Whenever someone brings up the “you can see Hanzo’s one pec, therefore there is no sexism in Overwatch”, I will always be thinking of this Reverse Hanzo and his glorious butt.
Okay, yes, baby steps, Blizzard has got a long history of being terrible and a lot unlearning to do. But they could at least try to show some self-awareness of this.
And it’s not only body diversity which seems to be a challenge for female Overwatch characters, so is their AGE!
D.Va is actually the youngest in the whole ensemble (19). Female characters don’t get older than 34 (Mercy), while male ones range from 20 (if you count Zenyatta, a robot) or 25 (Junkrat) all the way up to 61 (Reinhardt).
The overall design of D.Va is perplexing on so many levels, too. What new is she supposed to contribute? Yet another young, thin, conventionally pretty woman in a catsuit… something the game (and the industry as a whole) so totally lacked before! Even her silly pseudonym rubs in that she’s a diva. The idea of a Korean professional gamer-turned-mecha pilot is very cool (even if the backstory rips off Evangelion/Pacific Rim), but why make her look so generic… and paint her mech pink?
My most optimistic guess: one of many Blizzard’s CreepyMarketingGuys saw Zarya and said “So, we’re doing female tanks now? Okay, but next one is gonna be the SEXY tank! And make her more PINK!”
Remember when Blizzard was doing female characters better in Overwatch?
Yeah, me neither.
We will be doing a full post about the new Widowmaker skin, but until then, we just wanted to throwback to this post about all the effort Blizzard is putting into their diversity. It still doesn’t make sense for Widow to wear those clothes because,
a) she is a sniper and that top just screams nip slip; and
b) she’s a sniper, who’s she going to be ‘distracting’ exactly from 2 miles away?
It also just looks really ugly? It really looks like someone designed a practical suit for her, and then Creepy Marketing Guy walked in and told them to cut a third of it off, so they just did, without any design adjustment.
-Icy
edit: Since a lot of replies ignore that the original post is almost 1,5 years old and mentioning newer characters is beside the point Icy is making about Widowmaker, let’s quickly address this: We do acknowledge how Ana Amari is a cool non-sexualized old lady (even if squarely within OW’s established beauty standards) and Orisa is a cool female robot. That said, there are still problems with how old characters continue to be depicted and adding new heroes doesn’t change that.
~Ozzie
PS: Mercy is 37, not 34 – my bad. She looks neither age, regardless.
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Orisa
Many excited readers informed us of the new Overwatch tank character, Orisa, as well as her child prodigy creator, Efi.
One thing we can say from the start is that Orisa is easily the first female-identified character in the game to whom “can I fap to her?” obviously wasn’t a design priority. So there’s no robo-ass or boobs to show and sexualize. That said, she’s a modified battle robot, so unless Blizzard lowered their standards to super sleazy, it was a given she wouldn’t have arbitrary secondary sex characteristics.
That said, Omnics having gender in the first place is pretty complicated issue, storytelling-wise, as some are considered non-gendered machines (Bastion) and other are mechanical people (Zenyatta), which makes it akin to “Why does Goofy wear pants, but Pluto doesn’t?” sort of philosophical problem. Though Orisa’s story, given that Efi converted her from one kind of robot into another, seems to explain her being female quite well.
It’s also nice to see how since the open beta, number of female tanks in the game rose from 0 to 3 out of 6, making it the first currently the only gender-balanced class in Overwatch.
Efi herself being an African girl is good in terms of diversifying cast, though we’re still yet to see a black female character who is also playable.
~Ozzie
If we are to engage in the oddity of gendered robots it’s good that the explanation be something outside of gender roles or excuses for literal objectification of women.
It would however, be even better if they remembered that while it’s important to have diversity in your secondary cast, it’s even more important to have it in your primary lineup. That and robots are not (yet) an audience for your games.
