That sheet reminds me of the concept art of Zero Suit Samus with a note pointing to her butt saying "I'm really going to enjoy drawing this!!!"
Why women criticise sexualised character designs |OT2| I have no pants and I must scream (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
- Start date
- OT
- Status
Here's some of her initial design concepts. :/ (sorry for quality; but you get the idea)Man, so.
Y's 8 had a free weekend and I've kind of been in the mood to play a Y's game since I watched someone play Y's 3 the other day.
Man, after a certain point, the women just stop wearing clothes huh.
RE: Fighting thread
Her tits are practically their own separate organism; undulation caused by nothing. *whoosh*
On Kojima and women, in the old forum there was a thread that postulated that something happened with Metal Gear's handling of female characters post-MGS3. I'm not saying it was perfect before then, but you do kind of notice a difference pre and post-MGS3. The theory is that one of Kojima's co-writers had something to do with it.
And as a director, Kojima approved everything. There's no use of putting the blame on someone else.
No I mean they suggested one of Kojima's co-writers had something to do with Metal Gear's sexualization of female characters being somewhat less egregious up to and including MGS3.
I don’t think there’s necessarily a big difference before or after MGS3. It’s just that it’s more blatant in some of his games.
I think the more egregiousness of it just stems from more opportunities that opened up to him as he got more successful (or at least people begging him to stay on MGS) and that allowed him to push more to the point with the B&B unit, Paz, and Quiet.
But then again, you have Snatcher and Policenauts, those were well before MGS3.
But then again, you have Snatcher and Policenauts, those were well before MGS3.
Oh hell yeah it is. MGS4 and V are on some other level shit.
And pre MGS with policenaughts.
Unleashed kojima is noticable
Baiken really annoys me because she's just another example of characters sexualized from their orignial concept. Her chest seems be grow like 3 sizes with every game. And while she always had that dumb cleavage thing, it wasn't that bad nor was it that prominent. But as usual, they go more and more sexualized until her boobs are practically oscilating out of her chest.Here's some of her initial design concepts. :/ (sorry for quality; but you get the idea)
RE: Fighting thread
Her tits are practically their own separate organism; undulation caused by nothing. *whoosh*
Nah, even MGS2 had a lot of child's first philosophy course in it.
I agree. There’s no real marked moment in his work where he got worst or better. Kojima always was Kojima. Trying to be cool and deep, be probably not realizing how misogynistic he was in the process.
Technically I think he doesn't flirt with Bernadetta but I think that's because Bernadetta's issues apparently supplant Sylvain's flirting attempts. Bernadetta's does have the proper response to someone like Sylvain though (set him on fire).
Also Sylvain's supports with F!Byleth border on the worst type of sexism.
Wow...the fact that this is even an option for a character to do, why would i want to play a character like this?!
“You’re doing everyone a great service”
“I’ll only be a moment”
I wish Kojima would stop being a weird creep. I want to hug him and strangle him at the same time. He’s a prime example for "Genius is only one remove from insanity".
Shame. <.<
Shame. <.<
He's slightly less of a shitbag in other supports as you progress them, but his support with F! Byleth just made me hate him. Not seeing this great character others are seeing in him. He has his reasons for treating women like shit, but his justification is still awful.
He even hits on frickin’ Flayn! If anyone hasn’t played Fire Emblem Three Houses, Flayn is the requisite 12 year old.
Flayn and Sylvain are the worst characters imo. While most characters are still anime but not over the top, those two rub me the wrong way the moment I see them.
Flayn an alright character except for looking like a child yet having romantic supports with older looking characters. My issue with her could've been resolved if they at least gave her an older timeskip design like the other students because she acts around their age. Though, if my suspicions are correct, she could be an example of another annoying anime trope. The 'I look like a child, but actually I'm a 1,000 year old dragon!' trope. I hoping that's not the case, but the further I get into the game it's difficult to come up with any other explanation.
That trope is pretty bad when the end result is to have a relationship with that type of character. There only a few characters that come to mind that 1. are not looking for a relationship and 2. stand above the other character by being a very powerful character.
Yeah, shit's creepy. Sucks because I like her character except for that aspect. I don't know Flayn's whole deal yet, but I'm definitely not pairing her with anyone because of her design.
Just a minor mechanical spoiler about pairing:
You don't get any direct control over it, in the epilogue characters may be paired off with anyone they have an A/A+ support with. It's not random, but I don't know if it's been cleared up exactly how the game decides this. Some epilogue pairings are romantic, others are not. There's also a chance that a character ends up alone if all potential pairing supports are already paired up.
