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

[Orange cat]

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.

Diversity for diversities sake does nothing but really tokenize characters.

The men are strong and the women are beautiful. Lets be serious now, there is no actual diversity in such things because diversity would include homeless people and people without power...these are games, and that wouldn't be fun. In games you play the hero, not the mook being gunned down at the start of a shift one day for no damned reason.

Dunno, every-bodies saying they're great, but I'm left still wanting. All their silhouettes are pretty boring stock standard hourglass female figures compared to the males which have a bit more variety.

But then they're not wearing battle bikini's so I suppose its a step in the right direction at least.

What of bikinis...I guess the saudi's took the biggest step in the right direction right?

Hour glass figures are now problematic? They don't even have large breasts, I swear sometimes people can never be happy.

These are the basic ideal female body types even women promote for themselves, just look at the standard womens magazine, thin models without much breasts or curves are standard. Not "sexy" enough to be threatening. The constant complaints about womens bodies puts them in a bind, so they chose the generic. If they had put kim kardashian or even more curvy into the game they would have had people frothing at the mouth to attack them. But such women do exist in reality, but this discussion has made them too dangerous to even consider representing at all. And lets be serious, even women don't want to play as a fat woman. Just again, look at female entertainment, the standard "bella swan" types seen in womens entertainment are all very "average" types.

 

[Req]

I just love how Pharah's Horus-inspired design is reflected in her playstyle. I'll probably mainly play as her if I get the game.

 

[Danny Dowling]

Are you.. being sarcastic?

All 4 share the same hourglass shape. Even the one in fully armor. And those other 3 are wearing skin thigh latex pants.

And none of them is unique looking as person. The men range from gorillas to fatso to robots to dwarf to middle aged men to giants. Why isn't there any pretty boys for girls to look at? Why did they make them all typical middle aged men and bunch of other stuff?

All the women just got different sized breast sizes and skin tones, with the same body type.

Blizzard is becoming the epitomy of misogyny if they keep this up.

Is it so hard to consider that they might need to be in shape in order to perform the tasks they need within the game?

or we could just all see there isn't a fat ugly chic and call misogyny. Ugh I hate this neo PC gaming culture...

 

[Alex1508]

Is it so hard to consider that they might need to be in shape in order to perform the tasks they need within the game?

Yeah sure but it would be lovely if they didn't have basically the same shape with small variations and 3/5 dressed either in catsuits, skintight armour to show all those lovely curves and a futuristic cocktail dress....oh and all of them have some variant of heels. hmmm heels. Kerrigan evolved high heels in her new starcraft 2 model, gotta keep the tradition going i guess.

Yeah, Tracer and Pharah look awesome, they are not sexualized and have great personality in their designs but considering the male designs range from a gorrila, giant robot, stocky space dwarf, muscular and toned samurai, slim levitating robot monk, etc the rest of the female designs fall short.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It's not going to win every "progressive female character design" award in the book, but...

1) It actually HAS female characters
2) At least a couple of said female characters don't boil down to "tits with guns".

So it's already a fair length ahead of most of its competition in that regard. Well done, says I. I imagine as the character roster grows they'll look to have a little something for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

[Danny Dowling]

Is it so hard to consider that they might need to be in shape in order to perform the tasks they need within the game?

Yeah sure but it would be lovely if they didn't have basically the same shape with small variations and 3/5 dressed either in catsuits, skintight armour to show all those lovely curves and a futuristic cocktail dress....oh and all of them have some variant of heels. hmmm heels. Kerrigan evolved high heels in her new starcraft 2 model, gotta keep the tradition going i guess.

Yeah, Tracer and Pharah look awesome, they are not sexualized and have great personality in their designs but considering the male designs range from a gorrila, giant robot, stocky space dwarf, muscular and toned samurai, slim levitating robot monk, etc the rest of the female designs fall short.

Okay, so they have the same body shape possibly because there's a necessary amount of fitness needed for antheticism sake, but none of the male character examples are ones that couldn't fulfill the role either. Gorilla's are strong and powerful, robots aren't really real so they're good, dwarves being stocky... yeah no that's cool, especially since that character is a slower support character iirc.

I just don't see what you want. There are female characters skantily clad and there are female characters in full armour looking like they crawled out of Warhammer 40K... I just feel like people will complain for complaining's sake, even though there are options in the roster.

 

[Fappy]

I think Symmetra's sexualization is just right. It's classy and grounded in reality. It supports the character rather than detracting from it.

