Discussion
I unironically hope they DO change Shiv’s face in the final version
The game is full of many different archetypes, but no character is impossibly handsome like Shiv is supposed to be. We have yet to see Valve to go all out for a man attractive wise like they can for the “bad boy” redemption archetype.
His model right now is a recolor from neon prime with a different art stlye thats why he looks terrible. Any actual person that knows Shiv lore knows that he has no relation with monkeys. This happened already with old ugly Ivy in the past to “contrast” her uglyness with her being nice and welcoming which is not good character design at all. This will be no different.
Reporting in, Venator gets some side eyes from the lesbian side of things, though if you made him a battlenun just as jacked up and scarred and grizzled and the accent, OH LORD DON'T HAVE MERCY
Hypermasculine working-class beefcake is wayyyy more gay-bait than it is girl-bait. Tom of Finland lookin' ass.
Victor is way more girl-bait. Brooding undead guy with sharp facial features, a middle part, dark eyeliner, and a tragic mysterious past. Absolute romantasy novel character design.
I get what both are saying but I have actually found myself asking if Shiv is an in universe reference to monkey king. If its not intentional and not in the lore then they should really consider changing it.
If you don't know what I mean than do an image search for "Monkey King" and you wont have to go far to find someone who looks vaguely like Shiv. It isn't a problem per say but its a bit confusing for pretty much anyone in Asian countries where this design is almost always used for that style of character.
For reference an old reddit post that pointed out the similarities.
Yes he’s not supposed to look like a monkey at all. The reason he looks like this was cuz initially in neon prime he was meant to have a transformation mechanic like silver where he turns into a giant monkey thing, but that’s scrapped.
That’s why you can find a lot of old voice lines towards Shiv that mention him “being a monster deep inside” and not in the allegorical sense. Over time it seems they’ve just transitioned his past monstrosity into just being a super bad dude rather than literally being a monster
I do hope they change him because we don't have enough pretty boys. But doorman is imposibly handsome. That's like the whole point of his character. He is way too handsome for being a normal doorman, but that was probably his bet attempt to look like a normal human
Doorman’s face is perfect because it’s so uncanny. The perfection, the flawless skin, that’s a big part of it; but it’s also his facial expression being this resting vaguely amused look that looks so out of place for what he’s doing. The little subtle smirk, the relaxed eyes, his eyebrows trending down at the outer ends.
It’s like he’s watching a puppy trying to climb a set of stairs, except it’s him watching Venator trying to put a crossbow bolt through his pristine uniform for the 4th time that day. And in-game he still often has that look of subtle amusement, like this really is all just a game to him.
I do find it very cute that doorman is your type so much that you call him impossibly handsome but yeah. He is very symmetric and flawless so I can definately see it.
his current model makes him look like a young ron perlman which bugs me for reasons that are beyond my own comprehension. like i enjoy ron perlman i just don’t understand why shiv looks so much like him???
LOL spot on. Its his weird proportions and face in comparison with the rest of the cast. Here is a official art of him from Neon Prime. He looks like that because he was a literal different art style
This happened already with old ugly Ivy in the past to "contrast" her uglyness with her being nice and welcoming which is not good character design at all.
I don't have strong opinions on shivs face but this is such a childish thing to say it makes me want to disagree with you out of malice. That sounds like a perfectly good reason to design a character ugly, and her being more monstrous made her more unique. A good design isn't about being pretty, not every design needs to be pleasing to be good. Like cmon.
Yeah, I was kind of with them until they said that. Cause that's like saying Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame is bad character design just because of his ugly outward appearance but having a kind and friendly personality.
ill honestly even take it a step further and say that anyone who says stuff along these lines really should introspect on why they think this.
like there might genuinely be something to unpack here about how we might assign virtue to aesthetics that can be causing us to treat other people poorly.
the idea of ugliness being incongruent with positive traits like being nice and welcoming is childish and shallow, exactly right.
They want fuckable characters. If they don’t look fuckable in their mind then it’s not good enough for them. I find the conversation around Shivs appearance weird. He’s not an ugly dude, and it shouldn’t matter if he was. I like his design because it’s unique in a world full of sharp jawlined small nose stereotypical “hot” men. It’s a video game I get on to play the game not goon over characters.
He’s not an ugly dude, and it shouldn’t matter if he was
god that's exactly right, and they get so hung up on "everyone thinks he's handsome" because the idea of someone being attractive simply by the way they carry themselves primarily and not like the "conventional attraction" of their looks is lost on these people i think.
I don’t think some of these people have experience tbh and/or they’re just shallow.
You’re completely right, how someone holds themselves is at least 60% of their attractive rating. A confident funny average man is sooo much more attractive than a shallow instagram fitness model. I also genuinely think Shiv is attractive 🤷🏼♀️.
