Positive Examples: Hades 2 (and Hades)

A little unusual positive post here, to signal that while realistic armor on women is always welcome, there are more ways to give female characters decent representation.

We're trusting our regular readers to infer from the Saturday post that we don't consider depiction of female characters in Hades games, no matter how stylized and impractical their costumes (or lack of thereof), among regular negative BABD material. And that's because of a couple simple reasons.

Here's a selection of male Hades & Hades 2 characters, often with their tits pecs out and generally glad to present as very approachable for people who are into men:

Shoutout for Hephaestus delivering myth-accurate disability rep AND having a big belly, which fans are already very happy about (the issue of somewhat lacking body diversity was brought up since the first game).

And of course there's primordial god, Chaos, who encompasses all and none genders and uses they/them pronouns:

So yeah, we're pretty cool with Hades.

As reader @relto replied to our previous post:

The mere concept of a sexy female character never offended us, it's just shoving (very limited, cishet male gaze version of) sexyness onto fictional women in otherwise non-sexy setting that we're criticizing, especially when it's combat-oriented.

And Supergiant Games is pretty consistent (and surprisingly tasteful) about how horny everything and everyone in Hades is. Take notes from them, not from Creepy Marketing Guy.

~Ozzie

This is truly stiff competition for the worst case of willful false equivalence we've ever seen.

So, for those not aware: Ongoing embarrassment to gamers and the gaming industry, Mark Kern (former lead on FireFall), has been desperately trying to get Gamergate 2 going on X/Twitter... well after others have given up. If you need to get caught up on Mark, I recommend this video by documentary maker and experienced game developer, Dead Domain:

One of the latest fiascos in this mix has been the comparison of responses to character designs from Hades 2 (Aphrodite, left) and Stellar Blade (protagonist Eve, right). The post isn't by Mark, but is part of the general harassment campaign he's trying to lead.

If you're somehow not familiar with Aphrodite, she's the Ancient Greek goddess of love, lust and hot girl shit. It is absolutely perfect characterization for her to show up to a battle (or anything else) nude but for her hair teasingly covering the intimate parts of her body. But the buried lede here is, you don't fight her in Hades and nothing about Hades 2 indicates she'll fight there either, she just likes the aesthetic and has no reason not to indulge.

Stellar Blade will release on 26 April 2024, so we can't really give an informed discussion of her character. But what we do know is the studio head is the illustrator from Blade & Soul, Eve is described as being a member of "the 7th Airborne Squad" engaged in an "operation to reclaim the planet from the Naytiba", and the promotion material promises "an enthralling narrative filled with mature themes, mystery and revelation. Embrace the relentless pace, with no time to pause between moments where critical, story-changing decisions are made."

It's to be compared to games like Nier: Automata, Devil May Cry 5, Jedi: Fallen Order and Sekiro. And the screenshots look like this:

And yeah, unlike Bayonetta she's not supposed to be an unstoppable force of nature (and fashion) who is immune to self-doubt, she's supposed to be the scrappy underdog last survivor of her team.

Weird they gave her a costume that conveys... the opposite of literally everything they're supposed to be trying to tell you about her.

-wincenworks

Dragonheir: Silent Gods was released in 2023 and partnered with Dungeons & Dragons, getting to include Drizzt Do'urden and even Elminster the Sage in their game. They even managed to hire YouTube sensation Deerstalker Pictures to do a promotion about it.

And um... yeah... on their site they open with Drizzt but some of these other "heroes" look like they are trying to emulate some older marketing strategies that we've critiqued in depth in the past.

-wincenworks

If this doesn't happen in Marvel Animation's X-Men '97 then my childhood will have officially been ruined.

