“Look at me now.” Game characters and their new looks

When you have a character that has been around for a long time, eventually you will have to reinvent and modify certain aspects of that character to reflect the style of contemporary times…

…at least that’s what some characters go through. Other characters who seem to have changed over the years are changing for different reasons. Some characters change their appearance due to art style, others change because of their new circumstance, and some others don’t really change, they’re just a lot more… well equipped than they were before.

While playing through Batman: Arkham Asylum recently, I found myself wondering if Batman had hit the steroids to get that huge. Of course, Batman isn’t the only character in a game that has come out this year that has had some obvious steroid abuse going on.

Chris Redfield

There are many characters in the Resident Evil universe that have grown and changed over the years. Leon S. Kennedy started out as some rookie cop in Resident Evil 2 but then returned as an experienced government agent in Resident Evil 4. His new look reflected this and his new style was very well received. Chris Redfield went through his own transition over the years… though instead of experience reflected in his new look, you get the idea that he’s been hitting the steroids pretty hard so that one day, he’ll be able to punch a boulder to make good use of his huge pulsating biceps.

Chris does look pretty damn good in Resident Evil 5, but at the same time he does look very ridiculous with those HUGE (HUEG LIKE XBOX!!) muscles. We’ve had some time to think over why Chris is like this in Resident Evil 5 and one reason that comes to mind is that he needs to counter Wesker who has his own brand of super strength.

Samus Aran

While Chris wanted to bulk up, Samus Aran from the Metroid series seems to have shed her armour and made use of her other assets. Nintendo won’t want to openly admit it, but more and more they’re making an effort to sell Metroid using Samus’ sex appeal. Where before we only saw glimpses of Samus out of her Chozo power suit, now we get to see all of her in her Zero Suit. Of course, the justification that they have going on with it is that you don’t actually see any skin so it’s nothing bad… but come on, she may as well be naked considering how form fitting the Zero Suit is.

Samus is an attractive and athletic woman under the suit, we’ve all known it for quite awhile, and she does use common sense over fashion sense when it comes to her exploration of alien planets with hostile life… I’d just like Nintendo to remember that and not to pimp her out as much as they have… I mean, it’s not that bad, but Samus’ Zero Suit model in Super Smash Bros. Brawl had the most obvious breast enhancements over previous games, every time I look at her, I think “wow, that suit sure cups her breasts better than any wonder bra could”… *looks around* or maybe they just made her that way to take attention away from Snake’s ass…

The women of Soul Calibur

To be fair, Samus is nowhere near as bad as the women from the Soul Calibur series who seem to get breast enlargements between each game release. Many people in the gaming community theorise that eventually it’ll get to a point where all of the female characters will just be a large pair of tits and ass on screen and nothing else.

We all know that breast jiggle physics have been around for awhile now, but it seems, if things keep on progressing as they are, Soul Calibur is in dire need of some ass jiggle physics as well… though I suppose it’s better than what has been happening with the characters in Street Fighter. Chun Li’s thighs have never looked more huge and now she has some pretty “impressive” man hands going on as well. It’s a new style for the series… one that scares me a little.

Link

The legendary hero of Hyrule has also gone through his own changes over the years, though unlike other characters, the various heroes by the name of “Link” have all been different people. With each new hero comes a different art style, but not only that, the various different heroes have been of different age groups.

Pictured above are the two styles used for Link in his most recent adventures. The style changes The Legend of Zelda series have undergone over the years have been very well received… mostly. The initial shock of seeing the first images of The Wind Waker unsettled a lot of people initially, but they quickly grew to love it. I personally feel that The Wind Waker is a great achievement for Nintendo in terms of visual development and is a game that is (and already has) aged gracefully.

Unfortunately, Nintendo seems to be sticking to these two art styles for the moment. The Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks all share the same art style, and Twilight Princess, while being a modernised extension of the art style of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, is seeing its art style return (or so it seems) in the next Zelda game for Wii. When will we see a new style for Link? Maybe next generation…

Solid Snake

Unlike Link, there is only one Solid Snake… well, one Solid Snake, one Naked Snake, one Liquid Snake and then you also have Solidus… *cough* Well, my point is, the characters in Metal Gear, unlike most other series, age natura…er…not so naturally.

We’ve all seen Snake age over the years, though we never expected anything as radical as what we got from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Very few video game characters actually get the chance to age, so it’s ironic that Snake happened to go from Solid to Old in quite a short time. Of course, once a characters starts to age, there will eventually come a time when they will experience a true end to their story. Snake’s story ended in MGS4 and although there is still a lot more to squeeze out from Metal Gear, we won’t be seeing Solid Snake in a new Metal Gear from now on… unless it’s a remake.

There are a lot more character to write about, but I think I’m going to do the lazy thing and leave the rest up to you. What other characters have changed over the years and how do you feel about the ways they have changed?

(And yes, I realise I’ve been quite negative in this entry… it’s not on purpose, it’s an accident, I swear!)