Does the model have a vagina? I've only seen a couple of pics on reddit from this and it wasn't exactly visible on them.[/quote]

When it comes to game art, this is partially right. I do know the occasional artist who insists on sculpting junk on all his monster demons before wrapping clothes on them, and it's common for artists to block in breasts when sculpting or drawing a figure to help establish the form. Nipples aren't visible through most clothes, but it's important to at least know where they go and I could see them occasionally being worth modeling. For a fully clothed character, probably not though. Most character artists also have a collection of stock base models to start out with, some of which are just blocked out forms, and others are highly detailed nude models.

The weird part to me is any of that getting past the low poly stage, much less in game, if it wasn't intended for use at any point. The reason why first person weapons and buildings often have deleted faces on the sides that they will never be seen: optimization.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

But she's already been naked in film. How is this different?

Because this is a video game. Nudity in video games is evil. Violence in video games is evil. Everything that exists is evil if it's in video games. Because video games are evil.

 

[wulf3n]

The sculptor is generally his own boss but as the game artist, you don't know what the director is going to want to show or not show, it's not up to you.

Yes, if only there was some way to figure out whether the major game you were working on needed nipples.

Because nothing ever changes from when the scene was first drafted to when the game is released. It's not possible the scene originally showed more than was released but due to a myriad of potential reasons got re-written.

 

[alandavidson]

But she's already been naked in film. How is this different?

Because this is a video game. Nudity in video games is evil. Violence in video games is evil. Everything that exists is evil if it's in video games. Because video games are evil.

Quick background, I work as an actor and writer. So yeah, I actually know what I'm talking about.

So why is Ellen Page pissed about there being nude models of her in the game?

Because production companies are required to tell the actor if there is nudity for the character in the breakdown.

A typical day at the office has me reading about half a dozen breakdowns of upcoming projects that my agent thinks I would be a good fit for. A typical breakdown looks like this:

Indie Hipster Movie 500

Written by: Wes Anderson
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Production Company: The Weinstein Brothers

Synopsis
A coming of age tale about a group of young people navigating life, relationships, love, and secretly being Super Sayans.

NOTE: There is nudity in this project.

Ron
(Male - 18-22)
A quiet, shy loner who is new to the group.
Actor selected, Michael Cera

Emily
(Female - 18-22)
A quirky, fun girl who becomes the love interest of Ron.
(Full-frontal nudity)

You have to know from the very start what your walking into. That's not just a contract thing, that's SAG thing, put in place to protect actors from being exploited. A film can't randomly add nudity, either. It's either there from the start, or it isn't there at all.

I don't expect people in the Escapist to know this, because it's not common knowledge outside of the industry, and to be quite frank, it's not as common knowledge as it should be inside the industry. But the justifications and even hostility I've seen on this thread towards Page on this thread... I am disappoint.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Or you know, they could've just NOT had a shower scene. Havn't played it (don't feel tempted to) but I highly doubt it was substantial to the plot.

 

[wulf3n]

But she's already been naked in film. How is this different?

Because this is a video game. Nudity in video games is evil. Violence in video games is evil. Everything that exists is evil if it's in video games. Because video games are evil.

Quick background, I work as an actor and writer. So yeah, I actually know what I'm talking about.

So why is Ellen Page pissed about there being nude models of her in the game?

Because production companies are required to tell the actor if there is nudity for the character in the breakdown.

A typical day at the office has me reading about half a dozen breakdowns of upcoming projects that my agent thinks I would be a good fit for. A typical breakdown looks like this:

Indie Hipster Movie 500

Written by: Wes Anderson
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Production Company: The Weinstein Brothers

Synopsis
A coming of age tale about a group of young people navigating life, relationships, love, and secretly being Super Sayans.

NOTE: There is nudity in this project.

Ron
(Male - 18-22)
A quiet, shy loner who is new to the group.
Actor selected, Michael Cera

Emily
(Female - 18-22)
A quirky, fun girl who becomes the love interest of Ron.
(Full-frontal nudity)

You have to know from the very start what your walking into. That's not just a contract thing, that's SAG thing, put in place to protect actors from being exploited. A film can't randomly add nudity, either. It's either there from the start, or it isn't there at all.

I don't expect people in the Escapist to know this, because it's not common knowledge outside of the industry, and to be quite frank, it's not as common knowledge as it should be inside the industry. But the justifications and even hostility I've seen on this thread towards Page on this thread... I am disappoint.

I don't think the situation is quite as simple. The nudity in question wasn't intended to be in the game. The closest film equivalent I can think of is if a movie was released with letter box overlays which when removed shows nudity not declared to be in the movie.

Also does this include adding nude shots from a stunt double?

 

[Rellik San]

Yeah I believe the issue is contractual obligation, but as others have said this is a massive grey area because as an artist, drawing at least semi anatomically correct figures before clothing them helps a lot (you have no idea how unnatural some pants look on drawings of dudes until you give them junk space).

So it's really a question of did she realise she was posing for essentially a sculpture from the ground up and if not I can understand her being justifiably upset.

Also as a note on sexually charged Page characters, all I'll say is "It's so gushy." and hopefully the other 5 people who saw Super will get it.

 

[PirateRose]

I don't expect people in the Escapist to know this, because it's not common knowledge outside of the industry, and to be quite frank, it's not as common knowledge as it should be inside the industry. But the justifications and even hostility I've seen on this thread towards Page on this thread... I am disappoint.

Part of the hostility towards Ms. Page comes from the Escapist articles themselves, alluding once again that she's really angry about something that she really hasn't said much of anything about.

I remember she said it kind of bothered her that the character in "Last of Us" looked like her, The Escapist spun it like she was on the war path and the forums trashed her back then too.

The other part of it is the general opinion that breasts are only for male viewing pleasure. How dare a woman try to stop men from their rights to see boobies without a woman's consent! Even though it's been mostly Sony reacting and trying to hide the boobies, clearly Ellen Page is evil feminist out to destroy man's fun.

It may not really be her body, but it is still disturbing on many levels and is a very complex situation. I'm willing to bet video game companies are going to have a hell of a time trying to enlist famous women to model for games after this, including extra pages swearing up and down they won't have nudity in the game without consent. Fictional characters like Liara T'soni and Lara Croft, yeah people are total pervs for getting these characters naked in the games, but it doesn't have the same level of problems. When you have someone who is an existing, real life person, with an identity, who was modeling for a character and did not consent to the nudity, then the pervs find a way to bring it out, it starts to really push moral lines.

Honestly, I don't see how no one at that company didn't see this coming considering the history of video game hackers looking for hidden tits in game files. Did they really think that the "Beyond Two Souls" audience would be different?

 

[alandavidson]

Snip

I don't think the situation is quite as simple. The nudity in question wasn't intended to be in the game. The closest film equivalent I can think of is if a movie was released with letter box overlays which when removed shows nudity not declared to be in the movie.

Also does this include adding nude shots from a stunt double?

From a contract and legal standpoint, there is no difference here than if the director shot a sex scene using a body double without the main actor's knowledge or consent.

That also answers your question about the stunt double. The stunt double is doubling for the actor, so as far as the audience is concerned, they are one in the same, and everyone is bound by the same nudity rules.