have you seen the armor for characters on Diablo III, and if so, what’s your opinion on them? i think they’re actually very practical compared to other games and if a piece of armor’s revealing on a woman it’s likely to also be revealing on its male equivalent :)

I don’t think I would ever describe any outfit from Diablo III as “practical”.  Which is okay in itself, fantasy that conforms strictly to reality isn’t much of a fantasy.

That said, I feel there is only one outfit for a character in Diablo III that deserves celebrating – the Crusader.  And I suspect she only got her outfit because of the moral implications of her occupation:

All the others may be equally revealing, but are designed with very different stories and themes to them.  For example, as is appropriate to our blog, Barbarians.

First there’s the male barbarian. A massively muscular individual on a huge skeletal frame – his heart exposed due to his apparent unwillingness to match a breastplate with his oversized pauldrons and horned belt.

Female barbarian, equally exposed per se but her frame is less bulky, her pauldrons less over done, she has no big horns before her and her outfit is structured to ensure nothing obscures the silhouette of her boobs:

And of course, there’s the desktop wallpaper that’s seems to be a homage to Red Sonja in wardrobe, hair and general presentation.

A lack of armor or even clothing is not inherently a bad thing.  It is not by accident that a totally nude warrior will not score Bingo, but a suit of battle lingerie will.  Depending on your circumstances, it may even be safer and healthier to disrobe before battle.

Outfits should not be measured by some sort of skin quota – there are some amazingly terrible outfits that cover a lot of skin.  Rather it has to do with the purpose and priorities behind the designs, no amount of tweaking a male version’s armor or arbitrary coverage rules is ever going to disguise when a design prioritized being sexy over being badass.  Rather it tends to just make things even more absurd:

All of this is sadly pretty standard for fantasy and video games in general due to the strange belief that (regardless of what other aspects they have) at least the highly visible, if not all, female characters must present aspects like cleavage in order to be successful.

Which is really ridiculous when you remember that some of them (coughUbisoftcough) really seem irrationally adverse to including playable female characters in the first place.

– wincenworks