Nais submitted:
So, I was watching the Smite 4.21 patch notes, and I was really impressed by the quality of the skins.
Nemesis’ new skin actually looks like half decent armor, minus the high heels.
Discordia looked cute and mage-y.
And then there was this.
This is “Exterminator Kali”, who is supposed to have a “superhero feel”. She looks like one of those flag girls from car races. Had me going there for a minute with the improvement, Smite…
Ok, that Nemesis skin looks surprisingly interesting and not particularly sexualized in SMITE’s very low standards, especially compared to her default design. It’s not perfect, of course – you mentioned high heels, but there’s also spandex chainmail on her legs and skin-tight material around waist… Though this is probably the closest they ever got to practical female breastplate.
Dicordia could use a longer skirt, but her design at least has some personality, something nonexistent among other goddesses in this game.
As a side note, her lore starts as a coherent story (Eris flees Troy after successfully spreading chaos of war there, reinvents herself as Dicordia) and quickly spirals into something that spits into face of everyone even remotely familiar with Greco-Roman myths and history (she makes a character who is neither the ancestor of Romulus nor
and
Remus the original founder of Rome instead of the twins).
Sometimes I feel this game exists only to troll mythology nerds with blatant disregard for everything that makes those stories and characters special.
Speaking of which, can we ALL, as the humanity, please stop sexualizing the Hindu goddess Kali FOREVER?
What’s video games’ problem with her? There was a super-porny version (NSFW link!) in Rise of the Incarnates (the game doesn’t seem to exist anymore). Overwatch also felt justified in turning this powerful female deity of a living religion into a “sexy” skin for Symmetra, because the character is Indian.
We referenced SMITE’s disgusting treatment of Kali in this 2015 post about exotification and it’s as topical now as it was then:
Other than sporting four arms and blue flesh, that “Exterminator” skin doesn’t even have anything to do with Kali’s default SMITE design. And what’s “superhero” about it, too? The biggest connection I can think of is that she looks like an ultrasexualized Guardians of the Galaxy reject.
~Ozzie
edit: A reader informed us that SMITE Wiki misspells the character’s name in Discordia’s lore: the article says Aeneus, an unrelated Greek mythology character, rather than Aeneas, the protagonist of Virgil’s Aeneid, bridge between Greek and Roman myths and ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome.
