DmC: Devil May Cry Dev Talks Boobs

[LiquidGrape]

What. the. flying. fuck.

Did game developers all start catching a bad case of the "political correcties" lately? I mean, Tomb Raider, Soul Calibur, now Dead or Alive and DMC........

We understand the desire to make slightly more realistic and "normal" women in games. We somehow feel guilty for this and that we should and try and fix it. Thats ok.

But the method to fixing it should be to create new original characters and stories, rather than fucking established franchises up. Its particularly egregious when you do it to series that are known for their characters being a certain way.

This guy's blatant slut shaming (in spite of his weak backpedalling) does not qualify as "political correctness".
I'm probably what people would call a card-carrying political correctoid (or "person of a certain sense and social sensitivity" as I like to think of it) and I take serious issue with this guy's statements, because in his futile attempt to decry exploitative character design he upholds the ridiculous Madonna/Whore dichotomy.

There is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with a female character having large breasts, assuming that aspect of the character isn't simply put there for the benefit of the male gaze.
Antoniades misses the point spectacularly by suggesting that it is the physical attribute alone which is exploitative, all the while talking about the female character's role as though the entirety of its function was to be attractive.

 

[Xanadu84]

For what its worth, I think the giant breast thing has nothing to do with real or percieved immaturity compared to movies. Its that making huge breasts is just as easy as making small in games, while movies need either surgery or clunky wardrobe. When breasts can be huge with the stroke of a pen or mouse, they get huge. If the person casting a movie could choose the best actresses bust size, you can bet a c cup would be considered conservative.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Wow, that is one of the greatest "fuck you" fanfics I've ever read. Spicy.

Thanks! I'm not really a a fan though so it's really just "fuck you fiction" Which is a section we all want to see in our bookshops.

The guy sounds like an early 90's western idea of what an edgy person is. You're supposed to to think "wow this guy is hot shit on a skillet, he be breaking all kinds of taboos up in here" The truth is he has the oily black jizz of the marketing dept. congealing on his chin. Look closely and you can see it. That's why he smokes. Oral fixation.

Ok I'll stop...

Yeah, everything that's going one with NT's bullshit makes me feel like they read too much Rob Leifeld back in the 90s. It just reeks of a guy who only knows "hardcore" at face value and comes off as an old man trying too hard to be cool

 

[Mike Richards]

Enslaved was a game that dropped almost immediatly into the bargain bins and had it's planned sequel cancelled. To be honest your pretty much the only person I've run into that has had much that is nice to say about it. Indeed when the game came out about the only real topic of discussion was the thematic issue of why it's okay for a female to enslave a guy but if the situation was reversed we'd be complaining about sexism. When that kind of conversation is the major legacy of the game (and trust me, I've been around believe it or not) that says something.

I think the problem is that most people couldn't justify spending $60 on a relatively short campaign driven by story instead of gameplay. I though the gameplay was fine, but the writing and environment design is what really made it shine and those are hard things to sell this type of game on. If it had explored a different pricing model, or if people had different ideas about content vs. value it probably would have gone better.

I can't really say that I've heard the potentially sexist double standard conversation come up much but it wouldn't really surprise me, although I'd say it was immediately missing the point because the game isn't trying to say that what she did was objectively a good thing to do. It's stance is more that the situation is too complex for there to be any single, simple moral answer.

As far as DMC itself goes, I know very little about the rest of the series so I'm not really in a place to judge how well it lives up. But I am in a place to judge how it looks purely as a game, and on those terms I've loved everything I've seen. The idea of the city itself turning against him opens the door to a lot of dynamic environments on a scale we rarely see, and if it can keep up the level of what's been in the videos so far I think it'll be something pretty special.

 

[Paragon Fury]

What. the. flying. fuck.

Did game developers all start catching a bad case of the "political correcties" lately? I mean, Tomb Raider, Soul Calibur, now Dead or Alive and DMC........

We understand the desire to make slightly more realistic and "normal" women in games. We somehow feel guilty for this and that we should and try and fix it. Thats ok.

But the method to fixing it should be to create new original characters and stories, rather than fucking established franchises up. Its particularly egregious when you do it to series that are known for their characters being a certain way.

