The female characters in Overwatch...look pretty darn cool

[VanQ]

I'm just hyped to see Blizzard doing something new and interesting. I'm also particularly happy that they've gone for a less dark setting than their games usually have. I'm really hoping that I can get into the beta and give it a whirl, looks right up my alley. I'm just worried that their monetization model will be as bad as Heroes of the Storm's is. While HotS is a brilliant game, its payment model blows.

Ignore Popido. Just look up their post history for reference.

Besides his obvious sarcasm, he's not wrong. The females do all have the same hourglass figures. I actually thought when I saw the trailer that there'd be sexism posts within the first few hours because of that. The male characters range from dwarf to gorilla to middle aged dude to young buff black dude but most of the women just look like reskins of the same model with changes to the height, breast and butt sliders. But apparently since one girl has power armor everything is okay. It's like when I'm disappointed with the lack of diversity, the usual people that I recognise that are disappointed have this double standard because they like it.

Maybe we just have to wait until the Zero Suit alternate skin is revealed.

I'm calling it now.

And to be honest, I love the designs, every single one of them. I think the theme is perfect for racial diversity and it's already exhibiting that. It's just that I expect outrage at this point.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I don't know about it being boob-shaped armour. To me, it looks more like they're going for a motif crossing a falcon and a plane. To me looks more like the puffy chest of a falcon and the sort of weird sort-of bubble-shaped aerial vehicles you always find in sci-fi.

Well, it isn't boob-shaped, like I wrote

Yes, she seems to have the theme of a flying fortress, something aerodynamic but bulky.

I was thinking more like gunship. Like if you pointed to an Apache helicopter and said, "Turn that into body armour and weapons".

 

[VanQ]

But if you want, I would love to cooperate with you in an attempt to draw Blizzard's attention to this, and hopefully see this resolved. Maybe if this game updates regularly or cycles heroes like LoL, then maybe updates can introduce characters like a... German bodybuilder heroine named Blitzkrieg who deals drop AoE electric damage and a stun ability, and even supercharge other heroes to give them stronger attacks or charge their supers, and maybe she can do a speedball special with other players or use her electricity to magnetically push someone. OH OH and her special is an AoE attack where any enemy stuck in her electric field is stunned for 5 secs, but she can't move either.
Yeah I'd play that.

That sounds like a cool character. We need to get a drawfriend on this. Sounds like fun mechanically too, make her able to push or pull depending on if she targets a friend or foe. Make it happen.

 

[maninahat]

I saw the trailers the other day. I'm pleased by it being an even gendered roster, and there is even some ethnic diversity in there (how often do you see an Indian female playable character?). Plus their powers and abilities are awesome, and even in the non-gameplay trailer, it's nice touch that the little boy's favourite hero happens to be female.

That said, all the female characters are attractive, barbie-dolled and a good number of them have boob plates. The game is a clear step in the right direction, but the game designers haven't shaked that notion that women could be different shapes, or ugly, or different ages, which is something they had no problem applying to the male characters. If they'd sprinkled a bit of Borderland's female character design in there, it would have been practically perfect.

In terms of the game play, it does look pretty darn cool. Sure the similarities to Team Fortress 2 are as plain as day, but I don't think that harms the game at all. There is plenty thrown in to give it a separate identity, and there isn't exactly a glut of multiplayer FPSs with distinctive cartoon characters and ludicrously over-powered special abilities.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Looks cool. Art style is simply gorgeous. Will probably check it out.

Also, a medic who is an angel just blew mind right now. Good work, Blizzard. Going to get a new one.

 

[Tsukuyomi]

I didn't bother to watch Blizzcon. They lost me after I quit WoW and I finished Diablo so I felt like I had little need for them. But when I saw Overwatch I was really impressed. It looks like it's either gonna hit things out of the park or crash and burn really hard. Given blizzard's track-record, I'm leaning towards the 'knock it out of the park' side.

About the gender business, I agree with some points. I was impressed by the roster, and visually yes there's a few things that are off or not perfect, but we're not dealing with Call of Duty here. There's a lot of impossible going on, so unless we get something REALLY bad, I think it's worth being flexible in our expectations and judgement. I think the industry knows what the community wants by now in terms of gender, and I think that by now Blizzard likely has a pretty darn good ratio of men to women and many different ethnicities working for them. To an extent I trust them to balance old habits, marketing strategy, and just what they wanna do, with doing what's right and what's fair.

That said, Overwatch's designs, for both the men and women, made me come to one conclusion that, somehow, I'd never reached before. It's so stupidly simple that I kick myself for not realizing it. When we play, when we invest ourselves into a game, when we project ourselves onto a character to some extent, male or female, there's one universal truth in gaming that we're showing:

Everyone wants to be a badass.

