But now at least we can make an informed guess that those old costumes were some sort of hard-earnedcompromise between giving the actresses wearable armor and meeting the “sex sells” demand from higher ups. It’s obviously no coincidence that once there were no women in power over the next movie Amazons appear in, any restraint over shamelessly objectifying them was gone.
I have to admit that Oraco has been impressive in their dedication to minimizing the amount of creativity in their designs. Sometimes I joke about some studios using a spinner to pick random design elements, but it seems genuinely possible (example: nature + League of Angels)
Seriously the recycling art assets on the front page and committing to this level of generic imagery, is impressive in a terrible kind of way. Not to mention the combining with @eschergirls type anatomy.
No surprise that it’s not only incredibly generic in gameplay, but often accused of another game which is essentially a game that plays itself (so not quite an asset flip, but close enough it may was well be).
This is why we say that if you’re counting on sex to sell, it’s probably because you don’t have anything worthwhile in your game.
– wincenworks
Posted on
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.
*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.
Guild Wars2 continues to be the textbookiest textbook example of most typical of double standard cliches in video game armors.
For a game that
can provide occasional (relatively) nice female armor and has a commendably self-aware fanbase, GW2 itself is lacking self awareness of its very obvious shortcomings. It just plays the bikini armor tropes straight and pretends there’s nothing out of ordinary about a lady in metal lingerie being the direct equivalent to a dude in heavy armor.
~Ozzie
Yikesaroonie. This also seems to be the Norn race, which live in a place that’s so cold, they have giant ice statues just standing around in town, as depicted vaguely in those background colors. I can’t even tell where her crotch flap is supposed to be attached? Is it coming from her underwear??
Armor like this becomes even more hilarious when you’re in the super serious story cutscenes, and people are talking about military tactics and loss of life, and your character is just… dressed like that… being a commander and stuff… yeah.
(The color scheme is also Awful, but it’s customizable. I just wish their algorithm was better at picking the preliminary examples for you.)
-Icy
edit: Corrected the Norn name. Thanks for correcting us, no thanks for the tone, dear rebloggers.
Putting the Online game aside, in the original manga and anime the characters belong to a religious order which was originally males only.
You know how women managed to get allowed to join? They have to wear these stupid and totally impractical masks (hello? How does she even see? Or breathe? how does that shit attach? They live in GREECE, for Gea’s sake, who decided putting metal against DELICATE bare skin under such punishing sun was a good idea?)to “give up” their femininity so men won’t feel guilty hurting them. And besides that, if a man ever sees them without the mask they have to either kill him or love him.
They literally made female warriors cover their faces 24/7 so “dudes wouldn’t get distracted” and then threw some metal lingerie at them. Yep, so much less distracting, sure thing… Thankfully we only ever see about three of them, so the other literal 85 male warriors won’t need to feel pressured.
Even funnier. This particular armour is supossed to be a second tier one, which for males supossedly protects more than the third tier ones, while hers… well, has barely any protection at all.
(Second tier)
(Third tier)
Didn’t you know? Weird mask and Madonna bra are totally less distracting than just being a regular knight, like your male peers are!
So I guess, in a very sad way, Saint Seiya Online is a questionable improvement over manga and anime, since the ladies at least are allowed to show their faces (and see and breathe)… For the low low price of trading ridiculous boobplate for skimpy bikini armor full of sharp, stabby parts!
The three lucky ladies are Jaina, Zagara and Sonya (from left to right):
(Though, don’t be fooled by that awesome concept art of Sonya, her in-game model is of smaller frame and has no defined muscles.)
So let’s take these in order, shall we?
Jaina is an ice wizard (basically) whose regular outfit just looks really stupid, besides not making any sense. Her demon skin replaces her 70s pants with booty shorts, and while she does gain “armor,” it’s in the laziest possible way. [x]
Her design brings to mind the Draenor, rather than demons. It’s so generic, I don’t even have anything to say… And what’s with the colors?
As for Zagara, you may notice that she is not even a person. She’s the “Broodmother of the Swarm,” an “ant queen” type of creature; she doesn’t even have a face, despite that strange exoskeleton boobplate. The maw in the front of her bug abdomen spews various things in combat. So of course her demon skin makes her Hot Bug Lady. [x]
I mean, we know she has weird bug arms and huge bubbling pustules on her insect-like abdomen, but look at those titties! This is the second Zagara skin that gives her a sexy face, but why include her in this particular promotion at all, for the release of a lich character from WoW? Do they think their zerg-birthing monster needs more sexy lady skins to even out the fact that she’s a bug? ಠ_ಠ
Finally, we have Sonya, the lady barbarian from Diablo III. Her demon skin still reveals about as much as her regular, although for some reason she has platform shoes now? This is called the Death Knight. Much spooky. [x]
Also, the design screams “we didn’t know how to make her demonic.” There is a skull on every piece of armor she’s wearing, and her weapons! This is even more baffling when you realize that this skin came out concurrently with the Deathbringer skin:
It’s the exact same skin (save for the weapons), except no spooky scary helmet, and actual padding under her armor… so why?? Why did they take the padding away from the Death Knight skin? I thought they were just doing the typical fantasy barbarian thing, where they sort of wear kind-of clothes, but apparently not!
Around May 2017 they started using their current iconic line up, the front and center lead of which has such a ridiculous costume it appears their advertising team feels the need to hide it:
Ironically, despite this apparently being less of Creepy Marketing Guy and more part of the studio culture, a lot of the content could be pretty good and they could probably get a lot more female players if they didn’t strive to save the booplate.
Alas, it seems to commitment knows no bounds:
Can’t imagine why they have so few female players…
