I don't know if Eileen the Crow from Bloodborne counts ?
(We never see her face tho)
(Well she's not the main protagonist of the game either...)
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Overwatch's Laughably Convenient Ageism / Sexism
- Thread starter mindsale
- Start date
I don't know if Eileen the Crow from Bloodborne counts ?
(We never see her face tho)
(Well she's not the main protagonist of the game either...)
I'm not sure I'm following you. I didn't say anything about censorship. And creative vision is absolutely a factor when we're discussing character/(and in the case of the omnics) world design of the game.
EDIT: People do cite such things for other aspects of a game as well. One example is Dark Souls combat and how obtuse it can feel, but the response is that it is very intentionally nuanced by the creators. Or how ridiculous the "flex" animation is in Monster hunter when you try and recover health, the response is also that it was intended by the creators as a balancing mechanism. When there are calls for those things to be changed or made easier, the frequent reply is "that's how it was intended, you just need to play around it and practice at it".
The Omega Man
Member
So there were some inter-species mating going on? out of curiosity, who was the human, the mother or the father? because, oh boy...
If we go truly into the lore it's actually an Orc-Dranei hybrid.
This is a female orc.
Fair enough. On the other hand, though, you do have some pretty out-there origin stories for some of the male characters (thinking about Zenyatta, Reaper, and Winston in particular). Granted there's nothing pertaining explicitly to aesthetic choices (though, there's some room to argue, at least in Reaper's case).
Also, I should note that the explanations in the OP are still extrapolations, to some extent. I don't think that there's any mention of how cryostatis, time travel, or a slow heart beat impacted their aesthetics specifically, merely mentioning their age (and, in Widow's case, it didn't even mention age). The OP inferred this on his own, to my knowledge.
I was talking broadly about the kind of defense you're raising. Your defense mimics the defense where people scream censorship -- it's basically the same thing -- you even said the approach in this thread is an "attempt to force the developer's hand in a strange way." No, it's not -- it's just simple constructive criticism.
Character design is open to criticism just like map design and combat mechanics and any other part of the game. You don't think there's creative vision in gameplay...? As a dev myself, it's always super weird when people pretend you can't criticize this stuff. I think most devs appreciate constructive criticism -- it's super helpful when you're trying to improve your games -- like many people in this thread, it's very possible the devs never realized they were doing this stuff so having it pointed out makes it really easy to address in the future. If the criticism doesn't align with your goals, it's easy to ignore.
Nova Prime?
You know, despite being a non-combatant in GotG, Nova Prime is maybe a good example to draw from if someone was interested in putting an older woman in a game like Overwatch.
She comes across as powerful, confident, the design of her costuming and hair make her visually striking and interesting. If the plot had come to a place where she had to take up arms personally against Ronan, I don't think I would've been shocked or confused. Not any more than if they'd cast, say, Sean Connery as Nova Prime anyway.
In fact, where's my version of this movie where Glenn Close is taking off alien heads with an energy canon? I didn't know how much I wanted this until just now.
Winterblink
Member
What a fucking cool bit of lore, that.
SirPinkyNose
Member
Not really.
Both Winter wyvern and Broodmother are mindless beasts which have no voicelines in Warcraft 3. Also Wc3's Medusa is far from being ugly and Legion Commander was a male there.
Dota 2's hero designs could borrow some basic elements from Blizzard, like how Invoker looks exactly like Kael, but they also twist and turn with a lot of characters.
"Dead" like Morisson (Soldier 76) and Reyes (Reaper) also were, most probably. There have been many hints in the game that suggest Ana Amari might be the mysterious Sombra, that is a character still to come.
That makes little to no sense, robots are genderless, but if you still want to atribute a gender to a robot there is literally nothing stopping you from considering Bastion a female.
Athena is also a hero to come, she is already an introduced character in the game, she is the AI that assists Overwatch operations all around, but also has an omnic body:
The implication seemed (to me) to be that the roll design fell into what that picture is mocking.
You gotta admit from the pictures you yourself posted a post before, the Troll female looks further from the male troll and closer to a human female in contrast to the female tauren in relation to the male tauren and a female human.
Female troll still looks like a female human with blue skin and weird hands/feet, and even the hands while three fingered look more human than the dude's.
Female Tauren = Anthropomorphic cow.
Female Troll = Human cosplayer.
SocksAndShoes
Banned
Ugh, it's not accurate though. Our blood is never blue at any point. It goes from a light red to a dark red.
Yes, I am well aware I'm being "that guy" right now, but this particular bit is repeated as fact all the time.
In regards to the OP; I had never honestly thought about it but it's a good point. There are very few older women characters in games, period. Let's hope Blizzard diversifies a bit for the upcoming heroes.
The dimorphism between male and female taurens isn't that far off from Bulls and cows.
Winterblink
Member
Yeezus
Member
Usually around Oscar season, this discussion gets brought up alongside movies as well. Save a few choice names, that middle-age sort of space in between young/sexy and old/wise falls by the wayside in terms of meaningful roles and their availability.
It's something worth thinking about, for sure.
It's something worth thinking about, for sure.
You're bad at being that guy
You still turn blue when you're lacking oxygen. I guess she has mild cyanosis constantly (with some artistic liberty).
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanosis
Well... i did admit that in my post.
But I get it I guess. I think the most glaring example are the dreanei and naga. Trolls are are distant 3rd
But Tuarens, Worgens, Belfs, Nelfs, etc etc are all fine.
Sure they twist and turn and make their own unique look, but the inspiration is still there.
SocksAndShoes
Banned
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
I have no idea what any of this actually means.
I did. Not that there was much to address as it was pretty much a shitpost.
