Kotaku: Lost Ark's Depiction Of Female Characters Feels A Decade Out Of Date

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Lost Ark's Depiction Of Female Characters Feels A Decade Out Of Date

The free-to-play action MMORPG forces women to wear heels and has gender-locked classes
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Lost Ark is a lot of fun. I've played hours and hours of it and I'm excited to play more. However, the latest smash hit on Steam is facing criticism for how it portrays its female characters.

Specifically, the game features some truly silly female animations, gives women few options besides revealing armor, forces them to wear heels, and uses gender-locked classes. This would have been a problem in 2012. Now in 2022, it's not only bad, it seems as if the folks making this game just ignored the last decade or so of discussions and debates surrounding representation of women and non-masculine characters in games.

When I first started playing Lost Ark, I booted up the game and created a paladin named Zack, who was a dude. I'm very boring. However, even as a male character, I noticed how many of the female characters around me seemed to be, uh…lacking pants. And I'm not the only person who noticed. Other players have pointed out how hard it is as a female character in Lost Ark to find clothing and armor that actually, y'know, covers your body.

I wanted to experience this myself, so I started up a new character. Although she was fully clothed and armored in the character creation menu, the moment I started the game my new heroine was stripped down to nearly nothing and plopped in some heels, and that was that. I spent nearly two hours running around, doing quests and killing monsters before I finally found a new pair of pants that weren't just booty shorts. Instead, these were slightly longer booty shorts.
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Even if Lost Ark offered a wider variety of clothing and armor to women, it wouldn't fix its other big problem with women: all the hyper-exaggerated, fan-service-y animations. Women in Lost Ark have hips that wiggle side to side so much, so quickly, they look like they fell out of a Source Filmmaker project from a decade ago. On social media, you can find lots of women who have already pointed out just how comically bad Lost Ark's female animations look, especially when zoomed in on.
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Kotaku:
shut the fuck up GIF
 
attractive, feminine women should be applauded, not demonized, which most of the entertainment industry has been doing for quite some time now.
 
Stuart360 said:
The only thing 10 years out of date is this tiresome SJW schtick.
Its time to move on loonies, the masses dont care about your 'cause'.
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While I dont think sex appeal is bad, there comes a point where you are trying so hard at it you fail and make it look stupid. Which this game reached
 
It's pretty hilarious how sexualized the women are in this game. Part of me appreciates that the developers just don't give a crap, another part of me kind of cringes at the thought that I'm playing the same game as some nerds who get off on this sort of thing. Either way, Kotaku can get bent.
 
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I don't play it but women in that game are so pretty <3 that I already knew it was korean :D

EDIT: Twitter responses are amazing, people here mock Twitter for being woke mobs and all, but Twitter is a lot of things and one thing is people making memes to wokes out of tiresome lol
 
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I think virtual women can walk the way they want.

Otherwise, I would like to play Lost Ark but usually f2p games soon or later have a paywall. And there's no console port, so no comfy couch gaming.
 
And look at the bullshit in that headline. "Out of date." Because all designs have to be current? It's literally a meaningless statement. They mean that it's sexual, and sexuality is bad when they say it is.

Remember when they said they weren't coming for our games? Now they're saying they already got all the games and this one didn't realize it was over with 10 years ago.
 
ckaneo said:
While I dont think sex appeal is bad, there comes a point where you are trying so hard at it you fail and make it look stupid. Which this game reached
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I think they went sliiiightly overboard with the swaying side to side of the hips. It is silly really.

But - the pendulum had swung so far to the other side that this is I guess.. needed?

I mean Lara Croft - who was created as a character with overt sex appeal, was mostly stripped of this part of her image in Shadow of the Tomb Raider...
 
Hahaha I love that the devs just dont give a fuck and aren't playing scared.

Slaying monsters with huge tits and stripper gear with a Victoria's Secret runway strut? Sure why not, suck it haters.

Edit - Also I don't care if they give all the dudes huge bulges and Conan the Barbarian loin clothes. Go for it.
 
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Attractive women isn't a bad thing. I'm glad as a culture we've started to clap back at this tired woke shit.

However, those animations are pretty embarrassing. I've seen the spirit of both of those expressed much less cartoonishly. Vanille from FFXIII did the dainty run, and it was super animu, but it didn't look like she had lost control of all of her limbs.
 
NickFire said:
Did Kotaku just "Ok, Boomer" a game dev for making the women attractive?

Kinda feels that way.
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That's just their cowardly way of saying that they're shaming a game for having any sexuality in it.

"Out of date." Because you know, Mario is "out of date," and it's really important that all our games are "in the current date."
 
I mean, even if they were right, it's almost that old already so chalk it up as a product of its time and move on?
 
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Embarassing article, I find funny the people who get scared or disgusted by feminine pretty or sexy stuff.

I never have been interested in this game, but now I will support it. Let's hope the insane success of the game helps these and other devs to ignore this kind of complains.
 
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Majormaxxx said:
I think they went sliiiightly overboard with the swaying side to side of the hips. It is silly really.

But - the pendulum had swung so far to the other side that this is I guess.. needed?

I mean Lara Croft - who was created as a character with overt sex appeal, was mostly stripped of this part of her image in Shadow of the Tomb Raider...
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It's funny because old Lara was a MUCH more iconic character. Women liked to cosplay as her. Who cares about this new one? Another boring cargo pants wearing character.

Many women also like 2b and other "sexualized" characters over these new boring ones.
 
When will we get fair representation of male gamers in games? Out of shape dude in cargo shorts that has to sit down every 2 minutes. It's 2022 man!
 
Punished Miku said:
And look at the bullshit in that headline. "Out of date." Because all designs have to be current? It's literally a meaningless statement. They mean that it's sexual, and sexuality is bad when they say it is.

Remember when they said they weren't coming for our games? Now they're saying they already got all the games and this one didn't realize it was over with 10 years ago.
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Exactly. It's not "oh there are many games being done this way, it'd be cool if some games were made differently". It's "you'll conform to our rules or we will criticize your game until it's changed". Authoritarian pricks.
 
As a female myself i would like to say fuck off to Kotaku. While i'm not a fan of Lost Ark (i can't get into those game) i have seen the character designs and they look great. Way better than the generic tank top with blue jeans we been getting quite often on AAA games.
 
Aranea said:
As a female myself i would like to say fuck off to Kotaku. While i'm not a fan of Lost Ark (i can't get into those game) i have seen the character designs and they look great. Way better than the generic tank top with blue jeans we been getting quite often on AAA games.
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Shut up, you don't get to decide that. Male feminists know what's good for you!
 
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Let me guess...while at it, they want to create a male character with female traits and genitals and being allowed to be called "them" or whatever the pronoums close to helicopters.

Same shit, different day.
 
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