Zero Suit Samus has a great character model
- Thread starter Matthew Jabour
- Start date
Yeah... I get the argument at its face value and it really is pointless in the end to argue over a fighting game roster. As for "army," she was raised by anthropomorphic birds, so who knows? In most pictures, the heels don't even seem that high, but I digress.erttheking said:
Wow, fandom is weird, huh?
Well, yeah. Except by Metroid fans, who just had salt poured on their wound. Other M will remain the main complaint, but this will be a recurring garnish.Matthew Jabour said:
On the surface this looks like an excellent point. But what's the first rule of Metroid? Don't just look at the surface. And this argument's about as full of holes as Zebes.Matthew Jabour said:
In the original games, Samus killed every living thing in her way, then when her work was done she took off her armor. Which is basically what you'd expect any soldier to do when the battle is won. You could argue it was a bit crass for Nintendo to let us see her when she was relaxing after work, but it was fanservice delivered in a way that let Samus as character develop into something strong and really not sexualized. 10 seconds of her out of her armor in the credits is heavily outweighed by however much time you spent with her in her armor beating the game.
So she became characterized someone that was all-business most of the time, wearing completely practical clothing, but with the ability to relax later. When she finally got a few lines of dialog, they matched with that personality. She was quiet, serious-minded, introspective, and practical. Basically, someone that has no business wearing high heels, the epitome of clothing selected for their sex appeal and not their practicality.
It's a shift that happened bit by bit, a little at a time, and it wasn't even a straight line. In the original games the "sexy Samus" was limited to when she was done with her work. In Zero Mission we saw the Zero suit briefly, but it was presented as a hell run of sorts, something you wanted to get over as quickly as possible, and was still a small fraction of gameplay overall. A few people complained and said it would end badly, but they got laughed at. I mean come on, the official art even had Nintendo saying "no high heels!" they weren't going to turn Samus into Lara Croft (a character that in 2006 showed more sense than modern Samus, by taking off a pair of high heels before fighting)Matthew Jabour said:
Smash Brothers' introduced the Zero suit more visibly, which is unfortunate, but the main Varia suit was still the thrust of the character, and you had the Prime games presenting Samus more desexualized than ever. At that point it could have gone either way.
And we got Other M.
'Nuff said.
We probably would've spent more time protesting the high heels and beauty mark in Other M, but there was just soooo much to hate in that game. We're only human!
And now here we are with her in high heels, a skintight suit, enlarged breasts since the last game, a beauty mark, and the "no armor on" Samus is being pushed to the forefront so heavily it's a playable character itself. What was once something you got for a few seconds, if you worked hard, which still let the character remain serious, is now being shoved in the fans' faces from the word go.
Science disagrees. The psychology of sexual attraction has been an intense area of study over the years, and make no bones about it, the research points to high heels being considered sexy. It looks like because they leave women off-balance they exaggerate the hip movements in a woman's walk, which causes greater arousal in male viewers. And it looks like we learn to think of high heels themselves as indicating greater sexuality, even when that exaggerated walk isn't in play. More than half the models on dirty magazine covers sport a pair of high heels. We can debate whether or not these particular high heels are fashionable, and that's a matter of taste. But whether or not they sexualize her is much simpler. Yes, they do, because they're high heels, and research points to high heels being viewed as inherently sexy.Matthew Jabour said:
Of course research also says high heels are an absolute health disaster, and doctors have been yelling "stop wearing those things" for a couple centuries now, but that's doctors for you. There to be ignored.
Has there EVER been another example of rocket high heels? EVER?Matthew Jabour said:
And I don't care what your engineering Anon said, having rockets in your shoes is a terrible idea to begin with, and no amount of tubes change that. They can sometimes get away with it by rule of cool, but trying to claim that "rocket HIGH HEELS are more realistic!" is like saying "the giant Iguana Godzilla (1998) is more realistic than classic Godzilla". Maybe, but it's stupider, and they're both so unrealistic it doesn't really make a difference.
Matthew Jabour said:
Neither would I, unfortunately. The poor franchise is in serious trouble.
Yeah, they've definitely redesigned her underarmor so it looks less like underarmor and more like something Samus, being an idiot all of a sudden, would wear into battle instead of her Varia suit.Matthew Jabour said:
I'm putting that firmly in the "bad things" category. The industry has no shortage of characters that dress like that while fighting. Give me back the Samus I liked, Nintendo, stop taking away her individuality.
I've never met you, I'd never say you're a terrible person without getting to know you first.Matthew Jabour said:
A lot of us noticed when people pointed it out and posted the side-by-side comparisons confirming it. As for the people that did those initial comparisons, some of them might've been fixated on her sexuality because they're perverts, but some of them were probably fixated on how Nintendo portrays her breasts because they're not perverts, and they don't like the direction Nintendo's taking the character in.Matthew Jabour said:
As someone who thinks sexism in games is a big problem, I do not find Zero Suit Samus's new design particularly offensive. The entire concept of Zero Suit Samus, maybe, but the heels? They're dumb, but not super sexist to me. More offensive is the fact that they just look dumb, but that's another issue.
