‘Batman: Arkham Knight’ May Be Game Of The Year – But There’s One Big Problem (contains spoilers)
While most critics are busy either wildly celebrating Batman: Arkham Knight or raging over the poor quality of the PC port, this article talks about a very important point – the inevitable diminishing of the female characters.
I feel it would be dishonest not to hold their costuming as at least partially accountable. When developers put all their design focus on making the female characters appear sexy and exposed, then it greatly reduces the options for the kind of roles they can have in scenes. The can either be:
- Vulnerable and some sort of device (decoration, instrument, prize or joke but never a person)
- Spectacularly over powered in a attempt to subvert the costume and play the “so badass their costume doesn’t need to make sense” card
Since Batman games always put Batman as the hero, it means there’s scant few opportunities for the second option and they usually only get one bite of the apple. Ivy in Arkham Asylum, Catwoman in Arkham City and now in order to make Harley Quinn formidable (instead of the Joker’s puppet) they gave her what’s actually the most practical outfit in the series to date:
(Yes it is actually an upgrade on Arkham Asylum and Arkham City)
This is why video games, comic books and video games based off comic books can’t have nice things.
– wincenworks
SU Knights
While Crystal Gems, much like Sailor Scouts, aren’t the kind of warriors who really need armor, those are nevertheless very cool stylized redesigns which I’m glad will join other cartoony armors among our positive examples.
So glad, in fact, that I’m introducing ‘cartoony armor’ tag for designs like these: not necessarily realistic or 100% practical, but larger-than-life only in positive, non-sexualized ways.
~Ozzie
Here we go again
whereismywizardhat submitted:
Time to add to Langrisser’s sins against basic sanity in costume design
This is Priestess Mariel Sarlus. I mean, I know nuns are often sexualized anyways, but really?!?
One of the things I always find truly baffling about a lot of these designs is they’re not trying to find integrate the fantasy setting with the sexy design… they’re just cutting windows and adding clothes you’d find in a modern day lingerie catalog (or sex shop).
I mean… unless I’m supposed to believe that part of her role as priestess is to set some sort of example for pubis grooming.
– wincenworks
Here we go again
whereismywizardhat submitted:
Time to add to Langrisser’s sins against basic sanity in costume design
This is Priestess Mariel Sarlus. I mean, I know nuns are often sexualized anyways, but really?!?
One of the things I always find truly baffling about a lot of these designs is they’re not trying to find integrate the fantasy setting with the sexy design… they’re just cutting windows and adding clothes you’d find in a modern day lingerie catalog (or sex shop).
I mean… unless I’m supposed to believe that part of her role as priestess is to set some sort of example for pubis grooming.
– wincenworks
As excited I was about ME:A being announced, this (i’m sure very fast) concept art put a bad taste in my mouth. Just goes to show how silly poses for women are so ingrained into artist’s heads that they probably did it without thinking, not realizing how they broke her out of perspective (check her shoulders and feet against the man) just to achieve it too. I mean they were probably drawn separately but no one was like wait a second… lol
Happy space adventuring!
Even with equal amounts of body coverage, Mass Effect characters can’t escape the double standard.
I think kaaaaaaaaaaaaaldwin puts the problem with original picture really well in here:
~Ozzie
Personally I am hoping that the E3 demo armor was chosen for conveying more dynamic motion and this is just a side effect of marketing people going overboard with it.
It is good though that they’re now promoting the female option right away and I do hope that the rest of the armors will be more like what we saw last year.
– wincenworks
