Tag: high heels

Posted on

Riders of Icarus

@vonboomslang submitted:

Dear BABD

Please let me share with you a tale of hopes and disappointment, starring Riders of Icarus, by our old mutual friend Nexon.

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“Well, that is an interesting looking class. I wonder how it looks on females. It probably has a battle skirt or something.”

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“Good lord, is that actual full plate? Armored legs and everything?”

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“Oh. I don’t know what I expected.”

Yours, vonBoomslang

Nexon is such a wild ride, I mean I struggle to understand how the same people publishing Vindictus also publish Dirty Bomb!

Looking at the promotional screenshots for this game, one might easily be tricked into believing that the armor for ladies would not be terrible:

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I mean it doesn’t look great, but the main issue is the stock-standard boobplate that seems to be mandatory in so many fantasy RPGs these days.  Even the trailer isn’t too bad for the first sixty seconds… then:

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Apparently there are still people out there who believe that the MMORPG market is not yet over saturated with this exact same style of double standard nonsense.  Somehow.

– wincenworks

Posted on

Riders of Icarus

@vonboomslang submitted:

Dear BABD

Please let me share with you a tale of hopes and disappointment, starring Riders of Icarus, by our old mutual friend Nexon.

image

“Well, that is an interesting looking class. I wonder how it looks on females. It probably has a battle skirt or something.”

image

“Good lord, is that actual full plate? Armored legs and everything?”

image

“Oh. I don’t know what I expected.”

Yours, vonBoomslang

Nexon is such a wild ride, I mean I struggle to understand how the same people publishing Vindictus also publish Dirty Bomb!

Looking at the promotional screenshots for this game, one might easily be tricked into believing that the armor for ladies would not be terrible:

image

I mean it doesn’t look great, but the main issue is the stock-standard boobplate that seems to be mandatory in so many fantasy RPGs these days.  Even the trailer isn’t too bad for the first sixty seconds… then:

image

Apparently there are still people out there who believe that the MMORPG market is not yet over saturated with this exact same style of double standard nonsense.  Somehow.

– wincenworks

Posted on

@bleedinginkxiii submitted:

Found this oh so lovely set of female mage armor on Artstation. I had some time so I decided to make some fixes. They’re not amazing by any means, but at least these women can move without worry of a breeze or breaking an ankle/neck in the heat of battle. 

The artist also made a set of male counterparts to these and they look nothing alike (surprise, surprise). 

Here’s the link: 

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/O94e

Very nice redesign.  Personally what I find amazing about the male counterparts is that it seems their outfits are already very unisex and would be quite flattering on many bodies:

Looking around these appear to be concepts for a new “card” game by the creators of Vindictus.  It seems, that they’ve been quite free and loose with the art direction, but apparently quite determined to maintain double standards.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

– wincenworks

Posted on

@lauraelyse submitted:

Same character class, same style of game, three different takes on it.
Stylistic choices don’t exist in a vacuum.

Dirty Bomb really doesn’t get enough credit for it’s walking the walk when it comes to egalitarian character designs and commitment to diversity.  Every mercenary has a story, a personality and gear that is suitable to them – on top of that, they’re not afraid to let things get ugly.  Have a look at how Proxy (basically their equivalent of Tracer in terms of personality) looks lately:

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Needless to say Sparks as a white-clad medic who’s only thoughts on her profession is “Call me Sparks. I heal. I kill. Is ironic paradox. Yadda Yadda.” is a wonderful breath of fresh air in games.

Ambra from Battleborn is certainly not ideal, but as we’ve discussed before her design reeks of the Creepy Marketing Guy influence – but they at least made her a unique character and worked in no small amount of entertaining quirk.

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Mercy… oh Mercy.

– wincenworks

Before anyone comes to say we’re taking things out of context or comparing apples to oranges, yes, all those games have their own aesthetic and we should should judge how each character looks within it.
Dirty Bomb is quite realistic, Battleborn is very cartoony and Overwatch lies somewhere in the middle.

Overwatch, out of the three, is the one which suffers from disparate stylization:

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And with female cast already less diverse than male, boobplates, the staple of unrealistic ignorant female costume design, look jarrigly cartoony there.

And we’re still not okay with boobplate on Galilea, even though Battleborn is more heavily stylized.

Speaking of ensemble games with cartoony aesthetic, let’s not forget about Gigantic, which while not boobplate-free (on their healer character, no less), does really good with gender and age balance among their cast.

~Ozzie