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

Platy · Mar 16, 2021

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

To enter the gerudo town you need a "disguise" and the person who sells you has a 5 o clock beard like ... dear god

Also some npcs in the town can tell that link is not a girl which makes zero sense because dude is more feminine than most women npcs xD

Persephone · Mar 16, 2021

just saw some Genshin Impact gifs of a character I don't have yet and like damn. ladies if your boobs actually move like that...you've got a condition

texhnolyze · Mar 16, 2021

Regarding Vilia in BOTW, there was a recent article about this.

During Link's conversation with Vilia, Breath of the Wild itself seems to mock her identity, presenting the player with the option to progress the conversation through flattery or to end it by suspiciously accusing her of being a man. As Feminist Frequency pointed out in a 2019 video, the pairing of these dialogue choices implies Link - and, by extension, the player - is meant to believe Vilia is actually a man, only complimenting her to give her what she wants.

Regardless of Vilia's "true" in-universe identity, her depiction in Breath of the Wild matches harmful stereotypes about trans women. It encourages players to see them not as real women but as deceptive men, disguising themselves in order to "infiltrate" (as the previously mentioned NPC worded it) female-only spaces for some sinister purpose. The game also portrays trans women as something to laugh at, since Link's compliments about Vilia's appearance are juxtaposed with his apparent belief that she really looks like a man.

This "joke" is emphasized when, at the end of the cutscene, a gust of wind knocks Vilia's veil away and reveals a beard, which shocks Link and is clearly meant to make the player laugh. In reality, some transgender women (and cisgender women) do have beards. Facial hair is simply the result of hormones and might have nothing to do with how someone feels about their gender. The portrayal of a woman having a beard as scandalous perpetuates the belief that transgender women who don't adhere to traditional gender norms are not real women, potentially harming them, as well as cisgender women who can grow beards and transgender men who aren't be able to.

Breath Of The Wild's Trans Representation Controversy Explained

BotW's Vilia is controversial for a reason.

screenrant.com

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

Ah right, she did change to her original outfit in the later parts of the game in Inquisition.

Persephone said:
just saw some Genshin Impact gifs of a character I don't have yet and like damn. ladies if your boobs actually move like that...you've got a condition

Yeah, it's so jarringly disturbing. It's also such a common occurrence in a lot of modern Asian games (from JRPGs to MMOs and mobile games) so if you're into these games you won't be able to avoid it.

Eien1no1Yami · Mar 16, 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.

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

Hello, sorry to hear that you don't like the game.
Actually the protagonist in every Sakura Wars game is the main heroine, in this case Sakura Amamiya, that's why she's in the cover too and that's the character that the story focuses the most compared to any of the other characters but as you mentioned you control a male character during the adventure part and interact with the members.
In general Sakura Wars games try to make the protagonist just be supporting and try not to steal the spotlight of the show from the other girls and imo the've done a good job in the previous titles, but unfortunately one of the most serious flaws Sakura Wars(2019) has is that the new male character Kamiyama is way more "pushy" towards the girls compared to his predecessors
and that can create a bad image on him.
Also to further prove that Sakura is the protagonist, did you know that in the Sakura Wars(2019) anime Kamiyama barely makes an apearence and the show entirely focuses on the female cast?
So all in all that's what I want to say is that Sakura Wars as franchise, not just the new game, is more than just a typical harem.
It has a significant female fanbase in Japan, even today, and in the 90's and early 00's it inspired many girls that grew up with it.
It makes sense if you think about it as one of the main premises of the series is that you work for a female only theatre revue,which is based on a real japanese one called Takarazuka and exists even today.
Having said that of course the series contradicts itself in many ways with the fanservice "pervy" scenes, the situation with the male character that I mentioned before e.t.c., so as a huge fan of the series it's always this fight in me between the good and the bad stuff, as I never cared for any for of the harem/dating sim stuff, I was just attached a lot with the characters.
Oh..well at least as game, compared to anime which are not interactive media, it gives you the choice to avoid all of these stuff, even the "uncomofortable" scenes where it goes full dating sim and it lets you comment on the girls features or pat them in the head and stuff like that, which I personally never really liked anyway.

