A new Street Fighter V has been revealed. Her name is Laura, she has gigantic breasts and her outfit is keen to show off this fact. This now means that 3 of the 5 female Street Fighter V combatants have overtly sexual character designs, but because this is a fighting game and not Metal Gear Solid V, everybody’s pretty okay with it.
Laura, whose character design revolves around the core concepts of the color green and boobs, was leaked by Japanese magazine Famitsu (via Eventhubs), with outfit, accompanying stage and fighting style all suggesting that she’s Brazilian. Like her fellow Brazilian Street Fighter combatant Blanka, she also appears to have the ability to shock her opponents with electricity. Must be something in the water.
This leak follows Capcom’s unveiling of Rainbow Mika, an ass-centric character who along with being comically out of proportion, has a fighting style that largely revolves around her buttocks. Then you have Cammy, a series veteran most well-known for an outfit that looks like it must be giving her a perennial wedgie, who sits alongside Chun-Li and Karin whose designs break the mold by virtue of them not being built to serve as uncomfortable wank fantasies.
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But Street Fighter V has largely “gotten away with it” (i.e. hasn’t been the subject of a thousand opinion pieces from various gaming outlets) due to us accepting this as the common standard for fighting games. Dead or Alive features near-naked women, SoulCalibur does it, so why shouldn’t Street Fighter be allowed to do it, too? That Street Fighter V has managed to make these character reveals with little backlash among both gaming critics and gamers alike represents something of a double-standard in the industry, with Hideo Kojima being hounded for the design of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’s scantily clad Quiet. It’s not even as though Street Fighter V is a less anticipated game than MGSV which is why it’s falling below the radar – Street Fighter V is the latest entry in a series that has whole tournaments set up devoted to playing it, and it’s got a good chance of pulling in higher numbers in its lifetime than MGSV.
Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on in regards to such gratuitously sexualized character designs, this double standard should still be discussed. If you’re going to argue until you’re blue in the face about whether or not it’s agreeable that a developer should choose to place a huge emphasis upon their female characters’ cleavage, then surely you shouldn’t let an entire genre of video game get away with doing so without so much as a passing comment?
