Thing I notice about Soul Calibur is that with every installment of the franchise new costume designs are introduced for established characters and they usually go the pretty straightforward path of de-evolution (see Sophitia as an example and keep in mind she’s far from the worst).
We already devoted a couple of bingos and stream redesigns to them, but with the SC’s momentum leading up to the prophecy, we will probably never catch up completely to every awful version of every female character in the games.
~Ozzie
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So… this latest version of Jeanne D’Arc (aka Joan of Arc) is apparently a dragon (hence the tail) but seems to also have incredibly ridiculous armor. Why does she look like a generic waifu? Um… honestly I have no idea, and I think I’m happiest not knowing – this is what the “main” dragons look like:
I’ve been trying to play the game since it came out, but the ridiculous outfits the ladies have are very distracting, and not in a “battle tactic” way; in a really off-putting way. And that’s without even talking about the game’s depiction of the protagonist’s sister.
We often see the rhetoric “she’s a magic-user, she can’t/doesn’t have to wear armor” as defense for bikini armor, so this week we have some mage ladies who are dressed for action. They’re not wearing full plate or anything, but they have very practical outfits, each in their own distinct style.
This is Carabel (top) and Gislan (bottom) from the game Nine Parchments, a co-op game about magic students going on an adventure together. The character roster also includes a cat and a robot owl, of course.
Carabel specializes in ice magic, and I think that everything about her design really illustrates that. Gislan, meanwhile, likes nature magic, and her design similarly informs that. Neither lady is put in a bikini to showcase their magic roots, because there’s simply no need.
I recommend you guys check out the art of Nine Parchment’s art director, Charlotta Tiuri, who designed these lovely ladies, for character sheets and other cool projects.
-Icy
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Fire Emblem Gals Part 1
We are assured that Fire Emblem is great game franchise with engaging characters. We have to take the readers’ word for that, because we always find a distinct dissonance between how FE female characters look and what their bios tell us about their stories and personalities. This week, my take on Nowi, the loli dragon.
“She chose to wear that!” is a bullshit excuse for a grown woman character running around a battlefield in a bikini, let alone for a thousand year old magical creature who also chooses to have the body and face of a child.
Since she’s really a dragon and probably needs no armor, the goal of redesign was to give her clothes that would look appropriate (rather than protective) for someone who takes form of roughly a 12-year old.
I actually found the color scheme and many shapes in Nowi’s costume very good, just wasted because the focus was on showing skin and adding too many decorations.
I decided that her teeny tiny scaly bra would make a good vest, if put on top of a crop t-shirt with the same lace finish as those white gloves… which she wears under the black gloves? Then, since I liked the scale pattern a lot, I recreated it also on her belly. Is that a matching undershirt or her real dragon skin? Who knows! It looks cool.
The area between her belly and knees was made of pure visual noise. It was sexualized and overdesigned at the same time. The only ridiculous thing I decided to leave in were the crossing belts, because they look cool enough and aren’t implausible… Provided that I added belt loops to her pants. Speaking of which, fetishy short shorts connected to stockings with garter belts had to go, for obvious reasons. Since her shoes had such a strange shape, I decided to turn them from thigh-highs with inexplicable ankle boots bottom into tights and ankle boots. All it took was to reverse and change the hem of the boots into that of short pants.
Ribbons weren’t a bad idea on their own, but they just completely didn’t belong as decoration on her sides, so I got rid of them and just transplanted the long tails onto her chest ribbon, making it both cuter and a more prominent splash of pink on her upper half.
All in all, it’s one of my favorite, while most subtle, redesigns. Probably also my best simulation of the original’s coloring style. I really hope it managed to turn creepyness of a sexualized childlike character into cuteness.
~Ozzie
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“Savage Worlds is the core ruleset for all of Pinnacle’s current roleplaying games, including Deadlands, 50 Fathoms, Weird Wars: Rome, and more. It has everything you need to play narrative or miniature-based games, with quick, simple, yet comprehensive rules for everything from combat to Dramatic Tasks, Chases, and Interludes. The emphasis is on less bookeeping for the Game Master so he can quickly and easily create worlds and adventures for any setting, and focus on the players and their actions during frenetic combat.”
Frenetic… no wait, I checked, frenetic does not mean combat that involves lots of awkward nip slips and pauses to untangle gear – it’ supposed to mean the opposite of that.
It boggles the mind that studios still think stuff like this somehow signals “for all kinds of players” and “totally legit about the game experience”.
And yet, this particularly example is still better than cover of the the Horror Companion…
– wincenworks
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The Monster Hunter series has been a mixed bag when it comes to armor design, and as we’ve shown before, Monster Hunter World has proudly followed in that tradition. We’ve seen that they can do actual armor for both the men and women characters, so what the fresh hell is this? This is high level armor, too. This is what the male version looks like, by the way:
I guess I’m impressed that the characters can hand-mold monster carapaces into boob cups?
