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.
~Ozzie
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Disagreeing with Disgaea’s Designs, Part 2: Flonne
I feel like I’m going to get flack for this but oh well lol. So Flonne here, in her initial appearance, is an angel, assassin, otaku, ditz, and believer in love and justice. Hashtag relatable, am I right? I’m not sure why an assassin would have annoying detachable sleeves and hotpants. The color contrast between her pale-ass skin and white shirt isn’t even strong enough to make her shoulder an interesting standout shape. Maybe all the angels wear pajamas, which honestly, I can relate to. But not for assassinating.
For the redesign, I took inspiration from the lolita fashion style and gave her some fun shorts and a little cape. I was trying to maintain a lot of circles/rectangles in the redesign, since she is a force for good, even though the original had those bow triangles.. I guess they’re supposed to foreshadow her role in the sequel games? I’m not sure. I kept the color scheme, and I moved around some of the bows for balance in the design.
I think she could benefit from some socks, maybe, but I decided to forgo them cause I feel like even if she wore them, she’d forget to. She’s supposed to be an airhead, after all!
I’m not sure how I feel about the final product, this is the result of like 3 different tries, as usual. The only thing I’m really sure of is that cape. ?
-Icy
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On today’s episode of Literally What Happens When You Let a Hate Group Founded on Taking Comics Away From “the SJWs” Design a Superheroine – Peregrine! Whoever the fuck she’s supposed to be. Credit to @renfamousfor the apt commentary on Twitter.
Possibly the most ridiculously physics-defying boob window we ever featured on BABD. If this was the older version of the bingo card, she’d also be scoring cameltoe.
@eschergirls will definitely be interested in the anatomy. Someone in the thread already did a decent breakdown of everything wrong with her body.
I’m afraid the costume’s awfulness is overshadowed with the absolute mess of anatomy, and while it tried very hard, didn’t manage to score a bingo. I even crossed out “Looks nothing like the male equivalent”, as a safe bet. I’ve seen the way people in that movement draw.
The game’s wiki lists Barbara’s costume as a minor edit of the female Armor Knight, a rather inaptly named character class. Though yes, this is basically just recolor of their “armor”.
Other than reshaping the ugly AF boobplate and patching up all the random skin showing I didn’t have a concept for this until @filipfatalattractionrblog suggested using the pin-stripe suit-like elements, which was a stroke of genius. It ended up being a mix of 3-piece business suit with plate armor, with breastplate as the vest worn on top.
While I didn’t manage to keep her proportions stylized like in the original (because, obviously, it was stylized in a very sexualized way), I am really happy with how Barbara turned out. Hope you enjoy it.
~Ozzie
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Found that character in a Twitter thread about suspicious dimorphism… because of course that problem also refers to characters who are robots/AI, not only animals and fantasy humanoid races.
Her name is Layer, she’s a Megaman X character and apparently the worst-designed member of an all-female team in which at least one other lady robot (Alia) sports a boobplate.
While the color of her torso, including the boobs, is slightly different from her face’s skin tone, I am still marking that as an underboob (it doesn’t have to be skin to count). This chest design is pretty damn egregious, no matter how much lore would justify it with her not being human.
Needless to say, anyone familiar with how Megaman characters look knows there are no male equivalents to whatever the hell is happening to Layer’s breasts.
Also, no, designers, you weren’t clever by giving her panties and weird pant legs that do not actually connect to form real bottom outfit. It’s just gross.
