“We thought she was dead.”
The full Talon Widowmaker painting from last month’s Patreon. Ya know, from the Legacy comic that gave her prototype armor that -made sense-.
If only she looked like that in the game!
I re-read the comic in question and beside the helmet, back armor and part of arm guards, there’s very little detail of how Widomaker’s then-costume actually looked like. So, most of the awesome stuff in this design, like the reasonable breastplate, seems to be @artbytesslyn‘s invention, not Blizzard’s.
In the official comic we can see an outline of her boob from the profile (first panel here) and what seems to be her blue cleavage (second panel), so it definitely lacks chest protection:
Ironicaly, in the story Widow is almost killed by Ana, whose bullet shatters part of this helmet…
Presumably next time Amelie shows up in the OW timeline, she changes to the cleavage-tastic clothes we love to hate.
Why after nearly dying she gets a costume that’s
objectively
worse and less protective in every way? Maybe in Blizzard’s logic, just like a cocktail dress makes an espionage outfit, a deeper cleavage and new, cooler helmet makes a sniper costume?
~Ozzie
So when a recurring character in Overwatch looks vastly different between her 3 appearances, we get told that different artists have different styles, and that Blizzard is allowed to change their character designs over time. But when Alexstrasza, queen of the dragons, gets a makeover and a pair of pants in Heroes of the Storm, there’s outrage on the forums.
This is her original WoW model:
You might notice that her clothes look a lot like Sylvanas’, even after they gave her pants. Even down to keeping the thong!
They did try to differentiate her with the leg armor and cape, but they couldn’t bring themselves to actually design her properly, despite the fact that they supposedly redesign their characters all the time. She has the exact same coverage as Sylvanas, even down to the upper arm bands. Doing a bingo on her would just be redundant!
I’ll give them props for giving her an interesting jawline, but that seems to be the extent of their creativity.
Also, is it just me, or does the jewelry she wears in her dragon form not resemble her humanoid jewelry at all? Even the rings on her horns seem to be different.
And if the answer is, that’s what she chooses to appear as when she’s not a dragon… well, we already have stuff written up about that.
-Icy
h/t: @ghostoftom
On Brigitte
So, shortly after Ozzie posted on why you shouldn’t expect people to go out of their way to do more research and consume more media in order to find a good message in a creator’s work… a bunch of people rushed in to tell us that the “unnamed redhead” in the Reinhardt animated short had a name… she was clearly Brigitte, Torbjorn’s daughter and beloved Overwatch supporting character!
But, what identified her as Brigitte, what kind of character is she? Was this depiction of her accurate to previous material?
The woman depicted in the short is the second-most muscular woman we’ve seen in Overwatch (second only to Zarya) with a cog tattoo on her left shoulder and a t-shirt which has the sleeves torn off and reads “I like exercise because I love eating” and she has the standard issue Disney-face.
This is Brigitte in her only other speaking appearance, note how she started with a strong jawline, narrow lips and freckles:
And here she is in her other follow up appearance, arms like twigs and half-way to the final Disney-face, no more freckles or jawline:
So really what identified her as Brigitte were these elements:
- Proximity to Reinhardt during his pre-game period
- Tendency to tell Reinhardt that he shouldn’t do what the audience is specifically eager for him to do (ie, be a hero)
- Her hair is kind of the same and she has practical pants (a rarity for women in the world of Overwatch)
- Nobody refers to her by name while she’s around
There’s also that one in-game spray graphic where she’s shown sporting even more “prettified” face, posing for a photo with her dad (good luck knowing that relation without digging up lore):
The greater irony of this is that the single exchange between Reinhardt and Mercy where Brigitte’s name is mentioned actually undermines her role in the video. According to the in-game content she goes off with Reinhardt on his adventures… not keeping him company in the castle while he avoids risks. Note how in the short she isn’t shown to change her mind and support Reinhardt’s decision at the end.
(Also worth noting is people have been asking, by name, for her to appear more often and be shown helping Reinhardt in the game for over a year now but this is the closest Blizzard have come, that and they had to confirm her who father was in a tweet because again… zero priority elsewhere.)
At this point, if you look at what Blizzard have provided: Brigitte has no consistent look beyond pants, skin tone and hairstyle. Her only consistent behavior is telling Reinhardt not to go be a hero. In the video she isn’t even shown doing the other support aspects such as enabling travel, fixing his armor, gathering intelligence, being the social one of the pair, etc.
The point is here is Blizzard doesn’t care enough about a female character to give her a consistent appearance, have her name be used so the audience can identify her or give her any sort of motivations of her own – you shouldn’t take the time to act like she’s an important character who everyone should know.
I promise you that defending Blizzard’s failures to do the basics when it comes to their promises of better depictions of women and better diversity will not result anything good for anyone other than Blizzard’s shareholders.
– wincenworks
@otherwindow has done a beautiful edit of what Brigitte would have looked like in the short if they stayed true to her initial comic appearance.
I said this on the Moira post, but really… what could have been.
-Icy
This is exactly what I meant by “asking us to “do our homework” before we comment will make the commentary far more critical, not more lenient.”
~Ozzie
h/t: @red-queen-on-the-heathen-throne for bringing our attention to how off-model Brigitte is between her cross-media appearances.
