E3 2014: "Rainbow Six: Sexism"? Far from it.

My first year of game development at college has come to an end and, although I haven't yet received my grades for the entire year, they're expected to be first-rate (although I don't wish to sound as if I'm bragging; if they're good, it's because I agonised over the work every day rather than because I'm necessarily more intelligent than the other students. I noticed that an insane level of commitment seemed to be a trend with the mature students). I can't say that I'm any closer to entering the games industry than when I started but it's only one year of college, so it isn't unexpected that I haven't come out of it "industry-ready".

Enrolling on a game development course also didn't give me the opportunity to discuss sexism as much as I had hoped. I think I had around three conversations about it in the entire year but other than that, as you'd probably expect, most people -- male and female -- didn't care about gender issues in games. Which is fine and completely understandable; in spite of all the articles about gender issues in games online, it has to be said that it is not an issue that the majority of gamers care about. A few people did seem interested in how Wil Wheaton spearheaded a movement that ended with Destructoid writer Ryan Perez being fired though, so that's something.

E3 took place last week and I really enjoyed it. I didn't have much interest in any of the current-gen consoles but with Bloodborne, Mortal Kombat X and No Man's Sky being the games that made a big impression on me, I suspect I'll buy a PS4 at some point (probably next year). Oh, and the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain trailer blew me away.

Anyway, speaking of E3 and articles about gender issues, I suppose it was too much to hope for to think that E3 might pass without an accusation of sexism being aimed at someone or something. Off the top of my head, "scandals" I can recall include a lack of female presenters, a lack of games featuring female characters and, in case anyone has forgotten, the "rape" joke during the Killer Instinct presentation last year.

I followed the conferences on Gamespot and on June 10th, before the event was even finished, Tom McShea took it upon himself to write an editorial called "The Disturbing Representation of Women in the Rainbow Six: Siege E3 Demo". Tom's big problem? In the stage demo for Rainbow Six: Siege, a female character was a hostage. That's it. That's the entire issue. You can watch the demo at the link above but here's a Youtube version if you prefer:

Before I go into Tom McShea's article, what I took away from E3 with regards to gender issues was how many positive portrayals of female characters there were. All of them got their share of the spotlight. I'm sure I'm going to forget some but we had Bayonetta 2. Mirror's Edge 2. Alien: Isolation. Infamous: First Light. Rise of the Tomb Raider. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris. Plus, think of the games that had a mix of male and female characters, like Mortal Kombat X. Fable Legends. The Sims 4. Hyrule Warriors. If the predecessors of Bloodborne, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect 4 are anything to go by, they'll all have the option to play as male or female characters too. Hell, it seemed like most games had a choice of male and female characters, from Broforce to the Dead Rising 3 DLC. In fact, would you like to know another game that had a positive female portrayal in the stage demo? Rainbow Six: Siege!

In case you didn't watch the video above, the demo -- which features the disclaimer "the following is pre-alpha footage captured from a multiplayer match" but is very blatantly staged -- features five online players trying to rescue the female hostage from their five opponents. Of the five players whose voices we hear, one of them -- playing as a sniper -- is female. She is portrayed as being just as capable as the male players on her team.

The point is that E3's representations of female characters should've been cause for celebration (or, if you're part of the "they shouldn't be praised for doing what's expected of them" crowd, at least it shouldn't have been cause for criticism). Yet Tom McShea, being a glass half-empty kind of chap, focused on the one example from the show that featured a woman in a damsel-in-distress role and argued:

"It was their decision to have a woman presented as an object, something to be fought over--to be won--so that's the message that was hammered home. So I can only look at the reality of this demonstration and wonder why it's once again a woman placed in such a sad position."

The main reasons I still visit Gamespot are (A) habit and (B) the majority of people who post comments seem to be sensible and rational. In this case, I was impressed with how this excerpt from a comment by "tonkins22" got to the heart of the matter:

"Sexism in games needs to be tackled, and deserves a billion-word discussion. But you can't use a non-example as your launchpad into that point, or it makes the argument itself look thin, which is bad for the cause. The author is writing an article about a serious forest fire and tries to get your attention by panicking about a lit match."

This is the central problem with McShea's article. It's a perfect example of making a mountain out of a molehill. McShea refers to women in games as "prizes", "rewards", "objects", "plot points" and "second-class citizens" throughout his editorial but the main thrust of his argument is based on this lone female hostage from Rainbow Six: Siege. There is no evidence that she is any of those things and the rescue team in the video are intending to rescue this hostage, not claim her in any way. That's McShea's own interpretation. He's the only one seeing her as an object rather than a human being. It's little wonder that the Gamespot members collectively roll their eyes at this when there is a positive female portrayal in the same video, many positive female portrayals in other games at E3 and there will be male hostages in Rainbow Six: Siege too.

