I have never, and will never, forget the horror of the final boss in Dante's Inferno...
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs | OT3 | "make her look more...corpulent, more stuffed where the eyes can't escape."
- Thread starter Persephone
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I have never, and will never, forget the horror of the final boss in Dante's Inferno...
This is straight up inaccurate. Developers like Idea Factory, Compile Heart, Nippon Ichi, Gust, etc where already releasing games on PS3 before XIII's release. We might not be on the same page here.
People are talking about the latest Trails games but to be honest I think Trails of Cold Steel 1 already crossed the line. Maybe it doesn't get as explicit as ogling mini games but the general attitude of the game is pretty bad, the game is a harem and you can see that attitude constantly woven into the writing and character interactions.
As I watched/listened as my GF play through the first game, the use of well worn anime tropes, particularly tied to the harem genre was quite noticeable.
I'm not sure if I see DS & PSP as the start of that. Both of those got quite a lot of JRPGs that sold well enough to not need to dip into the otaku-well too deeply yet. DS & PSP is still time when we got stuff like the initial Kiseki trilogy (not entirely unproblematic, but generally pretty good with depictions of women & non-sexualized children), Tactics Ogre, Jeanne D'Arc, Radiant Historia, TWEWY, all kinds of non-Persona SMT games, Rune Factory, Soma Bringer, Magical Starsign, early Etrian Odysseys etc. that I don't remember being too bad with this stuff.
I think Vita was really where it really started going all wrong. It sold ok but not all that great in Japan, basically DOA outside Japan. Consoles were in huge decline. Game sales overall seemed down, unless you were Nintendo/Pokemon/Animal Crossing or Monster Hunter. Nintendo was maybe still seen as the more family friendly option and since there WAS another option in Vita, there went the pedo bait & waifu culture trash and those were nearly all that Vita got. I feel like that brought out all the wrong kind of people into the JRPG fandom who then never left but kept demanding more pedo waifu crap and that really blew up with anything & everything starting to get those elements.
True dat, but even problematic series like Game of Thrones didn't go out of their way to, like, sell Sexy Sansa merch or anything like that. That's just a low that seems like quite a few JRPGs reach (or drop to).
Enjoy! (or well, it can be kinda hard to watch at times, but it was a good watch!)
Other m coming up again because the 10 year anniversary. 10 years removed from maybe the most flagrantly sexist game ever.
I think it STARTED with the DS and PSP, but it really kicked into high gear with the Vita and 3DS, for sure. Hell, we're STILL seeing PS4 games come out in 2020 that look and play like they were up-ported from the Vita both in terms of core game design elements and artistic/character demographic targeting.
Nowadays there's basically nothing left outside of Final Fantasy and who knows when we'll see another one of them.
OP
OP
finally playing fallout 3 (lttp i know) and the male vs female armour...........
if theres one thing you want while fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic irradiated hellscape its exposed titties, stomach, and thighs. im cold just looking at them
edit: if ur bra isn't made from two strainers welded together i don't even wanna know you!!!!!!!! its called fashion sweatie look it up
at least the dude is also scantily clad i GUESS........
if theres one thing you want while fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic irradiated hellscape its exposed titties, stomach, and thighs. im cold just looking at them
edit: if ur bra isn't made from two strainers welded together i don't even wanna know you!!!!!!!! its called fashion sweatie look it up
at least the dude is also scantily clad i GUESS........
Are we talking about JRPGs and harem bullshit? Well, as a person that recently finished FFVIIR:
Fuck all this:
And also fuck this guy too:
Fuck all this:
And this:
And also fuck this guy too:
He lost his girlfriend to Corneo and worked for him to get a chance get back at him. But he is part of a group that doomed other women to that same fate of his girlfriend and no one tells him to fuck off after his needless chapter was over?
Ah, yeah! That screenshot you've put in spoilers was a barely veiled "choose which girl is your favourite!!!" moment wasn't it? Definitely rolled my eyes there, and at the other moment you posted where you choose what Tifa should wear. That game LOUDLY assumes the player is a straight male.
VII Remake has a weird hidden points system that affects which character Cloud sees at the end of Chapter 14.
