The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: HiRez
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So, Rogue Company is the game with the most forgettable name… and the most forgettable aesthetic. At the time of this post their main video juxtaposes Ronin (above) with a male hero, Dima.
You may already have noticed some issues aside from the cringe inducing leaning into “Japanese girl with a katana” (who is also a street racing champion) archetype… in a game mostly about shooting people.
So it does tend to give the impression that there is a particular design philosophy common to boys club studios…
But what can you expect from the studio that brought us Smite, Paladins and thought this was a good idea?
– wincenworks
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In case anyone forgot that Paladins comes from the same developer as SMITE (if you couldn’t tell by their absolutely “creative” designs), here’s original costume of Furia, one of their newest champions.
Somehow even people at HiRez concluded that visible panties and completely out-of place garter belts are too ridiculous combination, because apparently after some fan feedback she received a slight redesign that includes pants under those garters.
Fret not, perverts! Her original look is preserved through red recolor “Iron Maiden” skin!
From one Hel to another, this week. This particular one is from SMITE, which is a game that lets you play as various deities from different pantheons. This was their interpretation of Hel, who they split into 2 forms instead of keeping to the original mythology, where she was a person who had 2 different-looking halves. Ok, fine. But could they not have made her just a generic white woman? Twice?
So that was my main beef with the original, besides the nonsensical clothes: the lack of any connection to her Norse roots, and her original myth. To briefly describe her game mechanics, which I was also considering while redesigning her: White Bread is a healer/support, and the Jelly Sandwich is a debuffer and does some over-time damage. The player’s able to switch back and forth between them.
In that vein, I decided to make Vanilla Wafer and Blueberry Tart into Old Woman Healer and Undead Monstrosity, respectively.
[Warning: There’s a close-up of her corpse face below the Read More!]
I was sent some lovely reference pictures of traditional Norse clothing, which I used to build the warm, functional clothing for the Old Lady half. I went with a color scheme that would evoke the frosty conditions of Niflheim, the place where her domain was located.
She floats in the game, so I was able to get away with impractically-long skirts.
I also made her a woman of color, because why not? Honestly, the sheer Whiteness of the original just had to change.
The scarf is her dog, Garmr. Since this is her healing half, the dog is nonthreatening (even though I used a wolf scarf for reference, shh).
For her debuffing half, I just took the idea of the fact that in the original myth, half her body looked like a corpse, and went all out with it. And like a corpse, she’s got no tits, cause fatty tissue is the first to go in the decomposing process.
Since she floats, she didn’t need the legs, and the dog becomes an angry knife inspired by traditional Norse knives. In-game, it would be mostly the animated knife that would attack. Over-time damage can be flavored as bleeding from a bite, stuff like that.
So that’s my Hel. I had a lot of fun working on her, especially because we don’t get to work with older ladies a lot, and I got to use a lot of cool references.
Ozzie just gave me the idea of giving each version one eye, since the corpse has 2 and the old lady doesn’t, which would have been a cool idea.
Now if only SMITE would remove their depictions of Hindu dieties, but that’s a rant for another day.
With a very few exceptions, pretty much every time I see a game brag about diverse body shapes – I wonder if they hired the same “expert” consultant that Levi’s did:
Since everyone can predict us talking again about Overwatch in the near future, this week’s throwback is the video game industry’s bafflingly narrow definition of what “diversity” among female characters looks like.
So, I was watching the Smite 4.21 patch notes, and I was really impressed by the quality of the skins.
Nemesis’ new skin actually looks like half decent armor, minus the high heels.
Discordia looked cute and mage-y.
And then there was this.
This is “Exterminator Kali”, who is supposed to have a “superhero feel”. She looks like one of those flag girls from car races. Had me going there for a minute with the improvement, Smite…
Ok, that Nemesis skin looks surprisingly interesting and not particularly sexualized in SMITE’s very low standards, especially compared to her default design. It’s not perfect, of course – you mentioned high heels, but there’s also spandex chainmail on her legs and skin-tight material around waist… Though this is probably the closest they ever got to practical female breastplate.