Speaking of male hostages, McShea notably didn't mention Huey Emmerich being taken hostage and tortured in the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain trailer (from 2:20 to 2:40 in that video). Both the protagonist and his "plus one" are taken hostage in the Far Cry 4 villain trailer (from 4:45 until the very end in that video). None of those three male characters are shown as being anything other than helpless, much like the female hostage in the Rainbow Six: Siege demo. However, McShea insists that "it's once again a woman placed in such a sad position". He even mentions Far Cry 4 in the final paragraph, using it as an example of "white male protagonists [being] placed front and center" (which is wrong because ... ?) without mentioning that the white male protagonist in question gets a bag placed over his head before being taken captive.

It's disappointing that this type of blatant misrepresentation of the facts has become so commonplace but that's what happens when people are desperate to promote an agenda that doesn't have any grounding in reality. There are gender issues that should be talked about and the portrayal of women in games is by no means perfect -- as tonkins22 said, "sexism in games needs to be tackled, and deserves a billion-word discussion" -- but McShea took what should've been a success for women in games and turned it into a failure.

Then again, this is the same person who wrote "The Santa Barbara Killer Is a Product of Our Culture, and We Shouldn't Hide From That Fact".

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(When I began writing this part, I didn't plan on it being as long as it became. If you just care about gaming, you can stop reading now because this is related to real life.)

Hopefully, I won't go into this too much because it seems like I've discussed nothing else since it happened at the end of May. For those who don't know, on May 23rd a college student named Elliot Rodger murdered four men and two women and injured thirteen others. There were many reasons behind it; Rodger was a misanthrope. He loathed men, describing them as "obnoxious brutes" and left forum comments fantasising about a virus wiping out every man on earth except him so he could have his pick of the women. He loathed women too, referring to "blonde sluts" and fantasising about wiping all of them out too while sitting in a tower and watching at all. Rodger was also a racist, recoiling at interracial couples and showing disgust towards full-Asian men (Rodger himself was half-white, half-Asian and referred to himself as Eurasian several times. Three of the six victims were also Asian and, given that they were the three who were stabbed in his apartment rather than shot, these were apparently the predetermined murders).

It should also be mentioned that Rodger suffered from a mental illness. At times online, I've seen people react to that point with aggression, thinking that just pointing it out means he's being held up as an example of all sufferers of mental illness but that isn't the case any more than he's an example of all virgins or half-Asians. The point is that without acknowledging that Rodger suffered from a mental illness, the severity and significance of mental illness cannot be understood.

The reason I'm bringing this up isn't just because of Tom McShea's article on the subject. In fact, if Tom's editorial is the first you've read about the Isla Vista killings, you might be confused about why he's focusing so much on misogyny and violence against women. The fact is that in this case, McShea was just following in the footsteps of over a dozen other, more mainstream news sites that ignored every single motivating factor in the murders ... except for Rodger's hatred of women (although the blog itself was about how misinformation can be spread and perpetuated, the women of Honey Badger Radio have a decent list of around fifteen sites that focused specifically on violence against women. As they mention at the end, they're only a fraction of the total number).

Without wanting this to turn into a rant, the most disgusting aspect of the Santa Barbara killings if you followed the coverage was how it instantly and blatantly it became an event to promote an agenda ... and it wasn't just to raise awareness about violence against women. Men's rights activists were blamed, even though Elliot Rodger wasn't an MRA. White men were blamed, even though Elliot Rodger wasn't white. In the Huffington Post article I just linked to, feminist blogger Anne Theriault actually states:

"We have no evidence yet that he suffered from any kind of mental illness or was under any sort of treatment. Immediately claiming that with no proof to back that fact up leads to the further stigmatization of the mentally ill, and contributes to the (incorrect) assumption that mental illness equals violence, and vice versa."

This is in spite of the fact that the day before, Rodger's own father (speaking through an attorney) stated, "the 22-year-old was being treated by multiple therapists and was a student at Santa Barbara City College".

Phrases like "male entitlement", "male privilege" and "male rage" all became commonplace, effectively painting all men with the same Elliot Rodger-shaped brush. If you have the time, you can go through the Honey Badger Radio list of articles and find the number of pieces that use the phrase "six people were killed" before launching into a rant about Rodger's misogyny, entitlement and violence against women rather than say "four men and two women". That isn't a coincidence. Feminist bloggers and journalists leapt on the opportunity to use the deaths of a tragedy where more men were killed than women to promote awareness about an unrelated viewpoint.

I want to make it clear that I'm not just disappointed about the deaths of the four young men being used (or, more accurately, ignored) to further an agenda that attacked men on a regular basis. None of the six, including the two women, deserved to have their deaths used in this manner. They were people. Their deaths were not something to be politicised for personal gain. It's safe to say that over the last month, feminism reached full Jack Thompson territory.

Credit to Europa-Phoenix. This comparison went through my mind over the course of the last month too.

One reason I'm bringing this up is because mass shootings in the U.S. have affected me in a few different ways. When the 2012 Aurora cinema shooting happened, I was so unbelievably shaken that I intentionally (and probably selfishly) avoided reading anything about the Sandy Hook shooting when it occurred in case it affected me in a similar way.

