The following is a guest post from Ben Godby:
Ben Godby writes mysteriously thrilling pseudo-scientific weird western adventure fantasy tales. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario with a girl, two dogs, and a cat, and blogs at www.bengodby.com.
Whereas Diablo II's final cinematic depicted the Lord of Terror as beastly, heavy-set, and undeniably masculine, Diablo III feminizes the Prime Evil's form with a slender waist, a sauntering gait, and chest muscles that look more like breasts than anything else.
First and foremost, Diablo III is an exceptionally entertaining and highly addictive game. As a player with zero MMO experience, coming in with lots of expectations–I first played Diablo when I was 11–I was highly sceptical of the always-online game, not to mention its “rune”-based, rather than skill-tree and ability score, customization–a big change from Diablo II. But it certainly didn’t take long for Diablo III to win me over. In the age of Skyrim, the Diablo franchise can’t compete as an RPG; but what it lacks there, it makes up in spades as an action-packed loot-bonanza.
This is not to say it’s a perfect game. The mechanics may be at the core of a gaming experience, but anyone with at least one eye and half a brain will find that Diablo III is a game designed for neckbeards and their ilk–leading to a rather complete set of groans and shudders for those of us still hoping that big gaming companies can produce something that is not racist, sexist, and directed by the male gaze.
It takes no particularly critical analysis to realize that the Diablo franchise embodies the notion of “two steps forward, one step back” when it comes to racism. At least in the previous editions, the token person of colour was professed to a class noble and powerful in its own right: the Sorcerer (Diablo) and the Paladin (Diablo II). Alas, in Diablo III, people of colour are relegated to the cartoonish Witch Doctor. Shake your juju, my African friends! And, since Blizzard for some reason didn’t bother to include another coloured class (which would have still left the non-whites outnumbered), all the rest of humanity ought to get on the bandwagon, too. Don’t worry, though: there’s enough shrunken heads for everyone!
But we shouldn’t be too angry, right? Because at least Blizzard made all the classes available in both sexes! That’s progressive, isn’t it? Not exactly. In the fantastic land of Sanctuary, men wear shirts and women wear brassieres (and, concomitantly, men wear pants, and women, thongs). And even when those suits of armour aren’t absurdly lacking in means to protect (and, of course, cover), they’re still form-fitting to those double-D breasts–which sit atop those perfect size 2 waists. Is it the influence of Diablo’s evil reaching forth from the Burning Hells? Or just the male gaze directing all the game’s artwork?
Despite my sarcasm and the rhetorical nature of the question, the first of those two suggestions is actually narratively plausible–because in Diablo III, women aren’t just to be looked at: they’re evil. [WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.] There are only four principal NPCs in Diablo III: Tyrael, the angel who became, when he was cast out of the High Heavens, not just mortal, but a black man (take your pick, visible minorities: savage spellcaster or forsaken of the gods); Deckard Cain, ancient bearer of white-man wisdom; Adria, the witch and seller of magic items from the original game; and Leah, Adria’s daughter. As it turns out, though, Adria–who initially helps the player foil Belial and Azmodan’s machinations–is actually evil, having copulated with Diablo himself to produce Leah–who, in time, becomes the vessel by which Diablo is reincarnated. And, guess what? The latest incarnation of Diablo has breasts.
In short, the women who form the storyline of Diablo III tick off all the feminine stereotypes of the worst kind: knowledgeable, dangerous, sexual Adria; innocent, goofy, tomboyish vessel-for-other-powers Leah; and, finally, the androgynous Prime Evil, Diablo, who growls like a man but walks with an obviously feminine saunter (never mind those mammaries). And, hey, just to make it all pat, Tyrael becomes a doubter later on in the game. Only Deckard Cain, white man extraordinaire, is true to goodness to the very end. Great job, Blizzard: you’ve outdone us all and created the paragon of offensive videogame narrative.
I will never understand how people who are smart enough to create a game so mechanically fantastic can overlook how narratively and graphically offensive it is. Nor will I understand why they couldn’t just add one more character of colour. Even though there’s Tyrael, he is, after all, the only coloured NPC; and at the end of the game, though Heaven lets him back in, Blizzard makes sure we know that he’ll never really be an angel again.
Come now, Blizzard. You had a decade to prepare this game. We who were children when Diablo began are adults now. And though you may not know better, we do. Grow up.
My understanding was that the wizards are east-asian (male and female). Otherwise this is a good article and I agree with everything said.
Yeah, that was my impression too.
I had the same thought.
I just want to call you out one one note of bullshit.
