The discourse era of social media is, let’s face it, terrible. What used to be a space for overpriced coffee, Candy Crush invites and a realtime checker for when your favorite celebrities were having bowel movements is now a maelstrom of people at each other’s throats in the least sexy way imaginable.
The latest front of the Culture War is Shift Up Corporation’s Stellar Blade. Made by NIKKE studio Shift Up Corporation, Stellar Blade has a premise not too unlike NieR: Automata: play as a hot girl in a dead world fighting monsters with laughably low camera angles.
Look, I love a good weirdo game. I think games that speak to niche communities are generally net positives- it’s nice when you can tell a game was made for a specific crowd, not just targeted mass appeal. If it was just the perverts coming out in support of Stellar Blade, I’d be over the moon.
And yet, that’s not the case! Online, it feels like no one’s talking about how alluringly tall Eve appears to be, There’s no gushing about the inherent eroticism of the supermodel who gives Bayonetta a run for her money being lovingly called Angel in exchange for new outfits.
Instead, I’m met with the real monster. Discourse. Yet again, the torrid feels of the internet are so incredibly bored (A global recession and the planet being on fire must be too blase) that consumption must now be activism. All along my feeds all I see is people saying they’ll buy Stellar Blade in a desperate bid to “own the libs” or “Show the woke mob how its done” because people somehow want realistic graphics but for people to not look real in that same style.
No, The Internet Never Hated Sexy (Video Game) Women And It Won’t With Stellar Blade
A lot of this faux-outrage comes from this fallacy that somehow the internet hates sexy video game women. Somehow, just months after Shadowheart let everyone experience fumbling a goth gf or even in the aftermath of the Triss v Yennefer wars, the conclusion was that video game women just weren’t hot.
The idea was that a shadowy cabal, all with aesthetically pleasing tumblr blogs and blue hair were somehow stopping videogames from having hot women in them, screeching at the thought of Stellar Blade ever-jiggling closer.
The “Make up a guy” energy is extremely strong here because we literally live in a world where Bayonetta, 2B and Ryza are incredibly popular characters. 2B and Ryza literally injected new life into their old franchises, presumably using the blood they lost by cutting circulation to their thighs with tight socks.
If anything, there’s only one major complaint that I’m seeing with Eve’s design, and it’s that it doesn’t go hard enough. Given the sheer absurdity of outfits in games like NIKKE, or the single-minded focus of characters like Ryza or 2B I’d have personally love to see Eve laser-focused to the team’s fetishes. Yes, she’s got curves but you can push it so much further.
If her height is a big factor then make sure she’s never sitting down in a room with a man so she’s always looking down at them. Have her take smaller steps when she’s walking indoors because you could launch an airplane in the space of her stride.
Instead the Eve we get is taller on average, but somehow still shorter than every dude she stands next to. It’s this kind of half-baked approach that really stops her from joining the 2B/Bayonetta pantheon- that lack of a standout feature that makes you think “Oh, someone fought to have it this way”.
But I digress.
To Hell With The Culture War
Seriously, the fact that these petulant man-children are constantly trying to “save” gaming is nothing more than a tell of how fake they really are. When have you ever needed a higher reason to buy a game other than wanting it?
I’m not even against criticizing the game- there’s plenty to be made there. But it’s this constant back-and-forth that’s just exhausting. Back in my day, a video game had a hot woman in it and we’d spend the whole week browsing forums for fanart of her. Today, so many gamers are desperate for a hill to die on that they’d choose “Buying games is activism, actually” right after they got done harassing lady game devs.
When I buy Stellar Blade, know that it is not for any ideological reasons. It’s not to stick it to the woke mob, nor is it to show that you can have beautiful women and still sell a million copies.
It’s because Eve is (in my heart) very, very tall.