Something that I've tried to keep up on this blog -- which I've admittedly been back and forth on at different times -- is avoiding using "feminists" as a blanket term. Sometimes I haven't used it at all, other times I've tried to soften the blow by saying "some feminists" or "the feminist argument", to try to communicate that I'm not blaming the movement as a whole. I've always been swayed by the "not all feminists are like that" (NAFALT) argument that comes up repeatedly when men's rights activists point out some of the ways that feminism has had a hand in the poor treatment of men.

Now? Well, as you might've noticed over the last half-dozen paragraphs or so, I'm not particularly concerned about sparing the feelings of the NAFALT crowd any more. While I reacted to the Aurora shooting with horror, I ended up reacting to the Isla Vista killings with anger and not just directed at Rodger. Some of the most despicable people -- making the most unpleasant, untruthful arguments -- came crawling out of the woodwork and every one of them was a feminist ... and too few feminists responded to these articles with anger, disappointment or disgust. The quiet, half-hearted opposition on forums and in comments sections doesn't do much to combat the loud dogmatism of feminist journalists like Laurie Penny, dismissing violence against men while telling me that I'm "part of the problem" ... for saying that not all men are like Elliot Rodger because that dismisses violence against women. Somehow.

On the plus side, she makes Tom McShea look like a saint.

Okay, so I had a lot more to say on this issue than I thought but it's probably better that I got all of this off my chest here and not just in the comments section of a news article. This may be primarily a games blog but a few occasions have been set aside to talk about men's issues in general. It annoys me that this shouldn't have been a men's rights issue -- Rodger wasn't even remotely related to the men's rights movement but that didn't stop Anne Theriault and others from branding him one -- but it became one, so it's worth being brought up.

Hope you all had a happy Father's Day! Feel free to comment or e-mail me at themalesofgames@gmail.com.

Women Are More Innocent (and more on Anita Sarkeesian)

Women aren't as evil as men. Everyone knows that! Although in case you didn't, game developers have a helpful way to educate you; if there's a female villain in a game, she's the most likely of the bunch to switch to the heroic side or she'll have been hypnotised or brainwashed into being evil instead. One of the two.

Although I try to avoid referring to TV Tropes too often -- I'm a fan of the site but I know Anita Sarkeesian is criticised for taking it at its word a few too many times -- but it has some information on this on the "High Heel Face Turn" and "Females Are More Innocent" pages. The "Sorting Algorithm Of Face Heel Turning" is also worth a quick look ("face" and "heel" are the professional wrestling terms for "good guy" and "bad guy" respectively, in case you didn't know).

The "High Heel Face Turn" trope gets the basic point across but I think it's missing something; going by the definition on that page, the female villain would have to be the lone female on a team of villains to qualify. Not that it's incorrect or any better when it's only a single female villain rather than several but I can think of a game series where all the female villains either switch sides, aren't as villainous, are coerced into being evil via brainwashing or repent how evil they are shortly before death. If you don't want to be kept waiting, I'm thinking of Metal Gear Solid.

Let's start with some others though. Back when I blogged about Batman: Arkham City, I wrote the following:

"There are barely any bad women in the game. Catwoman is an anti-hero. So is Talia Al-Ghul and her all-female army of assassins. Poison Ivy keeps to herself. Harley Quinn is the closest thing to "evil" a woman gets in the game and she plays the comic relief role."

Meanwhile, Mr. Freeze is the closest the game has to a male villain switching sides. He's a lot like Poison Ivy, in that he wants to keep to himself. Even so, he acts pretty selfishly; while Poison Ivy only attacked when Catwoman entered her territory, Mr Freeze shattered a vial of a cure that could save Batman from the illness that plagues him throughout the game purely out of spite. Well, leverage supposedly -- he wanted Batman to help get his wife back but there was nothing to suggest Batman wouldn't have done so anyway -- but clearly spite.

One of the traits that is always present in Mortal Kombat's messed-up canon is Kitana shaking off her brainwashing and joining the good guys. She's raised to believe that she is the daughter of the villain, Shao Kahn, but it doesn't take long for her to find out the truth; that Shao Kahn killed her father, forced her mother, Sindel, into marrying him and adopted Kitana himself. Kitana switches sides, as does her best friend, Jade. Jade was only siding with the villains to keep watch over her best friend. Depending on the timeline you look at for the Mortal Kombat games, Sindel may follow suit and join the heroic side too (but in that particular timeline, so do Ermac and Smoke ... and Raiden turns evil. It's a bit of a mess as the series continues). Kitana and Jade's side-switching is a mainstay of both the old and new Mortal Kombat timelines though, so it looks like there's no way of keeping them evil.

Even in games where the male and female villains are evil for the same reasons, there can be subtle differences. Take the first Mass Effect game, for example. Saren (a male Turian) and Matriarch Beneziah (a genderless Asari but physically female, like all Asari) are both evil because they're in the thrall of Sovereign, a massive ship-slash-AI with mind-controlling powers. Even then, however, Beneziah is given a more sympathetic backstory than Saren.