Reading a lot of comments on this thread and all I can think of is a lot of people here need to go outside more, and stop basing their idea of attractiveness on like, supermodels, anime characters, and porn
Exactly! Plus, I dont really care all that much if they change shiv's model or not but these arguments about him being a chimp face or whatever are so shallow. His character design and kit oozes style imo and I 100% believe some people find him dashingly handsome me included. A character doesnt have to tick every box for them to be dashing or attractive? If anything that one celeste line already shows the devs understand that not everyone has to be onboard with this. Just let him be? Just because you dont find a "chimp-face" ugly doesnt mean everybody else has to. I think his style and kit more than makes up for it and his face might just be the cherry on top to make him stand out IMO.
Genuinely wish the "character not pretty so design bad" people would stop talking about character design. Some of the best designs in Dota are characters that are ugly, and Shiv isn't even an ugly design to begin with lmao.
Ivy's design IMO got worse with valve making her cute like that, i started playing her because she looked like a monster, and fell in love with her character because of the contrast between her looks and her personality.
Absolutely hate this aversion that people have to uglyness or imperfections.
Ivy has an unused model in the game files under models - heroes_staging for a design with a much more ":3" face. Valve felt like they overcorrected by making her too cute, so they dialed it back and we got current Ivy. Imo current Ivy is amazing, I firmly believe that even if her old model got touched up to the new standards while keeping the design, it wouldn't fit in with Deadlock, but current Ivy 100% does
I like current ivy cuz she could still look scary if she wanted to.
I just wish it wasnt something she needed to turn on. She should look a bit scary at a baseline
I remember that kinda rat face that was leaked before the Old Gods New Blood update, i agree current version is far better, but i still believe they should have kept more of her old face.
It also doesnt make much sense for a gargoyle looking cute when they are all made ugly on purpose in order to ward off evil(or so is theorized as there is no documentation on why they were all made ugly/mosntrous).
I like current Ivy because I have a headcanon that Ivy got help from a stonemason with Arroyo connections to make her less obviously ugly and a little more on the cute side. She is still a woman, after all
And shiv's design imo is especially interesting because he has a weird face but still looks so stylish and handsome with everything he does. It's his choices, not his genetic luck lol.
And people keep saying "but the lore says", yea then change the lore. It's only a few voice lines and the game isn't finished, just like you say the model isn't. Then why should the voice lines be final?
It doesn't even need to change much, Shiv IS already really attractive. Just not in a conventional way, that's all the voice lines would need to reflect.
Looking at the design direction of the game I assume valve sides with changing his face to anothwr conventionally attractive one and not changing the lore though. Sad :( He's probably my favorite design.
What "the lore says" is also like, 90% referring to his hair which is an established trope hairstyle where the wearer is obsessed with their hair while it's played as a visual gag. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading some of this discussion because there are dozens of characters with this exact hairstyle that's supposed to look funny to the viewer while being earnestly cool in-universe lol
Especially funny considering how so many people revolted when there was that possible leak of an Ivy remodel looking "cuter" because people loved Ivy being a scrungly lookin gremlin
I still can not believe there is people who defend the Neon Prime placeholder asset, they also do it for dinclair and Yamato. They say that its a joke they find him handsome in universe…That is so cheap and nonesense for moba character design.
I can actually tell what I'm looking at and for at a glance with the new item designs. The old ones are all very samey and when you're in a match last thing you want to do is second guess if you're looking at the right item the enemy or team has and not having to hover over it to confirm it. With the new art you just know instantly.
Because I am the person who made the post OP is referencing, figure I'll say this: Old Vindicta sucked. Old Lash sucked. Current Sinclair sucks. Old Ivy had her merits but her new design is better.
I am not one for nostalgia. I like Shiv's current face because it adds more diversity to the cast and spices up a media landscape that is already overbrimming with hotties.
I agree that making him sexier would detract from his uniqueness but atm I think his design is too inconsistent. He's clearly modelled around his old ability to transform and as a new player I was really confused about what his design was trying to convey.
He's clearly modelled around his old ability to transform and as a new player I was really confused about what his design was trying to convey.
The word clearly is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. And sure everyone's expectations will be different, but for me his design screams greaser. Tough guy, rides a motorcycle, dressed sharp but gets into bar fights type. Plus how he uses knives that shoot out from his shoe makes him look underhanded and like a dirty fighter. That combined with him always holding his suit jacket, the pompadour, and riding the Zipline by his legs gives more of an "very vain and obsessed with appearance" kind of vibe.
