Lady Soldiers from XCOM: Enemy Within
I’ve meant for a while now to offer a writeup for the XCOM
games for a while now. My brother picked it up a couple years ago, and I
was immediately impressed with the armor designs for the women soldiers
in the game. Unlike other science-fiction based games, where skin-tight
catsuits and shorts with unzipped jackets over tube tops are considered
effective combat attire, ALL of the armor in XCOM
offers full body coverage for both male and female soldiers. I picked up
a copy from a Steam sale last week and found myself infinitely
addicted.XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its expansion Enemy Within
are turn-based sci-fi strategy games featuring excellent squad-basted
tactical combat on various urban and wooded environments. In Enemy Unknown,
players are in charge of the XCOM Project, a secret multinational
organization formed to combat an alien menace responsible for abductions
and experiments on human subjects across the globe. The Enemy Within expansion
adds a new level of story and challenge with the addition of EXALT, a
secret organization aiding the aliens and attempting to undermine the
XCOM Project. In both games, players recruit, manage, and deploy elite
special-ops units against alien invaders while studying captured alien
technology in order to better combat this unknown menace. As the game
progresses, players are able to research and create improved weapons,
armor, and facilities to better equip their soldiers.All screen captures taken from game play. XCOM was produced by 2K Games and developed by Firaxis Games and Feral Interactive.
It was particularly great since that X-Com’s original game was pretty awesome for not just female armor but also diversity in general. Soldiers were hired with randomly allocated names, nationalities, gender and stats.
I am very pleased that they have maintained this tradition – unlike some other games attempting to emulate the original.
– wincenworks
I don’t think that costume, that a female character deliberately wears into battle and dangerous situations, provides enough protection to qualify as armor…
You know who you are
– wincenworks
Bringing this back to remind anyone that outfit doesn’t have to be explicitly an armor or armor-like to qualify for this blog.
As long as a female character deliberately wears it for battle, it counts.
~Ozzie
I don’t think that costume, that a female character deliberately wears into battle and dangerous situations, provides enough protection to qualify as armor…
You know who you are
– wincenworks
Bringing this back to remind anyone that outfit doesn’t have to be explicitly an armor or armor-like to qualify for this blog.
As long as a female character deliberately wears it for battle, it counts.
~Ozzie
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
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