Pregnant Game Characters
polycounter lvl 13
The other day I was thinking about female characters in games and I couldn't come up with a single female character in the late stages of pregnancy. I was curious if anyone had any examples of this. I did a quick search of polycount and couldn't find anyone who had attempted to make one either. I'm sure there isn't much demand for it in a portfolio, but I think it would be a very memorable piece.
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You never see anyone pregnant but in Doom 3 there are also women crying "they took my baby!" in the medical bay.
It's not very common but when games do use pregnant characters they tend to be like that... plot gimmicks. The same goes for sci-fi/fantasy movies
I don't actually think it would be a very memorable piece. Pregnant women in games might be rare but it's not necessarily interesting and in order for something to be memorable to me it needs to be both. In some cases "interesting" can just mean bizarre, I'm sure I am not the only person who remembers that model of the ogre with 7 penises...
Alma is preggers at the end.
Also wondering if there's some kind of ESRB thing about shooting pregnant ladies.
You can still do it, but making a big, fat, beer belly, monster with a glowing belly-button will get the eye more instead of a pregnant woman at the end of the day, especially if she's going to be 'functional pregnant' (EI: wearing baggy clothes, which cover all her form's and give alot of excuse for hiding stuff).
And let's face it, pregnancy is something that makes many of us uneasy as a subject, if it's not personal, then it will be how others will see it (can you imagine the shit-storm you would get if your 'folio was featured on Kotaku and you had a pregnant amazon warrior in it? The large amount of complaints or kudos as drama? This wouldn't matter in your working environment, but it might be influenced...)
On the other hand: Games who use pregnant...stuff, almost always do it to force a reaction out of you, be it emotional, mental or physical; Dead Space, DMC 2013, Duke Nukem, FEAR2, Dragon Age, Parasite Eve, Harvest Moon, MGS3, Dante's Inferno, etc.
They can get that emotion out most of the time without a need for a physical display, so they use it to their advantage, essentially doing the least amount of work and risk.
Also, looking back on TVTropes, you're right, outside of Sims like games, pregnancy is only ever shown as either evil (Brood Mother from DA) or hinted at (Boss from MGS3).
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PregnantBadass
@Choi: Yes, there is actually, AvP Requiem was originally going to be rated Mature, but ended up being an R, because of that scene of pregnant women getting the entire facehugging thing, and because the Alien would consume the baby. Not outright shown, but the implication was enough to get it a higher rating.
Basically all rating system out there have unwritten rules to which they will penalize you upon.
as for "real" characters that walk around and stuff, this wouldnt work either cause highly pregnant women aren´t realy supposed to be moving a lot.
and resulting from that it doesn´t realy make sense to build a character that would never ever be shown in a game for your folio.
Pregnant creatures are pretty hot though.
On a related note:
You simply cannot go wrong with Arnie being pregnant!
But seriously the themes that are in games do not usually allow for characters to portrayed normally. I can recall a few games with pregnant ladys and mothers as npc's in the world though.
I think the demon pregnant lady trope is a bit old though...
Completely agree. Totally redundant. Who cares if you model a women with a distended stomach?? As long as you're not putting her in an FPS and using her for target practice I can't see why anyone would care.
Hah that's hilarious, have you got pics?
F'real, it's a little disheartening to see they're boiled down to goofs and weird brood mothers.
That's the only non-evil, just "Hey, this person is pregnant" game instance I can think of, though.
Honestly this is a premise with such niche appeal that it's really unsurprising no one has done it.
You could always be the first?
Edit: If we're going to include non-late stage pregnancies, Sarah in Lost Odyssey gets pregnant, you eventually meet up with her kids too but you never see her in late stages.
That said, I can't see any particular reason why you couldn't have a pregnant lady on your portfolio. I'd toyed with the idea myself a few times. Might still get around to doing it eventually.
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