Yeah, that was a weird addition to the story. When you get down to it, all the top players in Wall Market are culpable for enabling Corneo. Yeah it's a black market and the darkest part of Midgar but they could have handled the whole human trafficking and rape aspect with more gravity. It seems like they were more focused on making the Honeybee Inn less problematic while failing to address the most fucked up section of the Wall Market arc.And also fuck this guy too:
He lost his girlfriend to Corneo and worked for him to get a chance get back at him. But he is part of a group that doomed other women to that same fate of his girlfriend and no one tells him to fuck off after his needless chapter was over?
Square seems to have an extreme blind spot for the characters from that "Kids are Alright" light novel, of which Leslie is one. It feels like one of the writers is super attached to Leslie and Kyrie regardless of how little they fit into the game's world and narrative.
I didn't need to see this to know that was the case. Remember people. There's a high chance that the developers like what they put in and an IP like FF doesn't really need to chase otaku-bait money since it will sell. And we are talking about FFVII here.
The gang gets shocked (somehow) that the Corneo Bride audition was not the first one but none of this is ever brought up when then they later go back. The most is a comment made by Cloud and Tifa of their discomfort
"you get kissed by Jessie."
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It's weird how JRPGs have felt more and more like exploitative harem animes over the past several years. Game like Persona 5 feel actively hurt by this "every woman is a love interest" philosophy, but the weird thing is that even with like half a dozen love interests and romance storylines, none of them ever feel particularly deep or affecting.
Maybe it's just that I'm older now, but some of the weaker JRPG romances like Zidane/Garnet from FF9 felt like they had some real emotion to them. They had time to develop and their relationship was part of the overall story. A lot of the classic PS1 Final Fantasy games were love stories at their core. These modern JRPG games aren't really romances though, the relationship you choose is just shallow and exists off to the side of the main story.
Better posters then me have mentioned that modern female party members feel less like characters and more like hollow tropes, and that is a perfect way to describe them. The characters all feel hollow, their relationships feel shallow and obligatory. I'm not a huge fan of modern Bioware, but even their "choose your love interests" often had moments of emotional resonance, even if there were plenty of immature objectification and pandering there as well.
It feels weird to say that games should give players less control or choices, but it feels like games should maybe stop making every woman in the game a love interest and just focus on fewer more well written love stories.
Maybe it's just that I'm older now, but some of the weaker JRPG romances like Zidane/Garnet from FF9 felt like they had some real emotion to them. They had time to develop and their relationship was part of the overall story. A lot of the classic PS1 Final Fantasy games were love stories at their core. These modern JRPG games aren't really romances though, the relationship you choose is just shallow and exists off to the side of the main story.
Better posters then me have mentioned that modern female party members feel less like characters and more like hollow tropes, and that is a perfect way to describe them. The characters all feel hollow, their relationships feel shallow and obligatory. I'm not a huge fan of modern Bioware, but even their "choose your love interests" often had moments of emotional resonance, even if there were plenty of immature objectification and pandering there as well.
It feels weird to say that games should give players less control or choices, but it feels like games should maybe stop making every woman in the game a love interest and just focus on fewer more well written love stories.
Yeah Japan has a thing with shipping your main character with your brother. One of the two main problems I have with Trails in the Sky.
Looking at you Oliver.
Just to keep in the spirit of Final Fantasy, I've been playing FF Type-0 over the past week or so (well, I've had to take a break which is why I'm ranting about it in this thread), and I've been having quite a bit of fun. The story is a load of anime nonsense where it can't decide on whether it wants to be a really dark fantasy thing like Game of Thrones- the game opens with a Chocobo that is bloodied and dying- or a goofy, tropey shonen anime, but the gameplay loop is enjoyable enough now that I've given it a fair chance.
The whole concept of the game is that you play as all 14 members of the most elite class of a military school, so all the characters are school children aged between 16-17. Anyways, this is Class Zero:
Before I go into my issues with the game, which are probably perfectly clear already, I have to give them some credit for the 50/50 male to female ratio in terms of playable characters, and in terms of movesets and playstyles they've not just dumped all the women into more support class roles, even if the single real pure support class is a woman, so you have plenty of cool attackers to choose from no matter who you play.
So the main gameplay loop in terms of combat is something called Breaksight (or Killsight if it'll kill an enemy), which involves dodging out of the way of an enemies attack, then countering during their recovery animation to deal critical if not fatal damage: ranged characters have an easier time doing this due to the fact they don't need to get close, but this is another issue I have which I'll explain in a sec. Dodging is one of the most important things to do in the game, doubly so because it's much faster than your basic run thanks to no sprint button, and you'll spend literally every single fight dodging around like you're playing Dark Souls with infinite stamina, waiting for a Breaksight opportunity, as it's the only real viable way to kill most things.
