• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Worst Female Character Design in Gaming?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Agree with the above (and with Cara Ellison's suggestion, as noted below). There are folks who approve of the improvement in Lara's visual design, but have specific objections to her characterization, in the latest game in particular:


Interestingly, it turned out that Pratchett herself may have had problems with the extent to which Lara's motivations/mental life (in ROTTR) is fixed obsessively around her father. Unfortunate that Crystal Dynamics apparently insisted on that type of effective simplification/trivialization of Lara's agency/motivations/mental life:
I was actually planning on starting a thread soon about how a lot of women in gaming that are more positive examples are often chasing the ideals/identity of their parents as a primary motivator instead of being their own person. Thanks for the links.
 

jiggle

Member
Usually a fan of Nomura's work
But I'd like to know what he was smoking when this thing happened
latest
 

Laiza

Member
Seriously people

Quiet isn't even notable in the scheme of bad shit from Japan

I'd take Quiet over the sea of bad created characters you'd get from simply walking into a lobby on a game like PSO2
The thing that makes quiet more egregious is how much she stands out in a game with otherwise believable designs.

Same thing with Cindy. Cindy stands out like a sore thumb. PSO2 is absolutely chock-full of idiotic designs, but at least they're consistently idiotic and you know what to expect at this point. Quiet and Cindy are standout bad designs in otherwise serious games.
 

O.v.e.rlord

Banned
My pick:

TIBW1ncl.jpg


Quiet from the Metal Gear series. Seriously the way they depict this "character" is borderline offensive!

What's yours GAF?

You mean the best right. Cause I love her both design and character. Fucking burned alive! Then infected with super bugs to get powers and gets her skin back. She's awesome.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
ivy1.jpg


I think i have a pretty high tolerance for T&A and other forms of sexualization of females in media.

This goes past that into pure cringe and embarrassing status. You have truly driven off the proverbial cliff when every other iteration of Ivy is tasteful by comparison.

Also in the running : any Mortal Kombat female from 4 to 8
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Given the wealth of options, I can't believe there are people saying reboot Lara Croft is one of the worst female character designs. Come on guys...
These people think that if a lady doesn't give them a boner, they're worthless. I bet they'd actually enjoy your "monstrosity", lol

I think it looks like an incoherent mess (though to be fair, I don't think any of the Zinogre stuff besides the hunting horn looks good; even the monster itself is a bit too overdesigned for my tastes). Impractical armor is fine if it actually looks elegant and interesting. Zinogre armor feels lazy, like they just threw all the Zinogre details onto a standard armor template.
I'm with you. MH armour designs have always been atrocious for both genders, but significantly worse for females.

The worst is the Wroggi set. If you're a dude, you get to be a cool cowboy, but if you're a girl, you get to be... a stripper?

BvwJDcw.jpg

SMH
 

Machina

Banned
I just knew this thread would revolve around sexualization more than anything else, because why wouldn't it lol
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
But i think that should be fine though? There have been plenty of art and stories that talks about sexuality. I know there's a problem in games with using women as sex objects meant to sell to an audience, but sex in games i feel should be discussed as long as it's equal and respectful? Not even saying that most of the examples in this thread are that lol.
The problem is that despite all of these sexualized designs, almost none of them have anything to do with any expression of genuine sexuality. Like, literally none.

You mean the best right. Cause I love her both design and character. Fucking burned alive! Then infected with super bugs to get powers and gets her skin back. She's awesome.
Yea man the one woman in the game, (who's actually real), being burned alive and then being nicknamed Quiet and conveniently falling in love with the player because the story makes no fucking sense is awesome. Which reminds me:

Hi, i'm the manifestation of the player's guilt since they couldn't prevent me from being raped, tortured, and killed over an extended period of time, nine years later, the player character is still guilty. So they imagine how I was before that time, but doesn't realize it yet, this is how the player remembers me, the person who used to also pretend to be an underage girl:
 

PK Gaming

Member
The narrative loophole is just another name for "Artist vision" making a context and a lore problem and instance where a character should/have/must wear of be in certain ways is just another way of justify it and normalize stuff.

No, that's not what i'm getting at. I'm not talking about Quiet tier "she wears this because she needs to" justification. I'm talking about what themes the game conveys through visuals alone. Like how a major part of the
9S
character arc revolves around sex and violence, such as when
2B chokes him to death, only for the game to reverse that later on, with the obvious implication being that he wants to both fuck and kill 2B.

