Why women criticise sexualised character designs | OT3 | "make her look more...corpulent, more stuffed where the eyes can't escape."

yaoji · Mar 13, 2021

Morrigan said:
It's a solid observation. The truth is that game devs have a lot of issues making male love interests. Women can be love interests, usually to men, very occasionally to other women... but men as love interests to either women or men? It very rarely happens outside of Bioware-style romance options.

And even BioWare struggled quite a bit, like when they were creating Thane:

According to art director Derek Watts, Thane was the toughest Mass Effect 2 character to design. BioWare started with a written description of Thane, and wanted to emphasise him as a "career assassin" while keeping him attractive as a possible romantic interest for female players. They asked the women in the office what they "liked" in their aliens. Concept artists began by drawing on lizards and birds-of-paradise for inspiration. It was considered giving Thane's face a "mannequin-like, 'perfect human' appearance", and a red mark was considered as a possible key feature for the character. Feedback was received from the women in the office who found the character "creepy", and as the character was a romantic interest the mannequin-face was decided to be too "off-putting". The team went "back to the drawing board", with Thane later becoming a mix of "aquatic" and "reptilian" characteristics.Thane ultimately went through eight or nine "phases" before his design was finalised.

lol

SapphiCine said:
I agree with this, Tess's death is more important to Ellie than Joel. Joel's manpain is all about Sarah's death. Personally, The Last of Us works for me since Ellie is the co-protagonist. If she was a mere companion the game would absolutely not work.

There really is no excuse for the racist handling of black characters in the series.

Hi, I just wanted to say that I love your posts! ^^

DragonKeeper · Mar 13, 2021

::Looks up picture of Thane:: I think they could have saved themselves time and just copied the fish man from The Shape of Water.

ConVito · Mar 13, 2021

DragonKeeper said:
::Looks up picture of Thane:: I think they could have saved themselves time and just copied the fish man from The Shape of Water.

Would have been difficult to do from a film 7 years in the future.

Kohlbiri · Mar 14, 2021

They should just have hot man meetings like what Disney did when they were designing Flynn Rider from Tangled.

grand · Mar 14, 2021

Zen said:
But it is certainly uncommon. In Fire Emblem Blazing Sword, both Hector and Eliwood have canonical romances with two of the recruitable characters IIRC, while Lyn, the first Lord you meet and whom you spend the first arc of the game with, has no such prospects and the game assumes the player insert character is male.

Redcrayon said:
Going by Lyn's dialogue in various games over the years, Lyn's interest is is the assumed male player insert (where you are an assumed wandering, faceless tactical genius without a unit representing you on the battlefield), a member added a video on that the last time we discussed it, it's so weird. Naturally FE Heroes takes it even further, both in dialogue hammering it home and the art sexualised to a far greater degree. Heaven forbid a woman with a leading role be allowed to have a story where she likes someone else, Lyn just exists to fill the role of the player's fantasy girlfriend at this point, not to mention that, initially, she existed to be the lead of the tutorial campaign before the game hands the story over to two male nobles from generic quasi-medieval countries with castles.

The other side of it is that why do men always need to have an arc where they manage to romance a woman amidst killing thousands of zombies/mercenaries/aliens/demons/robots anyway. You'd think they'd have their hands full :D

To be fair, Fire Emblem 7's plot was heavily constrained by the fact that it was a prequel. Lyn was introduced as the first female Lord but since she wasn't in the previous game, her fate was always going to be hamstringed. Of course, that doesn't explain the nonsense that happened to her in the mobile game.

Fire Emblem tried to build on Lyn with varying results. Eirika is very much what Lyn should've been and Micaiah has a love interest... Though to explain the flaws with the latter would in involve a 5 paragraph explanation of how absurd Radiant Dawn gets lol

After that, Fire Emblem goes all in on the support system. Which is good: you can have characters end up with a male love interest.... But also bad: the unnecessary limitations and the whole wife/husband simulator aspect. Three Houses handles it the best but it still comes off as playing with dolls in a doll house at times.

