Dark Souls – transition from full head of hair to baldness
Dark Souls, an acclaimed role-playing video game compatible with most gaming consoles and Windows PC, is one of the very games that admits the changeover of the main character-player. Unlike some other video games, in Dark Souls there’s transformation happening in the physical appearance of the player – he starts losing his hair until he get completely bald. In terms of player types, there are two main customizations available: the eccentrics and the realistic types. In the latter category we have characters that look like average people. The player is in charge with building it.
A complete character customization
In video games such as Second Life and Destiny, the player builds his character extremely differently. He wants to make it look good, thus recreating the perfect virtual alternative of themselves. In the mind of the player, the character he deals with online has to look fierce. Baldness is not a sexy feature, so if they had it in either Second Life or Destiny, nobody would have chosen it. Dark Souls takes great pride is making a character look as real as possible, even if that means losing his hair.
How many times have you played a character in a video game that lost its hair over time? Not one single time; until now. That’s because very few developers focus on these sorts of details. They may not seem important for the makers of a video game, but they could have a great impact on the player.
Aging characters in video games
In the Tekken series for instance, the developers have done an excellent job at making the character age. However, none of them lost their hair completely. Character Nathan Drake from Uncharted, starts going grayish after a while, although his amount of hair is intact. Solid Snake from Metal Gear is also going through an intense aging process as players advance further in the game; although the change is heading towards the Steve Martin type of hair and not the Vin Diesel type. In Max Payne 3, the character is bald because he shaved his head, and not because he aged. The action had a symbolic meaning, representing the character’s transformation into a killing machine.
Dark Souls – incredible character transformations worth mentioning
Software’s brilliantly developed role-playing video game Dark Souls features some insane customization menus. It is the first developers that allow the player to go bald. This could relate to the actual player (who may actually be bald and want to show this in the game); amongst other on-screen options, you can always go for the “shaved” or “short” versions, among numerous others. Baldness is not something you should be ashamed of. In some ways, it can be liberating especially if the inevitable will happen sooner or later.
Many men consider hair s a symbol of youth, confidence and vitality. For this reason, they want to exude the exact same traits when they’re playing a video game. If you’re bald and you’re ashamed of that fact, in the online world nobody would know how you really look like. However, for the mature video game player, baldness doesn’t have to be embarrassing. Many players want their characters to look just like them, with or without the hair.
Bottom line, Dark Souls rocks! It offers a realistic character feature that very other video games provide. Whether we want to admit it or not, people age and we can’t put an end to this; and if you’re going to make a realistic video game, you might as well allow the player to build his character in the most reasonable way possible – baldness is cool!
This is the guest post by Christopher Austin and Make Up Games 365!
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