It's complicated and i'm barely scratching the surface of it, but the characters being sexy lends itself to the game's aesthetics, rather than hurts it. Because unlike like dumb fanservice, it doesn't feel out of place.
 
Those games were extremely popular, and that design has become synonymous with that popularity. So, I'd agree with you that 90s Lara's attire is 'iconic,' but I think the idea that a skin tight tube top and short shorts can be iconic says more about the audience being considered than the design by itself.

Well, I think that gets into another discussion. Is showing skin inherently bad? With the two current character designs threads we see that there's some frame of thought that fully covered = good while revealing = bad. Like I said, there were no shortage of revealing designs at the time yet somehow hers came out. So, there has to be something about it that clicked with people in a positive way.
 

Springy

Member
I just knew this thread would revolve around sexualization more than anything else, because why wouldn't it lol

Because it's more often than not the driving force behind the visual design of female characters, so, yeah, it would tend towards being well-represented.

Well, I think that gets into another discussion. Is showing skin inherently bad? With the two current character designs threads we see that there's some frame of thought that fully covered = good while revealing = bad. Like I said, there were no shortage of revealing designs at the time yet somehow hers came out. So, there has to be something about it that clicked with people in a positive way.
There's context. There's always context. Even back to the first game, Lara's male foil, Larson, was sensibly dressed for expeditioning.

In the opening cut scene, she hikes through snowy mountains in a heavy shawl, before throwing it off to shoot wolves and reveal the hot pants.
 

luulubuu

Junior Member
But i think that should be fine though? There have been plenty of art and stories that talks about sexuality. I know there's a problem in games with using women as sex objects meant to sell to an audience, but sex in games i feel should be discussed as long as it's equal and respectful? Not even saying that most of the examples in this thread are that lol.

Exactly. You got totally my point. Sex, sexuality, problems related to sex, violence and every other variant should be a subject to discuss and a matter to learn in every aspect of life, then it should be treated in media and then in videogames, the problem comes when is it used as a marketing stunt more than an aproximation to a debate.

But yeah, you totally got my point (lovely avatar btw)
 

Laiza

Member
I have not meant to disrespect any females in this thread but my point still stands that designs aren’t automatically bad if they are sexy. I apologize if I have offended any females.
Referring to human beings as "females" instead of "female gamers" or "women" or even the not-really-great-but-still-not-as-bad "girls" is not a good look. Do not negate the subject or reduce us to animals, thank you very much.
 

cuate

Banned
I'm not saying that the women are solely sexualized, (although being able to self destruct 9S is a good example of how framing matters and that two or the same thing aren't necessarily equivalent:
hqdefault.jpg
Just that for the most part, the designs of women are more sexualized than the men. The guy who appears nude literally doesn't even have genitalia. Yet 2B for some reason is wearing a thong leotard that also has a cleavage window because reasons.

i like how his legs are freaking toothpicks whereas 2b thighs are bigger than her torso. so typical.
 

Gator86

Member
Reboot Lara Croft: looks like a normal woman wearing a tank top and pants
(some of) GAF: BORING, NON-FEMININE, GREY, UNATTRACTIVE, LITERALLY THE WORST DESIGN

Basically. It's dumb as hell. It's not some abomination because she's not wearing that shit green tank top and those shorts.
 

Antiwhippy

the holder of the trombone
The problem is that despite all of these sexualized designs, almost none of them have anything to do with any expression of genuine sexuality. Like, literally none.


Yea man the one woman in the game, (who's actually real), being burned alive and then being nicknamed Quiet and conveniently falling in love with the player because the story makes no fucking sense is awesome.

I mean i agree. Sex in games is still incredibly immature, both in presentation and the way it's explored.
 

Syf

Banned
I'd like to give a shoutout to Kerrigan's high heels in StarCraft 2, although I'm pretty okay with the rest of the design. Makes no sense why she suddenly has heels as a zerg lol.
 

JackelZXA

Member
Sure! Totally! I think that's a very valid critique. I think what I meant was that sexualized characters aren't inherently agent-less, but by framing them from a male perspective (i.e. as a sex object) it dimishes their agency and is no longer a female story but a story about a female told from the perspective of a man. See the controversial
Sansa/Ramsay Bolton rape scene
from Game of Thrones, where the story doesn't focus on how the woman feels about the horrific act being commited to her, but instead focuses on another man in the room and how it effects him.

