I’ve always been a sucker for a good racing game. But every once in a while I’ll settle for a decent one. As such, I’ve been grinding away in The Crew 2 a bit lately, and it’s been hit or miss so far (I dunno what the fuck is up with that drift) but the game gave me a bit of a surprise in the least expected way possible: A female player character and her painted-on yoga pants.
Now, if you know Merle, you’ll know that he don’t play dress up with the dudes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not his cup of whiskey. No, no, if I’m going to be staring, unblinkingly, at a character for any amount of time, I prefer it to be of the female variety. That’s just how I roll. Also, interesting enough, it used to get me gifted a lot of free shit back in the early WoW days, so I’ve always just kinda dug it.
The reason I bring this up is because, obviously, I’ve seen more than my share of female polygons over my gaming years, and every so often I’d stop and wonder if the developers of this day and age were ever gonna get around to figuring out them butt physics. I mean sure, the Japanese have been using Jell-O Jigglers as the basis for their breast physics for a while now, but as far as that rear cleavage goes, it’s been pretty static. We get a nicely shaped ass, on either a guy or a girl, depending on the game, but it always stops there, and most of the time it looks awkward as hell when the character runs or squats due to the way they rig up the mesh to the skeleton. Needless to say, nobody’s ever paid much attention to the ass. And that’s just weird, considering that’s what we’re staring at 90% of the time.
It’s often said that answers are found in the most unlikely of places. In this case, it’s a racing game that literally has no reason to have a detailed human character model, much less one of such well rounded features.
I do know, upon doing research, that Ubisoft re-worked the avatars for the game. This was before my time, but apparently they looked like hot shit. Maybe “no ass” was one of the complaints, because take a look at this:
I know it’s kinda hard to see, the global lighting always seems to be absolute crap, but that’s my avatar. She started out in those pants. I went into the wardrobe and swapped out the shirt and the set of gloves she was wearing, but not a single one of the other pairs of pants were more appealing than the ones she already had on. I wonder why?
Even though the lady spends the vast majority of the game in her vehicle, they still didn’t forget to give her some extra room in the trunk, if you know what I mean (and I’m pretty sure you do, it’s not a new metaphor). Now, big booties aren’t anything new in gaming. Even nowadays, in a world afraid of breasts, Squeenix still managed to give Lara Croft a healthy ba-donka-donk. Until now, I don’t think I’ve ever really taken notice, because as I said above, usually they look pretty awkward in motion. But this time around, I just felt myself staring at it, and I couldn’t grasp why.
Then, it suddenly occurred to me. Ubisoft, even if just by accident, managed to give this girl’s rear-end a proper deformation system. And while it’s technically not physics, I’ll still chalk it up as the first time I’ve seen decent ass movement in a video game. Allow me to illustrate…
It’s hard for me to show it without posting a video (and I’m not posting a fuckin video) but you can tell with the few screenshots above just how the glutes stretch and contract depending on her movement. It might not seem like a big deal, but it makes a world of difference in the realism department. I’m just baffled that it came from here, of all places. Why? Why make such a nicely shaped buttocks for a game that, for the most part, hides said shapely buttocks? What is the purpose of this? Was it an accident?
Whatever the case may be, the artist who created these characters went for the extra credit. Now if only they would’ve put that some amount of time into that wonky-ass drifting mechanic. Seriously, what the fuck?
This is Merle signing out.