And therein lies the problem: if you're playing as one of the women, then you're spending basically every other second of the game looking up their skirts, and it's just super off putting for me. I'll be perfectly honest here and say I'm not usually too put off by stuff like this: like I can enjoy the relative campiness of Bayonetta, and if Cammy still has her thong leotard in SF6 I'll just admit that her default look is never gonna change and use an alt costume. However, there's something about this being a story that is trying to be really dark in parts, coupled with the constant view of the underwear of these schoolgirls (plus the fact the English dub makes 4 of them sound about 10 years old), which is honestly putting me off playing the game entirely, and that's never really happened for me before. It's completely unavoidable too unless of course you just decide to not play as the women at all, and some of them just have random flips and even skirts just flicking up after performing basic attacks and special attacks. The best part is that one of the few characters who has a dodge slide opposed to a dodge roll is the woman with the gun, who is one of the few characters who doesn't actually need to use the dodge roll at all really, because you can just stand away from enemies, wait for them to whiff, then shoot them for the Breaksight.
There's thankfully one outlier to the bunch, which is Seven, and she is thankfully wearing shorts under her skirt, which is like a small miracle in the grand scheme of things with this game.
Moving on from that, I'm currently doing a quest which involves trying to determine if the female professor that everyone finds attractive, and who is like the only character so far with boob physics, is actually a spy for the enemy. Which you achieve by giving her gifts that you have placed a spell on which is basically a hidden camera spell, which gains the ability to see through clothes as you go to the -Ra and -Ga versions, to spy on her in her quarters to see if she has a specific tattoo on her.
So yeah, I couldn't tell you what an I'Cie is, or what Tempus Finis means, but if the game quizzes me on underwear colours and patterns at the end I'd pass with flying colours. :/
The whole concept of the game is that you play as all 14 members of the most elite class of a military school, so all the characters are school children aged between 16-17. Anyways, this is Class Zero:
Before I go into my issues with the game, which are probably perfectly clear already, I have to give them some credit for the 50/50 male to female ratio in terms of playable characters, and in terms of movesets and playstyles they've not just dumped all the women into more support class roles, even if the single real pure support class is a woman, so you have plenty of cool attackers to choose from no matter who you play.
So the main gameplay loop in terms of combat is something called Breaksight (or Killsight if it'll kill an enemy), which involves dodging out of the way of an enemies attack, then countering during their recovery animation to deal critical if not fatal damage: ranged characters have an easier time doing this due to the fact they don't need to get close, but this is another issue I have which I'll explain in a sec. Dodging is one of the most important things to do in the game, doubly so because it's much faster than your basic run thanks to no sprint button, and you'll spend literally every single fight dodging around like you're playing Dark Souls with infinite stamina, waiting for a Breaksight opportunity, as it's the only real viable way to kill most things.
And therein lies the problem: if you're playing as one of the women, then you're spending basically every other second of the game looking up their skirts, and it's just super off putting for me. I'll be perfectly honest here and say I'm not usually too put off by stuff like this: like I can enjoy the relative campiness of Bayonetta, and if Cammy still has her thong leotard in SF6 I'll just admit that her default look is never gonna change and use an alt costume. However, there's something about this being a story that is trying to be really dark in parts, coupled with the constant view of the underwear of these schoolgirls (plus the fact the English dub makes 4 of them sound about 10 years old), which is honestly putting me off playing the game entirely, and that's never really happened for me before. It's completely unavoidable too unless of course you just decide to not play as the women at all, and some of them just have random flips and even skirts just flicking up after performing basic attacks and special attacks. The best part is that one of the few characters who has a dodge slide opposed to a dodge roll is the woman with the gun, who is one of the few characters who doesn't actually need to use the dodge roll at all really, because you can just stand away from enemies, wait for them to whiff, then shoot them for the Breaksight.
There's thankfully one outlier to the bunch, which is Seven, and she is thankfully wearing shorts under her skirt, which is like a small miracle in the grand scheme of things with this game.
Moving on from that, I'm currently doing a quest which involves trying to determine if the female professor that everyone finds attractive, and who is like the only character so far with boob physics, is actually a spy for the enemy. Which you achieve by giving her gifts that you have placed a spell on which is basically a hidden camera spell, which gains the ability to see through clothes as you go to the -Ra and -Ga versions, to spy on her in her quarters to see if she has a specific tattoo on her.