There's nothing inherently bad about a female character who is sexy who also has a complex character arc and uses her 'sexiness' to further that arc; it's when the sexiness is the sum total of her character, or gets used to demean her character or diminutize her in relation to the male characters, who aren't sexualized, that I believe things begin to break down.

I'd say the sansa seen is telling both stories simultaneously. Reek's story is visual (as he is robbed of his speech and agency) and Sansa's is told through the audio. They only show the visuals of her story briefly and then cut away but still maintain the audio. It'd be very difficult to show a traumatic rape without any sexualizing imagery, actually. Her resolve is broken when it becomes a physical situation, so I'm not sure depicting the visual aspect of that, even on her face, would have done more than make things worse. I think restricting her scene to audio allows them to create a shared scene where two stories and two perspectives are being told at once in the last few seconds of the episode. They're both robbed of their agency in one way or another, and I don't think in the context of how the story progresses from there into the next season for the both of them that anything is particularly lost in how it was handled.
 
1035


It isn't just the usual anime Otaku pander. It isn't just the stripperiffic outfit.

It's the little bulge on skin under the string on the hip that makes it that much more skeevy. :/ Gotta make sure we know it's really tight.

Oh it gets worse. If you watch the gameplay demo the back of her shorts is actually see through so you can see her thong.
 

Jacqli

Member
[IMG.]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--9HuQfeLDVg/UZA8iXczdNI/AAAAAAAAAUg/pPnu6KtVPM0/s1600/composite2TR9.png[/IMG]

Bland, boring, generic, grey, uninspired, uncreative, unattractive, non-feminine, terrible.

I think her design is fine and I find her quite attractive, the problem lies in her personality and that is a much more serious issue in my opinion.

Anyway, my answer is Haydee:
maxresdefault.jpg

I bought the game and no regrets. And while the mod section has some incredible models (like 2B) and recently also modded maps, I am always surprised when I see breast enlarger mods. Or the pubic hair option. 10/10
 

Korigama

Member
Based on Nintendo's previous actions they're likely to "color in" some of the bare parts of her to make her look like she's wearing more clothing.
NoA (who dictated that sort of thing to Atlus when they were localizing #FE) aren't localizing Xenoblade 2, NoE are.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
I mean i agree. Sex in games is still incredibly immature, both in presentation and the way it's explored.
And that immaturity bred a really immature subset of the audience that complains about SJWs/PC ruining their games because "muh titties."

Maybe if game devs stopped making 90% of female characters needlessly sexualized we could talk about something else.
Ain't that the truth. Consider how differently these threads go when it's focused on the men of gaming, a LOT more to say about that with a lot less intellectual dishonesty and even worse, more varied designs...
 

Laiza

Member
Well, I think that gets into another discussion. Is showing skin inherently bad? With the two current character designs threads we see that there's some frame of thought that fully covered = good while revealing = bad. Like I said, there were no shortage of revealing designs at the time yet somehow hers came out. So, there has to be something about it that clicked with people in a positive way.
Of course it's not inherently bad. It's just that,

1. in the greater context of female character representation in the whole of society, it's basically the default to expose excessive and unnecessary amounts of skin

2. this is often done in spite of any characterization, cheapening the character's sense of agency and making her look dumb

3. this is also often done regardless of how the male equivalent characters are treated, to the point where there is a visible and egregious double standard.

Address all three of these and you can have characters running literally butt-naked for all I care.
 

zoukka

Member
The problem is that despite all of these sexualized designs, almost none of them have anything to do with any expression of genuine sexuality. Like, literally none.

Might have to do with the fact that sexuality much like any other subject isn't seriously/maturely being explored in video games 99% of the time. In those rare games they are, these designs are much more sensitive and deservedly scrutinized. In a game like Dragons Crown they are completely fine though.
 
I knew Quiet would come up, but I don't agree. If anything it is the worst explanation given for a skimpy outfit. In the end it is just a bikini right?

Some of the others here are just ridiculous. Ivy from Soul Calibur is even more offensive if you think about it.
 

Mobile Suit Gooch

Grundle: The Awakening
This drawing is amazing! Not a fan of over sexualized designs, but this makes me want to play this game. Better than the design of the girl currently in all the Persona 5 promotional materials.