SPOILERS
Calling Tyrael the “forsaken of the gods” utterly ignores what he really is: someone who was so disgusted with the systemic inaction of his peers the sacrificed his angelic nature to do something about it.
Tyrael is a man that embodies duty, sacrifice and justice. Not sure why you’d take “forsaken” from that.
Yeah, Tyrael wasn’t “cast out,” he jumped. That’s the centerpiece of the cutscene that ends Act 1. And in the end, events vindicate his decision, which is the point of the events that end Act 4.
When you drill down into details, several of Tyrael’s conversations indicate that the angels’ purity does not imply their perfection, and that human nobility, which is worked for and earned, is of greater value than angelic nobility, which is automatic and unchosen.
The message of Tyrael’s arc is that going from angel to human was a step up. I believe we can say that black Tyrael was unambiguously a good decision.
The Witch Doctor, on the other hand, is unavoidably grody. On top of the racist visual signifiers, the discourse (e.g. his promo video from the pre-launch site) surrounding him leans on harmful “dark dangerous Voodoo from dark dangerous Africa” stereotypes. Yet, when you get in the game (s)he’s the kindest of the five heroes, resembling the Magical Negro more than any other offensive trope. Given how terrible the surface is, though, it’d be wrong to blame anyone who refused to look beneath it to find the subtle problems.
One thing that disturbs me about the witch doctor that hasn’t been brought up is that so many of the fans who post on the Blizzard forum insist that the male witch doctor’s tremors are due to kuru, a prion disease you can get from cannibalism. I read somewhere that the witch doctor’s tremors actually resemble kuru’s symptoms as well, which is gross racist fail on Blizzard’s part.
But Blizzard also has five short stories up – one for each class. The witch doctor story makes it extremely clear that in their culture, cannibalism is utterly forbidden and an unforgivable crime.
Hm.
I agree with some of this, especially the bits about the Witch Doctor, but some of the rest?
The Wizard is East Asian, so there’s two characters of colour.
I’d have to go back and look at the NPCs, but take a look at the gear sets – the female ones don’t typically show off more flesh than the male, and the body types tend to be pretty similar both within and between classes, excepting the Barbarian. Notably, the actual armour styles are quite similar.
(http://www.diablowiki.net/Gear_sets_gallery).
Cain is not white. He’s not even really paler in D3, but if you look at him in D1 and D2 he’s clearly not white. And much of the wisdom he’s imparting seems as though it could easily be from the setting’s middle-eastern analogues.
Tyrael chose to cast himself out – he wasn’t cast out. And given that we never seen angels under their armour, I thought it was a good choice to make his human form a black man – it’s not his fallen form, it’s his human form, and it’s a nice shout-out to the Paladin from the previous game.
Leah, Adria, and the Witch Doctor are all problematic. Diablo seems more like they wanted to slim the character down from being the muscled male demon from the earlier games, but I hadn’t thought much about the gendering there. It’s possible it was just because the original host body was Leah, at least from a design perspective.
I think the theory of Diablo’s body being feminine because of the host is plausible but still somewhat problematic: He didn’t seem to have a problem destroying all resemblance to his previous host in Diablo II so why stay with a feminine look after tearing apart Leah’s body?
But if it was about changing from the known course then hey sure, I didn’t really feel the design was overtly sexual anyway, yes the chest and the gait suggested feminine but it was still a hulking, burning blood-red monstrosity. If Diablo’s design had to be sexually attractive someone in Blizzard is into some wierd stuff.
The Witch doctor was just cartoonish with his rings and accent though, he was a nice guy but…I could have gone with a more varied inspiration for his design.
That seems to be Blizzard’s problem though: They almost never go for the “pick small bits from everywhere” approach in their design, Pandaren were “Asia all the way!” and the Starcraft and Warcraft universes still have this eerie ressemblence to Warhammer they never seem to get past.
Certainly not going to argue that plot wise D3 has lots of issues, the jeweler, Covetous Shen being another poor example of handling race well. The enchantress (one of three mercenary followers available) hasn’t done anything I immediately noticed as off putting however. Also, you totally left out that the wizard class are designed to be asian and that the female barb does do a good job in not being a size 0 and that she actually looks like a burly fighter that is going to wreck some demons.
I couldn’t take Shen seriously at all because he has the exact same voice as Po’s (duck) dad in Kung Fu Panda.
From what I read in other articles, Leah isn’t really new. What happens to her seems to happen in every game they make. In Warcraft it was Sylvanas(?), In Starcraft it was Kerrigan and now in Diablo we have another “woman that turns evil” and switches sides/gets possesed/is a vessel.