DragonKeeper · Mar 14, 2021

ConVito said:
Would have been difficult to do from a film 7 years in the future.

Yes yes, I didn't know which came out first and I didn't care enough to check. My observation was just how funny the similarities were. I almost rewrote the post to say "They created the fishman from Shape of water".

ConVito · Mar 14, 2021

DragonKeeper said:
Yes yes, I didn't know which came out first and I didn't care enough to check. My observation was just how funny the similarities were. I almost rewrote the post to say "They created the fishman from Shape of water".

True, as similar as they are, I agree that something a little closer to that might have been a better idea for Thane. Similar to how Vetra was handled in Andromeda, where they didn't bother "humanizing" her and just worked within the confines of the types of turian designs they'd already established.

Persephone · Mar 14, 2021

just saw a tumblr post about this and WOWZERS i did not realise breath of the wild had some transmisogynistic shit in it (plus racism+misogyny with the gerudo)

Princess Bubblegum · Mar 14, 2021

Persephone said:
just saw a tumblr post about this and WOWZERS i did not realise breath of the wild had some transmisogynistic shit in it (plus racism+misogyny with the gerudo)

Yeah, that part of Breath of the Wild was not great.

Deleted member 35597 · Mar 14, 2021

Persephone said:
I'm planning to clear out my PS4 backlog including TLoU remastered and I'm baffled that it got a pass for the women fridged for Joel's manpain (and all the Black characters dying (or being evil and dying))

Yeah, the scene just before she dies is all about just giving Joel the motivation to carry on with taking Ellie across country. He was against the idea before, and after finding their contacts dead he is ready to head back home. The scene plays up the fact that her and Joel had potentially some romantic connection, and plays up to the trope of the woman having to sacrifice her self for "the greater good". Her whole character was just built up to die and be used as a reason for him to carry on with Ellie. I think her dying having an impact on Ellie is secondary to what her death scene was trying to do, which was make Joel/the player feel a certain way and move the plot along.

Just as an aside, does anyone think it is a bit odd that a lot of the "mother" characters are just sort of dead in TLOU series? A lot off screen. I understand that the themes of the games are focused on father/daughter relationships, but I mean I can only think of one that is still alive and that is also a prominent character.

Off topic and it has sort of been mentioned but it is a shame Naughty Dog seems to get little push back with how they tread minority characters in their games, especially Black characters. This along with the issues surrounding crunch makes it really disappointing to see ND voted Best Developer here on ResetEra.

RecLib · Mar 14, 2021

a e s t h e t i c said:
Off topic and it has sort of been mentioned but it is a shame Naughty Dog seems to get little push back with how they tread minority characters in their games, especially Black characters. This along with the issues surrounding crunch makes it really disappointing to see ND voted Best Developer here on ResetEra.

The best developer award was a silly and pointless award to include anyway. It was tallied based on total points a developer earned from people voting any of their games as goty, but also all the developers that were putting out major goty contenders would only be putting out one game a year anyway so... It was just a second goty award for no reason. What I'm getting at is that resetera didn't really give naughty dog a developer of the year award, they just voted tlou2 the game of the year and the weird voting system decided that was also the same thing. Who knows where a developer award would have gone? It could have still gone to ND, but maybe not.

I voted TLOU2 game of the year, because it was, but I wouldn't have awarded a "best developer" award to a company with all that kind of corporate crunch culture going on. But by the way the vote was tallied, my vote did go towards that award.

I would have given a Developer award to like... Respawn Entertainment, for making a high budget game like that with content updates and constant patches, while having no major issues with crunch or any kind of major workplace scandals. But also respawn wouldn't even be eligible by the silly way the award was tallied here, because they didn't put a NEW game last year, they just worked on their old one.

Edit: apparently respawn did put out some medal of honor vr game last year but like.. no one is voting any awards for that.

Rotobit · Mar 14, 2021

Persephone said:
just saw a tumblr post about this and WOWZERS i did not realise breath of the wild had some transmisogynistic shit in it (plus racism+misogyny with the gerudo)

The Gerudo stuff in that game is only gonna get worse with time, it sucks. Especially considering Urbosa and Riju are pretty fun characters. I feel like they could have made that whole part still work from a gameplay perspective without enforcing a strict gender binary.

