This week’s steam will be 3 hours long, since I’ve been running over the 2-hour limit every single previous steam. It will probably be just one redesign for the entire duration, as it’s a complicated character and I’ll be looking for ideas from the chat.
It is certainly true some people went naked or near naked into battle, but not alongside warriors in proper armor and not in battle bikinis. There are some other important factors involved in their choice to do so. Firstly it usually only in cases where they didn’t have access to armor and/or the battles were largely ceremonial or otherwise non-lethal.
Armor is developed in response to weapons and usually the first forms of defense were shields. So if you had no nudity taboo and hadn’t developed armor due to lack of resources or lack of regular conflict, you didn’t really have much choice in the matter. Particularly since your weapons are usually tools that are made for hunting or other work.
In areas where this happened, usually the battles were no war in the sense of systematic killing of the enemy but more demonstrations of strength to intimidate others – usually over a piece of farm land or livestock. It was used to resolve grievances and sometimes even as a regular sport.
Usually this happened where people needed everyone to work together in order to provide essential, which means you also don’t need any more land than you already control and work every day. When you have an argument with your neighbours, you settle it to both sides satisfaction so you can resume living next to one another.
The ability to make sophisticated items like bikini armor (which is surprisingly complicated) comes from civilizations where they have sufficient surplus of resources and people they can have specialists who can trade goods and ideas. By the time you reach this level you also a real incentive to try to obtain more and more land.
At that point civilizations can start developing dedicated weapons, training dedicated soldiers (to expand your nation or defend against invaders) and their battles start to involve countless fatalities. Then it becomes worthwhile to begin the cycle of making armor to protect against the enemies weapons, and weapons to beat your enemies armor.
TL;DR: If you’re in a society that has warriors and the know-how and resources to make bikini armor, you’re in a society where your warriors wear actual armor. There were civilizations that fought nude or near nude, but they didn’t have bikini armor, fancy swords, professional warriors or sophisticated combat techniques.
– wincenworks
Time to bring this back, as the subject of nudity and near-nudity in battle came up in a disappointing video about Barbarians and their lack of armor that was recommended to us.
So, just to reiterate: going near naked into battle =/= going into battle in a metal/leather/fur equivalent to lingerie, therefore the fact that some real life warriors, in specific circumstances, fought naked is not a historical precedent for bikini armor. Same rules apply also to gladiators.
Our advice for designers who want to convey a primitive warrior culture that either just doesn’t believe in armor or uses it just partially is, predictably, amazingly: avoid double standards.
Question how and why a “primitive”, yet pragmatic culture would develop such a sophisticated and impractical, melee-inappropriate garment as a battle bikini in the first place. Should they even have a nudity/nipple taboo and if so, why wouldn’t they just throw a simple shirt or sarashi-style wrap on women’s boobs?
If you actually believe in heroic nudity and aren’t limited by “family-friendly” commercial standards, ask yourself: which of those ladies convey the idea of a berserking, unstoppable badass who needs no armor and which ones of a fancy lingerie model:
Just as fully clothed women can be depicted sexily, so can scantily-clad women be depicted as powerful and not sexual. It’s not just about how much skin is showing.
Nikko: Immersion breaking female armor. I refuse to play certain games because it seems just ridiculous to me. Like this:
This makes me so mad, not for the obvious reasons, but because it just breaks any sense of the world being real (which is important to me, follow the rules of your universe however dumb). If it’s a fantasy world where everyone’s skin is made of stone- fine- let ALL of the characters run around in skimpy armor. But when the female armor looks like this compared to the male armor… it breaks any sense of immersion to me. I completely ruined Tera for me along with other games (Nier).
Justin:
Escort quests, yeah. Or..
Like fan service…just why.
But yeah escort quests, fan service, and uhhh shooting games…regardless of genre.
I just heard of a new upcoming video game called Battle Chasers: Nightwar which was based on a comic book of the same name. It seemed to be the type of game I would enjoy but first I needed to see if the designs of the characters were good (Bad designs can easily ruin the whole experience for me) so I checked on Gully…
“Wow! That is actually a pretty damn good design!” I said to myself.
How is that you could make one good female character design and then make a terrible female character design in the same fucking series?! HOW DID YOU SCREW THAT UP?!
So based on the promotional materials on their website, Red Monika (gee, her name reminds me of a character to whom she has a striking similarity) is a flirtatious acrobatic pirate/scoundrel type, which really makes me wonder what magical glue she uses to prevent her breasts from falling out. Her boobs also jiggle when she moves, cause that’s totally important when your view of the battlefield looks like this:
I, too, have a sexy swashbuckler character with large breasts, and they wear a sports-bra equivalent even when they decide to flirt and show some cleavage. And they don’t even do back flips in combat.
The lack of creativity here is painful in the most boring way.
But this game is based on an existing property; maybe it’s the fault of the comics that made Monika look this way.
… maybe not.
-Icy
90s comics was once of those amazing periods in history that’s hard to explain to people unless they were there – I kind of hope that one day Martin Scorsese will make a movie about it.
However Battle Chasers did have a ton of interesting material and a lot of promise – by that I mean the cast who were not generic fantasy hero and generic evil sexy lady.
So, let’s take a look at what they chose for their feature video and hope that the game creators realize that and don’t think that a classically 90s comic figure and outfit is what made this comic so interesting…