I know that I can't change your perception of the game but for Sakura Wars as a whole, not just this game, I would
still recommend for you to check out its history and how it went to be so popular back then, it might change your perspective
of the franchise.

yaoji · Mar 16, 2021

Phendrift said:
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

Platy said:
To enter the gerudo town you need a "disguise" and the person who sells you has a 5 o clock beard like ... dear god

Also some npcs in the town can tell that link is not a girl which makes zero sense because dude is more feminine than most women npcs xD

Ah, thanks for the explanation. That's awful :(

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.

That's neat, I'll definitely get those when I replay the series. There's a couple for Morrigan in DA:I as well:

RecLib · Mar 16, 2021

I've played more of FF7R, just beat chapter 8 I think, doing all side content. Count me on board for the people saying they hated the animations after all. I did try to give it the benefit of the doubt at first but after enough time interacting with enough characters its hard to get past.
So my initial take was "I really do hate the way Tifa is animated, but a lot of the guys are animated in a very over the top unrealistic way too, though in a different way to Tifa. I'll have to wait and see how Aerith is animated and see if its just a 'tifa sucks' thing, or its a 'oh yeah okay all the women suck' thing." After some more time with the game, seeing more of Jessie and seeing some Aerith too, I no longer have that cautious hopeful take.

The biggest problem after 8 chapters of this game and paying a lot of attention to the animations is this: The guys all animate over the top in different unique ways, even pretty minor side characters. Biggs is animated in a way unique to Biggs, Wedge is animated in a way unique to Wedge. But Aerith, Tifa, and Jessie are animated as "woman." The three personality types, Wedge Biggs and Woman.
And that is what makes it so egregious I think. Real thought was put into how they animate a lot of the men. 'Does this kind of animation support and enforce Barret's personality, does this kind of animation support and enforce Cloud's personality.' But the same thought was not put into reinforcing Tifa or Aerith's personalities, because who they were as characters is secondary to making sure they're good waifus.

Which is a shame, because so far I actually like the writing on the women. Or, I like the writing on Aerith and Jessie anyway. Tifa is a real nothing so far for me.

For a more secondary side character, Jessie is distinctive and interesting. I like that she's confident and forward in her interest in Cloud. Often times for any kind of woman love interest you get this shy demure girl waiting for the man to sweep her off her feet. Jessie doesn't give a shit though. Without being overly aggressive about it she is into Cloud and has absolutely no problem making sure he knows that, and that's kind of nice.
Let's not get started on the visual design on Jessie though, that fucking armor.

Aerith's fun so far too. She's just this solidly nice person doing good in her community and her kindness and generosity is not being portrayed as a weakness. It's shown as a strength, there are ways to do good and be strong beyond just being a cool anime sword bro like Cloud. She's also got that kind of like.. faux confidence humor going on that I'm finding really endearing

But boy every cutscene is better if I just close my eyes and pretend it was a radio play or some shit.

Maybe I'll grow to like Tifa or hate Aerith with more time spent in the game obviously though. I think I'm still less than halfway through right?

Gameplay wise I'm still into it. I do think every thing they try to do other than combat is really bad. Like the simple puzzles, the terrible "sneak out of Aerith's house" section, the motor bike minigame, all that stuff. Thankfully there isn't too much of that though.
I can't wait to just have my party at some point and not be constantly losing members temporarily. That does happen right?

The highlight gameplay wise so far was I think the VR mission fight against shiva, or fighting those side quest enemies that periodically switched between being immune to magic or physical. Those were fun.

FulcrumTK · Mar 16, 2021

Phendrift said:
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.

