Vepar in all its glory!

I'm a fan of the change to the colors and textures, but I can't lie that I'm a little disappointed that they decided to change Vepar's chest. I legitimately thought it played well into the idea of it being this broodmother-type sea demon that would feed its children the sailors it lured with its body. Now its just kinda feels like they're there to indicate that the demon is PROBABLY female (given Vepar's origins who knows though?). I feel like the original textured did play a lot into people saying the breasts were distracting or obscene, with the bright colors making them stand out a lot more. With the darkened and more muted colors and textures on the body, the glowing eyes on her face and stomach providing different highlights and focuses, and the fight being more zoomed out so her chest wasn't just taking up as much of the screen space they did before, I feel like their original size didn't need to be altered.

I'm not gonna make this opinion the battlefield I die on and I hardly think it was a change made due to mass complaints from a majority of vocal fans, but I guess I'm just disappointed because it may indicate that changes could be made to other designs without us even getting the chance to see what things may have originally looked like.

Gotta say that these tweaks to Vepar look nice. Much more menacing and creepy. The chest is smaller but it's still, proportionately, large. Just not massive.

That makes sense, but whose to say Vepar really has to move a whole lot? We don't know what its lifestyle entails. If we assume the ship may have been rather abruptly attacked by Vepar, it may have just appeared out of the aether/hell/wherever to block the ships passage. If Vepar is just always around, it may just patrol the small area around Gebel's castle (assuming thats where this is taking place). Maybe because Vepar mostly looks to be made of water, it could probably just shift the mass elsewhere as needed. Whatever the case may be, it is all fictional, so it doesn't necessarily have to be practical to the real world if its for the sake of evoking a certain idea in its design.



While it may be more in line with depictions at the time, we are still a modern audience they are presenting too, so it would make sense to appeal to a modern depiction of "beauty" if they wanted. Its not like every game in a medieval setting has characters that dress or look like what a person of the time period would, unless the idea was for the game to be as historically accurate as possible, which IGA's games have taken liberties with in the past.



That being said, a "modern depiction of beauty" is also in and of itself a vague descriptor being that we live in a time where all sorts of body types could be considered beautiful. Vepar's original breast size may have leaned a tad more into what most might consider the extreme side of that, but personally I like it when creators show some gusto and decided to exaggerate their designs a bit. It shows a willingness to go off the rails and do potentially unique things and leads to what I feel are more interesting and evocative visuals. If I was simply presented with the newer version of Vepar, I would be none the wiser, but knowing that they changed that detail about it's design, it makes me disappointed knowing that there is the possibility for more design that they will altered to be more reserved.



Its all still fiction though. If one were to decide they want a setting where demons would have genders, they have every right to do so even if it might not be accurate to the original mythos. And even if Demons aren't gendered in Bloodstained's setting, me referring to Vepar with female pronouns was really just for the sake of clarity. I could have used "its" instead of "her", but I was also referring to other parts of Vepar's design as "its", so I didn't want to muddle the points I was trying to get across. When I would refer to Vepar as "her" or "she", people would know I'm talking specifically about "the giant female looking sea monster with the distended belly that ejected smaller sea monsters out of a mouth on said belly".

So, during work I listen to a lot of YouTube. Sometimes I find some good stories. You could imagine this one features Vepar.

I like the new Vepar aspect. I think she looks more detailed than prior. I will say though that I think it needs a lot more detail and refinement for me to get behind this 2.5D style they're going with. I keep hoping they go with a style closer to Trine and maybe they will. All I know is I don't want to settle for sub-par and will gladly wait another year or more for more refinement of characters and environments.