Attractive characters improve games. True or false?

[LegitHyperbole]

chakkra said:

mZuzek said:

This isn't a good point. Sure I'm gay and I like my men to look masculine. But having a type doesn't mean that I think all characters should be made to look that way. If I need fictional characters in a videogame to look attractive to my tastes specifically, yeah, that's super insecure.

I really don't know much about LegitHyperbole, but I'm willing to bet that he was complaining mostly about women looking like men here; which, let's be honest, is a trend that western developers have gone way overboard with.

No, that's not the point of the thread. Women can look hot with manly features and men can look hot with womanly features.

I find women with squared faces to be more beautiful. 

And men with more feminine features

What I'm complaining about is simply a diversion away from beauty. Adding realism that goes to far and removes beauty or a trend to make character more boring and less pronounced or appealing aswell as the whole body positivity movement which celebrates unhealthy physiques. Simply put, the better looking the character the more it improves the gaming experience and when characters are bland, boring or ugly it takes away from that experience. Aloy in Forbidden West is more real but she is less beautiful so not once did I bother about her cosmetics or photo mode like I did religiously in Zero Dawn. That said, Jin in Ghost of Tsushima isn't exactly a looker but somehow he ends up looking bad ass most of the time.