Morrigan · Mar 14, 2021

Tess is not fridged. Fridging isn't every time a woman dies. Fridging are what happens to usually minor/nameless women with zero agency, who die gruesome/horrific deaths to motivate their male partners to go on a revenge story. You could argue that Sarah is fridged, but none of this applies to Tess.

Conditional-Pancakes · Mar 14, 2021

Morrigan said:
Tess is not fridged. Fridging isn't every time a woman dies. Fridging are what happens to usually minor/nameless women with zero agency, who die gruesome/horrific deaths to motivate their male partners to go on a revenge story. You could argue that Sarah is fridged, but none of this applies to Tess.

Thank you!! Yes, the concept of agency is very important with this kind of analysis.

Persephone · Mar 14, 2021

my original post was in reference to Sarah, yeah. she's textbook fridging which is why the opening of the game always makes me roll my eyes instead of cry lmao

AnimaRize · Mar 14, 2021

Fridging is sadly still being used as a trope today, but remember a fidged character doesn't have to die they can be brainwashed. and video games do it way to often along with the "disposable woman" trope women that exist only to get killed off. It quite frankly rampant in every genre. I understand it's a useful tool for a lot of writers but the problem is before these women are killed off/kidnapped/brainwashed, they don't have any character to begin with. Being a woman and the "important person" to the hero is enough sometimes make them cute or show clearly obvious affection that the main character doesn't actually see only to really drive it home that they are only here to die.

I think the oblivious to the feelings only after death is really the biggest one to that telegraphs to me oh that woman only exist to die/kidnapped/brainwashed. bonus points if they are a childhood friend, because you can't make it obvious enough at that point.

RJWalker · Mar 14, 2021

Zen said:
In Fire Emblem Blazing Sword, both Hector and Eliwood have canonical romances with two of the recruitable characters IIRC, while Lyn, the first Lord you meet and whom you spend the first arc of the game with, has no such prospects and the game assumes the player insert character is male.

?
Lyn is literally Hector's most 'pushed' love interest. Lyn had 4 potential pairings that are distinctly romantic (a lot has been said about Florina but the game doesn't so whatever). That's the actually more than the other two lords, Eliwood and Hector, who only have 3 each, with Lyn being one for both. None of the lords have canonical love interests but the game pushes two pairings in particular through main story dialogue (as opposed to optional dialogue through story conversations). Those are Eliwood x Ninian and Hector x Lyn.
And as stated before, Lyn gets the short end narratively because she's a character invented for FE7, which is a prequel. She does not exist in FE6.

texhnolyze · Mar 14, 2021

A newly announced indie action RPG featuring a female character. She looks great in a glimps, let's hope the game itself will be good. The devs used to make the survival horror series Remothered (which also feature women as MC).

Batora: Lost Haven®

Batora: Lost Haven® combines the features of a hack & slash and a twin-stick shooter in a nonlinear interplanetary story-driven action RPG.

www.batora.game

ConVito · Mar 14, 2021

texhnolyze said:
A newly announced indie action RPG featuring a female character. She looks great in a glimps, let's hope the game itself will be good. The devs used to make the survival horror series Remothered (which also feature women as MC).

Batora: Lost Haven®

Batora: Lost Haven® combines the features of a hack & slash and a twin-stick shooter in a nonlinear interplanetary story-driven action RPG.

www.batora.game

The "twin stick shooter" aspect is a big turn off for me, but damn do those designs look good.

Saucycarpdog · Mar 14, 2021

Morrigan said:
It's a solid observation. The truth is that game devs have a lot of issues making male love interests. Women can be love interests, usually to men, very occasionally to other women... but men as love interests to either women or men? It very rarely happens outside of Bioware-style romance options.

Basically this. And it's not limited to JRPGs or even Japanese games at all.