Nothing about his design really conveys that he would transform or anything, unless you were expecting to put on the jacket
You can have diversity but asking for it on the hero who is supposed to be impssibly handsome greaser fantasy, is not the best imo, specially when its for a moba. Character should tell you all about them at a glance. Him being monke doesnt serve that
Hey now that post I made is only about Shiv's face, nothing more. I cannot wait for the day Sinclair actually gets a design more interesting than a goddamn mannequin. This is not aversion to change, it's literally the opposite, I want the status quo of video game casts looking like fashion runways to change!
Well they’re definitely staying a mannequin, there’s too much stuff in voicelines and characterization to change that. They’re gonna be a way better looking mannequin though, for sure.
I beg that they minimum fix Sinclair's model. It's not even just simple for a placeholder, the cloth physics and deformations just don't work right. Like when they reload their neck just breaks entirely.
Exactly. The early player can not comprehend the concept of a changing wip game. They get attached to stuff despite it clearly not communicating what its meant to properly yet
I mean not to be that guy but I remember saying something among the lines "I hope when Lash gets remodeled they keep the closed eyes thing" and i remember getting downvoted into oblivion and told he was obviously placeholder and that his final design was nowhere close etc etc. Then his remodel showed up and he indeed has that closed eyes big eyebrows look. They improved on the concept.
Of course most likely Yamato won't keep her alien look (even if it would be nice IMO), but I can definitely see Sinclair being some sort of mannequin with both souls inside when they remodel them and Shiv with similar aesthetics but improved face.
We'll never really know until they do the remodels. No need to be like "WELL IT'S OBVIOUS IT WON'T BE THIS WAY". And if you guys don't like a few designs it's not the end of the world when there will be so many characters with different designs. Especially Yamato like guys... You already have a lot of pretty women and even if her pretty-woman remodel design is pretty much confirmed, if it wasn't I'm sure you all would survive it and it would not be the end of the world
I do think there's an interesting idea in: the best looking person, is not very attractive to our standards, however in their universe they are the best looking. Exaggerated even further by having more conventionally attractive characters (to us) who are seen as not as good looking as the other character.
people keep defending the outdated placeholder model with the argument that it's meant to be "unconventionally attractive". If that's the case, than the model kinda fails at communicating this argument, which is a big sin when it comes to deisgn that Valve doesn't allow to happen
Victor is also a hero who's supposed to unconventionally attractive, and the community seems to agree that he's got despite the corpse thing. Meanwhile, the only discourse that pops around Shiv is people saying that he's repusive to look at and then contrarians being like "bro you don't get it, he's HOT asf,trust me bro"
Lol. Shiv being ugly posts are filled with jokes “you dont find him hot?” And “in universe he is handsome” headcanons. Which is a one time gag that runs against the concept and lore of the character (even interactions)
I get Yamato, but Sinclaif just being a mannequin sounds sick to me, I dunno. Maybe they could make a better mannequin but personally that's where I want it to end up.
There are going to be people who are so confused when Vyper inevitably gets her remodel and she looks nothing like a snake. She's a Gorgon, it's the whole reason she turns people to stone.
I understand people growing attached to these placeholder models as when you grow familiar with something no matter how ugly you begin to love it. The unfortunate truth is that Yamato won't have an alien 5-head, Vyper probably won't be shaped like a snake, and Shiv won't have a monkey face.
The only 2 characters who I can believe looking somewhat similar to their placeholder models right now is Sinclair and Bebop. Sinclair looks like a mannequin with a magicians suit and Bebop looks like a scrap golem if you remove the weird futuristic samurai armor on him.
Are there other voice lines that indicate her being a gorgon other than the ult line? Surely if she was an actual gorgon she wouldn’t need to throw a bola at people to do it? I thought “the old gorgon special” was just her trying to be funny or something.
I don’t think Vyper is gonna look like a human with scales. Especially since the very first remodel sketch was of her being an anthro snake (even if the cobra hood was scrapped after).
I’m sorry, I don’t think people find her appeal from her looking like a stereotypical gorgon.
Because the design is cool, the model looks like shit. Yamato is a shit design with a shit model. Sinclair has a very basic but cool design with an extremely shit model. There's a difference between the spirit of the design and the actual asset itself.
I think there's something kinda beautiful and nice about the fact that the characters that everyone in universe considers really attractive are people that have traits that are often not necessarily that irl.
Victor is a walking rotting monster with patchwork flesh and depressed sunken eyes, and he is hit on by like every single woman in the game.
Similarly, Shiv doesn't necessarily have the prototypical "pretty boy" face and I think that him being the character every other character thinks is cute with that in mind makes him all the more beautiful a part of the piece of art that is deadlock. It's empowering that a character doesn't have to be so stereotypical to be written and treated like this- that you can still be found beautiful even if you don't fit the typical molds of attractiveness- that that might be the reason WHY people find you beautiful.
