GamesActionStellar BladeStellar Blade puts Eve in some incredibly stupid sexy outfits that hurt the game’s story, but despite the forced sex appeal I actually love her detailed designWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesActionStellar BladeStellar Blade puts Eve in some incredibly stupid sexy outfits that hurt the game’s story, but despite the forced sex appeal I actually love her detailed designWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Shift Up)
Much of the pre-release discussion of Stellar Blade has revolved around the appearance of its protagonist, Eve. After finishing the game and writing myStellar Blade review, I expect the post-release discourse to be more of the same. So here I am, discoursing.
(Image credit: Shift Up)
I don’t want to just both-sides this into mush. There’s been a lot of deserved talk about the male gaze and the part it played in how Eve looks. As someone with a lot of experience unlearning that same male gaze, I have an editor-scaring amount of thoughts on how Stellar Blade fails Eve, why I actually like her core design, and why I expect plenty of people to feel a similarly neutral way once everyone can actually play this game. To explain all this, I am forced to once again break out my greatest superpower: asexuality.
She’s sexy but doesn’t know it
(Image credit: Shift Up)
The problem is not that Eve is sexy. There’s nothing wrong with her body. She’s not a walking trope built like a snake that swallowed some melons. Her body is based on a scan of a real person so her figure is demonstrably realistic, even if some outfits inexplicably move her navel around or add 50% more ass onto a woman who’s already trying to fit 20 pounds of ass into 10 pounds of pants. She also jiggles like a bag of pudding nailed to the wall of a moving train, but what did we all expect from the developers of Nikke?
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(Image credit: Shift Up)
The problem is that Eve’s sexiness is totally divorced from the rest of the game and her personality, and Stellar Blade wants to be taken seriously despite how strangely this comes across. I think this is why a lot of people don’t like how Eve looks. Characters like Bayonetta own and flaunt their sexiness, and games like Hades are inextricably sexy from corner to corner. That’s partly why they’re so beloved – this stuff is hard to pull off convincingly, and memorable when done well. Everyone being horny in, and for, Baldur’s Gate 3 comes to mind. But Eve’s amped-up sexiness is a weird outlier. She has next to no interest in her own appearance or sex appeal. At most, she mentions her hairstyle one time.
Even Eve’s original outfit, the very first thing she puts on after emerging near-naked inthe game’s so-called skin suit, doesn’t seem to fully fit her. If I was a battle-ready woman heading out to fight monsters, my suit-up checklist would not include vacuum-sealing my boobs or bedazzling my groin. The look doesn’t match. This stuff exists outside the context of the game’s world as something artificial for the viewer’s enjoyment, so it disrupts that world. It doesn’t ruin the experience, or at least it didn’t for me, but it is jarring.
Make sexy make sense
(Image credit: Shift Up)
This isn’t limited to Eve, either. Male lead Adam is conspicuously covered-up – and has one of the best character designs overall – but the base skin for Lily, a younger-looking girl from a different squad than Eve, is an open top with a bikini underneath. Despite her more petite figure, she jiggles just as absurdly as Eve. Lily is written as a tomboyish engineer, and I think she looks much better in the alternate outfit with a big poncho and light gear like knee pads, which to me highlights another problem with Stellar Blade’s presentation and its narrow interpretation of sexiness.
Sensible, stylish outfits exist, but unfitting sexiness is the default and most common option. Yet the game makes it abundantly clear that these outfits are not appropriate for the circumstances. So if we’re going to add them anyway just for the players who do want to see them, why make them the default? Why not position these outfits as the silly, optional choices that they are? The characters would look sharper up-front, and the people who like the sexier bits could still knock themselves out. You can just as easily say, “I like the sexy look, why don’tyoujust wear the less-revealing ones?” That is what I did in my playthrough, and it’s good that option exists, but the priorities feel odd for an otherwise straight-faced action-adventure game.
(Image credit: Shift Up)
There’s nothing inherently wrong with liking these outfits, or with games having this material in it. I just wish the developers had gone all-in and made more sexy stuff that actually looks good on Eve, something she would feasibly wear. Hades 2’s Aphrodite “wears” a few strands of her own hair and nothing else, but is less vulgar than Eve in a bikini that’s clearly not right for her. I don’t want less or censored smut; I want thoughtful smut. Sexual themes don’t have to be taboo, and shouldn’t be, but they don’t have to be dumb either.
I try to picture Eve in a climactic cutscene, wearing an outfit that’s nearly lingerie, and my brain just shorts out. My favorite moments with Eve were her interactions with side quest characters, including several young girls for whom she clumsily but earnestly assumes a big sister-type role. Characters like the scrap merchant Kaya are adorably excited to talk to Eve and starstruck to receive her help. These moments and conversations are a big part of what little characterization Eve receives, and I don’t think it’s controversial to say it would be weird for Eve to be in a bikini during them.
The game’s serious and sexy sides are fine in isolation, but don’t mesh. There’s irrevocable conflict between the way Eve is portrayed and the way she is written. This weakens her as a character and displaces the tone of the story, and it’s a missed opportunity.
Stellar Blade director “grew up too poor to afford” a PS1, but when he finally got one in college, Ridge Racer and Final Fantasy inspired him to make games.
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1Nemesis review: “A magical sense of tension”
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