This guy's blatant slut shaming (in spite of his weak backpedalling) does not qualify as "political correctness".
I'm probably what people would call a card-carrying political correctoid (or "person of a certain sense and social sensitivity" as I like to think of it) and I take serious issue with this guy's statements, because in his futile attempt to decry exploitative character design he upholds the ridiculous Madonna/Whore dichotomy.

There is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with a female character having large breasts, assuming that aspect of the character isn't simply put there for the benefit of the male gaze.
Antoniades misses the point spectacularly by suggesting that it is the physical attribute alone which is exploitative, all the while talking about the female character's role as though the entirety of its function was to be attractive.

I'm referring more to the design of the women in-game than his stated opinion. This is yet ANOTHER series that was known for its....bountiful women......that has suddenly reversed course and started make them "normal" or "slightly above average" for no apparent reason other than some self-induced shame or other, no less stupid reason.

 

[Flight]

... People loved Trip? I thought she was despicable. Desperate, yes, but despicable nevertheless. That said, it's nice that someone's redesign doesn't include giant breasts for once, but did he have to use slut shaming language while he was at it, even if he corrected himself?

 

[Alufear]

Wow I...actually agree with this guy for once. :/

 

[Woodsey]

As someone who does not give one iota of a fuck about Devil May Cry, I'm happy to say that he seems pretty funny and normal.

Not the ZOMGHUGECUNTWHOFORCDARTDPRTMENTTOTURNDANTEIN2HIMCUZZOMGHEHAZMODRNHAYRECUT that everyone paints him as.

 

[Falseprophet]

What. the. flying. fuck.

Did game developers all start catching a bad case of the "political correcties" lately? I mean, Tomb Raider, Soul Calibur, now Dead or Alive and DMC....

Soul Calibur? I don't recall anything being toned down in SC V. Did we play the same game?

This is yet ANOTHER series that was known for its....bountiful women...

It was? I never considered the female characters of the DMC games to be particularly egregious offenders. I mean, they were all svelte supermodels, but none of them looked like two basketballs glued to a lamppost or anything like that.

For what its worth, I think the giant breast thing has nothing to do with real or percieved immaturity compared to movies. Its that making huge breasts is just as easy as making small in games, while movies need either surgery or clunky wardrobe. When breasts can be huge with the stroke of a pen or mouse, they get huge. If the person casting a movie could choose the best actresses bust size, you can bet a c cup would be considered conservative.

You think it's so hard for Hollywood to fake big boobs? Sigourney Weaver is actually pretty flat:

... People loved Trip? I thought she was despicable. Desperate, yes, but despicable nevertheless.

I liked Trip. Monkey too. Because they were actual characters, which are in short supply in action games.

 

[Falseprophet]

Has it occurred to anyone that maybe the artists are driving this trend? Maybe in the current hi-def, millions of pixels and hues, gritty photorealistic era of graphics delivered on tighter schedules, making large breasts react with realistic physics to gravity-defying maneuvers is an unnecessary waste of time and resources? It's probably better aesthetically to shrink them than have your female character doing backflips with a pair of motionless boulders on her chest.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

I don't recall breasts being anywhere in my list of important questions for Devil May Cry. Last I checked, the top 10 questions I had were:

1. Why?
2. Is?
3. Dante?
4. A?
5. Dick-headed?
6. Mincing?
7. Douchebaggy?
8. Swishy?
9. Little?
10. Ponce?

 

[Warachia]

Team Ninja doesn't believe in Big Boobs? WHAT MADNESS IS THIS?

He also addressed the common insinuation (so common it cropped up in the beginning of this article) that Dante's new design is based on Antoniades himself.

"He's a decade and a half younger than me, way better looking..." he said. "The only thing he's got is black hair. And he's male. I didn't design the character. I didn't go to our designers and say, "I think it's a really good idea if we make the new Dante look like me, because I want to be in the game." They'd laugh at me. They'd throw me out the window."

Does Antoniades take us for fools? There's no way he could be worse looking than the new Dante and still be allowed out in public.

NINJA THEORY, Not team ninja, this was addressed in the FIRST SENTENCE. That aside, with him and dante, I think there's a lot more in common than black hair and the same haircut, there's the general shape of the face, the eye lines, the nose, the mouth, the ears, all you need is a tweak of the chin eyes and forehead, and there you go, you have tameem.