Remember Me has a female protagonist, and was intended to have a male love interest and even a kissing scene in it, and the devs got pushback and were pressured to remove it, because it would make male players feel "icky" to see their protagonist kiss a man.

Remember Me developer struggled with securing a publisher over female protagonist

Remember Me is an upcoming action-adventure game combining stealth, parkour, cyberpunk, and the Inception-like concept of memory alteration. An amazing pitch, one sure to woo plenty publishers—oh, wait, the main character is a lady. Pass. That's essentially what developer Dontnod Entertainment...

www.pcgamer.com

Probably a mix of male creatives having no interest in women's romance and male audiences having a disdain for it.

Zen · Mar 15, 2021

RJWalker said:
?
Lyn is literally Hector's most 'pushed' love interest. Lyn had 4 potential pairings that are distinctly romantic (a lot has been said about Florina but the game doesn't so whatever). That's the actually more than the other two lords, Eliwood and Hector, who only have 3 each, with Lyn being one for both. None of the lords have canonical love interests but the game pushes two pairings in particular through main story dialogue (as opposed to optional dialogue through story conversations). Those are Eliwood x Ninian and Hector x Lyn.
And as stated before, Lyn gets the short end narratively because she's a character invented for FE7, which is a prequel. She does not exist in FE6.

I didn't interpret her relationship with Hector as romantic. I saw the three lords as close friends. I actually thought Rath had more chemistry with Lyn than she and Hector.

FallenGrace · Mar 15, 2021

So I bought Sakura Wars knowing nothing about it. I knew the old games were SRPGs and I liked some of the art design. I'd seen screenshot of Sakura in her Kimono and loved the design so when it was on sale I grabbed it.

This game makes me immensely uncomfortable.

I have played it for 3-4 hours now and it's just a waifu simulator like What? I've spent the whole time running back and forth collecting pictures of girls and talking to them. It's got the "oh no pervy character went in the female bath by accident ha ha" drive but what really just took the biscuit was a close up of Sakura where you have to point out her features and it made me feel so very uncomfortable.

Some other games I can enjoy despite this nonsense up to a point if the rest holds up but it has like nothing else.... Its the cringiest game I've played in some time. Really disappointed, but I'm not sure what I really expected either I guess.

CBTech · Mar 15, 2021

FallenGrace said:
So I bought Sakura Wars knowing nothing about it. I knew the old games were SRPGs and I liked some of the art design. I'd seen screenshot of Sakura in her Kimono and loved the design so when it was on sale I grabbed it.

This game makes me immensely uncomfortable.

I have played it for 3-4 hours now and it's just a waifu simulator like What? I've spent the whole time running back and forth collecting pictures of girls and talking to them. It's got the "oh no pervy character went in the female bath by accident ha ha" drive but what really just took the biscuit was a close up of Sakura where you have to point out her features and it made me feel so very uncomfortable.

Some other games I can enjoy despite this nonsense up to a point if the rest holds up but it has like nothing else.... Its the cringiest game I've played in some time. Really disappointed, but I'm not sure what I really expected either I guess.

The Sakura Wars games have apparently always been a cross of SRPG and dating sim, but almost all the marketing is around the Mech SRPG aspect at least for the newest game.

Princess Bubblegum · Mar 15, 2021

I was really interested in Sakura Wars until I found out the protag is a man and it's harem shit. :|

Warrior of Light · Mar 15, 2021

SapphiCine said:
I was really interested in Sakura Wars until I found out the protag is a man and it's harem shit. :|

It seems incredibly tropey too.

Pau · Mar 15, 2021

SapphiCine said:
I was really interested in Sakura Wars until I found out the protag is a man and it's harem shit. :|

Same.

SRPG? Dating Sim? Sign me up!

Oh it's for straight men. :(

Princess Bubblegum · Mar 15, 2021

Warrior of Light said:
It seems incredibly tropey too.

Yeah, the girls/women definitely fit various harem archetypes going off the trailer.

FallenGrace · Mar 15, 2021

Warrior of Light said:
It seems incredibly tropey too.

It really is.