My favorite chick so far is probably Pharah. I don't know, besides the Samus vibe I have a thing for badass Arabic women.

 

[Danial]

Just to make sure people know, While the Female body types are limited atm, Blizzard (i believe Metzen) has said the 12 Shown are the First of many more they plan to add, If we get to female 20 looking like a Pair of grapefruit in a tube sock then i agree that bullshit will be called. Just keep Samwise away from it should be fine. Since he mostly just Draws Hulk hogan, Dwarf design 21349, Elf twink or sex doll with an bow.

 

[Obama's Dad 420]

All the female characters look stupid. It's like, stop being sexist. Take away the boobs and vagina on them. I'm so tired of women having to conform to the traditional stereotypes about women.

 

[DrOswald]

I think Symmetra's sexualization is just right. It's classy and grounded in reality. It supports the character rather than detracting from it.

My favorite chick so far is probably Pharah. I don't know, besides the Samus vibe I have a thing for badass Arabic women.

Symmetra is the prettiest princess ever, I love her dress.

OT: So far I really like most of the character designs and all of the female character designs. Blizzard is pretty good at character design. I am personally looking forward to this game a lot.

 

[DrOswald]

I feel like they're all awful female characters.

This because I am comparing them to the male cast. Male cast has a monkey, a robot, a sexy samurai, a fatso, a creepy dude.

Female cast has a sexy pretty lady, a sexy pretty lady with wings, a tomboy pretty lady, a sexy pretty lady (nr. 2), a pretty lady in full armor.

Hint: all five of them are the same model type, the pretty lady. And three out of five wear sexy outfits, and only one out of five is wearing armor.

If the male cast was sexy pretty boy, pretty boy with wings, girly pretty boy, sexy pretty boy (nr. 2), pretty boy in full armor... then I would not complain.

So... They are all awful female designs because they are not varied enough? That makes them, individually, bad designs?

 

[DrOswald]

So... They are all awful female designs because they are not varied enough? That makes them, individually, bad designs?

They're awful female designs for the reason I have just explained in my post above.

Sure. I was just making sure I understood your position. Which, as far as I can tell, is that the lack of variation between the individual design makes them all awful. It is just that I find that position baffling, they are all individually very good designs in my opinion. And it seems that your problem is not with any single design but only with the lack of variation.

Further more, it isn't even that there is little variation among the female cast, it is that there is also variation among the male cast.

And that combination of factors, a varied male cast and a non varied female cast, makes them individually awful designs. Or at least that is your post as best as I can understand.

 

[Ishigami]

I?m very cool with their design.
What I think is not so cool is the backstory of ?Widowmaker?. I think Blizzard missed another opportunity to create a ?proper? female villain.
They messed up Kerrigan and now the created basically a Kerrigan 2.0. That is very disappointing.
She would have been way more compelling if she wasn?t a ?misled? and ?brainwashed? damsel.
How about her deliberately choosing Talon? ? Could be turned in that direction that she was indeed ?cured? by Overwatch but she discovers she actually enjoyed the thrill of her new prospects in Talon and that she choose to kill her Husband in order to return there of free will to live that exciting and thrilling new life. Now that would be make her a bad ass villain.
The actually provided backstory makes her just another victim? which like I said is just disappointing considering Blizzard already turned Kerrigan into that.

 

[Colour Scientist]

I think Symmetra's sexualization is just right. It's classy and grounded in reality. It supports the character rather than detracting from it.

I quite like Symmetra and Mercy with the exception of that silly flappy bit of material between their legs.

That kind of outfit is a huge pet peeve of mine when it comes to games and cartoons. Nothing to do with sexualisation, I just think it's awful and I don't like it. Why is it there?! XD

 

[masseyguy911]

Gotta say, I do love the character designs so far, especially Tracer.
Along with the medic/angel woman and Pharah and Winston, man do I love the look of this game so far.

 

[Areloch]

They look pretty good, but that Windowmaker design.

Sneaky rouge type with a form-fitting bodysuit? Ugh!

Spoiler: Could you imagine if a guy had a bodysuit that perfectly molded to their butt?

Oh.

Snarking aside, I concur, I do like the designs, and the game looks incredibly fun. The variation in the archetypes, emphasis on mobility types, and ultimate moves looks like it could make for a incredibly fun variation on the team-class shooter.

I'm hoping they come out with additional characters over time, as some have mentioned. That'd allow for a lot more interesting character designs to be rolled in later. Maybe we'll even see that Blitzkrieg character someone posted earlier.