Are you sure about that?
Guild Wars 2 continues to be the textbookiest textbook example of most typical of double standard cliches in video game armors.
For a game that
can provide occasional (relatively) nice female armor and has a commendably self-aware fanbase, GW2 itself is lacking self awareness of its very obvious shortcomings. It just plays the bikini armor tropes straight and pretends there’s nothing out of ordinary about a lady in metal lingerie being the direct equivalent to a dude in heavy armor.
~Ozzie
Yikesaroonie. This also seems to be the Norn race, which live in a place that’s so cold, they have giant ice statues just standing around in town, as depicted vaguely in those background colors. I can’t even tell where her crotch flap is supposed to be attached? Is it coming from her underwear??
Armor like this becomes even more hilarious when you’re in the super serious story cutscenes, and people are talking about military tactics and loss of life, and your character is just… dressed like that… being a commander and stuff… yeah.
(The color scheme is also Awful, but it’s customizable. I just wish their algorithm was better at picking the preliminary examples for you.)
-Icy
edit: Corrected the Norn name. Thanks for correcting us, no thanks for the tone, dear rebloggers.
So, Divinity: Original Sin 2 started off looking kind of promising. Despite their head animator throwing a public tantrum on deviantArt, Larian Studios did seem to be making a fairly attempt to improve next time, after all someone had instructed Thierry to fix the artwork (to his great upset) in the first place.
So on 1 October 2015, their Kickstarter finished successfully.
On 11 February 2016, they published results of a survey they did which showed completely unsurprising results for a studio where creative leads can post rants about their right to be paid to objectify:
On 10 August 2016, it became pretty clear that Larian Studios decided the thing to do with this information was to double down and go back to their regular double standards:
Around May 2017 they started using their current iconic line up, the front and center lead of which has such a ridiculous costume it appears their advertising team feels the need to hide it:
Ironically, despite this apparently being less of Creepy Marketing Guy and more part of the studio culture, a lot of the content could be pretty good and they could probably get a lot more female players if they didn’t strive to save the booplate.
Alas, it seems to commitment knows no bounds:
Can’t imagine why they have so few female players…
– wincenworks
@bikiniarmorbattledamage
Found some unsexualized female armor ?
Once Upon A Time has been pretty great for female armor, design – though the stiletto heels and lack of shoulder protection make this one a little less awesome than Mulan’s set.
However, it’s still well above the standard for today’s media and it’s really nice to see leather armor that looks like armor and not fetishware.
– wincenworks
Why is “no helmet” in the bingo, I fo mock battles all the time and have little need of a helmet even though I own 3.
There is an extremely critical difference that you need to remember between mock battles and real battles.
People in mock battles are not only not trying to kill you, they’re actually take deliberate steps to make sure you aren’t injured!
In a real battle your head is particularly vulnerable and a high priority to protect for a variety of reasons:
- Head wounds bleed really strongly, between blood in your eyes and problems from blood loss – a relatively light cut can be a death sentence
- Your head is relatively unprotected compared to your other vital regions. Even a glancing blow can do serious damage to organs like your eyes, nose, etc
- Because it is on top of your body, your head is vulnerable to attacks from pretty much every angle except directly below it so it has more ways to get hurt
- As well as being the end point for the common carotid arteries, your head also contains a vital organ known as the brain. Serious harm to this organ can result in life long crippling and/or death.
Not wearing a helmet as part of artistic license is often employed with characters who are either not normally in armor, or who need to be recognizable as unique among many armored figures.
However it is also often employed with female characters because of the idea that unless a character has long flowing locks, warm kissable lips and a dainty little nose clearly on display – men won’t be able to tell the character is female (and hence they’re supposed to be attracted to her).
Basically prioritizing the sexualization and objectification of female characters over portraying them as competent, interesting people, etc.
– wincenworks
So there’s been a few more people asking why we would include no head protection on the bingo card…
I know, I know…
But it probably also bears repeating that generally speaking, that part of the reason it’s a bingo card is because is that singular elements (even completely nonsensical) rarely ruin a design (most people don’t even notice Pharah’s battle thong).