It's garbage. I can deal with it in small doses if the rest of the story and characters hold it together but this has given me zero positive features so far.

Redcrayon · Mar 15, 2021

Is this 'Sakura Wars: So Long My Love' or a different one? I think I played that on the Wii. If so, yeah it was harem as hell.

Timu · Mar 15, 2021

Redcrayon said:
Is this 'Sakura Wars: So Long My Love' or a different one? I think I played that on the Wii. If so, yeah it was harem as hell.

It's the PS4 one.

Redcrayon · Mar 15, 2021

Timu said:
It's the PS4 one.

Ah, cheers. Wow that seems like a real bait-and-switch. Cool cover art, nice typography, cool female character design, mechs and dating. "Wait the lead character is a guy?"

Sakura Wars (2019 video game) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Timu · Mar 15, 2021

SapphiCine said:
I was really interested in Sakura Wars until I found out the protag is a man and it's harem shit. :|

I can't wait to play it

and then bash it later.

ShyMel · Mar 15, 2021

I believe NIS America's PS2 and Wii covers for Sakura Wars: So Long My Love are the only covers in the series to feature the male protagonist on the cover. The Japanese covers I can find for all other games just feature the main heroine of each title.

RedSwirl · Mar 15, 2021

SapphiCine said:
I was really interested in Sakura Wars until I found out the protag is a man and it's harem shit. :|

I'd heard of Sakura Wars way back in like the Dreamcast era and just thought the pink kimono girl was the main character. It wasn't until I tried that recent game that got localized that I realized it was one of those situations where there's a "main girl" who's the mascot of the franchise but the protagonist is actually a (nearly) faceless dude.

Raftina · Mar 15, 2021

FallenGrace said:
I have played it for 3-4 hours now and it's just a waifu simulator like What? I've spent the whole time running back and forth collecting pictures of girls and talking to them. It's got the "oh no pervy character went in the female bath by accident ha ha" drive but what really just took the biscuit was a close up of Sakura where you have to point out her features and it made me feel so very uncomfortable.

You are talking about the 2019 Sakura Wars, right? From what I understand, it is not a SRPG; it is an ARPG. The 1990s Sakura Wars was a SRPG and harem dating sim, and it had a male protagonist as well. I am not sure if it was this perverted, though.

KujoJosuke · Mar 15, 2021

Against my better judgement I've decided to replay Fallout 4 since it hit PC Game Pass.

Going through the mods, of course one of "Today's Popular" is a mod that does nothing but make every women character's breasts bigger. But "not too much, just the right amount" of "bustyness"

I know mods are low-hanging fruit for this thread, but I thought this one was just particularly baffling

RecLib · Mar 15, 2021

I can never forget that one of the top most popular mods for Skyrim back in the day was "Better Females" which boy, that is gross.

esserius · Mar 15, 2021

Pants y'all.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

FallenGrace · Mar 16, 2021

Raftina said:
You are talking about the 2019 Sakura Wars, right? From what I understand, it is not a SRPG; it is an ARPG. The 1990s Sakura Wars was a SRPG and harem dating sim, and it had a male protagonist as well. I am not sure if it was this perverted, though.

Yes the most recent one. I knew it wasn't a SRPG anymore but that was the extent of my knowledge going in. I didn't research it and just bought it on a whim in a sale, more fool me I guess....

Princess Bubblegum · Mar 16, 2021

RedSwirl said:
I'd heard of Sakura Wars way back in like the Dreamcast era and just thought the pink kimono girl was the main character. It wasn't until I tried that recent game that got localized that I realized it was one of those situations where there's a "main girl" who's the mascot of the franchise but the protagonist is actually a (nearly) faceless dude.