Well sure. For some people they're the straw that broke the camel's back, but what people are upset about really is the entire trend. The heels are just an exclamation mark for some people. But SB4 features ZSS as a separate playable char (so more screentime) with bigger breasts, a beauty mark, and high heels. And they do it right after Other M? Yeesh.CarlsonAndPeeters said:
For some of us with a little background in health though, the high heels flip an extra anger switch. Because it really is obscene how high heels are treated as no big deal by the public at large, while the medical community is pretty unanimous in saying that they cause a laundry list of short term and long term problems. Women have more than double the number of foot and ankle injuries men do every year, and while it's hard to say how much of that's do to high heels... high heels put your feet in unnatural positions, damaging your muscles, tendons, bones, and circulation while increasing the odds of osteoporosis. It's pretty safe to assume they're also one of the main reasons for women getting more foot injuries overall. So the way they've become the standard action hero girl uniform (EVERY female agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) kinda sucks. It's like the days when to be a badass guy in movies you had to be a smoker, and nobody ever showed the guys with lung cancer.
Well then that makes the argument even less solid, that is an argument someone used against my heel hating argument, maybe there's another iteration where she wears heels, I don't know. But thank you for just pushing the point that even a royal princess has the sense to not wear stupid footwear to combat.Asita said:
Edit: Not to say Zelda or princesses are incompetent but as someone who's not supposed to fight, she's got the right idea at least.
Fine, in that case I apologise. It can be tough to tell when people are joking on the Internet, especially during sexism debates.Matthew Jabour said:
And 95% is a good benchmark. You can't expect a man to be less than 5% loopy. Not in today's economy.
"If you're offended by this, you're the one with a problem, because you noticed" is frequently used as a real argument. You might want to avoid sounding like that, since there's lots of people that use that argument in perfect seriousness. It strikes them as a good way to silence dissent, for some reason.Matthew Jabour said:
On the surface this looks like an excellent point. But what's the first rule of Metroid? Don't just look at the surface. And this argument's about as full of holes as Zebes.Icehearted said:
In the original games, Samus killed every living thing in her way, then when her work was done she took off her armor. Which is basically what you'd expect any soldier to do when the battle is won. You could argue it was a bit crass for Nintendo to let us see her when she was relaxing after work, but it was fanservice delivered in a way that let Samus as character develop into something strong and really not sexualized. 10 seconds of her out of her armor in the credits is heavily outweighed by however much time you spent with her in her armor beating the game.
So she became characterized someone that was all-business most of the time, wearing completely practical clothing, but with the ability to relax later. When she finally got a few lines of dialog, they matched with that personality. She was quiet, serious-minded, introspective, and practical. Basically, someone that has no business wearing high heels, the epitome of clothing selected for their sex appeal and not their practicality.
Are you really going with "you're not a real gamer if you disagree with me"? Lame.Icehearted said:
As for why people are saying something now, "when clearly Samus has been sexualized for a while" it's because it's a shift that happened bit by bit, a little at a time, and it wasn't even a straight line. In the original games the "sexy Samus" was limited to when she was done with her work. In Zero Mission we saw the Zero suit briefly, but it was presented as a hell run of sorts, something you wanted to get over as quickly as possible, and was still a small fraction of gameplay overall. A few people complained and said it would end badly, but they got laughed at. I mean come on, the official art even had Nintendo saying "no high heels!" they weren't going to turn Samus into Lara Croft (a character that in 2006 showed more sense than modern Samus, by taking off a pair of high heels before fighting)
Smash Brothers' introduced the Zero suit more visibly, which is unfortunate, but the main Varia suit was still the thrust of the character, and you had the Prime games presenting Samus more desexualized than ever. At that point it could have gone either way.
And we got Other M.
'Nuff said.
We probably would've spent more time protesting the high heels and beauty mark in Other M, but there was just soooo much to hate in that game. We're only human!
And now here we are with her in high heels, a skintight suit, enlarged breasts since the last game, a beauty mark, and the "no armor on" Samus is being pushed to the forefront so heavily it's a playable character itself. What was once something you got for a few seconds, if you worked hard, which still let the character remain serious, is now being shoved in the fans' faces from the word go.
This one specific thing, all on its own? No, it's hurting nobody. But that "high heels, so what" attitude in general? Yeah, that actually factually provably is harming people. These days games are being played for a few billion hours worldwide every week, and people are influenced by what they see. That doesn't mean that because people play a FPS they'll go out and shoot people, because we all know shooting people in the real world is wrong. But continuing to push high heels as the norm? Yeah, that'll probably feed the public's denial that they're actually a major health nuisance. They may not be killing many people (I say "many" because something that common which leaves you off balance and limits your mobility has to have claimed a few lives over the last couple centuries), but it's well-established that they're a major source of injuries and health problems for women. So the overall trend of continuing to slap them on more and more women in media, even ones that should have more sense than to wear the horrible things, is definitely hurting women. And since some of those health issues, like osteoporosis, are likely to kick in when they're older and on Medicare, it's a drain on taxes, so sure, it sets civilization back a bit too. Less so than some other health hazards, but I can't think of many contemporary health hazards that get shrugged off and ignored as much as high heels.Icehearted said:
In all fairness Nintendo has been trying to put that blue and yellow together on her character at least since Fusion. They've been together so much on Samus I've just come to accept it at this point. If it weren't for the pink highlights and design on the front and back it wouldn't work at all.COMaestro said:
I have and thats the point, this isnt a real person, its an animated character and even if she wasnt on heels you can bet that her ass would be as if she was (and her walk will be the same too)JimB said:
You mention "Valve All Stars", sure, but you do compare this to Half Life 3 taking a dump on its characters too. You use 2 examples and one of those was that so you cant say that the second example made the first one non-existant (if you didnt wanted that to be an example you shouldnt have used it, just the "Valve All Stars" would be enough and closer to what is going on here)Carsus Tyrell said:
I mean yeah. The same could be said in reverse though. You might have your reasons to justify your opinions but they are that an opinion. It's just an opinion on what matters and to what degree.TheKasp said: