Tag: science fiction

So, until recently there wasn’t much commentary on video games on this blog simply because Ozzie doesn’t have the particular interest in the types of titles people put forward.

Since I (wincenworks) love arguing about these types of video games I’ve been going through backlog of messages regarding female armor and general sexism in video games.

The most commonly mentioned topic is video games that allow you to choose your gender and provide similar options in terms of clothing etc to both options.  This is, in itself, an awesome idea and my initial reaction to the announcement of such a thing, particularly when it extends into other factors like race, build, age, etc is always the same:

Some franchises that have been mentioned in regards to this:

• Dark Souls (which is the only title in this list I haven’t played)
• Mass Effect
• Dragon Age
• Saints Row
• Elder Scrolls

Now, I will probably later do a more in depth write up on some or all of these games. However I feel that there are two common issues in both these titles that can be addressed in a singular post.  (Though since I haven’t looked into it enough yet, Dark Souls will be excluded from on the presumption of innocent until shown to be guilty.)

1. Similar but different armor

In Bioware (Mass Effect and Dragon Age) and Bethesda Studios (Elder Scrolls) games there exists this strange tendency where armour magically re-styles itself dependent on the gender of the wearer.  We’ve touched on how this happens in Skyrim.

This re-enforces a variant on the Smurfette Principle (you may need to refer to this and this further commentary) where the female Player Character (PC) and even Non Player Characters (NPC) appear to be feminized versions of a male characters.

Often this is to the detriment of the effectiveness of the outfit. Even allegedly identical suits of Heavy Armor can be amazingly different:

This is compounded when marketing focuses entirely on one gender option and leads the player to think of the female option as a novelty and highlights everything changed in their outfits and leads to the game feeling too much like this.

Sadly also franchises are notoriously unreliable for this.  Mass Effect 1 at least made everyone wear armor that looked like it’d provide some protection, Mass Effect 2 decided some female characters didn’t need all that armor… ‘cause boob!  

Skyrim provided pretty close matches with just the occasional boobplate or similar issue, but pkudude99 has advised us that it looks like Elder Scrolls Online is a massive step back in female armor quality:

The whole rest of the outfit looks fully functional — she even has a gorget to protect her neck!.  Why’d they ruin it with that cleavage window?

Image courtesy of Nomadic Gamers, April 3… that’s one day before the official open release date.  For those who don’t play the video games… this is what orcs looked like in Skyrim. 

If nothing else, we’re living in an age where there are massive sites for mods on pretty much all kinds of games (and that’s good).  The people who want the silly sexy super armor are going going get the silly sexy super armor, there’s no need for developers to cram it kicking and screaming into the core product.

2. The PC is fully customizable but the rest of the world…

Some video games offer you the chance to design your PC from scratch, and then to use shops etc to dress them how you like.  Sometimes however, the rest of the game world does it’s best to neutralise this benefit.  The worst franchise for this is, without a doubt, Saints Row.

Saints Row is a game where you… don’t really wear armour, you just wear clothes, but somehow still manages to maintain a sexist dynamic in relation to armour and battle costumes and a false dichotomy of allowing choices for male and female PCs.  This, naturally, overflows into the writing, level design and overall feel of the game.

Sure the PC can go gallivanting around in anything from a three piece suit with a stylish hat and leather gloves to their birthday suit (make up and tattoos optional) but the rest of the world still forces generic female gang members to dress in impractical clothes and gendered tropes.

Even when you do unlock an option to turn your gang members into soldiers (the only ones in the game who wear armor of any sort) – soldiers can only be male (even though a major antagonist in Saints Row III is a female soldier).

Sometimes the game may even start with presenting major female characters in a variety of outfits but then decide to up the sexy as the game progresses.  Like Kinzie in Saints Row IV, for example:

And there’s the after party at the end of Saints Row IV where everyone has their Super Armor (which does not make them invulnerable):

This sort of thing also happens to a lesser extent in Bioware games female NPCs will sometimes be ridiculously misrepresented by their costume (the standing character is fanatical about enforcing justice and has no time for interactions or relationships that’d get in the way of that… can you tell by looking?).  

Mass Effect shows us a world where we have influence and technology from half a dozen alien races – but a casino still looks like this:

In Saints Row and early Elder Scrolls games the worlds are pretty much designed to cater to Male Gaze in every possible way.  (This is a NSFW shrine to the Saints in Saints Row IV, notice one of these things is not like the other.) Even Skyrim has some questionable costuming decisions that have already been highlighted on BABD. 

I can’t help but think that if your male PC and your female PC should dress with radically different levels of sexualisation to look equally at home in their world, then you’ve lost one of the real benefits of allowing customisation.

– wincenworks