-wincenworks

(Original Reddit comment here and the masterpiece of art by billythebutcher here)

Granblue Fantasy, "Woke" International Standards and pandering to toxic trash gamers

So, I'm not going to name him because I don't particularly want his fans finding it via searches and sending me weird nonsense to my inbox, and honestly I don't want people who don't know him receiving psychic damage due to exposure to his opinions - but a certain streaming personality whose primary contribution is toxicity is getting angry that various mega-corporations that happen to originate in East Asia are continuing to focus on marketing broadly to get the most sales, rather than just pandering to miserable straight white men who are scared of anyone different to them.

Basically the same people who used to scream "Sex sells! Deal with it! Facts don't care about your feelings!" are now having breakdowns when it turns out massive mega-corporations don't want to be their friend/nanny/punching-bag, they want to make as much money as possible and the obvious way to achieve that is to broaden their audience, to make more people interested in buying their game.

Because the $100 from a personal with a marginalized identity who joins the series midway, spends exactly as well as the $100 for the cishet white guy who then goes on to start a harassment campaign against a developer via his social media clout, and uses the proceeds to buy Hot Pockets and bootleg NSFW merchandise (I assume).

Granblue Fantasy is a game series which has... largely resisted this trend. It's been releasing games, etc for ten years so, so many depictions of the player characters could be used as an illustration of our double standards tag.

(Also the male protagonist, Gran, is the one the series is named for when translated into English... there is no Djeetablue Fantasy - despite the many attempts by the fanbase to use memes to manifest it. However her name is incorporated into the native Japanese title... nobody tell him in case he decides that's "woke".)

So this guy who screams about studios who go woke, and was 100% going to play the latest entry in it... he'd support it right?

Nah, he complained he didn't like the story, he didn't get it and posted videos of him doing his signature "this is so bad" face. Man who lives off Hot Pockets and has unreasonable expectations of everyone else, failed to have his expectations met.

It's probably good he bailed out there before he found out that Granblue Fantasy, and a lot of game series like it - often have a lot of female fans who are in it for the story, the characters, the cute boys and the generally fun of the world.... all the stuff he hates.

If you doubt this, there's a foolproof way to check....

Oh wow I wonder why more and more studios are deciding it's a bad idea to court the attention of guys like him.

-wincenworks

Ordinarily I'd save this for a Friday treat, but the clock is ticking down on this Kickstarter that seems... very relevant to many of our readers interests.

It's already passed it's goal by a wide margin and has less than 30 hours to go - so if you think you'd be interested in one of these Tarot Deck of Male Empowerment - check it out quick.

You can also find more images of this card art by Mazjojo on his Instagram,

-wincenworks

So Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), the game which inspired the Battle Royale mode that came to define Fortnite, is doing a Chinese New Year promo themed around Journey to the West. Specifically it's themed around the trio of divine guardians who served as the primary protectors.

So briefly, I would like to discuss depictions of Zhu Bajie in popular media... who I generally refer to as Pigsy since, like many westerners - my first exposure to the character was the Japanese TV series Monkey (1978 - 1980) - in my case dubbed into English.

That's him on the right, with the muck rake. I also use this name because it's pretty much an accurate translation of the character's core premise after he is cast down into the mortal realm. It's how he's very consistently depicted:

Honor of Kings (2015)

Monkie Kid (2020 - )

It's pretty much consistent to the point where the issue with googling for examples is finding the specific product they're linked to since he always looks like a pig man.... just like the PUBG unlockables above depict him as.

So you can imagine my surprise to discover that at some point in the development of this promotion, someone from the PUBG Corporation doubtlessly asked "Have we got the design for Pigsy ready yet?" and the reply was apparently "Yeah, made her real fucking sexy for you too! Just like you asked!"

This is also a rare PUBG outfit that look kind of different on a male model, than on the female model... turning into a full crop top rather than just a sexy bra.

It's also one where the chest design etc would probably get covered pretty quick the moment a player gets a vest... but I haven't had either the opportunity... or the burning desire to test that.

