So the new pictures released for Mevius: Final Fantasy (iOS/Android though supposedly a “console-style” game) shows a dude in, shall we say, an outfit familiar to this blog… except it’s usually worn on female characters.
But that’s okay, I mean, I’m sure the reactions will be like “oh it’s just fantasy”, “he’s confident and doesn’t need real armour”, “it’s stylized”, “he chose to dress like that”… right?
So Final Fantasy finally (all puns intended) decided to fully embrace its female-gazey nature and released initial promo pics with a male character not being cool and stoic, but under-dressed, sexy and vulnerable? Me like!
Aaaaand some gamers’ knee-jerk reaction is “Eeew, how is that supposed to be a man?! I’m never playing this!”? Me no like. …But all the same, I’m not particularly surprised either. Sigh.
While screencapping the worst comments from that forum thread, I also noticed lots of other posts being like “I don’t mind sexy male armor, BUT this particular one is just a shitty design, period.”, which is an argument far removed from the reality of current game industry. The thing is, we’re waaaaay past the “badly designed sexy female armor” quota, so there’s lots of “badly designed sexy male armor” quota to meet. And until balance of the two is restored, I don’t really think anyone is in the position to request male sexyness to be up to some arbitrary design quality standard.
I’ll also hold my final judgement of the whole game’s art direction until we get to see female characters for comparison. After all, FF titles provided us with some major Female Armor Bingo material before.