1) I'm speaking as a white person here, so grain of salt. The Gerudo outfits have more basis in fetishized "exotic"/"Arabic" clothing than in reality. My understanding is that people who live in deserts tend to cover up more skin if anything, for protection from sand blowing in the wind.
2) Personally, I'm not a fan of just how much the Gerudo society and a lot of individual Gerudo characterizations revolve around being the "all-female race" and their interactions with men. Like the whole "men are forbidden to enter" thing, the class for interacting with men, the old woman who used to "turn heads" and regrets not settling down with anyone, the women in heart lake and Tarrey Town who basically settle for men they just met out of desperation (that's how it came off to me at least). Contrast with Gorons, an all-male (or at least male-coded) race free of the same baggage. At least Riju and Urbosu's characters mostly aren't held down by the same tendency.

Raftina · Mar 16, 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).

Reading the character design blog post. The developers seem to have made a cuter and friendlier looking compared to some of the concepts. Actually, that might a good thing, because Avril is on the darker side of the skin color. The frowning, tough, and threatening Black woman is a stereotype itself.

Raftina · Mar 16, 2021

(Was trying to edit a post. Went to the new post box instead)

texhnolyze · Mar 17, 2021

yaoji said:
That's neat, I'll definitely get those when I replay the series. There's a couple for Morrigan in DA:I as well:

Oh that's pretty neat and should be useful when I replay Inquisition at some point.

Sometimes I just don't understand Bioware.

Raftina said:
Reading the character design blog post. The developers seem to have made a cuter and friendlier looking compared to some of the concepts. Actually, that might a good thing, because Avril is on the darker side of the skin color. The frowning, tough, and threatening Black woman is a stereotype itself.

I also noticed something about the change from concept to the 3D model, they changed the long pants to a shorty. I prefer the concept art version. But it's still pretty tame overall, and that kneepad is a nice little detail.

Flipyap · Mar 17, 2021

RecLib said:
The biggest problem after 8 chapters of this game and paying a lot of attention to the animations is this: The guys all animate over the top in different unique ways, even pretty minor side characters. Biggs is animated in a way unique to Biggs, Wedge is animated in a way unique to Wedge. But Aerith, Tifa, and Jessie are animated as "woman." The three personality types, Wedge Biggs and Woman.
And that is what makes it so egregious I think. Real thought was put into how they animate a lot of the men. 'Does this kind of animation support and enforce Barret's personality, does this kind of animation support and enforce Cloud's personality.' But the same thought was not put into reinforcing Tifa or Aerith's personalities, because who they were as characters is secondary to making sure they're good waifus.

Can't say that's how I saw them.

Tifa relies mostly on stiff and downright bizarre jpop choreography body language - the thing she does where she bends over is the absolute worst. She looks uncomfortable most of the time (the outfit certainly doesn't help), which I guess matches her role as the chief worrier of the cast. Shame they didn't even try to make her look like a warrior.

Jessie is more energetic and confident in her movement. Plus, she spends most of her screen time doing the cringy clingy routine which is unique to her.

Aeriス has by far the most detailed body language in the game, alternating between an overly excitable dork mode, and a more resolute yet reserved mode where you can tell that she's hiding some secrets and is generally more tuned in and attentive than she lets on. She's got ~~layerth~~ layers.
Her cutscene animations do a great job conveying her personality (which is also the closest match to how the character was portrayed in the original... at least in the Japanese dub, her Disneyprincessness in English was too much for me). I really wish I liked the rest of the game because that's one seriously well-crafted character.

yaoji · Mar 18, 2021

How are the women designed and written in the FFXIII games? I know they're divisive games, but I was thinking they might be worth a shot if that aspect is good enough.

Princess Bubblegum · Mar 18, 2021

Speaking of SE. How are the women in Dragon Quest XI S? Contemplating buying it given the sale. Jade's boobsock design and outfit is really offputting, and she's the only melee focused woman from what I gather.

yaoji said:
How are the women designed and written in the FFXIII games? I know they're divisive games, but I was thinking they might be worth a shot if that aspect is good enough.

Eh, my memories of XIII are a bit muddled but Lightning and Fang are decent to good. Vanille is extremely annoying, due to how she is written/depicted and plot contrivances. The sequels are an absolute mess, storywise.

Choppasmith · Mar 18, 2021

SapphiCine said:
Speaking of SE. How are the women in Dragon Quest XI S? Contemplating buying it given the sale. Jade's boobsock design and outfit is really offputting, and she's the only melee focused woman from what I gather.

