Instead I thought I'd just throw out a quick report about Blade and Soul and its strange take on fashion.
I'm still enjoying the game a lot. My Summoner's about half way through level 17 now and so far not much has changed. Everything seems slick, the world looks great and nothing I've been tasked with doing has been much of a challenge.I finally got to see the Pot Dogs. They turned out to be walking mushroom ceramicists. Of course they did. This game reminds me more and more of Zentia every day. *
The main thing that's puzzling me right now is what my character gets to wear. I haven't read up on this so I am probably missing something obvious but in seventeen levels I haven't really had any control at all over what she looks like.
Well, that's not entirely true. I have several costumes stashed in my bank vault. I could in theory choose to wear any of them. Except that putting them on changes my character's faction, making her an ally of her former enemies and kill-on-sight to her erstwhile friends.
For example, just by slipping into a BlackRam uniform I can be best buds with the same bandits I've been killing since the starting zone but every Bamboo Guard, an organization I've been doing quests for since the get-go, will try to rip my head off. It's a very interesting approach to faction but I can't quite follow the role-play logic.
As for my regular clothes, well they seem to work the same way. Every so often I get rewarded with a new outfit that replaces the previous one and changes my entire ensemble. There are no individual pieces to mix and match and no dyes to change the color scheme. It's a complete makeover, take it or leave it.As a Lyn Summoner I have to say there is definitely no issue with my costume being too revealing, a noted problem with imported F2P MMOs in general and Blade and Soul in particular. Quite the opposite.
She started out in a blouson and shorts ensemble that looked like something Little Lord Fauntleroy's younger sister might wear. Then she graduated to Tiger Lily's second-best lounging pajamas and now she's wearing an outfit Kate Bush might have considered and rejected for some mid-80s awards ceremony.
All in all it's rather odd. I'm sure there must be more to it than I understand right now but for the time being I'll just have to be content with wearing what I'm given - just so long as changing my colors doesn't mean changing my colors, that is!
* Footnote - I was wrong about Pot Dogs. They really are some kind of dog after all. I just did a bunch of quests around their kennels and finally got a good look at them. They seem to be some kind of bipedal basset hound although it's kind of hard to be sure, what with them all carrying pots on their heads bigger than they are. They share their territory with a slew of strolling fungi which is where the confusion crept in. Glad we got that straightened out. It's very important to know the phylum of the thing you're killing.
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Could not get past the female outfits, bodacious boobs, and oiled skin. Old rpger so armor has to have some coverage or it takes me out of the game. How is she not dead? Where are her scars if on the uncovered skin? Aren't the large boobs jiggling all the time a painful distraction? *sigh* Just not for me.
ReplyDeleteOiled skin can be toned down or completely removed during character creation. Jiggling boobs unfortunately not the case.
DeleteI have a relatively low tolerance for this kind of thing. I lasted less than an hour in Tera and the hideously offensive outfits (and even more offensive postures) were high on the list of reasons. In Blade and Soul, though, I have scarcely seen a hint of these issues. As is clear from the screenshots above, my character isn't sexualized at all - the opposite, really. She feels very innocent to play, some kind of cross between a child and an anthropomorphic animal. I haven't even spotted many scantily-dressed players of other races around me as I've been out questing. Everyone keeps saying it's bad so I guess it must be but somehow I haven't happened upon any of it so far.
DeleteOmg... Long comment eaten up on feedly!
ReplyDeleteThose potdogs are cute! I had a laugh when I saw them. The outfits are a means for farming faction and open flagging for PvP. You can farm tokens for a some sweet, non PvP flagging outfits. They look great on the Lyn. Sometimes you can just tag along with other people farming them too. Or sometimes someone will try to attack you while you have several guards on you.. Fun. Just change channels, over the mini map, if that happens.
Also the chance wheels in several of the outposts give costumes. One type per each. You can always go back and farm them at any level.
Zentia... How I miss that game. You are the only person who I know that loved it as much as I did. On that note, keep an eye on Asta, releasing on March 2, it looks charming as well. And there's Onigiri, which has a real sweet charm if you can get past all the boobs... Lol. The monsters are so funny, much like Zentia. Glad to see you enjoying BnS!
It might have been Blogger that ate your comment - it was playing up horribly yesterday. I have my eye on Asta already but Onigiri is a new one on me. I just googled it and the website looks *well* dodgy!
DeleteI really wish I'd played Zentia more. I think I got to about level 20 and I had a couple of characters but I drifted away and then there were some technical issues that meant it wouldn't run any more even before it closed down. Very, very underrated MMO.
Yeah, I wish I had played more. I puttered around with it to around level thirty. Zentia had the neatest mount and pet system. Such great ideas.
DeleteOnigiri was one I tried in a whim, it's surprising in a lot of ways, one was that it's a decent game, Lol. It also has cross servers for play station and PC, which was interesting. If you get really bored, it's worth a shot :)
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ReplyDeleteI don't know...none of those really look like Kate's style, even at an awards ceremony. I haven't seen her wearing puffy pantaloons of any length terribly much.
ReplyDeleteHehe very true. Lazy writing because I was in a hurry and it was late and I was tabbed out from waiting for The Shatterer event in GW2 at the time. I picked on Kate as a representative 80s icon because that outfit does look very New Romantic to me. Actually it looks more like something Steve Strange might have worn. It's oddly reminiscent of the thing Bowie wore in the Ashes to Ashes video, come to think of it, and Strange was in that. If only I'd thought of that when I was writing that paragraph...
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