Basically, if you want to avoid a pairing make sure you don't get their A/A+ support.
Basically, if you want to avoid a pairing make sure you don't get their A/A+ support.
That's the plan. I have most of my pairings with A support available. My plan is to activate the A/A+ support right before the end to hopefully get the desired pairings. I might also make sure they each show up at the top of the closest companion list just in case.
At one point, Kojima was just one of a handful of directors working in the mainstream that were really willing to engage in exploring player agency and motivation through a game's narrative. One example would be the MGS1 "You enjoy all the killing" scene that's shown in first person. Another would be the entire marketing campaign and plot for MGS2, where there's the bait-and-switch with Raiden, along with him being a player insert that wishes he could be Snake ('I've trained in VR simulators' and 'this is an exercise to recreate the events of Shadow Moses'). Perverting the player's desire for a sequel was clever and bold.
Those ideas are legitimately good and were virtually unseen in mainstream, big budget console games at the time, so I won't take that away from Kojima. The problem is that his games are so mired in overwrought, garbage commentary on subjects that are clearly completely out of his depth (child soldiers, the morality of war, etc.) that his ideas about games and players were often completely lost in the noise of nanomachines, genetic engineering, and love blooming on the battlefield. He's held up as an auteur for the wrong reasons, and I can't help but feel that there's a feedback loop there that just makes him worse as time goes on. There are so many directors/developers in the indie space (and even some in the mainstream, big budget segment) that deserve so much more recognition.
As for his treatment of the female characters in his game, it's always been bad, with few notable exceptions. Even those exceptions have some pretty glaring problems. I wouldn't expect him to ever get better in this regard.
Last edited:
Spoilers for Three Houses
Flayn is kind of annoying because its the game's clearest example of wanting to have its cake and eat it too. Flayn is a 1000 year old loli dragon like Nowi but the game goes out of its way to give why she acts like a child. She's essentially been in a time stasis coma for the past 1000 years so physically, emotionally, and mentally she's still 12 years old. And the game does try and present it like that. The huge issue is that she grows the least between the time skip still acting the same while most of the other characters do show some growth. It's worse when compared to Cyrill, another young boy who is Flayn's mental age who does grow up and mature after the timeskip.
As a writer, it never ceases to amaze me how many people insert their own personal fantasies/fetishes into their work without the slightest trace of self-awareness...
Jonathan's really just the obligatory shit-bag character you would have in a so-80s-it-hurts tech-noir buddy-cop thing like Policenauts. The game does try to impart some messaging about space and how running away there to avoid the problems facing Earth maybe isn't the answer, but it's pretty much on the same level of MGS yelling about how NUKES ARE BAAAD.
Speaking of, his partner is Ed Brown.
Which, of course raises its own issues, because you certainly didn't think the game could resist, did you?
And while we're here,
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There's some fan-translation related quibbles here, but it's still pretty damn bad regardless.
"Biovestite" was "biohalf", in reference to newhalf, which carries a whole host of unfortunate implications.
The "so-called" bit is an invention of the translator, but it's also extremely in character for Jonathan.
See, here's the thing I always see when people have to actually assess Kojima's work.
"Well, I guess it was pretty bad but honestly he had some interesting ideas!"
Sure, okay, but everyone has interesting ideas and implementation is how you make those ideas actually work. The video game industry in general is full of interesting ideas, but much like a poorly directed film, the idea doesn't just need legs, it needs, well, direction. And Kojima is a terrible director. Everything he does seems to point out that his own logic and understanding of his own characters and world is flimsy at best (not quite as dumb as Kingdom Hearts, but close). He might be a fine guy to work with in a writer's room scenario, where his ideas can be tempered and molded into something that might resemble a story and the characters therein. But him in a directorial position is just going to result in a mess of poorly thought out ideas, all shouting at you at some point, "LOOK AT THIS IDEA", while everyone just shakes their head and tries to move on with their lives, hopefully maybe eventually finding some coherency in the inanity.
