Debates over whether narrative, gameplay, or graphics are more important to a game’s success will likely continue as long as gaming remains a major hobby. However, one thing many players can agree on is that making your character look proper is a priority.
Players of titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Skyrim, and Elden Ring can spend hours in the character creator creating their perfect protagonist. Now it looks like Blizzard wants to improve the appearance of the characters in video games. It’s not by making faces more realistic or giving hair additional physics that Blizzard hopes to improve the appearance of the characters.
Rather, a recent patent from the developer and publisher focuses specifically on video game armor and clothing. These two elements are important in character customization, as sometimes players will take lower stats on their gear to make their protagonist look good, causing some titles like Horizon Forbidden West to introduce a transmog system.
The patent of Blizzard will make all armor look better on a character, meaning one set of gear doesn’t immediately look better than another to a player. Blizzard’s patented system will modify 3D game objects for a character model based on how they fit a previous model.
This essentially means that a piece of armor either clothing it will be modified to better suit the character wearing it, rather than having one skin for a female character model and another for the male version.
It seems like a patent quite ambitious, and if it works as intended Blizzard, could result in one player having a character that looks different from their friend, even though they are both wearing the same gear. It sounds like this patent would be especially useful for Blizzard’s next survival game.
Not much is known about the new title, but it will be set in a new universe for the developer and it looks like it will be a meeting of modern and fantasy environments.