God of War - the Non-Ladies Man

Is it absolutely necessary that the women in God of War II be so damn ugly? I just finished playing the game and I was amazed that they somehow managed to make the environments gorgeous and the female characters utterly wretched. I remember thinking the same thing in God of War the First—that the artists who made the female models either were misogynists or had never actually seen a woman’s body.

It’s funny too considering both games have erotic little uh…”minigames” wherein Kratos, the demigod hero of the franchise demonstrates his bedside manner to some enthusiastic ladies of the night. I don’t generally have too much issue with incidental cheesecake in games—however, what I DO have issue with his badly done cheesecake.

The women in the GOW games remind me of Renaissance sculpture. Renaissance artists apparently had more access to male models (not to mention a general preference for sultry young Italian boys), hence their female subjects were often based on male models. The muscular thighs and broad shoulders of Michelangelo’s sculpture “Night” for instance--

--make it painfully obvious that the artiste figured he could use a male model, slap a pair of grapefruit halves on his chest and none of us would be the wiser.

Now don't jump to the conclusion that I’m making statements regarding the "preferences" of the artists on the God of War team, but I can’t figure out why in hell they make their female characters—from prostitutes to goddesses—look like used-up Vegas strippers with bad boob jobs. All of them are haggard and hard in the face, with watermelon-sized breasts that in their granitelike immovability, manage to avoid being remotely sexy.

Granted, all the humanoid characters in GOW I and II are hard-edged and that works for walking/talking stone deities, mythological beasts and bloodthirsty warriors. But a fondly-remembered wife, a bevy of brothel babes or luminous incarnations of feminine divinity? Not so much.

The God of War franchise has now produced two extremely entertaining and successful games so I’m sure there are people out there who’ll wonder why the hell I’d bother mentioning such an admittedly minor aspect of the games. But I’m sorry – there’s precious little acknowledgment of the feminine in games or the game industry as it is. Considering that most of what does exist comes in the form of game hotties, it’s insulting when game developers choose to represent them as nothing more than a pair of ginormo-boobs supported by stiff, disproportionately masculine bodies and fail to take the entire feminine package into account. I’m just saying – if even the babes are getting short shrift, where does that leave the rest of us?