Us not wanting to fuck Shiv like the rest of the cast is not a flaw, it is a beautiful, fascinating feature of deadlock that I would be very sad to see replaced with something far more generic and less meaningful.
Ivy contrasting her pure soul with a monstrous exterior is fucking awesome what are you talking about??
Shiv looking unconventional but being hot nevertheless is more interesting then another generic hot dude. A handful of voice lines about him being hot doesn't overwrite the lore and characterization that exists. A tough asshole from a crappy background turns into a monster hunting hero chasing redemption. Why does he need to be prince charming for that??
I do think he needs a new face and one that is more conventionally attractive. Still, I'd be more happy if it wasn't the "league of legends prettyboy" face.
He needs a mccree face or smth like the Main character of Redline. Conventionally attractive in a grizzled way but not the chinese gacha androgynus slop.
Idk, i feel like this archetype of masculinity doesn't get enough representation. Dude's somewhere between a young ron perlman and a young tom waits and i think that's sick.The pompadour is a little goofy but it cuts a unique silhouette, which is important for gameplay.
As somebody who comes from League, this is a massive breath of fresh air.
Crazy he is so divisive. How is he not handsome. What do people even think a handsome man looks like? Also, “pretty boy” can so easily be teasing the guy for clearly caring about his appearance with his elaborate hairdo. He doesn’t have to be an actually pretty boy.
seriously, it's nice to see a return (or representation at least) of a bad boy biker who spends his spare time drinking bourbon at a bar. too many characters in media end up going down the hyper masculine route, effeminate or just Normal Guy route (nothing wrong with either!) and as a result blend together.
I swear man if this game ends up like lol where all the characters look like each other…
Pls can we let unique looking characters just be let alone?
Literally never have seen a character made like Shiv in one of these games before (MOBA/hero shooter genre). I agree his model can be updated but changing his face seems whack.
I don’t know why you guys need to jerk off over your pvp video game
Valve won't let that happen. They do a pretty good job of filtering out the absolute buffoon takes like OPs where every character needs to be pretty and humanoid.
Its a pompadour which is a hairstyle that was popular around the 50's in America for those following the rebellious greaser style. It then made its way to Japan when they also went through a rebellious motorcycle gang phase due to exposure from western media. Deadlock roughly takes place around the mid 50's so it would make sense for them to use an old hairstyle. Plus pompadours are a common hairstyle to signify a tough guy design
Shiv is so cool in very aspect like his kit his mobility tech how skillrelient he is i like him but that monkey face is really off putting I just can like him like I want to with such goofy face like all of his edgy style shatters on his face
I mean the touchups are mostly what people are talking about here. Shiv still uses his old model from neon prime when he was designed to resemble a monkey.
When his model is updated, they will probably tone down the monkey looking features and maintain his greaser look with the pompadour.
People are generally just getting antsy for the remodels. You see the same for heroes like Yamato too, for example.
I don’t particularly care one way another about his face, but his entire design doesn’t really scream “remorseful killer who partnered up with Drifter in the past and is barely containing his bloodlust/rage” to me
They are 100 percent going to make him better looking and not look like an ape. Plenty of voice lines suggest Shiv is handsome. Its not really a question of if they will change his face since its guaranteed.
Anyone defending the current look is just coping, there are plenty of incomplete models in the game and Shiv happens to be one of them. He still looks iconic regardless, with his pompadour and animations (holding jacket)
People unironically defend current Sinclair, and current Yamato on they hoping they dont get changed or not much. When the final result will obviously be better
God forbid a character have a unique face. I have seen people with similar faces in real life if you really care that much about realism. Also you people care far too much about new for the sake of new. Some of the old models look good, some don't. They should focus on the ones that don't.
Am I insane for thinking that shiv looks handsome. I see this "he's so ugly, why do the characters call him attractive" rhetoric so often it makes me feel like I've lost my mind
How about we stop being shallow and caring so much about a character's perceived attractiveness? Just let em do their thing, it's not like they have a track record of bad designs.
Also gonna join everyone in disagreeing with your take on Ivy. Her design is fantastic and you're not making any real arguments by saying it's a bad design just because she's not pretty enough for you. That's some straight vapid nonsense, imo.
they were talking about this old version of Ivy and if you think this looks better than current Ivy you are insane. Also as a Shiv player, when most of his conversations with other characters mention him being pretty, I do expect some kind of touch up even though I think he looks fine. Valve can cook so we’ll just have to see
I will take this post as an opportunity to say that I hope they add a stabbing animation to his melee. This is because most of his dialogue refers to stabbing despite him mainly throwing knives or slicing with his ult
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u/Upstairs_Belt_3224 5d ago
Victor? Doorman? Venator? Mirage? Infernus? Are we not playing the same video game?