So yeah, I couldn't tell you what an I'Cie is, or what Tempus Finis means, but if the game quizzes me on underwear colours and patterns at the end I'd pass with flying colours. :/
Just to keep in the spirit of Final Fantasy, I've been playing FF Type-0 over the past week or so (well, I've had to take a break which is why I'm ranting about it in this thread), and I've been having quite a bit of fun. The story is a load of anime nonsense where it can't decide on whether it wants to be a really dark fantasy thing like Game of Thrones- the game opens with a Chocobo that is bloodied and dying- or a goofy, tropey shonen anime, but the gameplay loop is enjoyable enough now that I've given it a fair chance.
The whole concept of the game is that you play as all 14 members of the most elite class of a military school, so all the characters are school children aged between 16-17. Anyways, this is Class Zero:
Before I go into my issues with the game, which are probably perfectly clear already, I have to give them some credit for the 50/50 male to female ratio in terms of playable characters, and in terms of movesets and playstyles they've not just dumped all the women into more support class roles, even if the single real pure support class is a woman, so you have plenty of cool attackers to choose from no matter who you play.
So the main gameplay loop in terms of combat is something called Breaksight (or Killsight if it'll kill an enemy), which involves dodging out of the way of an enemies attack, then countering during their recovery animation to deal critical if not fatal damage: ranged characters have an easier time doing this due to the fact they don't need to get close, but this is another issue I have which I'll explain in a sec. Dodging is one of the most important things to do in the game, doubly so because it's much faster than your basic run thanks to no sprint button, and you'll spend literally every single fight dodging around like you're playing Dark Souls with infinite stamina, waiting for a Breaksight opportunity, as it's the only real viable way to kill most things.
And therein lies the problem: if you're playing as one of the women, then you're spending basically every other second of the game looking up their skirts, and it's just super off putting for me. I'll be perfectly honest here and say I'm not usually too put off by stuff like this: like I can enjoy the relative campiness of Bayonetta, and if Cammy still has her thong leotard in SF6 I'll just admit that her default look is never gonna change and use an alt costume. However, there's something about this being a story that is trying to be really dark in parts, coupled with the constant view of the underwear of these schoolgirls (plus the fact the English dub makes 4 of them sound about 10 years old), which is honestly putting me off playing the game entirely, and that's never really happened for me before. It's completely unavoidable too unless of course you just decide to not play as the women at all, and some of them just have random flips and even skirts just flicking up after performing basic attacks and special attacks. The best part is that one of the few characters who has a dodge slide opposed to a dodge roll is the woman with the gun, who is one of the few characters who doesn't actually need to use the dodge roll at all really, because you can just stand away from enemies, wait for them to whiff, then shoot them for the Breaksight.
There's thankfully one outlier to the bunch, which is Seven, and she is thankfully wearing shorts under her skirt, which is like a small miracle in the grand scheme of things with this game.
Moving on from that, I'm currently doing a quest which involves trying to determine if the female professor that everyone finds attractive, and who is like the only character so far with boob physics, is actually a spy for the enemy. Which you achieve by giving her gifts that you have placed a spell on which is basically a hidden camera spell, which gains the ability to see through clothes as you go to the -Ra and -Ga versions, to spy on her in her quarters to see if she has a specific tattoo on her.
So yeah, I couldn't tell you what an I'Cie is, or what Tempus Finis means, but if the game quizzes me on underwear colours and patterns at the end I'd pass with flying colours. :/
I like a lot about Type-0 (the music, the dark vibes, the death = you get forgotten concept, the opening and ending are brilliant) but yeah, in a lot of ways it feels like SE trying to ride the Persona/anime high school wave and copying some of the worst things that entails. And even then it's still one of the tamer examples which is kind of depressing.
While I'd defend Hajime Tabata in some regards (FFXV was kind of a miracle in that it exists at all) it's undeniable the Square Enix games he was involved in were some of the creepiest. Cindy in FFXV, Type-0's seedier elements, and then there's The 3rd Birthday which I'm sure will be discussed in this thread eventually because yeesh. Hopefully Project Athia avoids the pitfalls with his absense.
Crisis Core is the only exception I can think of and that's probably because it has like, two women. Cissnei's great tho.
That whole game is a horror.