Dicordia could use a longer skirt, but her design at least has some personality, something nonexistent among other goddesses in this game. As a side note, her lore starts as a coherent story (Eris flees Troy after successfully spreading chaos of war there, reinvents herself as Dicordia) and quickly spirals into something that spits into face of everyone even remotely familiar with Greco-Roman myths and history (she makes a character who is neitherthe ancestor of Romulus nor
and
Remus the original founder of Rome instead of the twins). Sometimes I feel this game exists only to troll mythology nerds with blatant disregard for everything that makes those stories and characters special.
Speaking of which, can we ALL, as the humanity, please stop sexualizing the Hindu goddess Kali FOREVER? What’s video games’ problem with her? There was a super-porny version (NSFW link!) in Rise of the Incarnates (the game doesn’t seem to exist anymore). Overwatch also felt justified in turning this powerful female deity of a living religion into a “sexy”skin for Symmetra, because the character is Indian.
We referenced SMITE’s disgusting treatment of Kali in this 2015 post about exotification and it’s as topical now as it was then:
Other than sporting four arms and blue flesh, that “Exterminator” skin doesn’t even have anything to do with Kali’s default SMITE design. And what’s “superhero” about it, too? The biggest connection I can think of is that she looks like an ultrasexualized Guardians of the Galaxy reject.
~Ozzie
edit:A reader informed us that SMITE Wiki misspells the character’s name in Discordia’s lore: the article says Aeneus, an unrelated Greek mythology character, rather than Aeneas, the protagonist of Virgil’s Aeneid, bridge between Greek and Roman myths and ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome.
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Yes, this is Nemesis, the Goddess of Vengeance – her design makes it obvious right? Clearly she is revenge in Ancient Greece personified!
This week’s bingo brought to you by SMITE, who continue to follow their usual pattern. That’s right…
Artio got her first skin in Smite, and what a surprise she went from fully covered to perfectly molded cleavage. This is a tier 2 skin, which is usually the base skin plus some extra stuff, not stuff taken off. The icon for it even includes her standing in a winter storm. Not the best equipment for a winter storm.
Smite’s newest goddess, Artio, seems to be an improvement. Reasonably dressed for a girl on the battlefield, and she switches to a bear form that is actually bearlike (although with some feminine hair). (full size)
Unfortunately, the same patch that’s bringing her is bringing this Awilix skin…
Oh SMITE, I’m not sure if I should be congratulating you on moving on from ripping off Dragon Age to ripping off Horizon: Zero Dawn (rather than, I dunno, looking up the difference between Gaulish Celts and Gaelic Celts… I see that tartan and faux woad), but it seems you also chose to rip off League of Angels as well.
As a side note, remember that time SMITE released Bellona, an almost reasonably well armored goddess? Check out what skins she has now:
With SMITE, hope truly is the first step on the road to disappointment.
This is the newest addition to High-Rez’s hero fighter, “Paladins” who is one of the more interesting characters on their roster as far as her character goes, but that just makes it so much more disappointing that this is the design they ended up going with. This full screen image was the first thing I was greeted with upon logging in after the latest patch.
My biggest question is how she’s going to find the person who stole the rest of her outfit (and mangled her spine?) with that blindfold on, and hopefully that necklace doesn’t impale itself into her chest while she’s chasing them.
The one positive I find in this creatively sterile design* is the fact that Seris, unlike most Paladins champions, isn’t a direct or indirect ripoff of any Overwatch character. Though it won’t surprise me if she was heavily influenced by someone from a more fantasy-oriented franchise, like LoL or WoW… or maybe Warmachine [x]:
This bingo Sunday I decided to be experimental and compare SMITE’s The Morrigan with the character she’s clearly ripped off from… Morrigan.
The results were quite predictable. The SMITE version hits all the same squares (except boob window, cause that’s way beyond what “window” in clothing is) AND THEN SOME to the point of scoring a very common bingo row. HiRez’s brand of sexualization is more bland than BioWare’s? Color me unsurprised.
No-one would ever argue the Dragon Age character’s costume is not sexualized, though at least it’s iconic enough to tell right away when someone’s shamelessly copying her. Also she knows what good pants are, that’s some compensation for the bizarre hood-scarf too 😉