Yeah, I enjoyed that about Wolfenstein. Its gender portrayal was pretty decent for the most part. And it's a silly pulpy shooter where you shoot nazis!Since someone asked earlier for examples. Both Wolfenstein and its expansion The Old Blood had middle aged female antagonists which were both intimidating and effective.
Yes <3
It can be done.
It not only can be done, it's not even actually hard to do.
No she isn't but she's still badass and my favourite Soulsborne NPC.I don't know if Eileen the Crow from Bloodborne counts ?
(We never see her face tho)
(Well she's not the main protagonist of the game either...)
They were most of the time, you know, kinda pushing a narrative that grown powerful women were evil, while the young beautiful pure princess is the embodiment of good.
it's kinda funny, i recall that because of that narrative, Lauren Faust said while she was developing MLP she was told Celestia couldn't be a Queen because "Queens are evil, princesses are good", subsequently when a character was introduced with the title of Queen she was a bad guy.
Wasn't that like... the whole point of slowing down her heartbeat?
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but...
I am talking about the current "solutions" we (and I suppose Blizzard) have available to us. Either Blizzard takes another look at their cast and tries to fit in some of the themes we're talking about – or saying they should have done this from the start and significantly altered their cast – or they rectify this with additional characters coming up. All I am saying is we should focus on the latter because focusing on the former is, in fact, impacting creative vision. How could it not be? You'd be asking them to significantly alter their cast of characters.
Talking about character back stories and how no women is allowed to look old points to the former. Maybe I am reading too much into it. The implication to me is "look at these ridiculous back stories, they shouldn't have done that. Maybe they should change them." Maybe that's not an entirely fair reading.
See my edit about creative vision in gameplay. There totally is. I never said there wasn't? Where is that coming from? You seem to be bringing in another conversation to this that I haven't been a part of. Dark Souls and Monster Hunter get slammed all the time for little things like deliberate combat animations, but the frequent reply is that "no, that's how it was intended, so you need to work within those boundaries if you want to get better."
SocksAndShoes
Banned
But wouldn't you still have to hold in your breath? I mean she'd still have to breath and it would effect her shots, right?
Right, Blizzard!? I NEED THIS TO MAKE SENSE TO FEEL WHOLE AGAIN
Does it even make sense to begin with? Less oxygen in your blood sounds like a bad idea to me.
I mean the glaringly limited character types for the female characters was pretty obvious from the get-go. Male characters are allowed to be distorted in all sorts of ways, but all the female characters have that very typical Disney Princess-esque facial proportions. Even Zarya, this bigass mini-gun wielding tank character falls into this trap.
This isn't a problem limited to Overwatach - it plagues animation, comics, games... And hell live-action, obviously.
Though Overwatch's narrative justifications are new to me. That's just dumb.
This isn't a problem limited to Overwatach - it plagues animation, comics, games... And hell live-action, obviously.
Though Overwatch's narrative justifications are new to me. That's just dumb.
"saying they should have done this from the start" and "they should change them (after the fact)" are two entirely different suggestions. I literally see zero people suggesting they go edit existing characters to make them look older. Maybe there is one or two somewhere in this thread but that's not what I'm suggesting and I don't think that's what most people criticizing their choices are suggesting. I'd be fine if they just do a better job moving forward (I play the game and think it's great). And yeah, they're already ahead of a lot of games. This is constructive criticism. No reason to get defensive unless you disagree with the criticism (and don't want more diverse characters)... at which point you can just explain how you disagree instead of making up weird arguments about how we're "forcing" devs to do anything.
Night Elves are an interesting case in which they are immortal/long-lived races so in standard fantasy fashion they're frozen somewhere between youth and middle age, but, when it comes to the game model, there's still a noticeable difference between men and women. Night Elf men are by and large wrinkly, bearded prunes, but Night Elf women look like they're in their mid 20s, forever.
Somewhere between 30-50.
Somewhere between 20-30.
Shrike_Priest
Member
Thing is, middle aged female antagonists can be found a little here and there (see the Disney post above). It's protagonists/heroes that are fewer farther between (apparently women become evil once they hit menopause). But, luckily, Wolfenstein has that covered too:
FelixOrion
Poet Centuriate
Not surprising, night elves are literally the most sexist race in WoW if you know the lore.
Doctor Ironic
Member
You seem to believe that male characters are the default.
Blizzard took a step forward in realizing that there is more than one type of attractive body type and then gave up after that. Every female character in Overwatch is designed to be some kind of waifu, whereas you can't say the same about Reinhardt or Roadhog. If Mei is supposed to be wearing clothing that protects her from the cold, why the fuck is she wearing yoga pants?
No she isn't but she's still badass and my favourite Soulsborne NPC.
She's one of my fav ! One of the best designs ever, and she has a cool background too.
She's a badass old woman done right o/
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Makes sense. Queens are powerful women, princesses are not and are generally pure and virginal. Women with power are dangerous and scary, so it makes sense to make that they would be evil!
/s of course, it's a sad state of affairs
Way to ruin a good gif with superfluous photoshop. D:
Going by fanart I'd say Roadhog is husbando material, just not necessarily for women.
looks like thermals to me.
Yip because hegemonic beauty totally doesn't vary within different cultures or change with cultural shifts... Must be biological!!
While I love Overwatch, Blizzard aren't exactly known for their excellent writing.
Come on dude. I don't think any of my arguments have been "weird" and we've already talked about the "forcing" thing. I also don't think we have much to disagree about and I feel like you are seeing me as something I am not. I agree about the diversity angle (it's quite good, but could also be better, sure) but at the same time I feel the characters themselves are well justified being how they are, except for Mei, who feels absolutely contrived. I have outlined my thoughts on the characters in my first post