He's sort of the exemplar of the "auteur" today, which, whenever I hear it in just about any context relating to games, is something I interpret as, "incompetent person given too much agency / power while making a video game". So many of the creators leading the game industry get bandied about like this. And while it can result in some genuinely hilariously stuff, such as whatever brain parasite Peter Molyneux thinks up next, it also means that good ideas are being buried under the incompetence of their directors, and more problematically, they're being praised for their incompetence. Both by the industry and the fans. It'd be one thing if one was tempering the other, but for whatever reason (*cough* gamergate *cough*) that sort of considered rhetoric seems to be strangely absent from video game discourse - rather the, "players are asshats" mentality seems to be much more common, where developers seem to be taught to scorn their fans, rather than learning to filter. I am not condoning toxicity here, people who tell others to die or stalk people on Twitter are creeps and best avoided or if possible, silenced, but that doesn't mean all voices from the outside should be ignored, especially those with reasoned, legitimate concerns. This problem of avoiding feedback goes all the way up to the top, and most games seem to be the worse for it. Not taking in any criticism is what's led to so many issues in the video game industry, and incompetent directors being heaped with praise for their mediocrity is just one of the more recent. "Auteur" directors indeed.
"Well, I guess it was pretty bad but honestly he had some interesting ideas!"
Sure, okay, but everyone has interesting ideas and implementation is how you make those ideas actually work. The video game industry in general is full of interesting ideas, but much like a poorly directed film, the idea doesn't just need legs, it needs, well, direction. And Kojima is a terrible director. Everything he does seems to point out that his own logic and understanding of his own characters and world is flimsy at best (not quite as dumb as Kingdom Hearts, but close). He might be a fine guy to work with in a writer's room scenario, where his ideas can be tempered and molded into something that might resemble a story and the characters therein. But him in a directorial position is just going to result in a mess of poorly thought out ideas, all shouting at you at some point, "LOOK AT THIS IDEA", while everyone just shakes their head and tries to move on with their lives, hopefully maybe eventually finding some coherency in the inanity.
He's sort of the exemplar of the "auteur" today, which, whenever I hear it in just about any context relating to games, is something I interpret as, "incompetent person given too much agency / power while making a video game". So many of the creators leading the game industry get bandied about like this. And while it can result in some genuinely hilariously stuff, such as whatever brain parasite Peter Molyneux thinks up next, it also means that good ideas are being buried under the incompetence of their directors, and more problematically, they're being praised for their incompetence. Both by the industry and the fans. It'd be one thing if one was tempering the other, but for whatever reason (*cough* gamergate *cough*) that sort of considered rhetoric seems to be strangely absent from video game discourse - rather the, "players are asshats" mentality seems to be much more common, where developers seem to be taught to scorn their fans, rather than learning to filter. I am not condoning toxicity here, people who tell others to die or stalk people on Twitter are creeps and best avoided or if possible, silenced, but that doesn't mean all voices from the outside should be ignored, especially those with reasoned, legitimate concerns. This problem of avoiding feedback goes all the way up to the top, and most games seem to be the worse for it. Not taking in any criticism is what's led to so many issues in the video game industry, and incompetent directors being heaped with praise for their mediocrity is just one of the more recent. "Auteur" directors indeed.
Disgusted, tacky, and reaching, but that is how I view the man's games anyway.
In regards to 2B especially, I still believe it was her big ass that had the game sell as well as it did. It wasn't the writing or the combat or any of the themes, it was the big ass you could wank it to pretending you are there for something deeper. Pun not intended.
I bought it because of its pedigree and dont like the fanservice in it.
Id like to think it sold simply for the game's concept and being a platonum game :x
I'm on the same page as you. And that's a shame, because the game is obviously great. But without that kind of pandering, it might have met the same fate as the first game. But like, it actually has an achievement for peeking up her skirt a certain amount of times... and unsurprisingly, upskirt shots are plentiful in her SoulCalibur appearance as well - because that's clearly why a ton of people like her (regardless of her other qualities).
I don't think anyone's trying to claim that people like you don't exist. I'm right there with you. But it's pretty clear that they used sex to sell a game, no matter how great it is, when they really didn't the first time around. It got the attention of a lot of people who couldn't be bothered with the first game, and probably wouldn't have bothered with Automata if it had a male protagonist again.
The result of a character designer being a creep and injecting his fetishes into otherwise cool design ideas.
There's something morbidly refreshing when the video game auteurs say "i am just perpetually horny, man" instead of couching it in "when you discover the secret reason for why she is half naked, you will be ashamed of your words and deeds" bullshit, I guess. That's pretty much my opinion of 2B's design.
Cool game, though.
I still like MGS1 a lot, but I've long thought of the series in terms of that "we demand to be taken seriously" picture.
Cool game, though.
I still like MGS1 a lot, but I've long thought of the series in terms of that "we demand to be taken seriously" picture.
I was typing up a response, but Warrior of Light said everything I was going to already. The original Nier wasn't exactly a blockbuster, in fact it had a very niche following. And even Platinum games don't sell particularly well overall. So to me the breakthrough factor lies somewhere else.
