The majority of movie stars, singers, and television personalities in the world are hot people. While you need to be very talented to make it in Hollywood, when you compare the A-list actors of the world to the most successful writers, or even the most gifted athletes (where prime physical form is a necessity), the actors win in the looks department. We like seeing good-looking people on our screens; that’s what being good-looking means - good to look at. So why has the upcoming PS5 exclusive Stellar Blade gotten people so riled up?
Stellar Blade features an attractive female lead, Eve, but that’s nothing new. While gamers are often vocally critical when a woman like Aloy or Ellie doesn’t conform to their ideal vision of femininity, most female characters in games (like most actors) are hot people. Stellar Blade is not breaking the mould here. And yet, it seems to have suddenly become controversial, despite being relatively well received when it showcased a lengthy trailer at Sony’s State of Play last week.
Part of this controversy was set off by director Hyung-Tae Kim speaking to GamesRadar via a translator, but his statement makes a lot of sense: “Honestly, when I play a game I would like to see someone who is better-looking than myself. That's what I want. I don't want to see something normal; I want to see something more ideal. I think that is very important in a form of entertainment. This is, after all, entertainment targeted for adults."
It’s an adult oriented game but not explicit, and for a game with heightened action and colourful explosions, being grounded and gritty is not part of the aesthetic. I recently compared it to an Xbox 360 game in the way it values form over function, and the lead character model is an extension of that.
Kim also said the developers “put special attention” on the character’s back and rear since that’s what faces the camera. It’s easy to see a man saying ‘yeah we spent loads of him on her ass’ as sexist, but Stellar Blade is a hyper designed game and attention to detail on the thing we’re going to see the most comes with that territory. It’s not unlike Bayonetta or Lollipop Chainsaw in how it puts us in the shoes of an empowered, and clearly attractive, female hero who owns that part of who they are.
It’s important to note that appreciation for hot people can soon turn creepy. Maybe people are seeing red flags that I’m missing, and I’ll be back here in a few months discussing how Stellar Blade feels like a dated step backwards in its depiction of women. But right now, it just seems like a character who is designed to be attractive. She’s still covered up in her costume, so complaints that the game is too explicit and being marketed to sex addicted perverts is off the mark too.
Note: Shift Up is also known for Nikke: Goddess Of Victory, a gacha game infamous for sexualised depictions of anime characters, so there is baggage here despite Stellar Blade’s toned down approach.
It’s interesting though that the defence of Abby’s body in The Last of Us Part 2 primarily centres on the fact that she is based on a real woman, and therefore complaints of her being unrealistically masculine are off the mark. However, Eve is also based on a real woman in Korean supermodel Shin Jae-eun. It feels like both sides are claiming certain female bodies are unacceptable.
That’s an oversimplification - those against Abby typically only want women to be attractive objects of sexual gratification, while those against Stellar Blade are guarded against gaming’s history of using women as trophies, and wordless sexual mannequins for the hero. But celebrating all women does mean all women, rather than cutting out the attractive or provocative ones - although there is legitimate concern over who is doing the celebrating, and why.
Some Female Characters Find Power In Sexuality
CloseWhile parts of Lollipop Chainsaw (like the upskirting Achievement) have aged poorly, it celebrates the sort of women who are usually sidelined - games either give them no agency except to be won by the protagonist, or cut them completely in the name of progress. But women like this do exist, and when RePop was announced I wrote about why we need this sort of representation - Stellar Blade seems to offer it.
Some may scoff at these ideas of representation. Development of Lollipop Chainsaw was led by two men (Suda51 and James Gunn), while Shift Up, the studio behind Stellar Blade, is also mostly men. In a now deleted statement, a woman claimed she was fired from Shift Up for “being a feminist”. The truth is a little more complex, but certainly clouds the issue.
South Korea does have a history of anti-feminism, but the developer in question was a contractor affiliated with Megalia, a highly divisive group credited with popularising feminism in South Korea but also for its homophobic history and ironic misandry aimed at ridiculing misogyny. It was also alleged in the aforementioned deleted statement that the developer in question gatecrashed a shareholder meeting to protest - a more fireable offence than whatever motivated those actions in the first place. Eve’s design has clearly been controversial right from the start.
There are a lot of layers to Stellar Blade, even if you just think ‘pretty woman good’. Eve’s design fits the game’s aesthetic and is not dressed up as anything beyond being cool and visually appealing. There are some skeletons in the closet, but those taking up arms against unrealistic body designs when there is a real person behind that mesh may need to reevaluate their perspective too. We don’t need to intellectualise it: sometimes a good-looking person is just good to look at.
Your Rating
close 10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Rate Now 0/10Your comment has not been saved
Like Follow FollowedStellar Blade
Action RPG Systems 3.5/5 9.4/10 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 82/100 Critics Rec: 82% Released April 26, 2024 ESRB M for Mature Developer(s) Shift Up Publisher(s) Sony Interactive Entertainment Engine Unreal Engine 4WHERE TO PLAY
PHYSICALStellar 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