Huh. So Marie made someone want to play Persona 4 Golden...Well, I'll be damned.
 
Honestly went over my head for years until someone pointed it out a little while ago.

fdfe29daf61cf7a02c1cfae910cb671e.jpg

Somebody needs to explain this one to me. I've seen it several times before and for the life of me I can't picture it as anything but her bare crotch showing. What is it really?
 
Ugh. The designs of females in Xenoblade Chronicles are just SO bad. It kept me from enjoying the game honestly. Just armour set after set of boob windows, bikinis etc etc. So strange because the actual characters themselves are pretty fantastically written.

240


Fiora's is so annoying, like her "body" isn't even human? But no worries, she's still got boobs to show off at every opportunity.

sharla-trio.jpg


Also come on. Sharla is a Healer, so why is the emphasis always on her chest? What's worse is that the same armour sets on male characters COVER THEM COMPLETELY. LIKE ARMOUR SHOULD. You know, for like protecting?

Xenoblade X did so much better, but it seems like Xenoblade 2 will be reverting back to the series roots.

snaps-about-ign-e3-on-ign-es-2-1497370193889_1280w.jpg


Like this. This is an abomination. She literally looks deformed.
 
Hello, i'm a mechanic, my body is constantly gonna be exposed to substances that are not good for skin at all, I literally am never seen fixing a car, I do however, have scenes where I get to wipe the windshield:


Hi, I'm the ultimate culmination of my creator's decade long downward spiral when it comes to the representation of women, I literally can't talk or wear clothing or else i'll fucking die, btw, I will literally strip what little clothing I have and pose for you like a fucking animal with dead eyes if you take me with on your missions, please pay no attention to my rape scenes or the fact that I literally spend large chunks of the game inside a cage:


Hi, my designer literally gave up:


Hi, I'm a racist stereotype where turning evil literally turns my skin dark, gives me tribal tattoos, and increases my breast size, I literally turned evil because the hero who i've never met won't love me:
cia02jpg-b9976c_1280w.jpg



What? Also uncreative literally compared to what?. A long running line of tit ninjas?


This is the best post on this thread hands down.

Also yeah wtf? Lara Croft isn't feminine and that's a bad thing? She's clearly a woman, what else did u need? A pink head wrap?
 

PK Gaming

Member
The problem is that despite all of these sexualized designs, almost none of them have anything to do with any expression of genuine sexuality. Like, literally none.

It does. 100%

The androids are obsessed with sex and violence. The machines too, are similarly obsessed with sex and violence, and there's a particularly famous sequence where
the machine lifeforms imitate the various different ways humans have sex
. One of the androids is very clearly sexually frustrated, because of their
seemingly unrequited feelings towards 2B.

The following is an excerpt from an excellent Nier: Automata analysis. Major Nier: Automata spoilers follow:

After 2B’s death, 9S launches a rage-fueled vendetta against the machines and A2. As he grieves over her, his behavior grows increasingly erratic and violent. The true perversity of this rampage isn’t revealed until just before the end of the third playthrough. It turns out that 2B was, in actuality, a specialized Executioner unit designed to murder 9S when he inevitably discovered the truth about humanity’s extinction. In fact, 2B had already killed 9S several times in the past – he just lacks total recollection of his previous incarnations, or willfully denies it. 2B’s cold demeanor towards 9S, her constant insistence that “emotions are prohibited” whenever he tried to get close to her (despite the fact that none of the other androids, 2B included, abide by this rule in any other context), all serve to shield her from the pain of her murderous duty.

In one of the game’s most controversial scenes, Adam captures 9S and, via a text-only interface, expounds on his obsession with conflict and hatred. Immediately following his diagnosis of 9S as someone who wants to both “destroy everything” and “be loved by all,” Adam drops this bombshell:

“You’re thinking about how much you want to **** 2B, aren’t you?”

At face value, most players assume that the censored word is “fuck”. But other instances of “fuck” go completely uncensored – it’s an M-rated (17+) game, after all. However, after finishing the story, many have posited that the four letter word is, in fact, “kill”, an idea infinitely more profane and more likely to be rejected by 9S’s mind. The Japanese text is likewise obscured. The ambiguity of the statement, especially considering Adam’s preface, enhances the overlap between ideas of sex and violence among Automata’s cast. 9S wants to love 2B, physically and emotionally, but still struggles to repress the lifetimes of anguish she’s caused him. The irreconcilable nature of the conflict pushes his grief to insanity
.

