It’s probably fair to say that women in fantasy RPGs are the industry’s most highly endangered species.
I mean, these are women who take on entire monster-infested dwarven mines wearing nothing but a bit of moulded plate metal over their chests and a chainmail g-string.
If it’s not disembowelling, it’s probably going to be some kind of really nasty infection from all that… chafing.
Video Game Characters & Sexualization 101
Sexualization is an emphasis on secondary sexual characteristics and sexuality.
A sexualized character is one with emphasized secondary sexual characteristics and sexuality.
A hyper- or over-sexualized character is one with extreme, exaggerated focus on secondary sexual characteristics and sexuality at the expense of or in place of other attributes
that’s it
After discussing the disturbing attitude towards female protagonists in video game industry Jimquisition once again tackles the topic of gender in games by commenting on controversy around Dragon’s Crown female character designs.
Sorry to post again about not-exactly-warrior-outfits, but it’s a very relevant case concerning strictly related areas (character design, women in popular culture).
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
MichaelD submitted:
One example that always sticks in my mind are the two Kingdom Under Fire games on the Xbox (great games dumb armour especially on the dark elves). The one character that sticks out for me though is Ellen who gets a bit of a patch job between games.
From the first game:
From the second:
Its the same plate lingerie but between games someone decided got to put chain mail over all her exposed skin.
I’m struggling to find the words for this… In theory it is an improvement of some kind, but what is covering exposed skin with ridiculously close-fitting chainmail (patterned latex?) actually supposed to help with? Especially when her boobplate, chain thong and two-inch heels are still there?
It takes more than just covering the character to cure her design from sexualization.
Well, at least she acquired a helmet (a part of armor so often omitted on fictional warriors of all genders), I’ll give her that.
EDIT: Submitter noted on that little gem too:
It’s also a bit odd in-universe because the 2nd image is from a prequel game. So between games chronologically she decided to stop wearing the chain-mail and helmet. In retrospect probably a bad decision.
edit 2: Minor re-wording of the part about helmets, to make it more gender inclusive.
