In case you haven’t heard, Stellar Blade features an attractive woman as its protagonist. Not just that, she also wears tight clothing and climbs ladders. People have been losing their minds over this. You might jump to conclusions that these ‘people’ are part of the woke army like me, but we don’t care. Just as we don’t care how 2B or Bayonetta dress. Everyone thought Tifa’s swimsuit was in character, too. You are fighting ghosts you invented.

The recent Sweet Baby Inc. controversy has become a catalyst for airing grudges in gaming. You can read more about the saga here, but put simply, some fans aren’t happy about diversity consultants in gaming. The work done by Sweet Baby Inc. has been commonplace for a long time, and devs seek them out voluntarily, but fans are trying to paint this as a culture war.

These players (quite correctly) understand that something has been taken from them in modern gaming, but have chalked this up to more Black people and more women in games and in development studios, rather than the executive focus on live-service cash cows and cut corners necessitated by prohibitively long development cycles.

I also recommend Kotaku’s in-depth report on Sweet Baby Inc. for the full picture.

Stellar Blade’s Eve Is Rapidly Becoming Iconic

This leads us to Stellar Blade. It too has a female character, but one with exaggerated beauty. Because many gamers taking their hard-headed stance against diversity in gaming see things as zero-sum black and white battles, they consider a win for them to be a loss for others. This is not a grounded, realistic female design like in The Last of Us Part 2, and journalists liked those characters, so they must hate Stellar Blade’s Eve, right?

But Eve fits Stellar Blade’s world. Sure, she’s overdesigned and very exaggerated, but that’s the sort of game this is. There may be specific things to critique in her character once we see the whole game, but just because you don’t like quote-unquote ‘ugly’ women doesn’t mean everyone else hates beautiful women. See again: 2B, Bayonetta, Tifa. If you’re counting Stellar Blade as a victory, it’s clear you have no idea what you’re actually angry about, because no one sees Stellar Blade as a loss.

I think the game looks cool. I’m worried it will devolve into the sort of motivationless nonsense we saw in Scarlet Nexus, which the cybertronic aesthetics of the combat remind me of. But mostly, I’m pretty hopeful. One of my most anticipated games of the year is Lollipop Chainsaw: RePop. You got me all wrong if you think Stellar Blade is going to offend my sensibilities because of jiggle physics.

Journalists Are Not Out To Get You

This has boiled over with new footage showing Eve sashaying as she climbs a ladder, and it’s obviously sexualised - the devs have been upfront about Eve’s behind. But when you see her slide down the ladder in a supermodel pose, Eve is effortlessly cool, and we love characters like this. It won't be for everyone, but this is not something journalists everywhere are going to rally against. You might make memes about hairy faces, but to me Eve looks as badass as Aloy in these clips. I get to have both, you’re the one limiting yourself.

Look, could you find someone somewhere mad at Eve being objectified in this way? I’m sure you could. It takes a village to discourse over a video game. And likewise, I’m sure in the past I’ve taken the opinions of a few and ascribed them to a larger mass of gamers. But you have to realise that looking for enemies everywhere is a pointless endeavour. Nobody is mad about Stellar Blade except you, and you’re only mad about how mad you think everybody else is.

I’m not overly eager to dismiss the anger, however. Most of it seems to yearn for the days before politics in gaming, when men were men and women were women - some weaponising this language while others are merely ignorant to what they’re saying, but wanting all games everywhere to conform to traditional gender roles is specifically political. This isn’t even a leap, most conservatives would openly place this highly on their list of political values. Traditional family values is a core talking point.

But when it comes to Stellar Blade, nobody is angry. Stellar Blade may have a hyper-feminine protagonist, but nobody has a problem with that. Insisting all games need women who look exclusively like Eve? Yes, that’s something we’d object to, not least because of the damage it would do to creativity - while also being a very political decree. But Eve just existing? Nobody cares. Nobody but you who mostly cares about how much the people you’ve invented care.

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Stellar Blade

Action RPG 3.5/5 10.0/10 Released April 26, 2024 ESRB M for Mature Developer(s) Shift Up Publisher(s) Sony Interactive Entertainment Engine Unreal Engine 4
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PHYSICAL

Stellar Blade is an action-driven game from Shift Up, originally revealed as Project Eve. It follows the aforementioned Eve as she battles the alien Naytiba invaders, in a bid to reclaim the Earth for humanity.

Platform(s) PS5 Powered by Expand Collapse