Eh, my memories of XIII are a bit muddled but Lightning and Fang are decent to good. Vanille is extremely annoying, due to how she is written/depicted and plot contrivances. The sequels are an absolute mess, storywise.

Jade is a huge missed opportunity character. Without spoiling too much. She starts out badass but she quickly gets pigeonholed as Ms. Fanservice of the game without much way of you avoiding it. Certainly nothing as bad as Xenoblade 2 or some of the other JRPG offenders mentioned in this thread. I mean I think Serena, even though she might seem like wistful Disney princess wannabe, actually has some amazing development and Veronica is great because of her no-nonsense attitude (despite being a teen/young adult in a little girl's body it swiftly avoids a lot of those gross problematic tropes).

And then of course Sylvando should be experienced by everyone. Technically Sylv, is supposed to a trans woman in the Japanese version but just gets a mostly respectively queer male take in English. The voice acting is overall fantastic in a kind of whimsical Jim Henson 80s Fantasy epic kind of way. If that turns you off, you won't like DQXI.

Jotakori · Mar 18, 2021

yaoji said:
How are the women designed and written in the FFXIII games? I know they're divisive games, but I was thinking they might be worth a shot if that aspect is good enough.

It's far from perfect, but I would say XIII is a little better than most modern FF games design-wise (like you don't have anyone who looks like Cindy, Fran, or w/e the heck some of the NPCs in X wear). Vanille is about as bad as it gets, mostly cuz of her hyper obnoxious girly anime-isms and how yikes her little sounds and grunts can be. Some eyeroll-y stuff aside, though, I think it has some pretty interesting stories to tell with its characters. It has its issues for sure and is no doubt convoluted af, but I personally like it.
The sequels, however, absolutely butcher the character development for basically everyone, and they go waaayy more obnoxious on the sexualized designs. If you're really irritated by that, I'd probably recommend skipping them unless you just super love the gameplay (which they do improve on a lot); imo XIII is a stronger title on its own anyway.

Persephone · Mar 18, 2021

I'd say Fang and Lightning are actually strong (as opposed to Stronk™) female characters, bad writing notwithstanding. Vanille sucks (I like her character but the way the game/camera treats her is. Bad) and Serah literally only exists to be a damsel. so... 50% lol

Godfather · Mar 18, 2021

Some of the later spin off games to XIII also had a lot of fanservice with Lightning, which was unfortunate.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII garbs

Garbs (ウェア, Wea?, lit. Wear) are costumes in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII and are an integral part of the Schema system. One feature allows players to change the garments' color via a color wheel in a customization menu. The garb the player has set as default is the one Lightning wears...

finalfantasy.fandom.com

Some examples:

and promotional poses to really drag the game into the gutter:

etc.

Otherwise, I agree with the posts above me. Lightning and Fang are above average. Serah and Vanille are not great. They could be a lot worse though.

Choppasmith · Mar 18, 2021

Okay this is just bizarre. What's worse than a boobs and butt pose drawing?

https://twitter.com/UdonEnt/status/1372638370657042432

Kcannon · Mar 18, 2021

Lol, they even managed to sneak in pigeon toes.

Dragmire · Mar 18, 2021

Godfather said:
Some of the later spin off games to XIII also had a lot of fanservice with Lightning, which was unfortunate.

I'll never forgive SE for this.

Godfather · Mar 18, 2021

Dragmire said:
I'll never forgive SE for this.

I honestly never played it because it was so off-putting. Damn shame.

LinguisticGoblin · Mar 18, 2021

Daily reminder that this was a thing before Lightning Return released.

Nobuhiro Goto, one of the game's designers, replied, "Toriyama said, 'I want to make them bigger...'" To which Motomu Toriyama, Lightning Returns' director, said with a chuckle, "Don't pass the buck!" (Goto also told Dengeki Online that the decision to change the character's breast size was "an order from Toriyama.")

With a laugh, Goto replied, "Yes, they're bigger."

A follow-up question was asked: Will the character's breasts, um, jiggle?

