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They keep playing commercials for the new game "Heavenly Sword" on TV, and I have come to realize that I am abso-fucking-lutely sick of the "sword-wielding super-babe" cliche. It was kind of neat in The Fifth Element, it got reeeally old by the time Kill Bill 2 came out, I couldn't care less about Resident Evil, but goddammit, stop it with the fucking sword babes already. It's a totally retarded cliche. That is all.

EDIT: Damned typo.

I'm sick of super babes in general. It's generally demeaning to women, and it insults my intelligence. I hate super babes running around a video game toting ridiculous outfits that offer no protection whatsoever and exist basically to show off their breasts, complete with *high heeled* shoes of some type, usually "fuck-me" boots.

They should look at actual female soldiers and model them off of that. Not too tall, practically dressed (give them a uniform!) yet obviously still feminine. It's not hard.

Oh yeah, once you include gun-toting videogame babes, you have to mention good ol' Tomb Raider. Because nothing says "hardcore commando" like giant tits, a tube top, and micro-shorts.

I agree with Vympel: it's pretty absurd when almost all women in games exist solely as sexual archetypes: sluts, mothers or crones. Something else to blame on the 'ZOMG I SAW A NIPPLE' virgin crowd. What was it SA.com said about the HL2 Sin episode? 'whoa I see her thong we're on to a class act here boys'?

The only game with a female who isn't sexualised outrageously that I can think of is FEAR: the female FEAR operative wears the same shit as everyone else, doesn't have enormous fake breasts, and is just thinner. She's also plot useless and gets 5m of screen time, tops.

The whole genre of wank-martial arts chicks never appealed to me, either. It doesn't help that they always seem to use skinny-ass chicks with no muscle mass.

Yeah, the whole thing is pretty stupid, but that's probably because the video game industry seems to have yet to realize that their demographics are aging and there are people out there who enjoy playing games who aren't retarded 15 year old virgins with no idea of what an actual combat trained woman looks like. Hopefully they'll eventually catch on and stop making games that should be rated IM for Immature.

Oh, and Mike, somehow I think you'll be amused by the Zero Punctuation Review of the Heavenly Sword Demo

And on a somewhat unrelated note, who does Sony think they're fooling trying to advertise a game that's five hours long? Seriously.

Count me as having always been sick of the ‘insane martial arts/swords’ cliché period. I fucking hate any martial arts which require wires and any character who would take a sword over a gun in any situation. Bayonets fucking made them obsolete, deal with it.

I've always wondered how in the world they keep their balance, honestly. Their breasts are just so massively proportioned with nothing on that looks like it gives decent support. I mean, its not like my own breasts are small and they're quite easy to control when I'm engaged in sword practice, but the classic gaming heroine just pushes it till my eyes go swirly trying to imagine to fight like that, especially since more often than not the women in question are *ahem* very acrobatic in their fighting styles.

I would extend my complaints to a lot of other annoying fantasy cliches as well, though, not just this one. The size of swords in particular. Japan, I'm looking at you.

Fantasy, at least most of it in the popular gaming arena, seems to be stagnating hard.

I can think of one situation in which a sword would be chosen over a gun: no bullets. I suppose if you could block bullets with your sword might be another case.

Along with it all, I just really do get sick of the "Bikini Armor". I love the female form, but seriously for fuck's sake, why is every character Red Sonja?! And before someone points out the other archetype...no the dressed like a nun but is a sexy goddess underneath magic user is getting as tiresome.

Seriously, I wouldn't mind some variety.

As for Heavenly Sword...it's another dumb conudrum of cliches with ancient curse, one man/woman versus the evil horde...and she's the uber sword wielding goddess of death.

Beowulf wrote:I can think of one situation in which a sword would be chosen over a gun: no bullets. I suppose if you could block bullets with your sword might be another case.

Even if you could block bullets with your sword, the enemy would just shoot a grenade at you. Of course, a cliched acrobatic swordsman would just wire-fu away from the explosion and kill the shooter, but hey.

Honestly, while I'm sick of most cliches, I can't say this one is any more annoying than the sword-wielding super-dude, or the gun-wielding super-dude, or any of the other iterations of 'super someone' wielding some variety of weapon magically cutting their way though hordes of utterly worthless (though supposidly superior) foes. They all need to go, this one just for it's own reasons.

It's hard to build a game around a character who is utterly mundane and not carrying a weapon, and yet is able to massacre hordes of foes. However, when the character exists for absolutely no reason other than to supply the player with shots of ample super-tits, then that's gone too far.

There are limits.



Yeah...

But really, what's more annoying to me than the buxom superheroines with swords are the absolutely retarded sorts of plots that justify these people getting involved in things. I always wonder, didn't someone know that killing my dad would piss me off? Didn't they know that I am an unstoppable engine of your fucking doom? Shit. If I can split an army in 'twain with the merest mash of my buttons, don't kill my dad. As for the armor, a lot of people go into combat poorly dressed for it. Kratos, for example, isn't well armored. But with women it's really a lot more overt.