Then there's Metal Gear Solid, a series where all the female villains have excuses for being evil. In Metal Gear Solid 2, Olga Gurlukovich switched sides because her daughter had been taken from her by the real bad guys (which is an oversimplification but for the sake of this blog, a longer explanation isn't needed). Fortune also turned against at least one of her former villainous colleagues, going so far as to save the good guys' lives before dying of a gunshot wound. In Metal Gear Solid 3, we had The Boss. Long story short, she was never evil. She posed as being evil but the actions of one of the villains led to her plan spiralling out of control and she eventually had to be killed. In Metal Gear Solid 4, there's an all-female team of villains called the Beauty & The Beast Corps. All four women share the same backstory; they all suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Their fragile mental state was exploited and they were each given hi-tech suits to make them deadly soldiers. They're tragic figures more than anything else (or they would be, with a bit more character development).

Sniper Wolf from Metal Gear Solid is the only female villain who didn't either switch sides before dying or get her start by being coerced or brainwashed. Even she is given the noble death that she wants and isn't as much of an extremist as some of the other MGS villains. A few other male villains receive treatment along the same lines as Sniper Wolf -- Vulcan Raven, for example, and Grey Fox is probably more of a tragic figure than anyone in the B&B Corps -- but none along the same lines as, say, Olga or Fortune. Even characters who are supposedly doing good things resort to extremist tactics to do so; this turned out to be Revolver Ocelot's schtick by the end of the series.

This isn't to say that you won't find male villains switching sides or female heroes crossing over to join the bad guys. These few examples aren't the be-all and end-all of female turncoats either. All the games listed do have examples of male characters either switching sides or being coerced into being evil ... but often, the subtle differences between the male and female villains send out different messages. On its own, a female villain switching sides wouldn't matter very much but it raises questions when male and female villains are evil for the same reasons -- like Saren and Beneziah -- but the woman comes across more sympathetically than the man. It's hard not to wonder if there's a motive when, in a game with an even split between male and female villains -- like Arkham City or the Metal Gear Solid series -- the male villains are more evil than the female ones. There's no real reason for it and it can feel like a slightly insulting gesture.

Anyway, onto other things; there are two big important pieces of news this week. Firstly, the blog has a banner! It doesn't fit properly! I'm too lazy to fix it!

Secondly, a blog called Vicsor's Opinion rooted out something surprising about Anita Sarkeesian's damsel in distress videos; none of the game footage shown in the videos were recorded by Anita herself. They all come from Let's Play videos on Youtube and the owner of the blog, Vicsor, has comparison screenshots to prove it. He also made sure to contact some of the owners of the channels hosting the Let's Play videos and posted a reply on his blog to confirm that Feminist Frequency did not contact them to request permission to use their videos in her series.

So what does this mean for Feminist Frequency? Well it doesn't confirm anything except for the fact that Anita didn't use any of the $158,922 she received from Kickstarter to invest in a capture card. It throws up a lot of questions about how the money is being spent, however; we don't know whether there's been any investment in audio/video equipment at all, given that there's no visible or audible change in the quality of Anita's videos. The only difference is a new introduction logo. We also have to wonder if the many months in-between Anita's videos are spent playing games or simply watching Let's Plays. I know it sounds cynical and before this information came out, I wouldn't have even suggested it but hey, who's to say now that it turns out Anita didn't use her own footage?

This is just another addition to a long line of Anita's screw-ups. Questionable money-making methods. Flawed, occasionally sexist arguments with cherry-picked examples. Complete bastardisation of a study to fit the point she wanted to make. And now, stolen footage.

Anita's supporters may think I'm being too harsh. Maybe she doesn't own the games she took footage from. Maybe some were too old to get hold of and it wasn't wise to invest in dated games and consoles. Maybe they were released after she went on the initial spending spree that produced this famous picture. Even so, none of those points explain why she didn't ask permission to use other footage from other people's Let's Play videos. The only explanations for that is that she was either hiding behind "fair use", she didn't think she'd get caught or she arrogantly didn't think she had to ask permission. It's also worth mentioning that on Feminist Frequency's Kickstarter page, Anita states that she plans to reward large donations with a DVD featuring all the episodes of her Tropes Vs Women In Games series. It isn't clear whether she actually plans on selling these DVDs -- personally, I doubt it, considering how large a donation it takes for just one to be given away -- but even giving them away will probably be difficult if even one person takes offence to Anita using their footage in her series.

You know what else this means? Any one of the people whose footage was taken has a legitimate reason to flag Anita's videos as inappropriate and have them removed. I don't believe their case will be watertight but as far as I can see, they may have a chance with factor one of the fair use guidelines. Time will tell.

As always, feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me at themalesofgames@gmail.com

The Sexism Of Heavenly Sword

Hey all. Another long blog.

I know it sometimes seems like I fall back on the same games on this blog -- Heavenly Sword and Tomb Raider, or at least Lara Croft -- but trust me, it's not intentional. I actually intended to write about something else in this post but, thanks to a slow internet connection, I wasn't able to get onto YouTube to do some research. So we end up back at Heavenly Sword, which I've finally played through again.

