Tag: Female Armor Bingo

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5th edition Dungeons and Dragons’ human outlander is one painfully generic archer design, scoring low on bingo mostly due to sheer lack of inventiveness. 

Nonetheless, like quite a few official female warrior illustrations from that edition of D&D, biggest problem with her is that she looks almost legit, with some practical-looking shoes, pants and costume made of plausible materials… only to be ruined by nonsensical top, adorned with a pauldron, just as an added insult to the simulated practicality.

~Ozzie

The second most ridiculous thing about this pic is that its followed almost immediately by the rather awesome “Soldier” background’s illustration:

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The most ridiculous thing about it is that it represents the “Outlander” background, which is supposed to represent an individual who has lived isolated from society out in the wilderness.

In a weird designer leather bra thing… apparently…

– wincenworks

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Every year when E3 comes out, I know that there’ll be at least one title that chooses the event to highlight to the world just how ridiculous their design decisions are: This year, so far, the number one contender is: Strange Brigade

The best that can be said for it is that in terms of impracticality they were at least different in their terrible design decisions – sadly they more than made up for it with the baffling racism.

The premise is in the 1930’s a forgotten ancient Egyptian witch queen has awakened from the dead and only a group of four intrepid adventurers can stop her – specifically by slaughtering wave after wave of zombies and monsters.  The three white adventurer’s (two boys, one woman) dress in pragmatic adventuring outfits with pants and boots; and the black woman gets this hideous faux romper (this link nsfw), body paint, scarification and sandals.

Not only is this costume impractical for adventuring, completely at odds with 1930s sensibilities and general design – but this is a classic example of exotification.  Her body paint and stretched ears seem to be inspired by the Mun people (adjusted to look more appealing to western audiences) and the red mud in her hair inspired by the Himba people (again changed for western audiences). These two groups lived 2,500 kilometers from each other (about the same distance as Switzerland to Turkey) and it seems more than likely the designers didn’t do that much research to learn the names or locations. Mostly she seems inspired by some of Grace Jones (who was born in 1948) movie personas.

This seems a particularly baffling bad decision to be proud of given that a huge factor cited in the the massive success of the Black Panther movie was the incorporation of actual African designers in making fantastic visions of Africa.

While looking into this, I was unable to find a name for this character, or any explanation for her design (such as naming inspirations) but I did find they have exactly one closed/locked thread in their Steam Discussions:

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Yeah.

– wincenworks

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This design comes from a game about Norse mythology. I challenge you, our readers, to take a guess at which character from Norse mythology this is. I’ll wait.

Did you say Hel, who is the villain of the game Viking: Battle for Asgard? If you did, you must have read our post about Foldable Human Dan Olson looking into So Bad They’re Good games from a few months back. Because that awfully specific answer is indeed correct…. unfortunately.

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I can’t even comprehend what the art direction was for this concept. What in the Hel (ha) is this? I was only able to find this single promo picture where the full glory of this design is shown, which I can only assume is because if she stands in any other way, that belt bra will slip off. 

But let’s also not forget Freya, who also makes an appearance in the game!

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-Icy

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the-midnight-doe submitted (and Ozzie bingo’d):

And on today’s episode of Doing Women Better™, Blizzard finally granted us the much requested Magician Symmetra. Only instead of going for something super classy like the many fan interpretations out there or even just ladies in suits from real life, they went with…this.

Lack of pants and framing her bust (what is even with those metal plates) aside, the fact that this is a legendary skin and costs 3000 credits when it’s so close to her default skin makes this whole thing very disappointing. 

Thanks for submitting this highly requested post, including some quality scathing commentary! The Saga of Pantless Symmetra continues. 

This would be insulting enough just by the virtue of being a fetishy leotard instead of a suit, but what the hell are those boob-holder bars?! 
They’re some sort of garbage afterthought slapped on to make this look more “sci-fi”, I guess? Why would a costume need that? Because you can’t be science fiction without framing the tits with random pieces of metal? 

Since the bingo lacks a “What the fuck am I looking at?!” square, I marked “Boobplate” instead.