Not to forget Bloodraven and half of her order from D2.
The first thing D3 Diablo reminded me at was D2 Andariel.
You have a few important points, but when your criticisms are held up by so many convenient ommissions/misrepresentations, it takes away from the overall article.
Other people have already mentioned the wizard, so I won’t point that out again. Concerning the clothes, looking at the creation screen, the male and female of each class are wearing pretty much the same outfits (excepting the demon hunter. Apparently heels make you dodge better.) Perhaps that’s just false advertising, I haven’t had the chance to play every class/gender combination. Has anyone played enough to compare?
On the subject of evil women: Adria and Leah are not the only visible women in the game. Off the top of my head there is also Asheara, Maghda, the Enchantress Eirena and Cydaea. Maghda and Cydaea are certainly evil, but the other two? Asheara is integral to your defeat of Belial. She’s the leader of the Iron Wolves and a strong, no-nonsense, kickass fighter who does all she can to protect the civilians of Caldeum. The Enchantress fights at your side to defeat evil and never falters. As for Leah, it is clearly shown that she herself is a good person, despite her fate. Leah is not Diablo.
Also, so what if Diablo has breasts? As a genderqueer/nonconforming person, an androgynous Diablo is pretty awesome to me. I might be happier if there were also a good androgynous character, but still, having such a visible character is amazing.
Lastly, Tyrael: Possibly the greatest hero of humanity there is, who sacrifices everything to save the world, and he’s a black man? AWESOOOOME.
agreed. Wizards are east-asian and both genders look a bit frail and are equally attractive. Monks might look standard european-caucasian, but they are russian-inspired.
And while the voodoo/mojo stuff of the docs is quite risque, the character itself is very wise, maybe the most down-to-earth and humble of all five playable classes. I thought the WD was a cliche until I played one. Looks aren’t everything.
Maghda is a hell of an antagonist who does not use her looks at all, she was designed to look like a mashup between Snow White and Maleficient.
Eirena and her sisters were fighting demons before it was cool when they were only in their teens. She’s a bit awkward and aloof (reminds me a bit of good old Luna Lovegood from HP) but I like her.
Tyrael and Cain were also mentioned before. Cain has always been brown-skinned and I thought the horadric order to be desert-dwelling. Caldeum (and its twin, Lut Gholein) is maybe the most advanced city in the world and might be also the most influencial kingdom/empire. Both cities are clearly arabian.
Tyrael is *the* focal NPC besides Leah and has been in the Diabloverse since the very beginning. I thought it was an awesome move to make him black. Also, the angels/angiris council are no gods, they are just one side in the eternal conflicts and they hapen to be a bit nicer than the demons. Actuelly, the angiris leader is a rare kind of a jerk and the scene in which Tyrael defies him and chooses to be mortal is really awesome. Unless the other angels he sacrifices very much to do what is just and right. In fact, he is the most likeable NPC in D3 for me.
Shen… well… we still don’t know whether Shen is human, a trickster god or some kind of minor demon who likes humans. He tries to make us think of him as being insane, but there is more to him than just stupid ideas.
For the clothes, yes, in most cases the female and male characters dress quite similar. In the first armor tiers (0-2) one might see a bit more flesh with the female chars, but besides the (really stupid) demon hunter heels, I cannot see that much difference. And a thong is nowhere to be found.
I can agree with the article that some parts of D3 were problematic. First, we see a lack of active females, especially in the guard’s sector. We got Asheara and that’s it. Sadly, the artisan enchantress was taken out of the game to make up for a female crafter, but I hope we’ll see her return in the expansion.
We see a lot of emphasis on men trying to attract and exploit as many women as they can (Lyndon and Shen). Although Lyndon has his motives, they could have make him try to act bisexual so he can exploit both women and men through fake romance.
Then there is this oh-so-new (not) vessel thing with Leah and the matching motive by Adria (not that Aegwynn did this before with Medivh… at least she had higher motives and was a badass herself) .
Also, the female models could have used a bit less amphasis on the hourglass shape. Most muscular women won’t have such a well-defined waistline
Besides that, I think the general body types are matching although the female barb or monk could have been a bit older.
@koe
I think I was still in moderation when you wrote your comment, but if you check out the link in my earlier comment you can look at the armour sets for each class-gender combo.
Caveat: I only have second-hand knowledge of D3 via videos. The real-money auction house, the game being designed around the AH and the always-online requirement are too off-putting for me to buy it myself.