So yeah, there is a genuine expression of sexuality in Nier: Automata. It's not lip service.
 
Reboot Lara Croft brought up as a serious entry in a thread clearly titled "Worst Female Character Design in Gaming". God forbid a female lead (who by all intents and purposes is still very comfortably attractive!) accompanied by the claim that it's not a very feminine design. Now I've seen it all...

Let's now go over and see what happens when Tetsuya Nomura is going through his early-mid 2000s phase and has clearly stopped giving a fuck. Enter Shalua Rui from Dirge of Cerberus:

Code:
[IMG]https://abload.de/img/bmsuo.jpg[/IMG]

Stop laughing at the back. This is a serious game with a serious story and she's a serious scientist with a troubled family backstory or some shit, I dunno, I can't bloody remember. Is she the worst in all of gaming? Probably not. She's likely nowhere near the most egregious example I could have pulled, but I just had to bring up what happens when Nomura isn't on a leash.
 

Kinsei

Banned
Somebody needs to explain this one to me. I've seen it several times before and for the life of me I can't picture it as anything but her bare crotch showing. What is it really?

She's wearing like three layers. The pink suit that looks like it could be skin, the red sleeves, and the weird yellow half overalls.

It's atrocious.
 

Toxi

Banned
I'm with you. MH armour designs have always been atrocious for both genders, but significantly worse for females.

The worst is the Wroggi set. If you're a dude, you get to be a cool cowboy, but if you're a girl, you get to be... a stripper?

BvwJDcw.jpg

SMH
I do like this fan redesign.

monster_hunter_wroggi_redesign___character_sheet_by_statyk94-d9vd07s.jpg


I think there are some pretty good female armors in Monster Hunter though. Gore Magala and Zamtrios come to mind.
 

Antiwhippy

the holder of the trombone
It does. 100%

The androids are obsessed with sex and violence. The machines too, are similarly obsessed with sex and violence, and there's a particularly famous sequence where
the machine lifeforms imitate the various different ways humans have sex
. One of the androids is very clearly sexually frustrated, because of their
seemingly unrequited feelings towards 2B.

The following is an excerpt from an excellent Nier: Automata analysis. Major Nier: Automata spoilers follow:

After 2B’s death, 9S launches a rage-fueled vendetta against the machines and A2. As he grieves over her, his behavior grows increasingly erratic and violent. The true perversity of this rampage isn’t revealed until just before the end of the third playthrough. It turns out that 2B was, in actuality, a specialized Executioner unit designed to murder 9S when he inevitably discovered the truth about humanity’s extinction. In fact, 2B had already killed 9S several times in the past – he just lacks total recollection of his previous incarnations, or willfully denies it. 2B’s cold demeanor towards 9S, her constant insistence that “emotions are prohibited” whenever he tried to get close to her (despite the fact that none of the other androids, 2B included, abide by this rule in any other context), all serve to shield her from the pain of her murderous duty.

In one of the game’s most controversial scenes, Adam captures 9S and, via a text-only interface, expounds on his obsession with conflict and hatred. Immediately following his diagnosis of 9S as someone who wants to both “destroy everything” and “be loved by all,” Adam drops this bombshell:

“You’re thinking about how much you want to **** 2B, aren’t you?”

At face value, most players assume that the censored word is “fuck”. But other instances of “fuck” go completely uncensored – it’s an M-rated (17+) game, after all. However, after finishing the story, many have posited that the four letter word is, in fact, “kill”, an idea infinitely more profane and more likely to be rejected by 9S’s mind. The Japanese text is likewise obscured. The ambiguity of the statement, especially considering Adam’s preface, enhances the overlap between ideas of sex and violence among Automata’s cast. 9S wants to love 2B, physically and emotionally, but still struggles to repress the lifetimes of anguish she’s caused him. The irreconcilable nature of the conflict pushes his grief to insanity
.

So yeah, there is a genuine expression of sexuality in Nier: Automata. It's not lip service.

To add to that, a certain scene in ending A is also pretty sexually charged, only coming from 2B, showing that she herself has unfulfilled desires as well that are born from her duties.
 

orborborb

Member
Some of these are bad, a lot of them are not, but only one did I dislike enough to prevent me from enjoying the game.

Sorry, Bayonetta fans
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom