But, what identified her as Brigitte, what kind of character is she? Was this depiction of her accurate to previous material?
The woman depicted in the short is the second-most muscular woman we’ve seen in Overwatch (second only to Zarya) with a cog tattoo on her left shoulder and a t-shirt which has the sleeves torn off and reads “I like exercise because I love eating” and she has the standard issue Disney-face.
This is Brigitte in her only other speaking appearance, note how she started with a strong jawline, narrow lips and freckles:
And here she is in her other follow up appearance, arms like twigs and half-way to the final Disney-face, no more freckles or jawline:
So really what identified her as Brigitte were these elements:
Proximity to Reinhardt during his pre-game period
Tendency to tell Reinhardt that he shouldn’t do what the audience is specifically eager for him to do (ie, be a hero)
Her hair is kind of the same and she has practical pants (a rarity for women in the world of Overwatch)
Nobody refers to her by name while she’s around
There’s also that one in-game spray graphic where she’s shown sporting even more “prettified” face, posing for a photo with her dad (good luck knowing that relation without digging up lore):
The greater irony of this is that the single exchange between Reinhardt and Mercy where Brigitte’s name is mentioned actually undermines her role in the video. According to the in-game content she goes off with Reinhardt on his adventures… not keeping him company in the castle while he avoids risks. Note how in the short she isn’t shown to change her mind and support Reinhardt’s decision at the end.
(Also worth noting is people have been asking, by name, for her to appear more often and be shown helping Reinhardt in the game for over a year now but this is the closest Blizzard have come, that and they had to confirm her who father was in a tweet because again… zero priority elsewhere.)
At this point, if you look at what Blizzard have provided: Brigitte has no consistent look beyond pants, skin tone and hairstyle. Her only consistent behavior is telling Reinhardt not to go be a hero. In the video she isn’t even shown doing the other support aspects such as enabling travel, fixing his armor, gathering intelligence, being the social one of the pair, etc.
The point is here is Blizzard doesn’t care enough about a female character to give her a consistent appearance, have her name be used so the audience can identify her or give her any sort of motivations of her own – you shouldn’t take the time to act like she’s an important character who everyone should know.
I promise you that defending Blizzard’s failures to do the basics when it comes to their promises of better depictions of women and better diversity will not result anything good for anyone other than Blizzard’s shareholders.
– wincenworks
@otherwindow has done a beautiful edit of what Brigitte would have looked like in the short if they stayed true to her initial comic appearance.
I said this on the Moira post, but really… what could have been.
-Icy
This is exactly what I meant by “asking us to “do our homework” before we comment will make the commentary far more critical, not more lenient.”
She had a lot of exquisitely ridiculous costumesthroughout time (green is usually her color, corresponding with Loki’s), so I decided to take jab at by far the most WTFiest design, from the Ultimate Marvel continuity.
Now that is an “evil is sexy” trope in full swing! Looks like literal BDSM outfit, only done by someone who never saw real BDSM gear (so E.L. James’s visual artist counterpart?). Art by our “favorite” Frank Cho (first and third image) and David Finch (second image), so the comparison wasn’t really far off.
I’m always upset by Hel(a) being just another smooth-skinned Barbie in Marvel stories, considering how interesting is her appearance as told by Norsemyths she originates from. Half of her body is supposed to be that of a corpse, which disturbed Asgardians enough to give her reign over Hel (or Helheim), the land of those who died inglorious deaths, where other gods won’t have to interact with her.
Okay, so predictably Blizzard has used Blizzcon to announce a new Overwatch character, and now Talon (the bad guys) have a support healer – and surprisingly despite them clearly having recycled a lot of Mercy’s look (with more than little bit of Zarya and a lot of David Bowie… I mean a LOT), they’ve managed to avoid the Evil is Sexy trope this time.
Honestly this design is pretty good but I get the feeling that the boobplate is literally a case of “if no boob, how woman!?” given how refreshingly androgynous Moria looks in most of her origin story and lineup pic
It’s also pretty cool how she fills a big hole in Overwatch lore and meets the outspoken player demand for an evil/amoral healer.
Of course Blizzard took Blizzcon as the opportunity for demonstrating how they’re doing representation of women better in their games and media.