-wincenworks

Mortal Kombat 1 & "Girl Power"

Content warnings: Unsurprisingly all the new Mortal Kombat trailers include high definition depictions of extremely gorey violence and death. Like, gives developers PTSD extreme. I will link to the trailers, but not include them inline. I did include a more cartoony Mortal Kombat 2 fatality.

Mortal Kombat (MK) has a long history, ever since Mortal Kombat 2, of not great female outfits.

Ed Boon has had a long history justifying this with "girl power" and that its a game where women get to be kickass, and now there's been an announcement that Mortal Kombat is setting up for... yet another reboot of the narrative.

So let's investigate Ed's claims of girl power, now they're giving the world a soft reboot and have used it to do redesigns and depict the characters in their ideal situations.

The new game Announcement Trailer that the characters now have a "choice" to live in quiet, serene lives they have - until we get a montage of Shang Stun just murdering them. Notably some of them get to make token effort to fight back, but it's not until the Gameplay Trailer we see them actually bust any worthwhile moves.

Kitana

In the initial trailer, Princess Kitana gets shown being carried in luxurious wagon before the crowds, accompanied by the oddly threatening Mileena. So... doesn't seem she's getting the same level of deep fulfilment the boys are.

The next time we see her - she's just like... kneeling in front of Shang Tsun and waiting to get her eyeballs gouged out with his thumbs.

In the second trailer, completely unconnected to the noble quest the boys are preparing for - she's having a battle with Mileena that seems fuelled by jealousy and paranoia.

We don't get to see any of her fatalities in the fatality montages - and while we see the boys testing one another, and building an alliance against their oppressor - we just see the girls squabbling.

Would this be an awkward time to bring up that Princess Kitana used to be 10,000 years old and expert at dealing with the machinations of the courts - unlike Fire God Liu Kang, she's been nerfed.

Mileena

Milenna gets shown riding with Kitana... and implied to be her rival, but is apparently now the actual Empress. then the next time we see her it's in a half-second clip of her getting her neck snapped effortlessly.

In the second trailer she trades blows with Kitana for a while, tagging in Goro to do some big hits and then later she's in a fight with one of the boys... the hits are done by another one of the boys she tags in.

We don't get to see any of her fatalities, which is pretty disappointing given that hers have often been particularly creative with the horror angle.

Sonya Blade

Sonya doesn't appear at all... and in the second trailer she rushes in during a fight to do like a weird, flip where she suplexes someone with her legs - then runs out again. Sort of a tag team feature that she seems to do just once.

She doesn't get a line, she doesn't get to show off a move set, she doesn't make a critical move and doesn't get a fatality. Sonya Blade, the original

Fuck you Ed, stop trying to justify your own jerk off material as "girl power" retroactively and pretending that you don't think women deserve to be badass. And give the people what they want to see:

That and like female characters who are as badass and badass looking as the boys - and shown to be as driven and interesting.

Ed, make Sheeva the main character of the promotions, you coward.

-wincenworks

Raid: Shadow Legends has now reached the inevitable point of the cycle of fantasy themed game that starts with "we also have sexy ladies" marketing where its being promoted by shill accounts on the social media known as Twitter.

But it's not just the presence in the sewer. This is the Google summary:

This the Publisher's own page for it:

Strangely despite the "18+" in the top left corner, the game is still available on the infamously touchy Apple Play Store. So no, we can be very assured there will not even be so much as a nipple in it, let alone anything spicy enough to warrant any 18+ rating.

This is one of the truths behind the "sex sells" argument. It doesn't, this hasn't led to Raid gaining massive sales, dominating over games that don't use sexy marketing, etc.

If you look at the charts for Apple's top games, it's way below things like Roblox, Candy Crush Saga, Pokemon GO, Monopoly GO!, Minecraft and various other cartoony things.

This is with that creepy marketing, and well, why? Well it's just not that impressive in its niche any more.

It's just if you're having artwork made - it doesn't cost any more to add "make it horny" to the notes on female characters, and you'll definitely get endorsements from certain executives.

-wincenworks