Female Armor: Crazy S**t in MMO Games Episode 2

If you had to go into battle, one where the fate of your people was at stake, which one of these outfits would you choose, A or B?

Right, we thought so. So why is it that in most games, women go to war like they just returned from the beach?

We know why: because men think about sex every seven seconds.

Okay, so this isn’t a scientifically proven fact and it sounds like a huge exaggeration – or it was created by a true animal – but the truth is that men think about sex A LOT! And the videogames industry is mostly comprised of men. Everything adds up then, and that’s why when creating female characters, men choose to make them extremely sexual and without much clothing going on.

Sometimes, when a group of men decide to gather and make a game but instead begin to talk about the beautiful opposite sex and their attributes, games like Scarlet Blade happen. We can only imagine the pain that it was for the developers to create the first male character for that game, the Chaser aka Cyberblade.

Anyway, in MMO games especially, there’s this crazy rule about female armor: the less it covers, the higher the armor rating. Damned be logic then. Truth is that our fascination with the opposite sex leads us, men, to continue supporting this age-old trend and since we’re all teenagers at heart, we love the sight of a beautiful, sometimes nigh-on impossibly perfect woman. In a game, it can start as a way to praise them but mostly it just turns out as a vehicle for an artist to work on something he truly appreciates. We would guess it’s much more enjoyable to create a perfectly shaped woman wearing a sexy armor than to work on your run-of-the-mill all brawn, no brains warrior.

Lara Croft and Tomb Raider turned the sexy action hero into a trend in videogames, one that persists and is getting stronger every year, with names such as Bayonetta, Samus Aran from Metroid, Juliet from Lollipop Chainsaw and any number of girls from fighting games Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, Tekken and more. Similarities between all of these are the small or tight suits, things that certainly aren’t exactly suited for combat.

Before you begin shouting ‘Hypocrites!’ and throwing stuff at the screen, let me just add that we’re not against the sight of a perfectly defined female character with little tidbits of armor. We’re in fact quite excited, pun intended, by two Black Desert Online classes – we can’t help but appreciate the impossibly long legs of the female ranger and the beauty of the sorceress. We’re also fans of the unique artwork in Blade & Soul, even with all that oil going on. And no matter how tiny or inappropriate for combat, the female armor in TERA Rising has this artistic quality that makes it all forgiven. But we’re not that sure in the case of other games, and Scarlet Blade is the main offender here – despite its merits and being a proper, albeit generic MMORPG, as well as having some real girls playing it, what can we think about a world where women run around and fight powerful enemies barely dressed? That is, when they’re not disco dancing in their underwear? And Bless Online, which is a looker, just looks a bit too much with this character, especially the walking animation.

By the way, here’s a perfectly legitimate reason to fear the lighter female armor. We thank the devs of the free to play online shooter Loadout for the bitter taste of reality that you’re able to watch in our video.

So all in all, we’re a bit at odds here. We understand the approach to female armor from our obviously biased point of view, and we like it overall. And while we’re all for equality in videogames, truth is the last thing we want to see is muscular male characters running around in their underwear, shooting aliens and other enemies. Just where would they stick their rifle guns? We know a place, but we won’t say it.

And, guys, just think of this – what if someone would think it was a good idea to add bouncy physics to that particular manly attribute? Or even a dedicated slider during the character creation? Hell, no!

Let’s just hope MMO games manage to balance things out naturally, with some decent, logical female armor here and there to compensate for the more depraved ones. The universe will balance itself, or so we hope. Or China will eventually do it for us, even if we like it or not.

Let us know your thoughts on the matter!