lafinjack first brought Smite to our attention with the highlight of Neith from the promo video and while her outfit was highly sexualised it didn’t really fit since it wasn’t armor and… well why should a goddess need armor right? (Particularly an Egyptian goddess).

However, due to recent events on Escher Girls – where an ad featuring a white washed Neith made an appearance. Two things have become readily apparent:

1. The game also features a pseudo-armored Athena (pictured above, yes that’s her in all the pics), who features the most blatant a senseless boobplate we’ve seen in a while.

2. There are a lot of people around who feel this game is above criticism for it’s portrayal of female characters and their attire because of a Game Theory video that claims it’s fine because ancient artworks depict these characters are nude or near nude.

All of a sudden I feel like I’ve been slapped with a glove, and not just any glove, a glove loaded with the brick of borderline insulting brodude justification.  So, without further delay, let’s get to the bit where we apply harsh, pitiless judgement on the standard model (based off the image in the left according the the Wiki):

Spared from a bingo by the lack of a visible thong… maybe she’ll get a bingo with the next patch!  Now, onto why this particular character and the game in general completely debunks the theory put forward that these characters are culturally appropriate (my personal favourite square in Rhetoric Bingo).

Now, the the video alleges that because there were different standards of acceptable nudity in the relevant cultures – and that the developers couldn’t show bare female nipples without censorship disasters – that various hyper-sexualised characters such as Neith and Kali (who is part of Hinduism, y’know, the world’s third largest religion) is tasteful.  Did I mention Neith has a novelty card?

This is just outright ridiculous for two reasons.  Artists doing free redraws for Escher Girls and Repair Her Armor can solve similar problems fairly easy and even the video itself showcases examples of how they could have avoided it (Examples: Kali’s necklace of heads that always sits in the right spot or one of the many Egyptian dresses that DOES cover breasts)

Furthermore, by referencing the culture of the times having non-sexualised nudity (which the video acknowledges at the start) you’re suggesting the costumes should be something that reads as non-sexualised to modern day audiences.

But somehow, these guys couldn’t even manage to make virginal Athena look only moderately sexualised.

To remain consistent with the male characters in the game, they’d have to solve the nudity problem by incorporating clothing that would reflect the relative cultural values of the individual character (which they almost managed for Artemis) and pick mythological figures based on factors other than sexiness (figures like Tisiphone rather than Aphrodite). 

The alternative would be to share it both ways – so instead of Hercules ready to play baseball, we’d see him engaging in a friendly round of oil wresting.

– wincenworks

Words can not describe how disappointed I am in people who think that this game’s character designs are honoring the traditional depictions of these goddesses… It’s really amazing, too, how non-sexual nudity can be translated into something sexualized by adding (poorly-rendered) skimpy costumes and pinup poses to it.

~Ozzie