Here’s some closeup, to see their full absurdity, provided by @red-queen-on-the-heathen-throne:

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Fun fact: a convention I attended last week had an Overwatch: Character design done right! talk that I just couldn’t subject myself to come to, both out of the fear of my brain melting on sight and because I didn’t want to rain on some enthusiastic fan’s parade when the time for Q&A comes. 

I’m still amused that at the same time Blizzard made THIS, easily disproving the “character design done right” claim. 

But sure, Overwatch is totally ready to do women better. Anytime now.

~Ozzie 

#GiveSymmetraPants2k18

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So Lady Kagami was the main antagonist of Tenchu 2… which was supposed to be an epic battle between ninja clans and rulers in Feudal Japan but somehow ended up with this as the major villain.

How seriously can you expect to take people take this kind of villain when facing off against a protagonist like this:

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For those rushing to type that it’s an old game and doesn’t matter – it’s worth remembering what the final installment in core series was.   Design aspects like this left unaddressed can kill otherwise unique and engaging properties.

– wincenworks

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Ironically, despite this armor being the first “screenshot” image on Conan Exiles’ Steam page – I can’t find any evidence that it is or has ever actually been in the game.  The reason why is not particularly clear.  After all, this is “heavy armor”:

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The part that is most amazing about it is that the lower half is covered in pants that seem far beyond the heavy armor but then have a nightmarish boobplate that seems to have been designed with zero considerations for protection.

It gets chafing nightmare because it seems that after adding a layer of padding under the metal… they decided that a bare steel chain strap will be fine.

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This is doubly a shame because not only does a certain marketing strategy seem to impeding them giving a solid representation of the game but they’re also missing the opportunity to show the real empowerment in the game:

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– wincenworks

Update: Apparently it is possible to recreate the outfit, but requires mixing and matching bits, @p75369 created the female version here and… well I’m sure you’ll be shocked the male version is different. 

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King’s Raid is a mobile game with good graphics and artwork, typically addicting gameplay through psychologically rewarding progression mechanics, and a fun, cooperative Raid gameplay mode.

In other words, a Skinner box game with Sexy Girls, got it. Could have just said that, it’s much shorter.

I got an ad for this game the other day, so I decided to check out the wiki for some Bingo material, and now I’m feeling really bad for the poor Bingo card. This one is literally the first character listed under their first category in the Heroes tab: Aselica the Knight (she’s a Tank, can’t you tell??). Here’s a better look at her “armor:”

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Good Graphics and Artwork™, as advertised.

And of course, this is what her lesser version looks like:

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At least her wings acquired more protection…?

-Icy

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Time to come back to Sideshow Toys and probably their best example yet of how much amazing craftsmanship (that sculpt! the intricate paint job! the fabric and synthetic leather details!) can be wasted on super garbage design.
This time, a classic garbage that is Red Sonja in her standard scalemail bikini. 

How do the mail bra and loincloth even hold up with such flimsy straps?
What is the point of protecting your neck with metal collar when your heart, guts and skull are all totally exposed?
Why worry about reasonably padding your leg and arm protection, but wear a scalemail bra (that will sand your nipples off) directly on your skin?

“Looks nothing like male equivalent” checked, of course, because of Conan.
Not crossing out “High heels” square, since that (cw: gore) is a reasonable heel size for a horse riding and wouldn’t be out of ordinary for a male character either. 

Also note how all those arrows that apparently completely missed Sonja, presumably due to her “costume” being more of a plot armor than anything else.
Reminds me of those couple “bikini armor makes you completely resistant to arrows” parodies we featured before: 

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Full comics to be viewed here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

~Ozzie

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Mercedes Marten (Dragon’s Dogma)

qvlqu:

Mercedes Marten (Dragon’s Dogma)

Excuse me, but literally the first concept for this character is fully armored, in reasonable plate, with no Tiddies and with actual pants??

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E X C U S E  M E ? ? ?

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-Icy

Just in  case the “no pants” part wasn’t clear enough from the image used by the OP, here’s some concept art for the final design, pants definitely not included:

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Sad part is that clearly whoever worked on that studied real armor design… Then presumably got told by a creepy marketing guy that if no boob (and thighs), how woman?

I think it’s reasonable to say that Dragon’s Dogma, both with outright bad stuff and clearly missed opportunities, like this one, belongs firmly on our Wall of Shame.

~Ozzie