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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.
Hypothesis 0:
It's flag planting. It's always been flag planting. Taking a territory that belongs to your hated enemies and putting your mark on it. Making fictional women unattractive to the men you despise is taking it from them. Making their heroes into fat black trans lesbian girlbosses is taking them from them. Degrading their achievements by removing gameplay and shoving easy modes into everything is taking it from them.
Is this actually a trend in the gaming industry?
“Removing gameplay” probably peaked with the QTE craze, but it was never as clear-cut as the OP suggests. Sometimes games which wanted to blow the budget on set pieces and titty physics chose to “remove gameplay” as a consequence.
“Easy modes” are definitely more prevalent now, and unlike the former, people will show up to defend them on ideological grounds. Equity and inclusion, you know? But games are still a product. If adding easy mode generates 5% more sales at the cost of “degrading” that guy’s “achievements,” well…
And yet inserting black lesbian girl boss into a popular bro-shooter still happens almost every time. Many of these decisions really are ideological, and very many recent games a have failed because of it.
Almost every time, huh? Sure, I haven’t been keeping up with the latest in bro-shooters, but which ones do you have in mind?
Also, that’s not what he asked.
Here's an example, no scrolls, straight from the cranium: what extremely popular shooter franchise do you think this character is from?
Answer:Pre-guardian Ikora Rey from Destiny 2.
Bonus question: where in the popularity life-cycle of the franchise did this character design appear?
Hmm, I guessed that was the girl from Deathloop.
But hasn’t she been in that series since the beginning? Does giving her hair make that much of a difference? It’s not even blue!
Compare Overwatch, a game which I would put on the forefront of DEI technology. Every new character draws flak for being too gay, disabled, Japanese, whatever. Why? Surely they know what game they’re playing by this point.
I think nomenym is being melodramatic. Launching new franchises with inclusion bait is not the same thing as adding inclusion bait into existing ones.
Not Wolfenstein? Certainly not Gears.
Ikora Rey has been in the series since the beginning, and there was a time when I would have argued her as an example of "diversity" done right. I thought she was a pretty okay character back when I played; not nearly as interesting as Cayde-6, but then, who could be? Only, this is where her design lead. On the one hand, it didn't have to lead here; she could have been developed a million different ways. On the other hand, I think it was always going to lead here, because Bungie purged the non-Progressives, and this is what Progressives do.
I think it does make a pretty big difference, actually. Of course Destiny's story needs to loop itself and its main characters back to the 1970s; It's not enough for Ikora to be a strong black female character, she needs to be a strong black female character from this specific era and context, this specific trope, in this specific way. Of course the notable on-screen romance needs to be Osiris/Saint-14. Of course we need the Gay Pride iconography slathered over everything in-game. Of course we need Nimbus as the main NPC for the penultimate expansion; there's a hundred dollars I'll never get back.
And now it's dead.
You expressed skepticism about the prevalence of the specific cited pattern; I think I'm providing at least a reasonable amount of evidence that the pattern is real. But the pattern was asserted as an elaboration on how Flag Planting works, and it seems you're arguing pretty strongly that the flag-planting is real. You recognize the flags, and you endorse the claim of previously-shared territory they represent.
I would argue that Overwatch wasn't originally on the forefront of DEI technology, which is why it was repeatedly attacked by progressives for being insufficiently progressive, and senior staff were purged due to a moral panic, which in turn was caused by Progressive journalist culture warriors megaphoning false claims of sexual harassment and sexual impropriety. And now it is, by your own apparent framing, Progressive territory that Chuds have no standing to criticize.
Yes, Progressives see non-maximally-progressive media as territory to be captured. Yes, Progressives see it as good and necessary to plant flags on territory they capture. Yes, this has either resulted or closely correlated in significant drops in perceived quality for numerous franchises across the entertainment industry, to a degree that scarcely could have been imagined a decade or two ago. Yes, character redesigns/replacements/new main characters are a big part of how this is done, and making them a particular sort of black female is a notable example of the pattern. Progressives post video of public lectures where they lay all this out explicitly in plain language. I've observed the process in my own company. We've developed new terminology specifically to describe the resulting pathologies.
What's the difference? Why is that difference significant? Progressives view all media as their domain. They want to see that media conform to their ideals. This can be done in a variety of ways, but why are the differences in methods more significant than the nature of the change and the goals driving it? "Progressives will seek to gain control of a given media franchise and Christian Rock it into unrecognizability" is a claim with solid predictive potential, in my view.
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