First of all though, an apology; I stated a few posts back, and elsewhere online, that Heavenly Sword features only male enemies. That turned out not to be true and I'm sorry for misleading anyone who's never played the game. Ninety-nine percent of Heavenly Sword's enemies are male but there's that one percent that isn't. That's actually important because, for all my talk of how much I dislike the groin attacks against the "all-male" army in HS, the groin attacks can all be done against female opponents too. I want my research on this blog to be accurate, so I have no problem setting the record straight.

That aside, there's still plenty of stuff in Heavenly Sword worth talking about. I hope people who've played Heavenly Sword forgive me for this but since a lot of the sexism in the game takes place in cutscenes, I'm going to be explaining the whole story for people who've never played the game. Expect heavy spoilers. So first things first, here are the characters you need to know about:

 Top Row, L-R:

Nariko: The game's main character and narrator. Wields the Heavenly Sword for most of the game.

Kai: Also a playable character. Uses a crossbow. She became Nariko's "kind of" adopted little sister at some point before the game's beginning, after her mother was killed (more on that later). I'm not sure if she has mental disabilities or if she's simply "quirky" but she treats battles as if they're a game.

Shen: Nariko's father. Leads the clan that Nariko and Kai are a part of. The clan's job is to protect the Heavenly Sword at all costs. Described by Nariko as "a tutor first, a father second". That'll be important later on.

Clan Member: Honestly, I just included the clan member in this picture because I didn't want an odd number of faces. Clan members are all male and all serve the same role; to be selfish, cowardly, helpless and sexist against Nariko.

Bottom Row, L-R:

Bohan: The game's main villain. A rapist. Played by Andy Serkis.

Flying Fox: One of Bohan's "generals". Really annoying voice. Killed Kai's mother.

Roach: Bohan's son. He suffers from mental disabilities and Bohan hates Roach calling him "daddy". Frequently suffers verbal abuse at the hands of Bohan but loves him anyway.

Whiptail: Bohan's "consort". I have a theory on Whiptail's role and treatment in the game that I'll go into at the end.

Now onto the game's story. It opens with Nariko narrating about a prophecy that stated, "a deity would be reborn, in the body of a mortal man". Nariko was born instead and many of her people view her as a curse because she was born female rather than male. At the start of the game, Bohan's army attacks the clan because he wants the Heavenly Sword. One of the clanmembers voices his displeasure with this turn of events and states it's because of Nariko, since she's a curse. This earns him a choking from Nariko.

Now basically, even if you've only played this far, it kind of sets the tone for the game; we've already received the message that "being female is a curse". Even her fellow clanmembers voice this opinion, earning themselves a choking from Nariko in return. Let's start with the "being female is a curse" part; already, the more "Genre Savvy" player will know what's going to happen. It removes any doubt that Nariko will screw up in some way or fail at her quest. Now, I'm not specifically blaming Heavenly Sword for that, since the hero rarely fails in any game, but it actually stops Nariko from being a hero just because she can be; her sex is being insulted and degraded by being described as a curse and that makes her a representative of womankind in this fictional universe.

The choking is unpleasant for more obvious reasons; a male hero could never choke a female hero and still be considered heroic. Even if a woman referred to the man as a "curse", you wouldn't see him choke her in response. The only example I can think of in gaming is in Resident Evil 4, where Leon becomes possessed by the parasite infesting his body and attempts to choke Ada (who isn't even especially heroic). This earns Leon a knife to the leg and a swift knee in his midriff, to free him of his possession. The clanmember didn't do the same to Nariko, obviously.

Anyway, at some point during Bohan's attack, the clan flee their base but Shen tells Nariko to stay behind to fend off the attackers. She's also left in charge of the Heavenly Sword, which seems like a bizarre thing to do, since the clan is running away from the attackers but she's standing her ground against them and she's all alone. It works, however, and she survives the assault while the clan make their escape. Once she's done, Nariko has to escape too, and it's during this part of the game that we get a truly excellent piece of dialogue.

The first time I played this part of the game, five years ago or so, one of the enemies you ran into mocked Nariko for being "an under-dressed angel". I actually really liked that. It was clever and self-deprecating, willing to joke about one of the minor features that so many messageboards would be up in arms over; yes, the main character is female and yes, she's wearing somewhat "inappropriate" clothing for battle. It was what TV Tropes would call a "Lampshade Hanging". However, that was five years ago. This time I played the game, the enemy said something even better: "Take that carving knife back to the kitchen, wench". A "stay in the kitchen" insult! Just in case you weren't aware that women in Heavenly Sword are treated like crap, there's that hi-larious line of dialogue. So if you think Ninja Theory were being unfair by making Nariko's clan sexist, don't worry, a soldier in Bohan's army managed to top it by being more sexist.

