I am really struggling to write academically about this trend of developers making up bad excuses for not including women because what I really want to say is that it sucks and it’s adding insult to injury and could you please just be honest and say you don’t wanna.
Oh yeah, I’m sick of it too. And it feels like it just keeps happening and it’s insulting to our intelligence. Like
Ubisoft: We can’t have a female protagonist because they’re too hard to animate!
Logical Retort: What about all those female characters you already animated?
What they should have admitted: We didn’t want to make a woman protagonist.
~~~~~
Konami: Quiet can’t wear clothes because she’s infected by a parasite that makes her breathe through her skin and she’d suffocate!
Logical Retort:Well then how come that other guy with the same parasite was covered head to toe?
What they should have admitted: We wanted her to be eye candy.
~~~~~
Bungie: Cortana is rendered without any clothes because it gives her a psychological advantage over her opponents!
Logical Retort:Then how come the “male” AIs are rendered with clothing?
What they should have admitted: We wanted her to be eye candy.
~~~~~
Nintendo: Link can’t be a woman because no one would relate to them!
Logical Retort: 48% of gamers would probably love to see a character like them. And much of the other 52% may appreciate the novelty.
What they should have admitted: We really like making the exact same concept over and over.
Stop. Your BS excuses are honestly almost more insulting than the truth.
When not insisting that “sex sells”, Creepy Markerting Guy and his Creepy Executive buddies, are literally on record saying that “women (as protagonists) do not sell”. And pushing back against their development teams fighting for even slightest bit of inclusivity in their games.
We’ve been saying for years, one way or another, that there’s a direct connection between toxic white masculinity and the refusal in entertainment industry, including games, to acknowledge women as more than eye candy and that people other than white straight cis men deserve to have their stories told. We’re not surprised by the disturbing revelations – there were similar ones before. Moreover, the product itself reflects the toxic environment it was made in, if you know where to look.
I tried giving Umah from Blood Omen 2 some proper armour, design based broadly off the single piece of armour to her name – that weird double pauldron thing. Edited the bottom half of her bikini into a fantasy tabard, and if I’d thought to use a fuller screenshot I’d have put the dragon from her Defiance concept art on there, but thought of that way too late. Come up with your own reason for why she has the Soul Reaver, preferably one more interesting than the fact that it’s hiding some lop sided hip armour that would have been a pain to fix. Another case of not as good as I was hoping for but automatically an improvement on the bare skin chafing nightmare of the original.
Personally I ascribe to @bikiniarmorbattledamage‘s tongue in cheek philosophy that women in fantasy should be fully armoured while men should wear something tastefully revealing. Legacy of Kain at least gets halfway there with the well muscled men in leather pants, just a shame about the prevalence of bikini armour.
Wow, the original is a yikes, especially the huge boob part made from unidentifiable material. I guess it counts as better than most booplates we’ve seen on BABD because there’s no boob window/exposed cleavage, but that’s one low bar to clear. Also, one huge grey boob blob on her chest is somehow extremely distracting and boring at the same time. At least put some symbol on it or something!
I like your simplistic redesign, @kainissoable. If me or Icy were doing it we’d probably put some design (likely sampled from other part of the costume) on the breastplate, to break up this huge shape, which was also the original’s problem. It still works objectively better than the generic garbage the original was.
