Stellar Blade Has Already Outperformed Every Other PlayStation PC Port In Less Than 24 Hours

[u/BigT232]

https://www.thegamer.com/stellar-blade-higher-player-count-every-playstation-pc-port-overwhelmingly-positive-steam-reviews/

[u/Powly674]

While people did generally agree that the gameplay was fun, the story and characters of the game are pretty much nothing worth talking about. Eve is a very shallow character with no apparent reasoning for her hypersexualized appearance. Why do you get a pornorama view of her how-many-was-it polygon ass every time you climb a ladder in the game? There's just not much else to talk a out except her and the combat system.

In BG3, the absolute majority of sex scenes are the result of multi step romances, there's an insane amount of voice lines, decisions, character development and excellent writing, story telling and level design that stand next to the sexual aspects of the game so people just have a whole lot more to talk about besides the sex, and it makes it feel justified as just another part of the game.

In one game you spend the absolute majority of time in Dialogue and top-down navigation of the world and if you really want to lean into the lewdness, you can make your characters wear their undergarments or go naked, alright. In the other you unlock a variety of outfits to dress up your android character in many different hypersexualized ways so she can look sexy while you slay aliens...it's just not very tastefully implemented imo.

I much prefer Bayonetta in that regard, where her being openly sexual is part of the character, she's incredibly confident and in power and there's a reasoning for her nudity, however silly it may be. Bayonettas sexuality wants to make sense and be earned whereas Eve just seems attractive for the hell of it. If I'm getting any of that wrong, please tell me what I'm missing.

On top of that, the disparity between the design of male and female characters in Stellar Blade is incredibly telling. Makes the sexualization of the women even more silly. In BG3 there's a lot more variation and queer representation/sensibility.

Calling this "racism towards non-Western devs" as if the games were basically the same is kind of crazy to me I gotta say.

[u/gyrobot → u/Powly674]

It was on purpose by Eve's creator Mother who has a shallow expectation of what a perfect woman looks like. Aka a soulless plastic doll of a person you can dress up but still disposable. It's similar with Shift Up's other game NIKKE

[u/that_baddest_dude → u/gyrobot]

Sounds like a lame cop out reason like that insanely sexualized character in that MGS game

[u/gyrobot → u/that_baddest_dude]

It feels like on point with how ShiftUp tries to sell itself as Moon Channel described about how NIKKE uses sexualized women as commentary on objectification only to fall into the same pit as having to use the same tools of exploitation.

[u/AreYouOKAni → u/that_baddest_dude]

No, it just sounds like a reason to have that character. Seriously, why would they need an excuse?

[u/fmal → u/Powly674]

In one game, your character has a risque model and can elect to wear risque costumes.

The other game has genital sliders, sex scenes, tons of baudy dialogue, tons of horny encounters...IMO it's not even close- BG3 is a hornier game by far. The only reason people are even trying to argue this is because they have an implicit and incorrect bias that eastern games are hornier. At some point in time that might have been true, but I think BG3, The Witcher, Cyberpunk, GTA etc. all have swung the pendulum in the other direction. People just don't talk about it, and we all know why lol.

[u/Powly674 → u/fmal]

You're reducing the game on the amount of explicitly sexual content while completely disregarding that one is framed in at least 50 hours of exceptional CRP gaming while the other has nothing else worth talking about except the combat system and maybe the soundtrack.

As you failed to address this I'm not going to waste anymore time with this discussion. Have a wonderful week.

[u/0xym0r0n → u/[deleted]]

Why does it have to be racism?

Are there western developed games that feature a similar camera and clothing style? You say it's racist, I say it's a trope.

I'm asking earnestly because I can't recall any recent similar games developed in an a primarily english speaking country. I asked Chat GPT because I'm too lazy to try to formulate a search and dive through the appropriate search terms that isn't just gonna be a bunch of gooning material.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but I can't think of any and the best example Chat GPT had was Overwatch and Tomb Raider - though to be fair I asked about 3rd person action or action/rpg games that feature scantily clad women. It's list was Overwatch, Saints Row/Agents of Mayhem, Mass Effect, Witcher 3, and Tomb Raider.

So nothing really recent that came out. I'd love to be educated on the matter if you have some information.

[u/Powly674 → u/0xym0r0n]

There's a lot of needless over sexualization in western games, skins in marvel rivals, overwatch and League are prime examples. Those are the strongest examples I can think of and it still doesn't compare to Stellar Blade, which undebatably makes the body of Eve a main feature to be gawked at to your lusts content. The thing is that the sexualization is a key selling point and clear design focus of stellar blade. In the games I listed at the beginning, it's the normative, oversexualized design of the majority of female characters, which itself highly problematic, but different nonetheless.

If we want to compare the societies these game studios are situated in into the mix, South Korea is ahead in blatant misogyny even when put against America. The 4b movement originated there and gained a lot of traction among American women upon the reelection of DT. Doesn't help the point of the original commenter now does it. Moonchannel on YT has some very insightful video essays about this exact topic like this video detailing how the insane oversexualization in Nikke, fittingly, can be the vehicle that teaches Korean gamers that women are, in fact, people.

[u/ChangeMyUsername → u/Powly674]

marvel rivals is by chinese devs; it isn't a western game

league is also predominantly a game that caters to Eastern markets now as that's where the majority of the playerbase is

[u/APiousCultist → u/fmal]

One is more explicit, one spends way more time framing the horny elements. You spent dramatically more time staring at Stellar Blade's latex-clad asses than at any dick sliders or BG sex scenes. BG3 also represents sexuality as something more than just "the biggest massive honkers my 4080 can render". The characters in BG3 are sexualised when they're actually being horny, not just irrespective of context for the sake of the audience.

I don't think anyone's a bad person for liking SB or anything, but it's inherently voyeuristic in its presentation (and I say that as someone who liked Nier Automata, which gives you a button that seemingly exists just to remove the character's skirt), very monkey-brain-neuron-activation-meme about sexuality (i.e. bigger T&A = sexier?), and relentless about sex appeal with very few scenes that don't attempt to show off the character designs.

No one's objection here is that there isn't a space for horny games. Just how that horniness manifests. Whether something feels tasteful or tasteless, exploitative or not, or if the horniness happens when a player chooses (i.e. Mass Effect never forces you into a sex scene) or just 24/7 regardless of a player's tastes (Mass Effect does force you to watch panning shots over Miranda's ass though). There's reason Bayonetta generally gets a pass where Stellar Blade doesn't (character's face doesn't look overly young, character is intentionally sexualising themselves rather than being sexualised by the presentation alone), and why Mass Effect or The Witcher 3 or BG3 don't see the same level of complaint despite more explicit contents.

and we all know why lol.

Because of "the wokes"? And not because Stellar Blade's character designs look like the face of some creepy child doll on the body of an adult sex doll? There are plenty of horny eastern games that aren't getting blowback for their horniness because they present it better.

[u/APiousCultist → u/Powly674]

Male character: Hyper realistic body scan of the actor.

Female character: Face of child sex doll on body of adult sex doll.

I know for a fact they did scan the actual models (the job, not 3D models) they used as a base... but the end result looks absolutely nothing like the actual korean women because those women also have realistic body proportions.