I have to ask. Are there no women on the design teams creating these games? Could we please have a few?
How this latest musing came about was I was grousing about the dresses at the Oscars — most of them were dead ugly — with a friend and fellow game geek, and we fell to talking about the outfits for female characters in games. I mentioned how that black leather dress created for a female Shepard in Mass Effect 3 was really tacky and ugly. And just be sure I remembered it correctly I went to take a look. And came across a number of YouTube videos of Fem Shep in that dress. In almost all the videos she was flashing a beaver shot every time she sat down! There is one in particular where she is flashing Garrus with a crotch shot. Now I know she’s supposed to be this bad ass soldier and all, but really, guys. A woman in a really short dress is not going to sit like that. Please, but her knees together.
And then there’s Miranda’s outfit. That Asari mercenary wasn’t wrong when she talked about Miranda looking like a whore. Clearly none of these male designers have ever worn high heels. You cannot run and fight effectively in spike heels, and Miranda’s boots are ludicrous. Add to that the fact that all the female characters go into an airless Geth space station wearing a little half mask and their normal clothes while the men are armored like robots. We could take that as a compliment — that we are, in fact, the superior gender, but it’s silly and takes you out of the game. In Mass Effect 1 the woman characters wore armor like sensible people. What happened between game one and two? Are there no women on the design teams?
Okay, I understand that the demographic is primarily young men so chain mail bikini’s are the norm, but seriously getting objectified in quite such an obvious manner is not a way to endear female players to these games. This isn’t to say we don’t want to make our characters attractive, and get to play dress up, but have a range of outfits, and for god’s sake take into account how people actually wear cloths. And if no one in the gaming industry is willing to make that change maybe we can have a little sauce for the goose — a way for us to put the boys in tight pants and no shirts occasionally, and have them go into battle wearing nothing but a Speedo. 🙂
“…all the female characters go into an airless Geth space station wearing a little half mask and their normal clothes while the men are armored like robots. We could take that as a compliment — that we are, in fact, the superior gender…”
I see that the field’s traditions are quite alive and ‘well’, and that you have reached the same conclusion as I did last year, regarding that calendar reproducing old pulp covers.
I wouldn’t bother commenting on ME3. The design team that was present for ME was not included in neither ME2 or ME3. EA pushed BioWare to make changes that are typical for EA, BioWare now being another company that EA will have to put down on the terms that “it’s bad for business and they bring us low stock prices”, it’s happened so many times now that one can’t just ignore what EA is doing. Which is buying a reasonably successful “story and team” then proceed to ride the fame wave and put as much pressure as possible to obtain as much money possible.
So really it should not come to wonder you why the above mentioned things occurred. It’s simply because the team leader, another certified game destroyer with at least two crushed games under his belt and his second in command chose to brown themselves up for EA’s wishes. None of the decisions that are present in ME2/3 are of a direct lineage from the team that brought us Mass Effect.
If the above sounds too…unreal or petty you only have to look at the credits of ME and ME2/3. The gap left is enormous and undeniable. And if said gap is there one can’t deny that the level of intellect left within the design team is null. I for one, when i heard that ME2 was under EA’s patronage i “lit a candle” for what the MEverse could of had been.