Toriyama replied that how much her chest moves depends on what she wears. There appear to be numerous outfits for players to dress Lightning in. Japanese game site Dengeki Online even provided recommendations on how players can best see the Lightning Returns jiggle.

I like Lightning (mostly in XIII though tbh) and I enjoyed the XIII games but each one was successively more fanservice heavy than the previous and the devs leaned into it publicly.

Dragmire · Mar 18, 2021

Godfather said:
I honestly never played it because it was so off-putting. Damn shame.

Well, like 95 percent of the outfits are trash, but I mostly stuck to her original outfit or anything decent like this:

But during the original PS3 release, that(and it's variants) were pre-order DLC. In game you would find a few that were good like Urban outlaw.

LinguisticGoblin said:
Daily reminder that this was a thing before Lightning Return released.

What was supposed to be a event for the game and series in general turned awful with that confirmation during the Q and A and some idiot asking about her armpit.

yaoji · Mar 18, 2021

Thanks for the replies, everyone, I appreciate it. ^^

The stuff about the sequels is pretty disheartening, but the original seems to be worth a try (it's also pretty cheap on Steam atm).

RecLib · Mar 18, 2021

Hearing about all of the 13 stuff is always very disappointing. To think we got a female led trilogy of games out of final fantasy, and they were that.

On the positive side, I did fight a house in FF7 earlier today.

Raftina · Mar 18, 2021

Dragmire said:
Well, like 95 percent of the outfits are trash, but I mostly stuck to her original outfit or anything decent like this:

Aren't her stats and special attacks tied to her clothes? If yes, gotta applaud you for the dedication.

texhnolyze · Mar 19, 2021

Let's talk about an anime game with seemingly not filled with the usual tropes and bullshit, Scarlett Nexus.

Here's the female protagonist, Kasane Randall.

She looks pretty cool and her design is not strikingly different from the male protagonist. They're in the same organization, after all, but more often than not the female characters' designs are way more sexualized than men. Her backstory sounds solid too, not a simple a weak girl or damsel in distress.

Kasane is an orphan who lost her parents in a raid from the Others when she was a child. Adopted by the powerful Randall Family, she became one of the most promising elements of the OSF after being scouted at 12 years old. Now an elite soldier with superb fighting skills, Kasane is cool, rational, and indifferent to others. While her relationship with her parents is complicated, her adoptive sister Naomi is the only one who shows her affection, leading to a close bond between the two. The handmade hair ornament Naomi made her is Kasane's most prized posession.

grand · Mar 19, 2021

texhnolyze said:
Let's talk about an anime game with seemingly not filled with the usual tropes and bullshit, Scarlett Nexus.

Here's the female protagonist, Kasane Randall.

She looks pretty cool and her design is not strikingly different from the male protagonist. They're in the same organization, after all, but more often than not the female characters' designs are way more sexualized than men. Her backstory sounds solid too, not a simple a weak girl or damsel in distress.

It's developed by the Tales Of team and is releasing alongside a tie-in anime. The chance that it'll avoid the typical anime tropes is.... low

Dragmire · Mar 19, 2021

Raftina said:
Aren't her stats and special attacks tied to her clothes? If yes, gotta applaud you for the dedication.

All the outfits have certain locked abilities, auto-abilities, and stats, but you can put any abilities(like Attacks ,Fire etc) to any empty slot of the outfit. So you can have 12 abilities to use in battle. You raise actual stats completing Side Quests. There are also accessories, weapons, and shields to use for each garb, Here's an example:

There's always enough garbs(even on the first try) that I did not have to resort to the worst bikini outfit to beat the game. The worst one I used was this one for Hard mode:

Because it had a useful Auto Ability. But the garbs need to be found if you don't want to use the ones you start with like that default one you see the the CG intro.

Lycanthrope -R- · Mar 19, 2021

Dragmire said:
There's always enough garbs(even on the first try) that I did not have to resort to the worst bikini outfit to beat the game. The worst one I used was this one for Hard mode:

Because it had a useful Auto Ability. But the garbs need to be found if you don't want to use the ones you start with like that default one you see the the CG intro.