So if a something tends to skip on helmets for men and women alike for the purposes of giving character’s distinctive appearances and expressions it’s unlikely anyone is going to take issue. It’s more about stuff like this:
Or this
– wincenworks
Why is “no helmet” in the bingo, I fo mock battles all the time and have little need of a helmet even though I own 3.
There is an extremely critical difference that you need to remember between mock battles and real battles.
People in mock battles are not only not trying to kill you, they’re actually take deliberate steps to make sure you aren’t injured!
In a real battle your head is particularly vulnerable and a high priority to protect for a variety of reasons:
- Head wounds bleed really strongly, between blood in your eyes and problems from blood loss – a relatively light cut can be a death sentence
- Your head is relatively unprotected compared to your other vital regions. Even a glancing blow can do serious damage to organs like your eyes, nose, etc
- Because it is on top of your body, your head is vulnerable to attacks from pretty much every angle except directly below it so it has more ways to get hurt
- As well as being the end point for the common carotid arteries, your head also contains a vital organ known as the brain. Serious harm to this organ can result in life long crippling and/or death.
Not wearing a helmet as part of artistic license is often employed with characters who are either not normally in armor, or who need to be recognizable as unique among many armored figures.
However it is also often employed with female characters because of the idea that unless a character has long flowing locks, warm kissable lips and a dainty little nose clearly on display – men won’t be able to tell the character is female (and hence they’re supposed to be attracted to her).
Basically prioritizing the sexualization and objectification of female characters over portraying them as competent, interesting people, etc.
– wincenworks
So there’s been a few more people asking why we would include no head protection on the bingo card…
I know, I know…
But it probably also bears repeating that generally speaking, that part of the reason it’s a bingo card is because is that singular elements (even completely nonsensical) rarely ruin a design (most people don’t even notice Pharah’s battle thong).
So if a something tends to skip on helmets for men and women alike for the purposes of giving character’s distinctive appearances and expressions it’s unlikely anyone is going to take issue. It’s more about stuff like this:
Or this
– wincenworks
Amelia in Fire Emblem Heroes
FEAnon submitted (and Ozzie bingo’d):
So the character Amelia from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones was added to the inter franchise crossover, Fire Emblem Heroes in her General form, General being a heavily armored character class in Fire Emblem.
In Sacred Stones, Amelia looks the part if she becomes an armored class, but something seems off from her Heroes depiction.
Amelia seems to have forgotten not only leggings fro her armor, but pants. Maybe I’m missing something, but why wear heavy armor if your entire lower body is exposed? That pose and the camera focus is also real interesting of the artist.
Male Member of the same class in the same game.
Lets try for a Bingo!
Unimpressive bingo score, but that just shows how close Amelia was to a decent female armor design before someone decided that a girl knight should go pantless, despite being heavily armored from waist up.
Also wow, that second big image… Gratuitous upskirt shot while she suffers costume damage? Are we sure this is Fire Emblem, not Kanpani Girls?
How sad it is that the only images of this character without randomly uncovered legs are low-res sprites from an older game… Gods forbid pants on a female warrior were more than a couple pixels high.
~Ozzie
There’s been some excitement over Valkyrie’s full armor for Thor Ragnarok… but frankly I’m disappointed for the most part.
Even Tessa’s Thompson’s badass attitude can’t fix the weirdness of this design. Top plate even has a literal hole between the breasts. It shows the layer of armor beneath instead of bare skin, but it’s still a weakening and blow-directing point on the chest. And even though relatively flat, the breastplate overall brings plenty of attention to the boobs with the shapes and colors (could it be any less subtle than painting the titties gold?).
I’m starting to think that the other, vacuum-sealed chest Valkyrie costume was some sort of “See? We can do worse!” decoy, so that the audience’s expectations are lowered enough to accept just a slightly less insulting boobplate as an improvement.
And that’s a shame, because with a better chest piece (and without the wedge heels) this could have been a cool, believable female warrior costume (even if more on the aesthetic than practical side).
Seems to me like boob ornamentation always gets in the way of Valkyrie looking truly great, no matter which iteration of the character it is.
~Ozzie
Is it just me or does she look like she’s a party member in Mass Effect? I mean…
She does not look like she belongs at all… Is she maybe Space Valkyrie from the Future??
-Icy
h/t: @olofahere