Okay, so predictably Blizzard has used Blizzcon to announce a new Overwatch character, and now Talon (the bad guys) have a support healer – and surprisingly despite them clearly having recycled a lot of Mercy’s look (with more than little bit of Zarya and a lot of David Bowie… I mean a LOT), they’ve managed to avoid the Evil is Sexy trope this time.
Honestly this design is pretty good but I get the feeling that the boobplate is literally a case of “if no boob, how woman!?” given how refreshingly androgynous Moria looks in most of her origin story and lineup pic
It’s also pretty cool how she fills a big hole in Overwatch lore and meets the outspoken player demand for an evil/amoral healer.
Of course Blizzard took Blizzcon as the opportunity for demonstrating how they’re doing representation of women better in their games and media.
They also, a few hours earlier, released what is essentially Reinhardt’s origin story, which features exactly one female character:
An unnamed* redhead with a Disney face who is there to tell him that he doesn’t need to be hero so he can tell her that he totally does.
This is why it’s difficult to believe that, while many of their staff may be trying hard, Jeff Kaplan and Blizzard as an entity care about representation beyond marketing sound bytes and feminist cookies.
– wincenworks
Oh, what could have been.
I wish they would have pushed the medical tubing further, instead of just giving her a little tube backpack. Like maybe extending the tubing down her right arm to emphasize that she deals damage with it. Overall, the design is just very…. Safe. And also not angular enough. Look at the origin story screenshot above; angles!
I’m just kind of disappointed, honestly. One more thin, young-looking white woman, and her black/purple color scheme is giving me Morgana flashbacks.
Also, her powers are very reminiscent of Hel from SMITE and Seris from Paladins. We’ve almost achieved the originality singularity!
-Icy
I see this as a consistent problem with many female character additions to Overwatch… Individually, they’re pretty interesting designs (though it’s guaranteed that they looked better, less “safe”, in concept art), but when put together in a group, they turn into this boring blob of young-looking, thin, mostly pale ladies with a token unique feature here and there.
As I said before, I’d take so much less issue with D.Va (cause her pretty girl design is consistent with her teenage idol persona) if she didn’t follow after introduction of Mercy, Tracer, Widowmaker etc, who all have fatal flaws dictated by “sex sells” in their designs.
~Ozzie
*We understand that Brigitte has a name (thanks for all the readers for informing us of it); however that actually confirms our criticism regarding the supposed need for “doing the research” – the animated short can’t even bother to put her name into dialogue. The audience has to read some auxiliary non-game material beforehand to know who she’s supposed to be.
Overwatch Halloween 2017
Good news, this time new* Overwatch Halloween skins aren’t lazily whitewashed undead! Hell, Blizzard actually reached out for some GOOD ideas that our contestants had last year and made Pirate Ana and Jiangshi Mei.
Why is Symmetra sexualized even as a dragon, though? That skin really could do without reptilian boobs. They even made her dragon feet super strange-looking, because she always needs to be in high heels!
Also, why none of the characters released since last year get a spooky costume? It’s not like Orisa, Doomfist and Sombra are any less likely to celebrate Halloween than any other OW hero coming from a culture that doesn’t care about this holiday.
And, most of all, where are the sexy male Overwatch costumes? Do we always have to rely on fan-made content to provide that?
~Ozzie
*Unfortunately, as per usual, old skins are available again.
As a child of the 80s I am somewhat confused about why Zarya’s “Totally 80s” outfit is horror themed… I mean… they weren’t that bad. The fashion was that bad, but I don’t see how it counts as horror.
Also, Blizzard seems to really want to double down on new skins for Symmetra that maximize the panty flash… even if she’s a dragon monster.
– wincenworks
So, while we wait for Blizzard to release this year’s Overwatch Halloween selection, I just want to point out that @folksywindow has already thought of the best possible costumes the dudes in the Talon faction: Dress up as Widowmaker
Look at the potential for empowerment!
But what would Widowmaker dress up as? There’s an answer for that too!
– wincenworks
Let’s take a closer look at Sylvanas Windrunner, Queen of the Forsaken, as revealed in official Heroes of the Storm art. First though, to address one issue:
mitulita replied to your photo: “For the people who rushed to tell us we should never doubt Blizzard’s…”:
The Sylvanas design is not new, though. It has been exactly like this in World of Warcraft for years. They are just repeating an old mistake there…Which still totally proves our point that Blizzard is NOT trying to improve. They had a perfect opportunity to update the design and did basically nothing.
While her official model for some reason wears a thong over nice pants, lots of popular Sylvanas fanart depicts her as pantless and Blizzard seem to be pretty okay with that.
~Ozzie
more Female Armor Bingos | more World of Warcraft | more Blizzard
Since Blizzard fandom still seems to think that “You shouldn’t criticize this outfit used in Heroes of the Storm, because it originates from another game!”, we thought it’s time to bring back this HotS Sylvanas bingo. Along with the commentary that just because something existed in an older franchise from the same company, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be redesigned and improved.
Like… how does rhetoric make even the slightest bit of sense?
Bad, sexist design is just that, no matter how well established it is.
If Quiet somehow reappeared in a future MGS game, still dressed in a handkerchief bikini and torn tights, would you really expect us to stop making Breathing Through Her Skin jokes?
~Ozzie
So besides the fact that Blizzard has redesigned a lot of their characters over the years, promising to improve on a problematic aspect of your game, and then blatantly recycling those same old aspects, that’s not improvement. That’s the kind of behavior that gets you ridiculed by us.
-Icy