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A new wave of outrage is circulating on Twitter. Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is being criticized for Rose Belmont being insufficiently attractive. Hades II was also dredged up as an example of a game with unattractive characters in the same style, prompting the lead artist of the latter to clarify she wasn't responsible for Castlevania.
I personally do not think every woman in a videogame has to be designed as goon fuel, like Aerith and Tifa in the remake, 2B or half the cast of Overwatch. What surprises me is the ferocity with which the supporters of Hades and BC defend the artwork and decry the label of "safe horny" (which, as I understand, means technically, but not viscerally, attractive).
Hypothesis 1: they sincerely prefer this style and cannot understand why anyone would not like it. Maybe it's a learned preference.
Hypothesis 2: it's a form of "every woman is a 10" defense. They cannot say they wanted to have more diverse levels of attractiveness in games, because they implicitly agree that attractiveness can be ranked by saying it, and agreeing to this is very chud-coded.
Hypothesis 3: because some of the hecklers said the women in both games look trans, they cannot backtrack without losing face, because this would mean agreeing that transwomen are less attractive.
I agree not every woman in vidya has to be goonbait, however:
has to be some sort of anti-record in this regard, unlike the first game I don't think there's a single conventionally-attractive female character in that one, like you cannot tell me Aphrodite of II is not a man's face stapled onto a woman's figure. Even so, I was still a big fan of the first game and, while definitely another example of uh, female empowerment, it didn't bother me much... until in some Xth run I hit a Dionysus encounter, and something clicked for me.
Now, obvious over-the-top safe(?)horny parody is obvious, you don't even see Dionysus often in the second game because he's no longer a "main" boon giver and you can only meet him once a run in his literal goon cave, but consider: can you imagine a distaff counterpart here, even as a blatant parody? Can you imagine say Aphrodite in full bikini bimbo mode, with her divine knockers front and center? Somehow I don't think the parody defense would've saved any shred of the designers' skin from being flogged on xitter at every occasion. It's just tribal shit. Pandering to the male gaze is shunned in a way pandering to the female
headcanongaze never was and never is.While Rose is not a great example of enshittification (IMO she looks alright, Belmonts broadly are brick shithouses anyway), and full-on goonerbrain is its own kind of insanity, I think that people designing stronk women like her or gestures at Hades II know exactly (or at least intuitively) what they're doing, and lambasting them for it is fair game. Castlevania specifically was a stupid choice of flex considering the more ingrained (and attractive) associations fans are likely to have upon hearing "Castlevania female protagonist". I try to retain my lack of interest in the culture war around vidya, but as the saying goes, the culture war sure seems interested in me.
I feel like I must be missing something, because I'm looking at (what I think) is the two figures compared and I genuinely couldn't tell you which one is the uglified version. They both have angrogynous faces. Did they change up the version for II after the backlash or something?
I have to agree with you. It's so heavily stylized, and in profile, I have a hard time judging the faces in any way. The most I can notice is that they both have pronounced cheekbones.
I think it's the jawline, brow ridge, relative positioning of her eyes, etc...but the first game's splash art for her looks much more mannish to me. Like, if you erased the rest of the body I would not be able to tell that was a drawing of a woman's face.
Don't really think Hades II is even a very good example. Melinoë is conventionally attractive, Artemis too, etc.
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