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.”
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.
Evelynn from “League of Legends” just got reworked. And it is… horrendous.
Her attire was always awful, and her splash art as well. Reworking champions should give Riot the opportunity to fix some of the generic-babe-material they started with in 2010. But here we are. 7 years later and not a thing learned. Let’s open the history book on this one…
This was her original art:
It represented so much being wrong while retaining not an ounce of appeal, at least to most male humans I know. You should get a spooky vibe, but there was just nothing there. Just spikes and leather and… not even a weapon. And those heels. The character even jokes ingame about the fact that it is hard to move in those shoes. NO KIDDING.
Then, a while ago, they updated the art. To this:
I actually like this one a tad more. The outfit is the same (because only the splash art got changed, not the ingame model) but it conveys at least something. Still not much to characterise or read into and escher-esque. But at least stuff happens and you get an idea how the character is going to play ingame. And she seems kind of lethal or at least unhinged and dangerous, which is more than you can say of most bikini-clad-“no seriously she is dangerous and can fight”-girls in video game art.
But now, they remade the character. New abilities! New story! New background! A fresh new page to change things! Aaaaand… this happened:
No. Nope. I’m done. Why? Why succubus all of a sudden? Why ditch the spikes and go just down to lingerie? Does that make it better instead of even more generic? Why not add a tattoo that says “I am a metaphor for sex, you guys” and ditch the whole effort?
There obviously was reason to change things, and good thing that they noticed that. But why did they take it in the complete opposite direction to make it just plain stupid. I am not an artist, who can point out all the little signs where this went wrong, but the moment I saw this, I was even more done with the game than I already was.
Oh and one of her new abilities is named “Lust Dust”.
What’s really amusing about the promotional video is that the opening the sinisterassassin would suggest that Evelynn is essentially defined by her power of seduction… but then it quickly becomes apparent she’s more defined by spikes:
Now, spikes honestly makes more sense since League of Legends is basically a video game that more resembles at fantasytabletop war game than a roleplaying game, but apparently someone at Riot Games just really, really wanted to pay an voice actress to record a lot of innuendo lines and pay an artist to draw boobs.
So I’ve been liking my mesmer character, figured this should be one of the two I spend my level 80 character boosts on. Those boosts come with a trial period where you get all the top-level abilities unlocked and can run around a specific area of the game to make sure you want to use this boost before you commit. It also gives you upgraded armor. And locks out your ability to spend transmutation points to change its appearance. And locks away your old gear so you can’t put it back on, even at a significant stat disadvantage. Meaning that upon deciding to try out this boost (which I could only get by pre-ordering their expansion packs or by spending lots of in-game time/real-world money to buy on their gem store), I am very suddenly, unexpectedly, and irreversibly naked. Yes, I’m saying naked, because I can see her fucking crotch.
This game falls squarely within the genre of MMORPG – massively multiplayer online role-playing game. No, I don’t fully ‘role-play’ this character like some people enjoy. But this type of game generally holds the expectation that the player puts fairly significant investment into character creation and advancement. That’s the point of the genre. After playing this game for years, I tend to make characters that reflect some aspect of myself – in this case, (if the hair didn’t clue you in), my queerness. I directed my feelings about my identity, about pride and resilience and sometimes having to redirect attention, into this character and how she looks and how she plays. It’s a game, yes, but it’s also a fun escape that I’ve poured hours into around grad school and a family that I can’t come out to yet. It still means something. So to have that character’s appearance be suddenly taken out of my control, in a way that left her fucking *naked*. Is appalling. And uncomfortable, and sick, and makes me want to scream. Especially in such a clearly objectifying way that even added tattoos that point at her crotch for good measure.
GW2 certainly doesn’t have a perfect history with this kind of stuff, most notably because their starting light armor for their humanoid female characters includes a short skirt and garter belt. But that’s pretty easy to get rid of quickly, and not still not as bad as this. Otherwise, this kind of ‘armor’ tends to be one option among many, there for those that want it and easily passed by for those who don’t. Which is how it should be. But this shit. This isn’t okay.
Guild Wars 2′s track record regarding female designs is, in the most generous words, flawed. And wow, this situation is the textbook example of everything wrong with the skimpy high level trope. The game gave you an opportunity to test all the high-tier gear… by locking the character in probably the most objectifying costume possible. How charming!
Also nice commentary on the fact that MMORPGs are the game genre where players put a lot of investment into their characters. And how making top tier armors like this directly contradicts the appeal of character customization.
Hope you still can decide not to commit to this boost.
Putting the Online game aside, in the original manga and anime the characters belong to a religious order which was originally males only.
You know how women managed to get allowed to join? They have to wear these stupid and totally impractical masks (hello? How does she even see? Or breathe? how does that shit attach? They live in GREECE, for Gea’s sake, who decided putting metal against DELICATE bare skin under such punishing sun was a good idea?)to “give up” their femininity so men won’t feel guilty hurting them. And besides that, if a man ever sees them without the mask they have to either kill him or love him.
They literally made female warriors cover their faces 24/7 so “dudes wouldn’t get distracted” and then threw some metal lingerie at them. Yep, so much less distracting, sure thing… Thankfully we only ever see about three of them, so the other literal 85 male warriors won’t need to feel pressured.
Even funnier. This particular armour is supossed to be a second tier one, which for males supossedly protects more than the third tier ones, while hers… well, has barely any protection at all.
(Second tier)
(Third tier)
Didn’t you know? Weird mask and Madonna bra are totally less distracting than just being a regular knight, like your male peers are!
So I guess, in a very sad way, Saint Seiya Online is a questionable improvement over manga and anime, since the ladies at least are allowed to show their faces (and see and breathe)… For the low low price of trading ridiculous boobplate for skimpy bikini armor full of sharp, stabby parts!
The Sylvanas design is not new, though. It has been exactly like this in World of Warcraft for years. They are just repeating an old mistake there…
Which still totally proves our point that Blizzard is NOT trying to improve. They had a perfect opportunity to update the design and did basically nothing.
While her official model for some reason wears a thong over nice pants, lots of popular Sylvanas fanart depicts her as pantless and Blizzard seem to be pretty okay with that.
Since Blizzard fandom still seems to think that “You shouldn’t criticize this outfit used in Heroes of the Storm, because it originates from another game!”, we thought it’s time to bring back this HotS Sylvanas bingo. Along with the commentary that just because something existed in an older franchise from the same company, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be redesigned and improved.
Like… how does rhetoric make even the slightest bit of sense?
Bad, sexist design is just that, no matter how well established it is.
If Quiet somehow reappeared in a future MGS game, still dressed in a handkerchief bikini and torn tights, would you really expect us to stop making Breathing Through Her Skin jokes?
~Ozzie
So besides the fact that Blizzard has redesigned a lot of their characters over the years, promising to improve on a problematic aspect of your game, and then blatantly recycling those same old aspects, that’s not improvement. That’s the kind of behavior that gets you ridiculed by us.
-Icy
Posted on
It’s funny how when you have a female character who has magical or supernatural protection, and thus can “wear whatever she wants”, that “whatever” always turns out to be lingerie.
Glock H. Palin, Esq.
Yeah, funny that… It’s almost as if Thermian Argument and false assessment of agency had an ugly baby. And that baby kept turning up everywhere.