I do find it funny that they've tried to course correct by having Liquid fail Biology whenever his past is brought up...but that doesn't excuse Naomi Hunter, Revolver Ocelot, numerous members of people in the building, and the president of the United States all apparently failing 8th grade biology HARD.There's something morbidly refreshing when the video game auteurs say "i am just perpetually horny, man" instead of couching it in "when you discover the secret reason for why she is half naked, you will be ashamed of your words and deeds" bullshit, I guess. That's pretty much my opinion of 2B's design.
Cool game, though.
I still like MGS1 a lot, but I've long thought of the series in terms of that "we demand to be taken seriously" picture.
As a male redhead with blue eyes, I am the embodiment of recessive genes :'(
Meaning I make for the 1% on planet Earth, a true diamond ;D
A few people I recommended Automata to thought it was just that game with the thicc android and nothing else unfortunately.
Last edited:
Fire Emblem made me cringe all the way. Most female fighter classes exposing their one leg or skin. Unable to become a warmaster. The Flayn issue as have already been pointed out. Prehistoric notions about women and their interests. Pronounced cleavages post time skip with shittier designs. Petras design got much worse..
I married Leonie as she was the less typical female character but the game had to show off her cleavage in the last pic as if I was looking from the second floor down at her. Seriously f*** Intelligence systems. They will not ever be progressive. Tired of people cheering for them toning a bit down the skin exposure or boob socks. Most female characters are treated as either manipulative, hysterical, motherly or whatever. I do think most characters were rubbish but were more disappointed with the female archetypes they make.
I married Leonie as she was the less typical female character but the game had to show off her cleavage in the last pic as if I was looking from the second floor down at her. Seriously f*** Intelligence systems. They will not ever be progressive. Tired of people cheering for them toning a bit down the skin exposure or boob socks. Most female characters are treated as either manipulative, hysterical, motherly or whatever. I do think most characters were rubbish but were more disappointed with the female archetypes they make.
Last edited:
While I love MGS and its goofy as shit. I feel as though and I say that with respect.. that's a pretty bad way to interact with with fictional media. A lot of fictional media is you take out of its own context is fucking nonsense. But the whole thing is that it captures your imagination and allows you to enter that work.
Star Trek is a fanatstic example of " this is fucking nonse techno babble " and being an excellent series of shows presenting great ideas. Like if you want to criticize kojima for a myriad of other things including and not limited to " Some racism " " Mysogony " " Poor representation of LGBTQ characters " " litterally needing someone to hit him over the head with a newspaper so he doesn't over oggle women in the games he makes " " The entierty of quiet " " The message that sends that the only super soilders seem to be white people ( Though to his credit MGSV is dedicated to telling that boss is just some dude who worked real hard ). Along with a character named raiden ( who I love ) who comes from Libya and is a cool soilder, and what could have been oppertunity to introduce a cool combat oriented cool guy in MGS, he's white " " Multiple instances as using rape inappropriately as a sort of shock sting " and much much more.
But his weird fiction science doesn't work right? Like I dunno who cares?
Oh god dammit not flayn! Im only in month 9 and dont want any spoilers but i find flayn adorable now im scared. Also, noooo not Petra! I like her a lot so far D:
Don’t worry about Flayn. I was talking more about her being a child that ages slowly (trope) who is magically an adult but doesn’t act like one. I did like some of her humorous support conversations.
Last edited:
Fair enough, and it is a shame that the sexualization is what has gotten some people into the game @[email protected]
So it's weird, right? Like...I get the whole, fake anime mesopotamia thing they're going for where everyone basically wears slings as regular clothes, it's hot, it's temperate, I get it, thin excuse for sexy outfits, whatever.Here's some of her initial design concepts. :/ (sorry for quality; but you get the idea)
No shirt, leapord print bathing suit bottom, illfitting torn leggings, too large overalls that are about to fall off, 12 years old.
Who is this for?
Even Yoko Taro is like, "I was horny".
They're good, sexy designs that are INCREDIBLY out of place and result in sort of painting the last bastion of humanity as being a bunch of maids.
Most of the themes explored in Nier Automata are pretty much undercut by the fact that they spent so much fucking time on 2B's ass, especially the otherwise very good sidequest about a certain boss who hates the way she looks because she can't attract the attention of a certain asshole, so she goes through revision after revision after revision to make herself beautiful. Then two seconds later, the camera basically gives 2B a colonoscopy because "the moment is over, find the protags as sex objects again plox."
Last edited:
- Status