Every year when E3 comes out, I know that there’ll be at least one title that chooses the event to highlight to the world just how ridiculous their design decisions are: This year, so far, the number one contender is: Strange Brigade
The best that can be said for it is that in terms of impracticality they were at least different in their terrible design decisions – sadly they more than made up for it with the baffling racism.
The premise is in the 1930’s a forgotten ancient Egyptian witch queen has awakened from the dead and only a group of four intrepid adventurers can stop her – specifically by slaughtering wave after wave of zombies and monsters. The three white adventurer’s (two boys, one woman) dress in pragmatic adventuring outfits with pants and boots; and the black woman gets this hideous faux romper (this link nsfw), body paint, scarification and sandals.
Not only is this costume impractical for adventuring, completely at odds with 1930s sensibilities and general design – but this is a classic example of exotification. Her body paint and stretched ears seem to be inspired by the Mun people (adjusted to look more appealing to western audiences) and the red mud in her hair inspired by the Himba people (again changed for western audiences). These two groups lived 2,500 kilometers from each other (about the same distance as Switzerland to Turkey) and it seems more than likely the designers didn’t do that much research to learn the names or locations. Mostly she seems inspired by some of Grace Jones (who was born in 1948) movie personas.
This seems a particularly baffling bad decision to be proud of given that a huge factor cited in the the massive success of the Black Panther movie was the incorporation of actual African designers in making fantastic visions of Africa.
While looking into this, I was unable to find a name for this character, or any explanation for her design (such as naming inspirations) but I did find they have exactly one closed/locked thread in their Steam Discussions:
Yeah.
– wincenworks