Damn. That's a fashion disaster no matter how you try to slice it. Let alone whether or not it's sexy. What happened here? lol

grand · Mar 19, 2021

Lycanthrope -R- said:
Damn. That's a fashion disaster no matter how you try to slice it. Let alone whether or not it's sexy. What happened here? lol

A small group of designers were directed to spam out over 80 outfits for Lightning with the only directions being to make them fashionable (rather than sensible), show of Lightning's figure, and draw attention to her face. They apparently didn't even have time to add the dragoon helmet to the dragoon outfit

Their mission was failed successfully

Famassu · Mar 19, 2021

texhnolyze said:
Let's talk about an anime game with seemingly not filled with the usual tropes and bullshit, Scarlett Nexus.

Here's the female protagonist, Kasane Randall.

She looks pretty cool and her design is not strikingly different from the male protagonist. They're in the same organization, after all, but more often than not the female characters' designs are way more sexualized than men. Her backstory sounds solid too, not a simple a weak girl or damsel in distress.

The aging of all the characters has been stopped to keep them as young as possible. I'm vary of there not being any of the usual pedo bait shenanigans.

Princess Bubblegum · Mar 19, 2021

Choppasmith said:
Jade is a huge missed opportunity character. Without spoiling too much. She starts out badass but she quickly gets pigeonholed as Ms. Fanservice of the game without much way of you avoiding it. Certainly nothing as bad as Xenoblade 2 or some of the other JRPG offenders mentioned in this thread. I mean I think Serena, even though she might seem like wistful Disney princess wannabe, actually has some amazing development and Veronica is great because of her no-nonsense attitude (despite being a teen/young adult in a little girl's body it swiftly avoids a lot of those gross problematic tropes).

And then of course Sylvando should be experienced by everyone. Technically Sylv, is supposed to a trans woman in the Japanese version but just gets a mostly respectively queer male take in English. The voice acting is overall fantastic in a kind of whimsical Jim Henson 80s Fantasy epic kind of way. If that turns you off, you won't like DQXI.

That's what I kind of figured. :\ I'm not a Dragon Quest fan, I've finished like the first game on mobile and that's it.

Dragmire · Mar 19, 2021

Lycanthrope -R- said:
Damn. That's a fashion disaster no matter how you try to slice it. Let alone whether or not it's sexy. What happened here? lol

Haha. Yeah. It's just a variation of the first one:

Leandras · Mar 19, 2021

Saddest thing about Lightning Returns and Final Fantasy X-2 is that there are really good combat systems underneath these games that revolve around dressing up the main characters.

Such wasted potential.

Rosebud · Mar 19, 2021

That's a day one for me!

And Life is Strange continues with great designs

Moogle · Mar 19, 2021

Frey and Alex gmh

Persephone · Mar 19, 2021

not to sound like a Gamer™ but i would like both of them to marry me

Deleted member 5086 · Mar 19, 2021

So I've been playing through Nioh 2. I have two main thoughts, really.

1. It's cool that I've yet to find a piece of sexualised armour. Any loot I pick seems to be gender agnostic. This means I get to look like a badass warrior. Also the character creator is mostly awesome.

2. The female NPCs and enemies are a whole different matter. Most of the story related NPCs just look hyper feminine and docile which sucks. But the enemies are something else entirely. I saw this boss and was like... "Seriously...?"

It's a cat lady demon with her breasts hanging out for reasons. In a manner that defies physics. Like how are her clothes staying on?

No seriously, how?

Persephone · Mar 19, 2021

this is what I believe the kids refer to as a "deep cut" but I just finished an indie rpg called The Amber Throne which has multiple sapient races including bird people, lizard people etc. and of course the female lizard people have boobs and high heels

texhnolyze · Mar 19, 2021

grand said:
It's developed by the Tales Of team and is releasing alongside a tie-in anime. The chance that it'll avoid the typical anime tropes is.... low

Famassu said:
The aging of all the characters has been stopped to keep them as young as possible. I'm vary of there not being any of the usual pedo bait shenanigans.