At the end of this part, it turns out that the clan didn't escape after all. Bohan makes his first speaking appearance, with Shen as his prisoner. Shen is badly beaten and Nariko appears sympathetic. She decides to make use of the Heavenly Sword (which mustn't be done) rather than just protect it. Bohan sends some soldiers to attack Nariko, as an excuse to give the player a tutorial on how to use the sword. During this fight, you can hear Bohan say, "Bring me that sword. If she still happens to be attached to it, so much the better." Yes, Bohan is implied to be a rapist. This becomes even more overt later on.

Nariko runs, unable to defeat every single one of Bohan's army there and then. As Shen and the rest of the clan are taken back to Bohan's base to be held captive, Nariko is reunited with Kai, who managed to escape by hiding. Now, it's reasonable to think that Kai is better at hiding than the rest of the clan, which is why they didn't hide (or maybe they did, but were found) but let's recap; all the male clanmembers are taken prisoner. Both the female clanmembers were able to escape. Worst of all? This isn't even the male clanmembers' lowest point in the game. In any other game, it might be, but not Heavenly Sword. The epitome of their uselessness comes up shortly afterwards.

We get a cutscene introducing us to the villains. This is meant to be an analysis rather than a review but it comes across as a bit forced; they spend time talking about each villain, then moving onto the next without so much as a line of dialogue explaining why. We have Flying Fox, a creepy teleporting man who speaks in a very irritating voice. There's Whiptail, a scantily-clad snake-fish lady who is also Bohan's "consort". Many of her lines are about how much she admires him. And there's Roach, who is a huge overweight beast with mental disabilities and suffers verbal abuse from his father, Bohan, and the occasional object thrown at his head. However, he loves Bohan and can't seem to grasp that Bohan hates him.

Nariko is able to rescue the male clanmembers, except Shen. The first thing they do is thank Nariko for rescuing them but, when she suggests they help her find Shen, they selfishly refuse. They only care about their own lives. Then, the same clanmember that thanked Nariko says Shen was foolish to trust her with the Heavenly Sword … even though she just used it to rescue them. So the clan continues to be sexist towards Nariko and now decide to show their true cowardly colours. This is the epitome of their uselessness.

Shen is found by Nariko soon enough, being held captive by Whiptail. Earlier in the game, Nariko narrates a tale of a recurring dream she has of her father, Shen, killing her. After Shen is freed, Whiptail reveals that this stems from a moment when Shen wanted to kill Nariko at birth but couldn’t. Nariko actually reacts angrily at Shen not killing her and tells him to leave her. Somehow, I can’t imagine Mario basically telling Princess Peach to piss off after rescuing her. Combined with the rescue of her fellow clanmembers, there seems to be a recurring theme of Nariko rescuing men who she then deems unworthy of rescue. According to the game, Nariko and Kai are the only heroic souls in a sea of complete jerks.

Shen makes his escape, having suffered injuries while being held prisoner. Kai uses her crossbow to kill all of Shen's attackers. When he's finally to safety, Shen holds his arms out for a hug but Kai runs past him because she only cares about saving Nariko. Shen says, "I have led hundreds of men through life and death. Why do these girls never listen to a word I say?" It's kind of amusing but also sad because of how true it is and how little it makes sense; even before basically giving him a big "screw you" after rescuing him, Nariko was disobedient and disrespectful towards Shen. She ignored his orders to help Kai and it turned out that she was right to do so. I have no idea why it was so important to have Shen come off as wrong in that situation. Why not have him tell Nariko to go and help Kai? Without it, and with his capture, he comes across as an ineffective leader. Bear in mind that this is a man who was described as "a tutor first and a father second" and who tried to murder his own daughter at birth. So he's hardly winning father of the year but apparently, he's no good at being a leader either. He's portrayed as useless so the two women can be portrayed as wonderful. Lionising women at the cost of men.

Meanwhile, Nariko is fighting Whiptail. Heavenly Sword shows cutscenes during boss battles and during one of Whiptail's cutscenes, Nariko mocks the gashes on her cheeks with the sentence, "Was it your master who turned you into a slit-faced psycho?" Whiptail reacts with a shocked expression but that doesn't necessarily mean that Bohan did cut her cheeks. She could've been shocked at the insult in general. She neither confirms nor denies that Bohan made her look the way she did but the implication is that someone sliced those markings on her cheeks. I'm inclined to think it was Bohan but, without it being conclusive, I'll leave that one alone.

Anyway, Nariko defeats Whiptail but is knocked out in the process, meaning Bohan can finally get his hands on the sword, which is lodged in Whiptail's chest. Bohan taunts Nariko's actions by saying, "You’d never see me rescuing my father, the crusty old pervert", continuing the trend of bad fathers. Bohan runs his hands suggestively across Whiptail’s legs even while she’s dying and then, after exchanging a few "sympathetic" words, he snaps her neck and turns his attention back to the sword without a second’s thought. Remember earlier, I said that Flying Fox killed Kai's mother? There seems to be another trend in Heavenly Sword of the villains showing how evil they are by killing women. That's the threshold that turns regular bad guys into complete monsters. Whiptail wasn't exactly good but she was probably the least evil of Bohan's generals and, frankly, by being the victim of Bohan's uncaring murder, she becomes a martyr; all of a sudden, this horrible man she loved shows his true colours and how little he cares for women by murdering the woman closest to him. Honestly, the only thing worse would be if Whiptail switched sides and joined the good guys. That would really hammer the "men are evilz" point home. Actually, as I come to think of it now, Whiptail may be the only character Bohan kills in the game. Ditto for Kai's mother and Flying Fox.