Dead women attack you with their vagina
It's really frustrating because all the anime nonsense is super out of place, and it's just souring me on the whole thing completely. I was hoping that some of the alt costumes might've added pants or shorts, but nope. It's like the opening, and presumably the ending too based on what you're saying, is tonally different than everything else, but is much more interesting.I like a lot about Type-0 (the music, the dark vibes, the death = you get forgotten concept, the opening and ending are brilliant) but yeah, in a lot of ways it feels like SE trying to ride the Persona/anime high school wave and copying some of the worst things that entails. And even then it's still one of the tamer examples which is kind of depressing.
While I'd defend Hajime Tabata in some regards (FFXV was kind of a miracle in that it exists at all) it's undeniable the Square Enix games he was involved in were some of the creepiest. Cindy in FFXV, Type-0's seedier elements, and then there's The 3rd Birthday which I'm sure will be discussed in this thread eventually because yeesh.
Crisis Core is the only exception I can think of and that's probably because it has like, two women. Cissnei's great tho.
That's fair. I didn't even play KH3 and still heard how badly she was treated as a character. Maybe the answer is to have more diversity in who gets hired to write these games. Maybe more female voices behind the scenes and game that target a wider audience would help.
Yeah Type-0 thrives at its best when it's delivering really well directed and scored emotional gut-punches. There are several throughout the game.
Then the rest is basically a bunch of extremely weird anime war babies going on adventures and getting into hijinks at high school.
Like, the former is still marred by the most confusing lore this side of Kingdom Hearts, but at least it's captivating in a way. If you cut the school and just made them a special ops unit you'd lose nothing and in fact gain a lot, since a lot of said emotional gut-punches would be even worse if you were given more reason to connect to the party.
I ummmmm ........ I'm gonna take your word for it. Thanks though!
Yeah. Like look at Kurasame for example. This dude is clearly set up as someone you're supposed to care about, like a long-time vet of several wars.
But he's a high school student. How.
I'm not gonna defend the first one or the incredibly goofy raider armours, but I will point out the context of the second outfit. Of the three named female characters in the base game who wear it, two are sex workers in bars and one plays up to a certain stereotype, so the cleavage and exposed thighs make sense.
A flesh covered boob plate with golden "straps" covering the nipples. Designer couldn't help themselves, huh?With the exception of her boob plate. I liked Caetuna's design.
There used to be a few women involved in the JRPG scene (for example, Reiko Kodama and Soraya Saga) but they all seemed to drop out around - surprise! - the same time things took a turn for the worse.
Coincidentally, that was also when Konami decided to drop Ayami Kojima's art from Castlevania in favour of Generic Shounen Rubbish...
Yeah. That one thing. To think that combining one of the tops of the concept below with the dress they ended up using would of made it perfect.
With the exception of her boob plate. I liked Caetuna's design.
I don't even remember her. Was she only in the game for five minutes?
Sadly.
She, along with Kurasame, die summoning Alexander.
Yeah, I'm not interested in many JRPGs any more either, thanks to all this shit. It sucks. I like their gameplay more than WRPGs. I can't get into WRPGs in any significant way (I keep trying and it keeps not working outside of rare exceptions), so I've just had fewer and fewer RPGs in general catch my eye in the last few years thanks to so much of the JRPG design culture degenerating into brainless pandering. SMT is my favourite RPG series by miles and it's even started trading its depth for this shallow garbage too. I waffle between being excited for SMTV and being dejected and having no hope it won't be up to the series' older quality levels.
We could do a whole thread on how (horror) media demonizes vulvas/vaginas.
The scene at the 29 minute mark sure is something (TW for nudity if you go check)
That whole game looks like a edgy '90s comic book that inexplicably is only just over a decade old.
What's super frustrating is that the game itself (originally released in 2007) handles it... actually quite well. It's treated (shockingly) maturely and respectfully, and I gained a lot of respect for the franchise for how they tackled such a difficult and horrific story.
But then they're just pissing all over that with making the victim a pin-up. While she's still a teenager, even. It's really pathetic.
For AGES I thought the Ys VIII box art was nice, with a well designed main heroine. That white bit of cloth making up the front of her outfit was really stylish with the blue!
And then one day I realized it wasn't white material, it was her skin and she was basically naked. You let me down, Ys VIII.
It kinda sucks cuz some of her pitched alt designs don't go this route at all (and whatever, my bar is low enough that I'll take a bit of boob blate over an ENTIRELY EXPOSED midriff). 😂 😭
I'm scared/curious what other designs they considered for Ricotta.