Doesn't matter if you're male, female, white, black, purple, green, orange, whatever. Everyone wants to win, to rack up a stupidly good score or otherwise be awesome in their own way. What if, now this is just a question, what if for both genders the body type contributes to that fantasy? If I'm gonna imagine myself as a tower-busting, control-point capping badass, you can be sure, even if I may not really notice it, I'm probably gonna think of myself as thinner and more in-shape than I am. What if for some women that applies too? What if, when they think of themselves doing awesome shit they also think "yes, I can do all this AND I've got a damn good body too!" Would that really be so wrong? Different people have different tastes, and not every woman wants to be the same shape, but I feel like if I can sit here wishing I had a physique like Hanzo, it's not unreasonable to think there's a woman out there wishing they could fit into Tracer's pants like she does.

Is there a line to that that can be crossed? Yes. God yes, people have done it and it's not been pleasant. Is it too much to think that maybe when these characters were designed there were good, sensible women involved who said "shit, if I'm gonna be a sniper-rifle goddess with a heart of ice, I'd wanna be 12/10 to boot!"? I don't think so.

I'm all for equality, but part of equality is letting the nature of games (letting us be someone or something we're not for a bit), do their thing for all of us, male and female. Everyone wants to be a badass. Is it too much to think that part of being one is doing all that they do in the trailer and being traditionally attractive to boot?

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Well, at least Blizzard's trying. Not always succeeding, but trying.

 

[halisme]

The females do all have the same hourglass figures. I actually thought when I saw the trailer that there'd be sexism posts within the first few hours because of that. The male characters range from dwarf to gorilla to middle aged dude to young buff black dude but most of the women just look like reskins of the same model with changes to the height, breast and butt sliders. But apparently since one girl has power armor everything is okay. It's like when I'm disappointed with the lack of diversity, the usual people that I recognise that are disappointed have this double standard because they like it.

If you look at the wallpapers, there are some male characters that haven't been announced yet, so I'm hoping it's the same with the females and we'll get some more diversity in body shape, and age.

I'm not sure you can have it both ways as far as sexualized characters is concerned, since it ignores the underlying issues of the debate. People who find it offensive are still going to find it offensive. It's not enough to have a 1:1 ratio for sexualized and none sexualized characters.

thankfully I don't think that's a problem here. None of these designs are particularly offensive. I like the art style and character designs so far. It's nice to see bright, light hearted designs coming back into vogue. We can only have so many brown and grey shooters. I'm not usually a blizzard fan, but I may pick this up in the future. It looks really good so far.

Personally, I'm fine with equal sexulisation, it's not a bad thing when done equally, unless people think that sex is bad.

OP: If you read the back stories, a lot of the characters costumes make more sense. Symetra's actually a hard light architect, who "approached hard-light manipulation differently than her peers, with their more procedural, mechanical constructions, instead weaving her constructs in the motions of the traditional dance of her homeland". So it would make sense for her to have freedom of movement, even if it's slightly more revealing than the others.

 

[blackdwarf]

The female chars are cool and have good variety in theri design, but I would prefer some more body types for the females. This has always been my biggest issues with character roster based games like LOL or fighting games: the female have barely any difference in their body types.

still like some of them tho. Really looking forward to play Bastion and Symmetra.

 

[Erttheking]

ACTIVATE BUTT ENHANCEMENT (Widowmaker)

And the thread was immediatly proven wrong.

It's cute though that people think Blizzard are somehow above mainstream sex appeal, when Blizzard are one of the most mainstream vanilla studios currently existing.

You're gonna have to fill in the blanks on how Widow maker's ass somehow disproves that the designs in this game are cool.

And who the ruddy Hell made that claim? I flat out pointed out the sexualization on Widowmaker in the OP. Just about everyone in the thread, even the ones who like the designs, also pointed them out.

What point are you trying to make here?

 

[Fox12]

The females do all have the same hourglass figures. I actually thought when I saw the trailer that there'd be sexism posts within the first few hours because of that. The male characters range from dwarf to gorilla to middle aged dude to young buff black dude but most of the women just look like reskins of the same model with changes to the height, breast and butt sliders. But apparently since one girl has power armor everything is okay. It's like when I'm disappointed with the lack of diversity, the usual people that I recognise that are disappointed have this double standard because they like it.

If you look at the wallpapers, there are some male characters that haven't been announced yet, so I'm hoping it's the same with the females and we'll get some more diversity in body shape, and age.

