The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Month: May 2018
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So Lady Kagami was the main antagonist of Tenchu 2… which was supposed to be an epic battle between ninja clans and rulers in Feudal Japan but somehow ended up with this as the major villain.
How seriously can you expect to take people take this kind of villain when facing off against a protagonist like this:
For those rushing to type that it’s an old game and doesn’t matter – it’s worth remembering what the final installment in core series was. Design aspects like this left unaddressed can kill otherwise unique and engaging properties.
The upcoming game seems to incorporate time travel so they can have massive, carefully crafted settings with nonsensical outfits. Honestly, it makes no sense, since the same press footage they’re releasing confirms… they know how to make sexy badass ladies. I mean, look at this babe:
If you’re not in lustlove you’re just not paying attention.
Of course, most of the current fuss is not over the zombie mode but rather over the lack of a single player campaign. Though personally, I’m glad we get this moment that I’m choosing to believe depicts a female character getting to meet the Creepy Marketing Guy responsible for this.
With Ozzie busy with Real World Things this weekend, Icy was going to do a solo stream, but then she got sick.
We’ll see you all next weekend instead!
~Ozzie and Icy
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This shoot of Taner Sigirtmac was supposed to be channeling Tom of Finland (google searches will almost certainly be NSFW) but personally I think it is a tragedy that this costume isn’t setting a trend for male superheroes.
I think it’s been long enough but if you find yourself getting ready to type up a comment related to Mass Effect: Andromeda’s animations please consider watching this educational video from Extra Credits and not commenting here instead. This post is going to be a clarification of what we mean when we say Creepy Marketing Guy, and since the first post on this topic featured Samara, it’s only fair that Cora be the star of the clarification.
First, let’s start with what we do not mean when we refer to Creepy Marketing Guy. It does not refer to:
Using distinctly porny ads to promote products (be they porn or not porn), particularly if they’re generic images from a clickbait ad company
What we instead refer to is a product where you can see the development team’s intentions are to create something where every element is involved in telling a specific story – and then someone (usually marketing) steps in and makes the change specific parts of them with the assumption that the cishet male demographic needs the sexual availability of at least one female character broadcast to them in order to be interested in the unrelated aspects.
In this case, they pick Cora Harper, who is an ultra-professional soldier (one of the most battle hardened in the team), introduced as being calm in a crisis, the second in command on the mission, and seems to use “male” set of animations for her running, etc (instead of the elbows-in butt wiggle run generally assigned to female characters, including fem!Ryder).
Then you see in the outfit in the top of the post before launching into the tutorial mission, during which she appears in cut scenes like this:
Pretty much every other female character in the establishing chapters of the game has pragmatic, non-gendered attire on and off the battlefield. But, since Cora is a romance option for bro!Ryder, she apparently needs to wear a fetish outfit sculpted around her boobs and butt, while on the battlefield. The other female member of the away team who is a romance option also similarly needs to broadcast she’s got a sexy side (she also only owns one set of clothes).
All other traits other than romance option to bro!Ryder are considered secondary – to the extent now Cora looks not just contradictory to her character but out of place in the game about exploring a new galaxy, finding wondrous alien technology and shaping humanity’s future.
(This does not seem to apply to the male romance options, examples 1 & 2)
Ironically this now means she is so out of place cannot be included in marketing material without making the game look a ridiculous parody of a dramatic adventure exploring alien worlds in a new galaxy. It’s almost like they should have just given her one of the dozens of pragmatic outfits I am sure the concept artists designed for Cora before being told to sex it up.
– wincenworks
What is it with the “above boobs and under boobs belts” design feature that’s become so popular lately? Also, I thought Ashley’s outfit in Mass Effect 3 was insulting; the new BioWare studio really took it up a notch, though. … Good job?
I’ve read none of the promotional material for ME:A before it came out, so when I watched part of a Let’s Play of it out of curiosity, I couldn’t believe that Cora was this battle-hardened badass soldier type; I thought she was just another human on the ship. Her design makes me think of EDI before anything else. Those really sad attempts at actual armor pieces (like the baby plates on her shoulders) somehow make it worse, like Creepy Marketing Guy begrudgingly allowed it.
Also, send help, that butt window is staring into my soul.
This throwback is as the reminder that the problem of ridiculous female armor design is a wide spread enough probably that even studios known for being progressive end up falling prey to it.
That and well I recently acquired the Mass Effect Adult Coloring Book, which features Cora in it, but she’s clearly more inspired by the costume design than the writing in the game…
So much good work can be lost by pandering to an unappreciative demographic.
– wincenworks
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Angela and the layered armor (+ a cozy cardigan)
Marvel’s Angela redesign is still one of the favorite ones I streamed.
Maybe one day we’ll get to stream fixing that winged monstrosity.
Back to the redesign, tho: My priority, given that now she’s an Asgaardian warrior, was giving Angela actual armor, with lots of layering. She got some undershirt and pants, gambeson and mail tunic (painted vaguely, so it can be either chainmail or scalemail), then on top of that a believable breastplate instead of two half-spheres that barely connect at her sternum.
I disliked her generic huge belt design, so looking for inspiration in costumes of her father, Odin, I found this custom figure with really cool belt (unfortunately, source ungooglable):
So I based Angela’s belt buckle on his, as well as on the pattern from her magical ribbon thingie. Now that I look at it, I might have also taken some shape and color cues for her breastplate and gambeson tassetts from Odin.
Other little details: got rid of the pointless butt cape, made shoes not go thigh-high (how is she supposed to bend knees in metal thigh-highs anyway?) and gave her stockier built.
I’m really satisfied with that color scheme. What’s funny is that it was already there. Each color I used was sampled from some minuscule part of her costume that was drowning in the sea of dominating gold and flesh tones.
Ironically, despite this armor being the first “screenshot” image on Conan Exiles’ Steam page – I can’t find any evidence that it is or has ever actually been in the game. The reason why is not particularly clear. After all, this is “heavy armor”:
The part that is most amazing about it is that the lower half is covered in pants that seem far beyond the heavy armor but then have a nightmarish boobplate that seems to have been designed with zero considerations for protection.
It gets chafing nightmare because it seems that after adding a layer of padding under the metal… they decided that a bare steel chain strap will be fine.
This is doubly a shame because not only does a certain marketing strategy seem to impeding them giving a solid representation of the game but they’re also missing the opportunity to show the real empowerment in the game:
– wincenworks
Update: Apparently it is possible to recreate the outfit, but requires mixing and matching bits, @p75369 created the female version here and… well I’m sure you’ll be shocked the male version is different.