Tyrael standing up for what he knows is right instead of sitting on his butt like the rest of Team Featherduster, and the fact that his mortal form is a black man, were actually the only things I liked about the storyline, which looks laughably awful even by Blizzard “standards”. Maybe I’m biased though, since I liked him in D2 already. Shame he doesn’t get/want his shiny wings back, though. The poor bugger sure gets kicked around a lot in this series and doesn’t really accomplish anything, but he shares that fate with all the “good” NPCs in this wank-the-human-ego story.
What I find so mind-boggling about Leah is that she’s either too stupid to breathe or heavily in denial, what with her “just stories” stance on the existence of demons. From what I’ve seen and heard, that makes her extremely unpopular with most players. If Blizzard intended to make her some kind of sympathetic “innocent girl next door” before she gets consumed by her “father”, they totally missed the mark.
What’s with all angels except Hope (?) being male, by the way? To me that’s almost worse than no token girl at all.
Diablo’s makeover is weird since I’m so used to him being this big brutish demon. It also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but then this is Blizzard. If anything, him manifesting some aspects of all the other Evils’ appearance would’ve been interesting, since I understand he absorbed their power? All that aside though, I rather like the sleeker design. A fast, agile predator-like enemy just impresses me more than a stompy steroid hulk. It also reminded me very vaguely of a xenomorph queen, and as an Alien-lover I always dig such a resemblance.
A bit off topic, but I’d say a fast, agile predator-like enemy shaped like a stompy steroid hulk is far too rarely seen in gaming compared to it being quite commonplace IRL. (cf. bears)
i honestly don’t think the design around the auction house thing was intentional. just more a result of incredibly low drop rates, far too many junk rares and an incredibly steep damage and gear curve from each changing difficulty. normal and nightmare weren’t that bad. hell is manageable, though you’d probably still have to put some gold down to survive particularly nasty packs of rares and the likes. inferno mode? expect to spend several million just to get through the first act.
i do actually like the real-money version, but probably for reasons that most wouldn’t think of – it can be a way for people of low finance situations such as poverty or trying to fund their disabilities to scrape in a couple extra bucks for something they’re probably already doing, when things like working extra hours or holding two or three jobs at once is not a viable option. it’s actually something i’m considering doing myself for that exact reason.
I don’t have the page on hand anymore, but I know I’ve read that the loot system is designed around the AH. Makes sense, why implement a service without “encouraging” its use, especially if real money is involved and you take a cut off every listing and sale?
Between hackers, bots and “professional” farmers (which are pretty much the same), I just fear that all the kids who think “cool, free easy money from playing a game” are gonna have a rough awakening at best.
I’m a little skeptical, simply because it seems incredibly unlikely that Blizzard would allow players to somehow profit from their Diablo 3 experience.
I’d love to see some research, though. How many hours of play, and at what skill level, would it take for an average player to recoup the cost of the game?
Itherael is a neuter
But yes, they could have used a non-cannonfodder female angel in addition to Auriel
@Sivi
Nice! It looks like the wizard has the most difference between genders. I wonder why they got ‘singled out’ like that?
@koe
Not sure. Design docs show they emphasized the female Demon Hunter being “sexy”, so maybe a bit of that, wanting to highlight the difference between the female and male Wizards (there was a big kerfuffle a while back about the male Wizard looking too androgynous), and spell-casting classes being typically done a bit fancier (where fancier for women tends to mean more gendered)?
Gawd this article was FANTASTIC. Great writing! I wish I had more to add, but the points are made so well and clearly there’s nothing I feel I should say. Thank you for this article. It’s spot on with every criticism.
I wish I could tell you how many of my guy friends having been griping and moaning that THEY MADE DIABLO A CHICK!! It’s pretty sad really.
I think the Diablo design suffers from the same Kerrigan design philosophy of “let’s keep all the ‘sexy’ parts sexy!” and the “sexy saunter” is kind of obnoxious. But if the whole idea was that Leah was the vessel for Diablo’s reincarnation, then the androgyny makes some sense I guess. Overall I though it was a decent design.
I’d like to point out that Diablo is actually a mixture of all primevals as well as some of the lesser evils now. All those captured in the soulstone are now visible in Diablo. So, its actually not that Diablo is female now. Its that Diablo is androgynous or genderqueer because of the combination of the powers from the soulstone. Look at the model again and look at the various evils you fought. You’ll see resemblances.
I did, however, find the game pretty problematic.
Major problem I have: not sure what the technical term is but the faces that appear showing the face of who is speaking? EVERY FEMALE CHARACTER (with the exception of the PCs) HAS THE SAME FACE. Same face, different hair, sometimes slightly different skintone. It drives me up the wall.
Pretty much sums up a lot of my problems with the game.