Category: Uncategorized

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karniz replied to your post “have you seen the armor for characters on Diablo III, and if so, what’s your opinion on them?

Why do you guys just look at concept/promo art and not actual in-game armors? The actual armor within DIII is very well designed and not as sexualized as the samples you show. I feel it’s a disservice to your viewers that you don’t do more research..

Oh wow, you’re telling me that the promotional material Blizzard creates to market Diablo 3 are completely misleading and non-representative of the game… and not only has nobody mentioned this before but somehow it’s my fault?

Wow, I better look into that right away. Thankfully there’s always YouTube to provide us with Let’s Play videos so I can take screenshots that look slightly off since the live footage is always in motion and was never intended for still frames!

I bet the the in game models look completely different.  I bet they’re huge and so detailed that you’d be a fool to look at anything but what the actual in game play looks like.  It’d be ridiculous to propose that Diablo figures are displayed, by default, so tiny that you can’t make out any real detail beyond basic colours and silhouette right!?

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Oh… well never mind! The first thing you do when you start one of these games is create a character.  Obviously the Barbarian models in character creation will be completely different to those used in promotion and the ones that someone made gifs (from gameplay) of!

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Oh wow… what a co-incidence!  Oh well, there’s always the Demon Hunter right?  It’d be ridiculous to think that they’d use that stupid stance where she poses one leg in front of the other, sacrificing her balance to flaunt her hips! Or have her arms posed to both look like a she’s trying to be an action movie star and draw attention to her boobs.  That’d never…

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Wait a minute… does this game actually have all the problems previous suggested? Is it possible I just use promotional art and cleaned up gifs because they are easier to read and communicates clearer?

Is it possible that this kind of rampant double standard and objectification of women is so common in gaming that many people just assume it’s justified and normal?  And that it’s long overdue people called it out and didn’t just forgive games because there were a few good examples in it if you looked?  Or even games where it’s mostly good with some outrageously bad items used in marketing?

Outrageous! Someone should start a blog about this kind of thing… they could even like, make some sort of checkbox game to help illustrate the point!

– wincenworks

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have you seen the armor for characters on Diablo III, and if so, what’s your opinion on them? i think they’re actually very practical compared to other games and if a piece of armor’s revealing on a woman it’s likely to also be revealing on its male equivalent :)

I don’t think I would ever describe any outfit from Diablo III as “practical”.  Which is okay in itself, fantasy that conforms strictly to reality isn’t much of a fantasy.

That said, I feel there is only one outfit for a character in Diablo III that deserves celebrating – the Crusader.  And I suspect she only got her outfit because of the moral implications of her occupation:

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All the others may be equally revealing, but are designed with very different stories and themes to them.  For example, as is appropriate to our blog, Barbarians.

First there’s the male barbarian. A massively muscular individual on a huge skeletal frame – his heart exposed due to his apparent unwillingness to match a breastplate with his oversized pauldrons and horned belt.

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Female barbarian, equally exposed per se but her frame is less bulky, her pauldrons less over done, she has no big horns before her and her outfit is structured to ensure nothing obscures the silhouette of her boobs:

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And of course, there’s the desktop wallpaper that’s seems to be a homage to Red Sonja in wardrobe, hair and general presentation.

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A lack of armor or even clothing is not inherently a bad thing.  It is not by accident that a totally nude warrior will not score Bingo, but a suit of battle lingerie will.  Depending on your circumstances, it may even be safer and healthier to disrobe before battle.

Outfits should not be measured by some sort of skin quota – there are some amazingly terrible outfits that cover a lot of skin.  Rather it has to do with the purpose and priorities behind the designs, no amount of tweaking a male version’s armor or arbitrary coverage rules is ever going to disguise when a design prioritized being sexy over being badass.  Rather it tends to just make things even more absurd:

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All of this is sadly pretty standard for fantasy and video games in general due to the strange belief that (regardless of what other aspects they have) at least the highly visible, if not all, female characters must present aspects like cleavage in order to be successful.

Which is really ridiculous when you remember that some of them (coughUbisoftcough) really seem irrationally adverse to including playable female characters in the first place.

– wincenworks

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jethroq:

Plate armor isn’t exactly spandex, but it’s also not a tank you wear on your body.

And like, any male ranger/thief/whatever agility based class character is not going out in a metal speedo, so why exactly are female warrior/strength/heavy armor + weapons type characters in chainmail bikinis?

The agility defence is the official worst argument when it comes to fantasy armors.

And a little bit more on why the “women aren’t strong enough to wear armor” myth is just absurd.

Remember, in times of war they used to fit hundreds of soldiers in this stuff and expect them to fight all day with heavy weapons.  Armor had to be light enough allow an “average” man with training to use it reliably, which means it’d be easily usable for the “average” woman with the same training.

– wincenworks

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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If men had to wear the same armor styles that women do in certain games their heart would always be unprotected.

Handily the concept art for the upcoming game Nosgoth provides us a perfectly illustrated example of how ridiculous the the boob window really is.

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Why did they do this? I don’t really know.  Why did they do this for a vampire? I really don’t know.

All I know is: If this was a female character then many people wouldn’t even give a second thought to how ridiculous this is.

– wincenworks

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I’m a lady-type person with a large rack (Around european cup size 75j-80j). At this size binding doesn’t really work (at least for me – sports bras don’t really do enough either) What kind of armor you reckon would work best for a large bust?

I don’t have a lot of experience in building armor myself, but I reached out to a friend who’s been into extremely enthusiastic for several decades and happens to be a woman.  Her recommendation is a globose breastplate with padding for additional support.  Something like these:

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(Joan of Arc by Albert Lynch (x) and Knightess by TypeSprite (x))

It is possible that one made off a peg suit you, but more likely that you would need one custom made.  Regardless you’d be going to a smooth deflective curve such as in the illustrations above.  Plate armor like this is actually quite roomy in order to allow movement, so there’ll be plenty of room to add supportive padding.

Globose breastplates are held on with a harness, so with firm padding should be able to restrain even the mightiest bosom.  Similar armoring techniques were often used when making custom suits for rotund nobles,  Henry VIII of England armors show a gradually increasing girth throughout his life.

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(Photo by Chuck, King Henry VIII’s armor in the Tower of London’s Royal Armouries.)

– wincenworks