I'm not sure you can have it both ways as far as sexualized characters is concerned, since it ignores the underlying issues of the debate. People who find it offensive are still going to find it offensive. It's not enough to have a 1:1 ratio for sexualized and none sexualized characters.

thankfully I don't think that's a problem here. None of these designs are particularly offensive. I like the art style and character designs so far. It's nice to see bright, light hearted designs coming back into vogue. We can only have so many brown and grey shooters. I'm not usually a blizzard fan, but I may pick this up in the future. It looks really good so far.

Personally, I'm fine with equal sexulisation, it's not a bad thing when done equally, unless people think that sex is bad..

Well, my point is, if a character is incredibly sexist, or sexualized to the detriment of her character, then the prescence of a non sexist female character isn't going to balance that out. It's not a zero sum equation. After all, dragons crown had non sexualized female characters, and we all remember the controversy there. It's not about being anti sex.

But as I said, I don't really get that here. And the designs are certainly an improvement over former blizzard titles.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

ACTIVATE BUTT ENHANCEMENT (Widowmaker)

Seems like an animation error rather than anything intentional.

It looks like the model was recently changed and then they just forgot to update the masked form. I am going to guess that widow as originally more curvy and then they slimmed them down to give a more distinctive look or you know to avoid the sexism thingy.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

Meh, they're alright, but people shouldn't be praising a game simply because it has playable female Characters. Yes, in this day and age where certain developers say "Women in games don't sell" (Or some ridiculous equivalent) it's nice when companies like Nintendo and Blizzard do go out of their way to add women into their games. But the Women themselves should not be the main focus, the game itself should. Overhead itself looks like a more confusing version of TF2, what with about 12 classes, with many that seem to have similar, if not the same, abilities (The Black woman and the Dwarf are both Engineers, for example). It's nice that they have more characters and more Women then TF2 (Which might not even have one woman, unless you count the mysterious, gender-unknown Pyro), but I think I'll be sticking with TF2 because it's much more simpler and (to me) is simply more fun.

 

[halisme]

]

Well, my point is, if a character is incredibly sexist, or sexualized to the detriment of her character, then the prescence of a non sexist female character isn't going to balance that out. It's not a zero sum equation. After all, dragons crown had non sexualized female characters, and we all remember the controversy there. It's not about being anti sex.

But as I said, I don't really get that here. And the designs are certainly an improvement over former blizzard titles.

I wasn't meaning you in my former statement, and I mean having a one to one of sexulised characters gender-wise, not every other of the same gender, its not a zero sum, more a balanced equation, if you have two women who are sexulised, then it should be the same with male characters. Everyone should be served equally, that means catering to others to those who have less, not removing it from others.

And I agree, the character designs are great.

 

[major_chaos]

You know I didn't actually believe the first one in the second spoiler (Tracer) was female until I looked at the website. I'm not sure if that says something about me or about videogame character design in general. But my mind went "hum, its Ezeral from LoL but less feminine... wait, your telling me that's not a dude?"

As for Overwatch I love the ascetic overall, so its a shame that it sounds like something I could never enjoy gameplay wise. The amount of TF2 comparisons being made is not a good sign either. That said I hope it does well just to reward blizz for taking a risk and making something unrelated to their big 3.

EDIT: And having looked at the website a little more, the attempt at story feels really weak. It doesn't matter much considering what kind of game it is, but it just seems odd that they would bother to give the game a backstory that makes no sense. These people are apparently all heroes, why are they trying to kill eachother?

EDIT2: Ok I somehow missed the two people who are incredibly evil but my point remains.

 

[Angelblaze]

Yeah, I'm gonna echo - 'why no non-human or fat/'ugly' female characters?' along with the rest of the thread.

In any case, here's hoping its like borderlands - but DOESN'T punish the player for flying solo.

 

[Hectix777]

But if you want, I would love to cooperate with you in an attempt to draw Blizzard's attention to this, and hopefully see this resolved. Maybe if this game updates regularly or cycles heroes like LoL, then maybe updates can introduce characters like a... German bodybuilder heroine named Blitzkrieg who deals drop AoE electric damage and a stun ability, and even supercharge other heroes to give them stronger attacks or charge their supers, and maybe she can do a speedball special with other players or use her electricity to magnetically push someone. OH OH and her special is an AoE attack where any enemy stuck in her electric field is stunned for 5 secs, but she can't move either.
Yeah I'd play that.

That sounds like a cool character. We need to get a drawfriend on this. Sounds like fun mechanically too, make her able to push or pull depending on if she targets a friend or foe. Make it happen.

Here's my attempt at it, I'm not all that good with women but I gave it my best. I think I should swap out her lower body for some ACU pants but I definitely include more exposed wires or tesla coils on the upper body to properly showcase electric powers.