I think that's giving Other M a little too much credit. It deserves to die in obscurity.
I played Ys VIII last December and I really enjoyed it. I even like Dana as a character and it's sad she probably won't appear in any future Ys games. But I did find it funny how she is from a tribe of naturally tall people, like 7 feet tall, but she is short which makes her the same height as all the other cast members. The even have a cutscene in the game explaining how she can wear that outfit in the snow and if I recall correctly, the explanation is that her tribe is so technologically/magically advanced that they have some type of force field around them at all times to keep them no matter what outfits they wear. Something like that. Usually most games don't even bother explaining why character don't even to change their outfits for different weather but you can tell someone on the dev team thought about it and came up with hokie explanation.
I think you can get a pirate outfit for her though and it's much better.
I think you can get a pirate outfit for her though and it's much better.
One of the things that drove me nuts about Ys VIII is that a lot of the random villagers you recruit are way more interesting than the characters in your actual party.
Why can't we bring the knight lady or the battle grandma with us on adventures instead of the loudmouth little girl who contributes nothing to the plot?
Why can't we bring the knight lady or the battle grandma with us on adventures instead of the loudmouth little girl who contributes nothing to the plot?
Are we talking about JRPGs and harem bullshit? Well, as a person that recently finished FFVIIR:
Fuck all this:
And this:
And also fuck this guy too:
He lost his girlfriend to Corneo and worked for him to get a chance get back at him. But he is part of a group that doomed other women to that same fate of his girlfriend and no one tells him to fuck off after his needless chapter was over?
Game embarrassingly pulls a lot of weight trying to be toadie for the proverbial male gamer. Tifa suffers for it most transparently and they could barely even be bothered to just write Tifa for Tifa.
And it's probably going to stay like this as they seem completely committed in their attempt to please everyone. All coomers welcome.
I still can't believe they tried to flesh Jessie's character out but really just made her into a thirsty weirdo who never stops making inappropriate sex jokes at a coworker.
There are some western indy-JRPGs with decent character designs, at least - Crosscode, Cosmic Star Heroine, Virgo Vs The Zodiac.
I got to the part with Poseidon's...er, princess in my god of war 3 playthrough.
From my memories, when I first played it, it didn't affect me much. I never liked Kratos, but it seemed to me to just be a more polished iteration of "and here is where we make Kratos do something totally fucked up in order to progress". The first game you burned an athenian soldier alive in a cage, in GoW2 you killed the translators. In GoW3, you actually do the burn alive thing again at the very start of the game, but that guy is slightly villainized in how he talks in derogatory terms to Kratos.
Playing it now tho...ugh. In case you haven't played or don't remember, (I'll spoiler it because it's pretty heavy in violence against a sexualized young woman) Kratos needs to push giant wheel up in order to open a gate. If he lets, the wheel rolls back and the gate closes and there is no way to make it through in time before it closes. So, Kratos looks around and finds Poseidon's princess, where she's clearly an abuse victim and it's unclear whether she's simply a woman he's taken a liking to or if she's his daughter, as the princess connotation implies. In either case, she's barely wearing anything and her breasts are exposed as she's chained up. To solve the puzzle, you have to drag her through the halls of enemies, get her to hold up the giant wheel, and when you walk away, she's crushed under the weight of it, and the blocks the gear wheel from turning and your allowed to pass. You go back, you see her twisted body in the pool of blood under the wheel.
So, it's the fact that they basically invented a woman sex slave character, didn't give her a name or any significant design identifies that aren't about emphasizing her sexualized body, have her alternatively be too scared of you to ask for help and then beg for help when she has no other choice, and then have her murdered by severe mutilation. And GoW is a series that's mean and it's sold on it's meanness. People bought god of war specifically so they could play an absolute asshole. But still, there's throwing the boat captain into the hydra belly when you don't have to, and this. Because, if they wanted to do this, she didn't need to be sexually objectified like this. She could have just been a regular servant girl or whatever, which may have still held the connotation of violence against women, but she wouldn't have been sexualized. The sexualization only makes sense if we consider one possibility...I think the purpose of the sexualization is to dangle the possibility that Kratos would ahve sex with her...which would have been rape though I doubt the developers would admit that that's the fantasy they were dangling in front of players...Which would be more in line with the original achievement for it, "I didn't do it but I wish I did"...