I thought the same exact thing. 😂

Phendrift · Mar 16, 2021

Persephone said:
just saw a tumblr post about this and WOWZERS i did not realise breath of the wild had some transmisogynistic shit in it (plus racism+misogyny with the gerudo)

I know the transmysogenistic part you're referring too but where is the racism and misogyny with the Gerudo? I thought their depiction in BotW was pretty great, a VAST improvement from OoTs "evil desert people" trope that they were associated heavily with Dorf for. In fact Urbosa even comments on how Ganon taking the form a Gerudo was a taint on their race.

yaoji · Mar 16, 2021

Persephone said:
just saw a tumblr post about this and WOWZERS i did not realise breath of the wild had some transmisogynistic shit in it (plus racism+misogyny with the gerudo)

What's the transmisogynistic part? (I haven't played it)

RecLib said:
I can never forget that one of the top most popular mods for Skyrim back in the day was "Better Females" which boy, that is gross.

Ugh. Still is, apparently. :/

Phendrift · Mar 16, 2021

yaoji said:
What's the transmisogynistic part? (I haven't played it)

Ugh. Still is, apparently. :/

The Gerudo are a race of solely women, and link needs to sneak into the town because he can't get in as a man. There's a Gerudo outside of the town who sells Link and outfit, and once the Gerudo sells him an outfit, the wind blows the veil over their face and reveals them to be a man, and Link jumps back in surprise

Rosebud · Mar 16, 2021

RedSwirl said:
I'd heard of Sakura Wars way back in like the Dreamcast era and just thought the pink kimono girl was the main character. It wasn't until I tried that recent game that got localized that I realized it was one of those situations where there's a "main girl" who's the mascot of the franchise but the protagonist is actually a (nearly) faceless dude.

Lol, I thought she was the MC until now.

texhnolyze · Mar 16, 2021

KujoJosuke said:
Against my better judgement I've decided to replay Fallout 4 since it hit PC Game Pass.

Going through the mods, of course one of "Today's Popular" is a mod that does nothing but make every women character's breasts bigger. But "not too much, just the right amount" of "bustyness"

I know mods are low-hanging fruit for this thread, but I thought this one was just particularly baffling

Hah, yeah mods are where people go wild. But as someone who've been modding for decades, I noticed something lately as I replay Dragon Age Origins. People are starting to make good mods too. Like these ones for example, which wouldn't be a thing in the last decade because everyone would make female characters sexier, not the opposite.

It's such a blessing because if I were to play with the original Morrigan outfit in front of my wife, she'd give me the side eye.

Kalentan · Mar 16, 2021

texhnolyze said:
Hah, yeah mods are where people go wild. But as someone who've been modding for decades, I noticed something lately as I replay Dragon Age Origins. People are starting to make good mods too. Like these ones for example, which wouldn't be a thing in the last decade because everyone would make female characters sexier, not the opposite.

It's such a blessing because if I were to play with the original Morrigan outfit in front of my wife, she'd give me the side eye.

Her design stands out as being even more out of place in Inquisition where all the female armor (from what I recall) look a lot lot better. Although it's been a hot second so maybe I'm wrong?

texhnolyze · Mar 16, 2021

Kalentan said:
Her design stands out as being even more out of place in Inquisition where all the female armor (from what I recall) look a lot lot better. Although it's been a hot second so maybe I'm wrong?

She wears an Orlesian dress in Inquisition, which seems pretty normal for the people with a high stature in the country. It's the first one (Origin) where she wears the most revealing outfit. She's not in Dragon Age II.

Kalentan · Mar 16, 2021

texhnolyze said:
She wears an Orlesian dress in Inquisition, which seems pretty normal for the people with a high stature in the country. It's the first one (Origin) where she wears the most revealing outfit. She's not in Dragon Age II.

She also wears her DA:O outfit though for a bit as well.

texhnolyze · Mar 16, 2021

Kalentan said:
She also wears her DA:O outfit though for a bit as well.

Oh really? I guess my memory fails me.

It's been a while since I played through it, game was a slog.

Kalentan · Mar 16, 2021

texhnolyze said:
Oh really? I guess my memory fails me.

It's been a while since I played through it, game was a slog.

Yeah (posted image above), I think she actually now that I think about it she only wears the dress during the Winter Palace part.

Why women criticise sexualised character designs | OT3 | "make her look more...corpulent, more stuffed where the eyes can't escape."

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