I didn't mean that it will be free of anime tropes, just it would be better than average. At least it'll be playable in the living room.

That said, I just learned about that stopped aging stuff, oof.

Weltall Zero · Mar 19, 2021

RecLib said:
The biggest problem after 8 chapters of this game and paying a lot of attention to the animations is this: The guys all animate over the top in different unique ways, even pretty minor side characters. Biggs is animated in a way unique to Biggs, Wedge is animated in a way unique to Wedge. But Aerith, Tifa, and Jessie are animated as "woman." The three personality types, Wedge Biggs and Woman.

This makes a lot of sense to me from what I've watched of the game. Tifa emoted in that weirdly mix of demure and teasing that generic anime waifus do, which feels like such an ill fit for a battle-hardened resistance warrior.

Rosebud said:
That's a day one for me!

Hadn't heard of this and it does look great! Also she wasn't joking with "I'm a video game character now", I was expecting voice acting but that's pretty much a 1:1 translation of her. The movement / traversal mechanics looks really fun; it reminds me of Warframe's bullet jump, which is probably the most satisfying movement mechanic ever in a videogame.

PlanetSmasher · Mar 19, 2021

Aerith said:
No seriously, how?

It's Yōkai magic! That somehow functions the same way as double-sided body tape!

But yeah, some of the female yōkai designs are...erf. Sometimes they're accurate to how those monsters were portrayed in historical Japanese art, but other times it feels like Team Ninja took a lot of liberties to add sexy to things that don't need it.

Murfield · Mar 19, 2021

I was doing some research into 14/15th century armour for a project unrelated to video games and stumbled across this:

I spoilered it because its quite graphic.
It looks somewhat sexualised but I thought it interesting given how much armour design comes into these discussions.

Also found this one which has more realistic proportions, at least relative to the men in the scene.

They are both are from around 1400-1410 CE.

Not claiming its objectively realistic or anything given that artists of the 15th century were also capable of
sexualising their artwork and/or making stuff up (assuming said artists were in fact male).

Choppasmith · Mar 19, 2021

Boy we sure dodged a bullet with this didn't we?

SapphiCine said:
That's what I kind of figured. :\ I'm not a Dragon Quest fan, I've finished like the first game on mobile and that's it.

I keep hearing about how Dragon Quest X, the Japan only MMO has a great cast of female characters in it with a Legendary Hero princess in the forefront that's become really popular but I guess we'll never know.

Princess Bubblegum · Mar 19, 2021

It's scary to think that there is so much more shit we probably avoided getting during the 32 bit and below eras thanks to technical limitations. *glances at Trials of Mana*

Persephone · Mar 19, 2021

downloaded FFXIV. bullshit incoming y/n

grand · Mar 19, 2021

Choppasmith said:
Boy we sure dodged a bullet with this didn't we?

80s Sci-fi mouse girl

....what the?

crienne · Mar 19, 2021

Persephone said:
downloaded FFXIV. bullshit incoming y/n

Ehhhhh there's a long list of things wrong with the representation in it, but for the most part I can look past at least the player armor because it can make my character look cute and therefore makes me feel cute.

Now the treatment of some characters in the most recent expansion are definitely questionable.

TL;DR: Yes, but the amount you can tolerate it may vary based on who the bullshit applies to.

Cerulean_skylark · Mar 19, 2021

BOTW isn't just really transphobic, it's painfully homophobic.

The garudo literally are shown going to classes to learn about attracting men and have their own sex ed classes. They make it a point to demonstrate how painfully straight the Garudo are, despite being a race of entirely isolationist women. So clearly it wasn't "we're shying away from sexuality" situation, it was entirely straight enforcement so we all now they're DEFINITELY not gay in the least.

Just another terrible double standard by Nintendo that really highlights how painfully behind the times they are.

Persephone said:
downloaded FFXIV. bullshit incoming y/n

It should be noted that FFXIV allows you to be as armored as you want. It has a very generous glamour system and armor can be quite good.

Your number 1 annoyance will be clearly male players playing skimpy female character glams.

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

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