With a very few exceptions, pretty much every time I see a game brag about diverse body shapes – I wonder if they hired the same “expert” consultant that Levi’s did:
Since everyone can predict us talking again about Overwatch in the near future, this week’s throwback is the video game industry’s bafflingly narrow definition of what “diversity” among female characters looks like.
Oh boy, it’s what I’ve been dreading when the Soul Calibur VI character releases started; another uninspired lingerie-esque outfit for Ivy!
[ x5 ]
It’s so aggressively boring that the details they added, like the lace on her stockings and the cords around her sides, somehow make it even less interesting. She looks like she’s cosplaying herself. They also seem to have removed the snake motifs she had previously, and replaced them with… uhh, generic skulls, I guess? Cause that’s intimidating and not overdone at all.
[Ivy, thinking “What, you thought this was going to be a good design? Ha!” with a knowing smile]
I guess I’ll give the devs credit for giving her a boob window while also showing off about 70% of her breasts (the lace doesn’t count as covering). That’s some next-level dedication.
What is it with companies thinking that professional, Machiavellian female characters wear fetish outfits?
Wow. So she decided “I’m going to wear this pointless half-helmet that offers no protection, but I’m going to expose most of my upper torso, in a way which is hugely impractical for most mundane tasks let alone super-villainy”. Maybe she wants to show off her lack of bellybutton?
Star Sapphire basically never gets a break from godawful costume.
What upsets me the most is that animated adaptations usually veer on the safer (and less physically impossible) side of sexualized superheroine costumes (see: Angela and Dagger), thus old DC Animated Universe Star Sapphire just wore a leotard and thigh-high boots:
The Justice League Doom one is just… ugh.
~Ozzie
Legion of Doom, more like Legion of Skin.
Nobody in this team has a bellybutton…
Also, apparently that purple star tattoo is where she stashed her powers. Observe.
Am I the only one weirded out by the casual way with which he just sticks his hand into another person? ( ಠ_ಠ) Not to mention, maybe put the crystal that holds all of your powers somewhere where a person can’t just grab it so easily. Then maybe she could wear a better outfit.
Here we go again… Kojima posted a new concept art on his Twitter (left), which is apparently a female version of Ludens, the character featured in the Kojima Productions logo (right.) Can’t wait to hear about her tragic skin condition that requires her to wear literally half the armor of her male counterpart
Given that he’s already over-used (which is to say, he used) the “she breathes through her skin” excuse, and, well, how most of Death Stranding’s promotion has gone thusfar: I’m pretty confident the explanation will 1. make no sense and 2. ensure we receive contradictory responses from his fans trying to defend it.
Of course, the first thing they always tell me is I don’t know enough about Kojima’s work so let’s look at some some of his fans are saying about the deep textual values of this complex piece:
– wincenworks
And let’s not forget that the experience of starting to understand Kojima’s genius ideas, including gratuitous definitely justified and not contrived female sexualization, takes only playing the whole game at least two times, preferably with complete familiarity of all his other work.
edit: Since it caused some confusion: we don’t know for sure whether female Ludens is just a “fun” variation on Kojima Productions mascot or a future character concept for Death Standing. It’s alleged she might be the latter, but either way both her design and the commentary about Kojima belong among topics we discuss on the blog.