But I won't bedgrude myself some eyecandy, but the same limits apply. I'd rather play an attractive female character than an unattractive one, or a man, and would tend to choose to do so, if I could, like in Oblivion. I also love female characters, but my favorite female character is Samus Aran, who only wears a bikini if you first massacre the game wearing full-body power armor.

You almost never see unattractive people in games as main characters in games though, so I think it'd be false outrage for me to be annoyed only at the amount of hot women, when most of the men would be models as well. Maybe not in strict defiance of gravity like the women, but pretty extreme sometimes. I swear I'm going to strangle someone if I have to play another JRPG where the main character looks like a 12 year old beauty queen pretending to be a boy, though. I'm really tired of the whole 'bishounen' thing.

while I don't mind female warrior, what I do hate are "battle babes", if I play a female character I don't want her to look like she has melons stuck inside her breasts and dresses like a wannabe porn star.

I mean a lot of game and movie developers should ask themselves 2 things when delevoping female armor/uniform 1) is it practical, 2) would they want to see a hairy man in that same outfit.

Well let's face it, game and movie developers are businessmen, and sex sells, so obviously it'll be impractical, sword-wielding babes.

In this market, no nun or bashful mother is complete without thigh-highs.

Really, the idea behind Heavenly Sword is to rip off God of War, but to differentiate itself they changed the main character to a girl. I mean, the main character from HS actually is wearing more clothes than Kratos in GoW. So I don't think Heavenly Sword is the best example. I didn't particularly mind that instance.

I totally agree though. I'd like to see more practicality. Ninety Nine Nights bothered me in that regard, what with the main character having full armor on with a big fat hole in the chest.

I will dress my links

Sort of invalidates the point of armor.


And I second my favorite female character being Samus Aran.

I'm not convinced "sex sells" works for videogames. I can't fathom why anyone would buy this game because the game's protagonist is clad in a kinky S&M outfit (and leather, to boot - have fun with that chafing!) and massive tits.

Ever since Tomb Raider, I've been of the opinion that it takes a truly pathetic loser to buy a game just because the protagonist is a girl with large 3D-rendered tits. It's like that scene in American Pie when Biggs starts talking about how the character "Ariel" from The Little Mermaid is hot. It just makes you cringe, it's so pitiful.

My group rather well agrees: While tits are a thing of great beauty in this world, anything with them blatantly front and center on the cover/ads is generally only being sold on tits. At which point you may as well just spend the money on a porno, and at least get some pleasure out of the low production value.

Stark wrote: The only game with a female who isn't sexualised outrageously that I can think of is FEAR: the female FEAR operative wears the same shit as everyone else, doesn't have enormous fake breasts, and is just thinner. She's also plot useless and gets 5m of screen time, tops.

In my opinion Jade, the protagonist of the criminally underrated Beyond Good and Evil, is another example. Her proportions were relatively reasonable and sane compared to most of the Dead or Alive/Lara Croft derived females in gaming.

I think one of the most understated feminine characters I can think of is Chris from Suikoden 3. She's a main character too.



I think that the art direction on her is gorgeous, as it's a fairly belivable breastplate (with a much more believable breastline farther down her chest) without any holes cut in things. Showing off the cleavage is so crass.

Honestly though, where's my befreckled natural redheads? Enough of these massively buxom blondes and such. My idiotic male desires aren't being pandered to anyway, so we might as well make the rest of them dress like real people. And, c'mon developers, stop abusing the physics engine to make breasts out of jello. There's supposed to be tissue in there. Lots of games have breasts that don't even move at all unison. One has to wonder if they think these things operate on some sort of offbalance servo.

Personally I was sick of this cliche waaaaaay back with Xena.

I like to look at pretty women as much as the other guy, but women with giant, half-exposed breasts are just plain not pretty. They look like deformed mutants.

Exposing armor just adds to the image, because I can't help but imagine them bleeding to death or disemboweled because of how their armor does not protect all the most important places. Like, you know - the heart, the neck, thighs. The battlefield is not a fucking fashion show, dammit.

What's wrong with plate armor? Too protective?

You want to show off your hot gaming babe, include a casual moment in the story. It will suck if you don't have a good writer, though, because it will require dialogue. Too bad.

I don't have a problem in principle with a badass sword-wielding fighters cutting down legions of enemies. It's a tired cliche, yes, but mutant nearly-exposed breasts are far, far worse.

Yeah, that's another thing - why not have females who get changed? I mean, I know people are obsessed with the one-outfit-per-game-that-goes-for-weeks thing, but it's a simple solution and movies use it all the time.

How about this?

I Will Not Inline Excessively Large Images
She isn't quite human though, hence the ability to carry a claymore around with one hand.

How to Do Female Characters, as presented by Mount & Blade:



I, too, am sick to death of the over-sexualized warrior woman trend. Now don't get me wrong - I like warrior women. But I swear, if I see one, one goddamn heel...

I want to do horrible things to the first person who put heels on an outfit intended for combat.

Slightly OT, regarding Covenant's post: One thing I've never understood about anime is the fascination with over-stylized, pseudo-European aesthetics (usually 16th century or thereabouts). Can someone explain this to me?