They also, a few hours earlier, released what is essentially Reinhardt’s origin story, which features exactly one female character:
An unnamed* redhead with a Disney face who is there to tell him that he doesn’t need to be hero so he can tell her that he totally does.
This is why it’s difficult to believe that, while many of their staff may be trying hard, Jeff Kaplan and Blizzard as an entity care about representation beyond marketing sound bytes and feminist cookies.
– wincenworks
Oh, what could have been.
I wish they would have pushed the medical tubing further, instead of just giving her a little tube backpack. Like maybe extending the tubing down her right arm to emphasize that she deals damage with it. Overall, the design is just very…. Safe. And also not angular enough. Look at the origin story screenshot above; angles!
I’m just kind of disappointed, honestly. One more thin, young-looking white woman, and her black/purple color scheme is giving me Morgana flashbacks.
Also, her powers are very reminiscent of Hel from SMITE and Seris from Paladins. We’ve almost achieved the originality singularity!
-Icy
I see this as a consistent problem with many female character additions to Overwatch… Individually, they’re pretty interesting designs (though it’s guaranteed that they looked better, less “safe”, in concept art), but when put together in a group, they turn into this boring blob of young-looking, thin, mostly pale ladies with a token unique feature here and there.
As I said before, I’d take so much less issue with D.Va (cause her pretty girl design is consistent with her teenage idol persona) if she didn’t follow after introduction of Mercy, Tracer, Widowmaker etc, who all have fatal flaws dictated by “sex sells” in their designs.
*We understand that Brigitte has a name (thanks for all the readers for informing us of it); however that actually confirms our criticism regarding the supposed need for “doing the research” – the animated short can’t even bother to put her name into dialogue. The audience has to read some auxiliary non-game material beforehand to know who she’s supposed to be.
You: Video games won’t sell unless they’re filled with half naked women
Nintendo, an intellectual:
To be fair, this is a power fantasy even I can get behind. Who doesn’t want to have such chiseled muscles after being asleep for 100 years?
-Icy
It’s not like we don’t take any issues with female characters in Nintendo games (ahem) or like the company doesn’t take part in most idiotic double standard rhetoric (uhum), but at least they do offer some wholesome family fun male shirtlessness sometimes.
If a design isn’t good enough to communicate its narrative purpose to someone completely unfamiliar with the story behind it
(so each and every bikini armor falls under this), it fails as a design. As Red Queen puts it:
It’s not the player’s job to figure out what the designer is trying to actually tell them, as opposed to taking what is being communicated through this image at face value, before the game even begins.
And continues:
If this is what the game chooses to present to people who don’t know anything about the game yet, maybe don’t be quite so flippant about it when people get the wrong idea. Because then it actually matters that they don’t know anything about the game.
So truly, insight of someone who doesn’t know yet how an element that looks ridiculous is explained in-universe (or even by the creators,in some additional material), is quite valuable, as it sheds light on potentially problematic things that lore-savvy fans and creators aren’t capable of noticing.
We’re often accused by detractors of not having credentials to talk about (usually) a game we’re criticizing, because we supposedly never played it. Putting aside a fact that with three of us being huge nerds and pop media consumers, at least one would be somewhat familiar (unless the product is super obscure) – why would that be relevant? No matter if we know the title well or just superficially, our criticism of female visual representation is always the same.
In-depth familiarity of a story behind combat lingerie hasn’t yet once made us ashamedof our words and deeds. If anything, the more we know about any particular Thermian argument, the better we are at picking it apart. So asking us to “do our homework” before we comment will make the commentary far more critical, not more lenient.
Whether or not we actually do comprehensive research for any particular piece of media depends on many factors, like:
how influential versus obscure the media in question is
how interesting the excuses for skimpy female costumes in it are
if we’re already familiar with it beforehand
if there’s a Wiki for it
if a submitter provided some info
how much time we have at the moment
So while we try to at least look up everything we talk about, the amount of lore-heavy commentary (and its relative accuracy) varies from post to post.
Because, again, as we put it in our FAQ, this is not a full review blog, but one discussing character and costume design in the very specific context of in-story combat and meta-level sexism. Finishing a game or knowing a TV/comic series full storyline isn’t necessary for us to point at a fictional lady who goes sword fighting in two pasties and a chainmail thong next to dudes in heavy plate armor and say this is an absurd image. It just is.
