Now this kind of majesty and style is a fantasy look I can get behind. Particularly with the choices of decorative plate on the gorget and combination of chainmail and a tabard.
In an alternate mirror universe where game developers are terrified of making new franchises starring male leads Gears of War, Call of Duty, Doom, Max Payne, Battlefield, and Deus Ex all star Duke Nukem and people get really angry when you say you wish they would try to make some new male leads instead of hammer Duke Nukem into increasingly tonally different games.
Thank goodness female characters in popular video game franchises never suffer from a lack of diversity in appearance or tonal incongruity.
Yes, there is one character who appears in this image line up twice – and it’s not one of the (many) obvious match ups.
– wincenworks
Given the recent hilarity with Street Fighter’s new characters being indistinguishable from some Smite characters (and also some Halloween costumes) – it seemed appropriate to bring up this reminder that so many video games seem to use more or less the same few female models.
So, Kolin and Menat are two new characters introduced into Street Fighter V via intro videos… Kolin’s intro happens to feature her fighting fetishware model Juri.
And since her “Nostalgia Costume” is a throwback to when Kolin wasn’t playable, it’s a proof that you truly need to lose any remnant of credibility in your clothes to become playable female character.
~Ozzie
Posted on
(Warning: This game deals with a lot of dark material and imagery for this game includes a lot of themes of torture, death, psychosis and gore. I have tried my best to avoid putting any disturbing imagery in this post or linking to any directly)
We’ve had numerous requests for comment on Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and to be honest it’s a complicated topic. It is true that it is a game that avoided various tropes that we’re told games need such as bikini armor, battle thongs, cleavage, etc But the outfit is still not on par with say Emily Kaldwen or Billy Lurk’s attire. (It’s still angering brodudes though)
It’s also a game where the much more important criticisms such as the handling of theme of mental illness and protagonist having locs (which Celts and Vikings did not have, which is why their descendants need various modern products to replicate them). So comparatively Senua’s attire not being terrible is minor.
The game is however is an interesting example of how even studios beginning with the noblest intentions can get pulled down by industry pressure and reliance upon media and societal standards. They started with:
They wanted it to be historical, but when it came time to find reference images… they didn’t exactly cite what I could call historically robust sources:
When it came time to scan a body for the 3D model of Senua, they went with a fitness instructor, who also happens to do modelling. She she did end up half of the things that the original vision promised she would not be, and her attire was designed more around modern fashion ideals than her origin.
The fact that it stands out to so many people as so different and that the developers felt they only had the freedom to do this much by avoiding signing on a publisher really says a lot.
Thank you Ricky and Morty for illustrating to us that just because you have special feelings for someone in bikini armor, doesn’t mean you have the perpetuate all the problems yourself.
Summer’s outfit is certainly not perfect, but it’s still far ahead but it’s certainly better and more interesting than most we see.
– wincenworks
The creators are quite open about wastelander designs being an absurdist take on BDSM:
A (tiny bit) exaggerated Mad Max parody proves to be a land of equal opportunity in empowerment.
~Ozzie
Posted on
I came across Black Squad and it seems to be a game that is marketing itself on two things:
It will be like literally every other “real life” inspired paramilitary competitive FPS game (ie a Modern Warfare rip-off)
BUT there will be hot chicks in bike shorts and maximum cleavage on display (including that blond woman with who’s in everything)
So imagine my amusement with I downloaded it looked around in the shops and discovered that not only do they not have any female character options (at least not available for a new player). There are just four white guys who are almost indistinguishable from one another in game to the extent I can’t say for sure if it’s just the same model with different clothing choices.
That and like just about every other paramilitary shooter out there, this game seems to pedantically focus on making gear look as authentic as possible provided it’s not on a woman.
Cowboys outfits rarely get thought of as “armor”, since they’re usually just very durable and/or decorated clothes of a particular era – yet somehow so many depictions of women in this genre go so, so wrong:
Which is why I’m grateful for this series, which pretty faithfully recreated all manner costumes ranging from the flamboyant to the ultra-pragmatic.
