The RPS Advent Calendar 2024, December 22nd
54 minutes ago
BioWare revealed a new character for Mass Effect 2: Subject Zero.
Subject Zero comes off as unattractive*, lewd, crude, and badass. And female.
As a feminist, I consider this a good thing. One of the biggest complaints I have about women in popular media is that they constantly have to conform to notions of attractiveness and sexiness. Here we have a woman with (almost) bald hair, tattoos (and I don’t mean butterfly in the small of her back or the kanji characters for ‘hope’ wrapped around her ankle), and some nasty scars. Excellent.
Another thing is that popular culture prefers ‘strong’ women who are completely non-threatening to the male audience. Again, Subject Zero does not fall into that trap.
I found her a breath of fresh air. And you know what’s just as good as the BioWare making a female character like this? The response on the BioBoards is very positive. Despite what many marketers believe, the average straight male can handle the horror of not being pandered to.
In other news, I thought Batman: Arkham Asylum wasn't out until the end of the month, but I was wrong. I grabbed it today and have played several hours of it so far. It's great stuff.
*Meaning, she does not fit conventional notions of beauty.
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I totally agree, The RPG genre needs to move away from the "Men are big bad and scary and women are sweet and innocent" mentality.
It's not the 1920's anymore, Men do not find strong women scary, Some men even admire them like me. :D
Very f-ing cool. She is pretty sexy, her face is beautiful, she is thin and half-naked, but they did not feel the need to give her giant breasts and wide hips, good for them.
The character design is great, everything in it from the tattoos to the costume cohere to create character. Even if they hadn't had her talking it would be clear she is scarred and unafraid, never vulnerable. Awesome.
I am curious how she and Ashley (who is herself a bada$$) interact. Ashley who comes from discipline and SZ who seems to come from chaos. Thanks for sharing the vid.
Do you think the remaining squadmates will be as dark as the ones revealed?
On the flip side, everybody except for Tali in Mas Effect 2 appears to be a some sort of ruthless monster. Miranda works for Cerberus, Jacob is implied to have a been a remorseless monster in the past, Thane is an assassin, and Grunt is a total sociopath.
SubZero is yet another complete monster in the game. How about we finally see a character that I can sympathize with?
Dasher.
Naah it's a Dirty Dozen kind of deal - It will be Paragon Sheps job to teach all these "monsters" about poetry, English Tweed and the art of flower-sniffing.
She seems strangely familiar, like a character from another video game or film and I just can't remember which one.........Nevertheless Bioware seems to be trying to break the mould here which is ALWAYS a good thing. Hopefully, the other yet to be revealed party members are equally interesting. I would certainly like to know more about 'Legion' though.
She seems strangely familiar, like a character from another video game or film and I just can't remember which one
You might be referring to APB.