Mortal Kombat Pre-11 Fix, Part 1

This particular stream was inspired by the fact that Mortal Kombat waited until game 11 to take even a step back from portraying its women as progressively draftier titninjas.
We concluded that while we generally enjoy the official fixes many female characters got in MK11, we could look into the worst designs from earlier games and put our own spin on them. 

Skarlet, the Red Titninja 

content warning: blood mention 

Since all MK ninja ladies are color-coded, of course the red one turned out to be a vampire master of blood magic. And, of course, when you mention anything about her original outfit design, the furious fappers Capital G Gamers would insist that her skin needs to be exposed, so that she can absorb blood of her defeated enemies through her skin, for power. Very valid, totally not contrived reason for oversexualized costume! Poor MK11!Skarlet, she will starve!

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[sidenote: googling for image comparison of the two designs without coming across anti-SJW whining and islamophobic memes is downright impossible

So, on to my own fix of MK9!Skarlet. Her original aesthetic was basically just “tiddy and ass out, with random ninja bits”, so I tried committing better to the ninja aesthetic. Plus much poofier pants, to stay on brand ? 

Extending her top made it blend in with facial covering and with her red hair, so I had to reverse the mask’s colors for proper contrast. It looks so much better in dark gray.
Pro tip: bare skin shouldn’t substitute for color and shape breaks in costume design. 

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I don’t even know why someone thought that wearing arm guards straight on bare skin was a good look. Adding long fingerless gloves under them makes both for practical padding and matches the shoes, especially after I converted them from knee-reaching high heels into toeless stockings. 

Other minor fixes: short hair, so that ponytail doesn’t get in the way, torso girth that would fit internal organs inside, a hint of red tint in her eye. 

Also, while you can’t see her kunai arsenal anymore, I assure you she’s no longer storing unsheathed sharp knives in a way that stabs her leg. That would be dangerous even if ninjas didn’t dip their blades in poison and/or excrement! ? 

I am really proud of the color- and shape-breaking in this design. I think it’s as decent job as could be done without completely rehashing her look, like MK11 did. One of my rougher fixes, painting technique-wise, but it has some aesthetic appeal. Hope you enjoy it too!

~Ozzie

So, for those not away – about a year and a half ago the YouTuber known as H.Bomberguy made a video which highlighted the absurdity of claiming men were equally objectified in video games, specifically called out Taki as a bad example of female character design and proposed God of War would be better if Kratos actually acted like a character rather than a screaming murder machine.

Coincidentally, less than a month after where we get a God of War game where Kratos acts like a character with feelings instead of a screaming murder machine… a trailer goes live (and then is taken down) for Taki and… they’ve managed to actually make it worse.

Of all the options to expand her outfit… they chose to add some sort of weird fetish mask that looks like someone designed a classic Hannibal hockey mask but for a sex doll.

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Look if I can’t unsee it, neither can you okay.

– wincenworks

H.Bomberguy on YouTube

(Hey you, the one typing up the explanation for the mask: no, it looks exactly nothing like a traditional samurai mask)

Evelynn

EdwardGein submitted:

Evelynn from “League of Legends” just got reworked. And it is… horrendous.

Her attire was always awful, and her splash art as well. Reworking champions should give Riot the opportunity to fix some of the generic-babe-material they started with in 2010. But here we are. 7 years later and not a thing learned. Let’s open the history book on this one…

This was her original art:

It represented so much being wrong while retaining not an ounce of appeal, at least to most male humans I know. You should get a spooky vibe, but there was just nothing there. Just spikes and leather and… not even a weapon. And those heels. The character even jokes ingame about the fact that it is hard to move in those shoes. NO KIDDING.

Then, a while ago, they updated the art. To this:

I actually like this one a tad more. The outfit is the same (because only the splash art got changed, not the ingame model) but it conveys at least something. Still not much to characterise or read into and escher-esque. But at least stuff happens and you get an idea how the character is going to play ingame. And she seems kind of lethal or at least unhinged and dangerous, which is more than you can say of most bikini-clad-“no seriously she is dangerous and can fight”-girls in video game art.

But now, they remade the character. New abilities! New story! New background! A fresh new page to change things! Aaaaand… this happened:

No. Nope. I’m done. Why? Why succubus all of a sudden? Why ditch the spikes and go just down to lingerie? Does that make it better instead of even more generic? Why not add a tattoo that says “I am a metaphor for sex, you guys” and ditch the whole effort?

There obviously was reason to change things, and good thing that they noticed that. But why did they take it in the complete opposite direction to make it just plain stupid. I am not an artist, who can point out all the little signs where this went wrong, but the moment I saw this, I was even more done with the game than I already was.

Oh and one of her new abilities is named “Lust Dust”. 

What’s really amusing about the promotional video is that the opening the sinister assassin would suggest that Evelynn is essentially defined by her power of seduction… but then it quickly becomes apparent she’s more defined by spikes:

Now, spikes honestly makes more sense since League of Legends is basically a video game that more resembles at fantasy tabletop war game than a roleplaying game, but apparently someone at Riot Games just really, really wanted to pay an voice actress to record a lot of innuendo lines and pay an artist to draw boobs.

– wincenworks

Tenchu: Fatal Shadows was a game that showed how disappointing it gets when you decide to put more emphasis on an action focused female cast and decide that they’ll count of sex appeal to make up for bland designs.

While it’s true they are looking to Feudal Japan for inspiration and hence trying to match those, it’s also true the the previous games managed to incorporate much more interesting designs for important male characters.

wincenworks