Yeah, in HI it can be a bit much. In non-powered armor troops, though, it is less out of place. To me it brings to mind Vasquez and Drake from Aliens.
I’m going to say that I prefer the current style and that I prioritize representation over realism. Female models, to me, should be identifiable as female. Now, that doesn’t mean “cheesecake,” but the Yolandi riot grrl is a good example of a model with boob armor and combat heels, but still looking badass. I think the range could stand to have some sexed-up male models, sculpted by people who are attracted to men in order to be visually pleasing to people attracted to men. Not a whole lot, just some approximate parity with the sexy ladies. On a related note, now that we’re moving into Corregidor, I’d also like to see models specifically sculpted as black people, utilizing black hairstyles, resembling black celebrities and studio painted to be black.
I fell like this issue could largely be removed by scaling infantry weapons down to a reasonable size that looks right both on male and female frames. Looking up images of women posing with assault rifles, this issue doesn't seem to exist in real life, so I see no reason for it to exist in Infinity. The military would likely draft strong and able bodied individuals, which makes dimorphism more of a visual/aesthetic choice rather than a scale issue.
I'd prefer it if there was a visual cohesion and thought put into the representation of miniatures. The over-dimorphism and the diminutive clothing that kind of tries too hard to be anime only makes sense if it is applied to the factions where it makes sense. For one, it makes sense that not all cultures in the game have the same aesthetic sensibilities, but also so that the players can choose whether they like their fighting force to be dainty women in tights fighting besides burly men in loose fatigues from the same units, play an army where everyone is cheesecake as hell, or heaven forbid play an army that breaks against the singular photo model dimorphism and allows women to have some meat on their bones and men to be something other than perfectly chiselled (or obese). And as a small comment to whoever drew the parallel between the men being bigger and therefore better soldiers; A soldier isn't measured by their visible strength. Bigger also means more tissue to hit and destroy. This isn't quite a space opera setting, but it's close. Haqq in particular should be able to take a diminutive nerd and make him an equal of McMurrough without increasing his size very much. Even if in modern day we're not there yet, we're still seeing how combat values aren't proportional to physical size. Our soldiers are carrying a lot of heavy gear, and if we can reduce that weight we'd start seeing the physical requirements also go down with it.
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They sure do, but there’s also an opportunity to have more explicit diversity. It’s not a new idea to sculpt models based on celebrities, so why not Idris Elba or Serena Williams? Sub Saharan Africa has a huge Muslim population, so let’s see that inside of Haqqislam. the truth is that most units have enclosed helmets. Opportunities to display minorities (from a European/North American perspective) are actually fairly small. I’d just like to see it be common enough that there’s no assumed “default” amongst the sculpts.
I am not sure what makes a supposed "Anglo"? PanO models look like people I have met or could have met outside of my home, or in Netherlands, in Spain, in Germany, in France and Malta as well as people I have met in UK, US and Australia, speaking of my personal experience and most places I mentioned are not of English? I guess heritage? So the term "Anglo" must mean something else that "vaguely looking like something that came from Europe" because PanO models look like that.
Ah yes, hailling from places like Aconticemento, the most Anglo of planets. Or the SWISS guard, which are obviously Anglo, since everyone knows that "Swiss" references Switzerland, which is actually a small subsection of England. And, of course, their characters bear such strong, Anglo names like "Konstantinos," "Jeanne D'Arc," or "Bipandra Gauri." PanO being overwhelmingly Anglo is one hell of a hot take.
But the pose would give us that old school strip at last. Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Kicking or shooting? Spoiler Both and hacking with the empty hand.
Bits of Caledonia and most of USARF are about the only confirmed English-descent troopers we've seen yet, though I'd be shocked to see Fusilier Angus coming from elsewhere. Bolts are based out of a city stated to carry a distinctly Australian character. Spanish and Italian are far more heavily represented in PanO thanks to Neoterra being predominately descended from historically Roman Catholic nations and represented by two Sectorials, and Indian is most common amongst Characters. I can't remember what regions mostly settled Varuna though, could be some more Aussie or Kiwi areas there.
As far as I'm aware, the criticism @Hecaton is alluding to isn't about the names, it's about how the paint on the official minis have a tendency to be blonder than the names and ethnicities imply. #notallminis and all that of course Puerto Rico if memory serves. Which kind of tracks as how this taxation without representation island has a well above average number of people employed by the US Army.
I think when Hecaton says Anglo, he mostly means white. I think folks are getting hung up on word choice instead of the message he’s trying to convey. Let’s take a look at PanOceania, though. Neoterra is very much Space Australia. Australia has a significant aboriginal and south Asian population. They don’t HAVE to be locked in to the crocodile Dundee population. Svalarheima is Space Scandinavia, and, yeah. I’d expect predominantly white people there. Acontecimento covers South Asia, the Philippines and whatever South American contingent the original Earth-bound alliance had. One planet to cover all those cultures, and even then, with Melanesia and black South Americans, they don’t show up in the model range. Varuna is not strongly coded, but where we have names, they are “Patsy Garnet” and, maybe, “Richard Quinn” (I can’t remember where he comes from). The Zulu Cobras definitely have white people hair. (And when someone here said “if your going to paint croc men with Maori tattoos, please paint them as Maori” that got a hell of a lot of pushback) Yes, I can paint my models with whatever skin tone I want. I do that. I’ve actually been enjoying learning skin tones that aren’t Caucasian, because, man, they actually forced me to change up how I painted skin. I would still like to see more explicitly black model sculpts.
I don't have a problem with the "celebrity" sculpts personally, in fact I'm quite looking forward to Grado William Wallace mini... Combat wedges are an irritation, but a mild one that I pass over quite easily. Tactical rocks - when they actually are rocks-annoy my OCD a lot because they limit the narrative of how to base the models, ie it's much easier to explain ammo crates, bits of broken down tags or even a dieing Umbral in a forest, dessert, tundra, beach or swamp than it is to provide a plausible explanation for a slab of rock sticking out of a space ship's deck... At least assuming that the ship is still functional... The resized weapons are an absolute pet peeve, you can't just scale a firearm to a new scale and expect it to work, you'd be changing barrel lengths, chamber wall thickness and you'd be creating a logistics nightmare for ammo and spare parts. "oh they just 3d print the parts" yeah okay, but you'd need a printer at least as big as the largest part of the largest scale version, and sure I can see a deva or a tech bee carrying some quantronic nanotech folding thing that does that, but I don't think a dozer or a monstrucker would be... As a side note, it's always been slightly funny to me that a word derived from a region in Germany is used as a short form for the English, possibly because it used to be the French word for the English back when French was the dominant language of the world...
That's because Germanic tribes migrated to England along from the mainland side of the Saxon Shore (as the Romans called it) and the Anglia area.
I looked into this ages ago via the RPG material, it really isn't. Only one continent out of the four or so even has a substantial English-speaking population, and only the city of Darwin is confirmed to have a particularly Aussie culture (from the Bolt lore). Most of Neoterra is meant to be descended from devout European Catholic pilgrims following the Pope into space during the religion's resurgence. I last checked the book about a year ago, but from memory by far the most well-represented ancestry across both Neoterra and the game as a whole was Spanish- pretty understandable, given the setting's origins as an RPG game run by and for Spaniards. Basic summary of PanO planets in general: Neoterra: Historic European Catholic background. Acon: Pacific coastal nations that aren't covered by YJ or Russia. Sval: Skyrim Nords fighting Space Tibet & Mongolia. Varuna: Pacific Islands, though I remember the least details about this one. It's also worth noting that there's usually one or two exceptions to the norm per planet, like Neoterra's Australians.