Comment on Neverness to Everness has patched out a character’s shorts in favor of panties following complaints
Katana314@lemmy.world 3 days agoI genuinely think there’s a little bit of a sliding scale. Like, it’s not often vocal, since they know they’re coming from the “No fun allowed” club, but I’ve heard it a few times.
The two games that are used the most for examples are Nier Automata, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The first is a philosophical action RPG about death. The second is a party-based RPG about friendship and saving the world. But BOY HOWDY, will you have a bad time in those games if you don’t love boobies, panties, and a bit of misogyny.
To put it short, I’ve heard from people that actually felt a bit grossed out by both games and how they actively treat women. Nier a bit less so, but a fully-torn-away miniskirt on a combat android wearing a thong doesn’t exactly pull people into the sci-fi premise.
That’s just what little I know of from hearsay. But since it’s not something arisen in public conversation much (since no one wants to be a party pooper), I’m curious if it makes it into any game-testing focus groups that had already picked out people with hundreds of hours in other games.
And I can certainly imagine some friend circles would avoid mentioning Goddess of Victory, out of shyness around how gargantuan the nikkes are stacked.
Feyd@programming.dev 2 days ago
What misogyny is in those 2 games? Unless you think the sexualized character designs are inherently misogynistic I don’t see it, and you mentioned it separately after listing the character designs so it seems that’s not what you mean?
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 days ago
2B is a combat android built to fight machine lifeforms. Moreover, she’s staunchly anti-emotion, a veil which only breaks slowly over the course of the game. She wears a miniskirt and a provocative thong. The resulting outfit just feels kind of brazen, as well as staunchly contrasting the scifi mood of the game. Satisfying, if you swing that way, but if you don’t, it just feels like a loud reminder: “This game was made by a basement manga author”. What’s worse, there ARE many character designs out there that would fit the theme of “Emotionless combat android who slowly admits to her emotions” but also have a sexy appearance. Horny kinda overrode fitting character designs. Oh yeah; and they build in a mechanic to strip her clothes.
XC2 builds half of its premise around an intrinsic “bond” between Pyrah and Rex. It’s often very physical, and Pyrah is kind of forced into it. In addition, there’s a pretty large number of scenes that are very factory-printed gooner anime moments: Trying to get the girls to wear maid outfits. An inventor making his own cute-girl android. A Hot Springs scene with zero creativity to it. On top of that, the core gameplay involves a gacha to draw other “blades”, many of whom fit right in with something like Goddess of Victory.
When I know what I’m getting, I’m totally okay with horny-driven designs. When someone is baited by other elements like a fun adventure, I can’t totally blame them for feeling they were trapped into scenes like those.
And, just to calm some statements: I do think a game can be based around sexy women without being misogynistic. It’s tricky, Bayonetta is definitely a great example though.
Feyd@programming.dev 2 days ago
So you don’t know what you’re talking about. Got it.