With Nariko taken prisoner, Bohan taps his codpiece with his fingers suggestively and mentions to Nariko that they should “get to know each other a little better”. This is the more overt display of Bohan's wish to rape Nariko I mentioned earlier.

Bohan puts the Heavenly Sword in his armory and makes the classic villain mistake of leaving the hero alone rather than killing her on the spot. So Kai has snuck into Bohan's base and she visits Nariko in prison. Nariko wants Kai to get the Heavenly Sword back and Nariko says, "I don’t have anyone else", because, of course, the male clansmen were too injured, selfish or cowardly to help. This is an interesting bit: during the conversation, Nariko mentions being alone. Kai says, "Kai was alone once. But then Nariko found Kai. And Kai wasn’t alone. And Nariko wasn’t alone either". Wait a second … unlike Kai, Nariko was never alone. She always had Shen and the clan. So the only explanation for Kai’s "Nariko wasn’t alone either" remark is that men don’t count as company and either Nariko, Kai or both only value women as companions.

So Kai goes to get the Heavenly Sword back from the armory but to do that, she needs a password. And to get that, she finds the guard captain who knows the password, points her crossbow at his crotch and threatens to fire. Obviously, this is treated as comedy.

I'd like to pause for a moment because I'm sure people will point out that other games/films/television shows have treated groin attacks as comedy. Heavenly Sword is nothing new on that front. Why single out Heavenly Sword?

Well, I don't want people to think I'm singling out Heavenly Sword because there are other games with uses of groin attacks that I object to. However, it is slightly different in a number of ways. Most notably, it actually serves a purpose in the storyline; unlike, say the one-hit-kill groin shots in Metal Gear Solid and Johnny Cage's crotch-punch from Mortal Kombat, Kai threatening the guard in Heavenly Sword with genital mutilation earned her the password. She was actually rewarded for threatening to destroy a man's genitalia. What's the reward in Mortal Kombat and Metal Gear Solid? Removing a bit of your opponents health and a one-hit-kill, respectively. There are other ways to do those things in those games. However, even after Kai destroyed his hiding place, the guard captain refused to talk. He spoke up immediately as soon as his genitalia was threatened. So the message, apparently, is "women, you can get what you want from men if you threaten to mutilate their genitals. And it's not a bad thing to do, it's funny!"

You also have to take into account that because this happens during a cutscene, it's not comparable to the MGS or MK examples; those serve a purpose in gameplay while the scene pictured above could've been completely avoided if Ninja Theory didn't want it in the game. There is no equivalent in Metal Gear Solid or Mortal Kombat. Remember the keycards in Metal Gear Solid 1? You usually received a new one after each boss fight, to access new areas. Imagine if Snake had to threaten every boss' genitals while saying funny lines to get them. Sniper Wolf's death would certainly be a lot less depressing, although to say it would be in bad taste is an understatement.

There's also the issue of the misandrist themes in the rest of the game. Unlike MGS and MK, there aren't any positive male characters in Heavenly Sword. On its own, the threat of a groin attack from the quirky comic relief character of the game might serve as the fun little one-off joke that it was meant to be. Combined with the rapist, woman-killing villain (who later gets a completely serious elbow to the groin), his woman-killing sidekick general, the ineffective leader and father of the heroine, the sexist bad army, the sexist good army and the flawless heroines, a far worse light is shed on the supposedly-funny threat of genital mutilation.

Anyway, back to the game. Kai gets the Heavenly Sword back but Flying Fox attacks her. This is where we learn that he killed Kai's mother and kept her corpse on display in the armory as a trophy. So Kai has a flashback to this and runs away from Flying Fox, who she's terrified of.

For his own entertainment, Bohan pits Nariko against her clanmates – who were apparently recaptured off-screen, without mention – and states this simple outcome; “last man standing lives, everyone else dies”. For some odd reason, however, there’s no in-fighting between any of the male members of the clan. As soon as you gain control of Nariko, it’s everyone vs. her. I think this was just to make the game less hectic than a free-for-all but it certainly comes across as odd. All the male clansmen want to kill Nariko but she’s given the option to kill or paralyse all of them. Maybe they figured she was bound to win unless they banded together against her? It's probably best to not read too much into that one, since I think it was a deliberate gameplay choice rather than just to show how sexist the clan was against Nariko. Again.

So, Nariko wins, Kai gives her the sword back and Nariko goes on to fight Roach. Not much to say here. Nariko wins but Roach survives. Nariko escapes. Flying Fox almost kills Kai, Nariko fights him, Kai ends up with enough life left in her to land the killing shot on Flying Fox, as revenge for killing her mother.

