When Blizzard released the “Ghosts of the Past” trailer for StarCraft II, my friend Matt-Matt turned to me and said, “Since when did Kerrigan look like a Final Fantasy character?”
I’m starting to think Blizzard has a problem with women.
I know, right? Only the other week I was writing a post about how they’re actually pretty good with women — by video game standards, anyway — but it’s starting to occur to me that the sample size I’ve traditionally based that assessment on (vanilla WoW) was pretty small, and that maybe it’s time to broaden my scope.
If you’d asked me last year to name my absolute favourite female videogame character, I would’ve said Sarah Kerrigan. I mean, just look at her:
What a fucking badass. She’s not “pretty” in any conventional sense of the word, and by the end of Brood Warshe’s managed to take over an entire sector of space while all the male characters are busy underestimating her because she’s a woman. Also, she’s voiced by Glynnis Talken Campbell, whom you may also recall as the voice of Julie Winters in the awesome cartoon adaptation of The Maxx.[i] Whether or not Kerrigan represents a feminist template for women in videogames probably depends on who you ask — I’ve heard convincing arguments both ways — but the flaws in her plotline do not actually undermine the fact that, a) she’s the player character in an RTS game (not a genre traditionally thought to be of interest to women),[ii] and b) she essentially “wins” Brood War. The Zerg are the faction left standing at the end of that game, a victory which is all down to Kerrigan.
In this game, you have to take your victories where you can get them.
Kerrigan’s tiny head portraits in SCI do not feel “male gaze-y” — her human form in particular is even arguably sort of, uh, “homely” in that it doesn’t conform to the bland mainstream female beauty standard — which is why the concept art that’s come out of her for SCII is particularly disappointing. There’s even a page in the CE artbook devoted to her “high heels” and, seriously guys, that shit was fucking stupid in Beowulf and it’s not actually any less fucking stupid here.
And as for her non-infested appearance?
It’s almost like Blizzard popped out one of those awful “how to draw fantasy and comic book women” (ahem) tutorials and uses it as a basis to statistically calculate the perfect damsel-in-distress-cum-love-interest. With her soft, infantilized face it’s evident from the first moment she appears on screen that Kerrigan is the story’s plot point. And the opening in-game cutscene in Wings of Liberty makes it painfully apparent that her story is no longer her own, but rather regaled to simply providing the “tragic” motivational backstory in the life of a man.[iii] Her infestation is no longer representative of her own (quite literal) reclamation of agency, but rather Raynor’s failure as a “hero”.
Oh Kerrigan. What have they done to you?
It’s not just her. Wings of Libert ymight as well come with a giant warning sticker that reads, “WOMEN: THIS GAME IS NOT FOR YOU”. Because it isn’t, and it’s not just because of Cigar Guy’s (whose name escapes me and, honestly, I don’t care enough about to look up) propensity for awful, misogynistic dialogue. There are no female characters in this game who live outside of one of the narrow and tedious “supporting role” tropes assigned to women. There’s Naïve Plucky Reporter Girl, Mothering Love Interest “Nurse” Type[iv], Damsel in Distress and Morally Dubious Sexy Assassin Lady.[v] And dear gods how fucking sick am I of seeing these three archetypes over and over and over and fucking over and I thought Blizzard was fucking better than that by now.
Seriously. Why is Swann not female? Or Matt? Or that nerd guy with the Ghostbusters name? Or the general dude? Or the emperor’s son? Or, hell, Cigar Guy?
Oh, wait. Because “grizzled mechanic”, “steadfast second-in-command”, “science nerd”, “battle-scarred leader”, “ambitious heir to the throne” and “chauvinist army guy” aren’t roles woman are allowed to have. I forgot we have to live in our boxes of “annoying little sister”, “nagging mother”, “fawning love interest” and “slut”.
How silly of me.
So no, I did not like Wings of Liberty; I think it’s a fucking awful game. Not because of the mechanics or the gameplay or the interface or the graphics (which are all honestly fantastic) or the technical execution of the cutscenes (which, again, is fantastic; the bar-fight-scene, for all its laughable machismo and cringe-worthy dialogue, deserves some kind of award; just watch it with the sound off). No, Wings of Liberty is fucking awful because — after six years of WoW — it feels like such a huge ideological step backwards for Blizzard as a game company. Something which is especially notable coming hot on the heels of tales of Activision’s attitude towards female protagonists.
Of course, I’m prepared to accept the fact that I never really liked the terran campaigns, and there are definitely some promising seeds (read: Selendis, more of her pls) for the next two releases. So c’mon, Blizzard. Surprise me.
But if Kerrigan isn’t the main character in Heart of the Swarm?
Yeah. That.
- And seriously, if you do not? You should go check it out. I cannot even begin to describe just how much I used to identify with Sarah — overweight, socially awkward, glasses-wearing, creative freak that she is — when I first saw that show; something that was both a total eye-opener and completely New and Different for me when it came to a TV series/comic book. ↩
- Although PopCap’s Plants vs. Zombies puts lie to that one. ↩
- We have a term for that, incidentally: Refrigeration. ↩
- Who, you’ll note, looks suspiciously like she’s just walked out of a nail salon for someone who’d previously been doing it tough on a colony world. Kerrigan has the exact same nails in her final cutscene, though in that circumstance I can almost buy them being remnants of her infested claws. And yes, I notice this shit. The fact that you don’t, oh anonymous male reader, is called privilege. ↩
- Oh, and one token “background engineer” who can be occasionally seen hanging around in the cantina. Seriously, background engineer chick; you are my SCII hero. ↩