Her gauntlets have sort of small conductors in them that can shoot lightning, but if you land a right button melee attack on the opponent you deal a certain amount of damage x 0.5 of the remaining clip (DMG OUTPUT= 30+(0.5*X)) or a stun attack. Her left palm gauntlet I want red and pushes players, and the blue one pulls players, I think it should have a charge power to it or just a set amount of big push. ( I think this could be really useful for when sniper characters or OP close range characters come in and you need room to breathe). She has no long range and her mid-range isn't something that would make players charge to her, you need to play her short range.

Armor color is blue and hair is blonde, she also has a tattoo of West Germany on her arm.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Armor color is blue and hair is blonde, she also has a tattoo of West Germany on her arm.

11/10 would play as.

Awesome. Awesome. AWESOME work.

See how hard was that To produce an interesting female character with a physique not copy pasted from the rest of the cast. Thats some great character design right there, proving it can be done by a studio without too much trouble.

 

[cleric of the order]

I'm sorry for the following but I'm literally going to pick a part what you said

In case you didn't catch it, Blizzard announced that they were working on a new game called overwatch, a class bassed shooter that evokes feelings of TF2. And I have to say I like what I'm seeing of the female characters so far.

There's nothing wrong with sexualized characters, just when it's all they have and/or there's a lack of alternatives, and Blizzard manages to sidestep that pitfall.

I can empathize with that sentiment but frankly I cna't care enough to most of the time.
I really have to say that this I have to wonder why the drum on sex has to be banged.
Every character here is interesting and well designed and don't feel like they were designed by committee.
Also I'd argue that variety is the strength of class based shooters and blizzard is not a shovel-ware company.
The characterization is good business practice, like valve they can sell the personae of their charterers, (I'd by some merch' of these guys, damn they got me just as GW and tf2 finally got it's claws ot of me)

And while Overwatch does have sexualized characters like Symmetra and the Widowmaker

Spoiler

http://bnetus-a.akamaihd.net/overwatch/static/media/artwork/widowmaker-concept.1EwFH.jpg

http://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0gA_AW2zakQyXaQsnNIsU0Tv140=/1400x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2439150/symmetra-concept-16x9.0.jpg

(Best picture I could find. She DOES show off a bit of leg)

Spoiler

Widdowmaker and Synmetra are actually my least favourite char's.
Synmetra's design is actually pretty good in gameplay terms and her clothes are something but I'd never say she was sexualized.
She's something.
I suppose the clothes fit her, she's more of a support role and an architect. While It'd be smart for her to be in Armour (for everyone actually) I think it makes her instantly recognizable as a support.
Also She really doesn't seem all that sexy, perhaps I'm wrong but I don't care that she has some leg out or nutin'

Widdowmaker on the other hand has a pretty fucked up story, poor lass.

It balances it out with characters like Tracer and Pharah

Oh, and the game just looks like it'll be really fun to play. That's a plus.

I figure this is meant to be a joke but I personally think this was out of taste.
After seeing what blizzard did to heroes of the storm I don't have a lot of confidence in them and I need this game to turn out good.
I want this game with every fiber of my being to be good.

Frankly all of them look really good, but the cherry on top is that I just find this to be a really good step in the right direction. There's plenty of room in gaming to appeal to people who want sexualized characters and the ones who want more sensible ones. We can have it both ways.

Smart I was going to chastise you for taking this whole thing to a sex place (It's sex if it's dealing with the body, mind out of gutter).
But no.
This is an example of good char design for class based shooters.
Yatzee said something to the effect of why can't more games make classes easy to determine visually. and this is the epitome of this.
Not only did blizz-Ixar make some good damn chars that are instantly recognizable, made them interesting (Tracer fanboy and proud) or sympathetic (poor widowmaker) they also did that for both teams and even better they made each class function in a way that fits their role of attacker or defender.
Better yet they know that interesting and well characterized classes helps build the community and fells the gape that game-play leaves.
This isn't a step in the right direction, this is just good work.
They weren't lazy, they weren't sloppy and they got everything together.
I'm surprised there weren't more male chars, I saw a couple in the backgrounds of the trailers that I wanted to see make the cut (the gunslinger) but frankly I could care less, the chars we have now are great.

I'm frankly annoyed we have to keep having this sort of discussion.
I just want to play the game....BADLY.
This game has me enamored and I want to see it come to light well and the further you talk about things like this the more complainants are going to come.
People could find fault with anything more or less and good art is one people should not take offense.
The game is well worked and well designed just like a lot of the chars.
Frankly I think it would serve better to not point out the female chars becuase they are just chars. Hell even widowmaker's key defining trait is not that she's a woman.
This Seems a bit much overall.

 

[Jon4]

The game looks really cool, I am excited to play a FPS from Blizzard. If they do as good a job as they do with their other games it will be awesome