Nariko finally returns to the clan, carrying an injured Kai in her arms. She gives Shen the cold shoulder when he greets her. While Kai was kidnapped, Nariko narrates that when she found Kai, she didn’t want her to face a life of battle. So when Nariko returns to the clan, we get this exchange:

Nariko: "That is why I have returned."

Shen: "To fight for us?"

Nariko: "No. To fight for her."

In other words, it’s only Kai’s future that Nariko cares about. Not the other male clanmembers. Strictly speaking, hasn’t Nariko already failed to save Kai from a life of battle? Surely, there are better examples of innocents than a girl who has murdered hundreds but no; it’s Kai, and only Kai, that Nariko cares about.

Bohan's army attacks again and during a cutscene, Shen acknowledges his failure to be a father to Nariko with the sentence, "I know that in my desire to be your tutor, I neglected you as a father. It was a poor decision, for me and for you". Nariko replies with, "if you hadn’t, I probably would’ve died a long time ago". It’s pretty much the only moment of father-child bonding you see in Heavenly Sword but it also has what TV Tropes refers to as "unfortunate implications"; Nariko outright says that she values Shen more as a tutor than a father. Combined with Bohan’s verbal and physical abuse of Roach, the game practically sends the message that "fatherhood isn’t needed". At best, there’s no value in it and at worst, fathers are abusive scumbags. Shouldn't the game have pointed out that teaching a child to protect themselves is part of being a father?

Anyway, typical final battle stuff happens; Nariko fights army, then fights Bohan, elbows Bohan in the groin during the final quick-time event and wins the fight. During the final cutscene, Bohan gets his eyes pecked out by a Raven-God that he worships (it's complicated) and, just as Nariko wants to kill him, Roach shows up and begs her to stop. He says he wants to take care of Bohan and finally, Bohan seems to acknowledge him as his son. So maybe I need to amend my previous paragraph; fathers are worthwhile people after they've suffered severe injuries. Only incredibly severe though. Shen is captured and beaten? Not good enough. Bohan has his eyes pecked out? Yeah, alright.

Nariko dies at the end of the game -- the sword eventually kills whoever uses it -- and she gives it to Kai to hide. That's that.

So let's look over the characters again. Nariko and Kai are flawless. Shen is useless as a father and ineffective as a leader. Bohan is an abusive father, a rapist and a woman-killer. Flying Fox is a woman-killer too. The bad army is sexist. The good army is sexist. Out of all these characters, Shen is slightly sympathetic but you only sympathise with him because Bohan's treatment of him is so brutal. You could fit any character in his place and the audience reaction would be the same. There's literally no other reason to care about Shen; he tried to kill Nariko at birth and Nariko herself admitted he was better as a tutor rather than a father; emotionless rather than emotional. Roach, who I haven't written much about in this blog, is actually the only male character who's sympathetic and that's because he suffers from mental disabilities and has an abusive father. Plus, lest we forget, even though I learned that there are female enemies in the game and you can perform the same groin-attacking moves on them that you can on the males, the ratio of male-to-female enemies really is more than 100:1. The female enemies are so few in number that I had to replay an area with female enemies just to do more groin-attacking moves, to make sure they could be used. So 99% of the enemies you slaughter are male.

What about Whiptail? Well she's an interesting one because I have a theory that she represents everything that feminists criticise in games. She's scantily-clad. Her dialogue is sexual. She only exists to serve a man. She's even the first boss and the first character to be killed. Just to make it clear that all these things are bad, she's a villain. Nariko and Kai are everything that Whiptail isn't. In spite of what feminist critics of Nariko might say, she's not an example of an over-sexualised female character. The only skin she shows is on her arms, legs and midriff. She's reasonably small-chested. Her outfit doesn't reveal her cleavage. There are no gratuitous shots of her rear. None of her dialogue is sexual. The same goes for Kai and, being a teenage girl, her outfit is even less sexual, covering her midriff. The heroines are complete opposites of the villainess; they are enlightened while she is stuck in a dark age.

The thing is, I've heard certain works described derisively as "a male fantasy". Usually any show or film where an unattractive man ends up with an attractive woman. So why isn't something like Heavenly Sword described as "a feminist fantasy" or at least "a misandrist fantasy"? I don't think I've ever heard those phrases used outside of stories featuring female-only utopias. However, if I had to come up with a mainstream work that fit that description, Heavenly Sword would be it.

So is Heavenly Sword an awful game that you should never, ever play? No, actually, it's not. It's worth playing once. Rent it, if you can. I said in a previous post that games can feature content that deeply offends you, but you can still enjoy them if the gameplay is good enough. Heavenly Sword is one of those games. It won't keep you playing for months on end but it's fun for a little while. I like the blocking system and the quick-time events are nowhere near as annoying as I remember them being. Probably because I played games featuring much worse QTEs since then.

Phew! So that's finally over and done with. Sorry that this blog took so long, by the way. As always, contact me at themalesofgames@gmail.com or leave a comment below if you want to give feedback or suggest a topic for a blog post.