this is disgusting. But also, one thing I distinctly remember during either marketing or after game behind the scenes is how Kratos spares Hera. They specifically go to mention that Kratos is a bit chivalrous towards women, so he's willing to go easy on them unless they're outright enemies. And to the extent that he's talking about the scene with Hera, that's somewhat true. He is willing to let Hera go, up until she calls Pandora a whore. At which point, he kills her, but it's far more restrained than his usual kills, it being a simple neck snap, compared to the over the top gory violence we've had in other scenes. But that's out of tune with what he did to the poseidon princess, which may not be the most graphic violence in the game, but...she was just a scared girl begging for not to be killed, and Kratos didn't even blink at having her mutilated in order to hold open a door. But Hera and Pandora, both conservatively dressed, are given mercy up until Hera calls Pandora a whore, at which point that (which isn't even a meaningful threat of violence) is when Kratos decides Hera needs to die. Hera dies for (falsely) accusing Pandora of sexual promiscuity, of all things.
I'm....getting...a vibe here that maybe the developers had some fucked up ideas about female sexuality. Which isn't even getting into Aphrodite...
From my memories, when I first played it, it didn't affect me much. I never liked Kratos, but it seemed to me to just be a more polished iteration of "and here is where we make Kratos do something totally fucked up in order to progress". The first game you burned an athenian soldier alive in a cage, in GoW2 you killed the translators. In GoW3, you actually do the burn alive thing again at the very start of the game, but that guy is slightly villainized in how he talks in derogatory terms to Kratos.
Playing it now tho...ugh. In case you haven't played or don't remember, (I'll spoiler it because it's pretty heavy in violence against a sexualized young woman) Kratos needs to push giant wheel up in order to open a gate. If he lets, the wheel rolls back and the gate closes and there is no way to make it through in time before it closes. So, Kratos looks around and finds Poseidon's princess, where she's clearly an abuse victim and it's unclear whether she's simply a woman he's taken a liking to or if she's his daughter, as the princess connotation implies. In either case, she's barely wearing anything and her breasts are exposed as she's chained up. To solve the puzzle, you have to drag her through the halls of enemies, get her to hold up the giant wheel, and when you walk away, she's crushed under the weight of it, and the blocks the gear wheel from turning and your allowed to pass. You go back, you see her twisted body in the pool of blood under the wheel.
So, it's the fact that they basically invented a woman sex slave character, didn't give her a name or any significant design identifies that aren't about emphasizing her sexualized body, have her alternatively be too scared of you to ask for help and then beg for help when she has no other choice, and then have her murdered by severe mutilation. And GoW is a series that's mean and it's sold on it's meanness. People bought god of war specifically so they could play an absolute asshole. But still, there's throwing the boat captain into the hydra belly when you don't have to, and this. Because, if they wanted to do this, she didn't need to be sexually objectified like this. She could have just been a regular servant girl or whatever, which may have still held the connotation of violence against women, but she wouldn't have been sexualized. The sexualization only makes sense if we consider one possibility...I think the purpose of the sexualization is to dangle the possibility that Kratos would ahve sex with her...which would have been rape though I doubt the developers would admit that that's the fantasy they were dangling in front of players...Which would be more in line with the original achievement for it, "I didn't do it but I wish I did"...
this is disgusting. But also, one thing I distinctly remember during either marketing or after game behind the scenes is how Kratos spares Hera. They specifically go to mention that Kratos is a bit chivalrous towards women, so he's willing to go easy on them unless they're outright enemies. And to the extent that he's talking about the scene with Hera, that's somewhat true. He is willing to let Hera go, up until she calls Pandora a whore. At which point, he kills her, but it's far more restrained than his usual kills, it being a simple neck snap, compared to the over the top gory violence we've had in other scenes. But that's out of tune with what he did to the poseidon princess, which may not be the most graphic violence in the game, but...she was just a scared girl begging for not to be killed, and Kratos didn't even blink at having her mutilated in order to hold open a door. But Hera and Pandora, both conservatively dressed, are given mercy up until Hera calls Pandora a whore, at which point that (which isn't even a meaningful threat of violence) is when Kratos decides Hera needs to die. Hera dies for (falsely) accusing Pandora of sexual promiscuity, of all things.
I'm....getting...a vibe here that maybe the developers had some fucked up ideas about female sexuality. Which isn't even getting into Aphrodite...