 

[Warachia]

Also, how is gaming going to move forward if the developers of big IPs are too lazy to use a new engine and keep churning out crap with Unreal 3 which is how old now? Even shooters are starting to move away from Unreal Engine and that's the genre the engine was made for.

Hell yeah!!! There is nothing more important than shinny graphics in games.
We need MORE games that take over 6 years to make because they have to rewrite the engine every time and still look dated. Give us more games that take like Final Fantasy XIIIs, Final Fantasy Versus, Duke Nukem Forever or Grand Turismo 5 to make.
It will be totally justified once the game is released half a decade later (although they may have to throw it away before working on the next game) with a fraction of the features other games in the genre have. Why working on superfluous things like gameplay, mechanics, netcode and story when you have better things to do, like reinventing the wheel.

Yes, because when I think Devil May Cry, I think slower paced combat with small amounts of enemies and tons of platforming.
There are far better engines to work with, and since when in their argument did he say they only wanted graphics? They just said the engine is outdated, which it is, and do you honestly believe that because it is an older engine, they'll focus on gameplay more than the graphics?

 

[cikame]

I don't come to games for them to say "hey, remember how limited life is?".
Trip in Enslaved has small breasts because her character design almost requires it, she belongs to a community of salvagers, scrawny scrappy people who tie ropes to planks and call them bridges.
Kaileena in PoP: Warrior Within has large breasts because she's a temptress, a mystical princess who lures the prince into her trap. Try pulling off the seductive role looking like a scrawny 19 year old.

There are of course questionable uses of sex appeal but i find i can only point to Japanese games for this like Dead or Alive, but i feel Kasumi, Ayane and Tina have become the more popular members of the cast for a certain reason, you can't really argue with that.

 

[Paragon Fury]

What. the. flying. fuck.

Did game developers all start catching a bad case of the "political correcties" lately? I mean, Tomb Raider, Soul Calibur, now Dead or Alive and DMC....

Soul Calibur? I don't recall anything being toned down in SC V. Did we play the same game?

Taki vs. Natsu. Pyrrha vs. Cassandra/Sophitia. Ivy definitely got toned down.

This is yet ANOTHER series that was known for its....bountiful women...

It was? I never considered the female characters of the DMC games to be particularly egregious offenders. I mean, they were all svelte supermodels, but none of them looked like two basketballs glued to a lamppost or anything like that.

Trish and Lady, to name two.

 

[Canadish]

I'm still not all THAT fond of this guy, and I hate where they're taking DMC.

But I'll concede this:
At least he seems to get where the anger is coming from, and he isn't just flipping off all the angry fans and name calling, like a certain other company that's stolen all the headlines these last 2 weeks.

I agree with his point on the issue of character sexualisation.
It's harder to bond and take a character seriously when they have comically sized boobs that are always hanging out on show.

But he's obviously missed the point and style of Devil May Cry.
It really shouldn't apply in this case.

 

[natster43]

Interesting read. I am excited for this game. Hopefully it will be good.

 

[kouriichi]

"Not to demean prostitutes - it's a valid form of commerce."
I need to get that on a t-shirt. This man speaks like a genius. If he ran for office, he'd have my vote.

 

[Kahunaburger]

"I've nothing against big tits," he assured PSM3. "I'd rather have my head resting on a pair right now - but if you're going to try and stimulate someone on different levels, there's better ways to do it."

"If you look at the stars in movies, the women people find really attractive are often not the ones with the biggest tits. You've got to be attractive on a different level."

...

"We did that in Enslaved with Trip. People loved her, not because she had big breasts and high heels, but because she felt like someone who could be your girlfriend," he said.

"That to me is more attractive than a prostitute walking around with a big gun," he added. "Not to demean prostitutes - it's a valid form of commerce."

That's right, ladies and gentlemen: the problem with the depiction of women in media is not that they are primarily depicted as sex objects from the perspective of a male audience, it's that they're depicted as sex objects from the perspective of a male audience who likes big tits. If you decrease the size of the tits, you solve sexism. Now allow me to take a moment to demonstrate my lack of understanding about how consensual most prostitution is.

Like... holy shit. This guy's post is a fucking goldmine of fail.