The appearance of the protagonist Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West has sparked a significant discussion in the gaming community. At the center of this is a tweet from a Twitter user, featuring a modified image of Aloy with makeup as an example of good character design for women.
What was posted? Last Thursday, new gameplay from Sony’s upcoming game Horizon Forbidden West was showcased during the “State of Play” stream. This ignited a debate on Twitter and other platforms about the appearance of the protagonist Aloy.
Particularly a tweet from the user ApexAlphaJ gained significant attention, where he posted two images of Aloy side by side for comparison. One shows a screenshot from the Sony stream and the other is an edited version of her:
Is it just me, or is Sony making their female protagonists look totally masculine… Almost no curves or just rough, non-feminine facial features. Unlike average women. […] Image from the game on the left, fan-made image on the right. Hire your fans lol
Twitter user ApexAlphaJ
The complaint from ApexAlphaJ and users who agree with him is that the female characters in Sony games do not look feminine enough. In the right image, the user presents his definition of good character design for women in video games. Therefore, Aloy has a photoshopped face that makes her look thinner, gives her a smile, and has a lot of makeup.
“Never met a woman before”
These are the reactions: As a result of the discussion, Aloy trended with over 30,000 tweets worldwide on Twitter. A large portion of the tweets contradicted ApexAlphaJ. According to these comments, Aloy looks like a normal realistic woman. Various other images of Aloy were also posted, pointing out that she is very pretty.
Some users mocked the poster, saying that “average women” do not look like that. In the posts, they claim that the user has never seen a real woman before.
Men see women with tied-up hair and no makeup and say “Is that a man?”
Moreover, users bring up the argument that eyeliner and lip gloss make no sense in Aloy’s world. It is a post-apocalyptic world where the heroine faces dangers daily. She falls on the dirty ground while fighting or dives deep underwater. Makeup fundamentally does not fit into the setting of Horizon Forbidden West.
Other users also mentioned the Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra, who was the model for Aloy’s face, showing that she looks very feminine in photos.
Hannah Hoekstra. Dutch Actress who was the face model for Aloy. Aloy is modeled on a real person, so I really want to know the brand of paint thinner this guy has been sniffing so I know to steer clear of it. pic.twitter.com/Bh8cdNRaVS
— Steve Doyle (@sjd_83) May 30, 2021
Did not understand satire image
This was the intention behind the image: The edited image of Aloy originally came from the subreddit r/gamingcirclejerk. It is a satire subreddit where users poke fun at common gaming clichés. Posts in that subreddit are generally ironic.
The image itself was posted under the title “Hey everyone, I decided to make Aloy less political.” The meaning behind it is that women in games are inherently political unless they look like supermodels.
The author of the image did not intend for his edit to be taken seriously and posted it to mock players like ApexAlphaJ:
In the comments, the satire became even clearer. Users wrote there that Aloy should please have “huge breasts and butts.” Her armor should also be as revealing as possible so that she is not political at all.
This is what it’s all about: In recent years, more and more games have been released featuring female protagonists. Their designs have been very diverse and do not always conform to the beauty standards for women often portrayed in mainstream media.
As a result, there have been ongoing complaints that women in video games should be attractive. Characters like Lara Croft from the reboot games or Ellie from The Last of Us have been criticized for not being sexy enough and that this is a problem for the games. It means that the games with non-sexualized female characters are politically charged and want to spread “a feminist agenda.”
The opposing side, advocating for this development, argues that these characters look more realistic. They look like normal people and not supermodels with unrealistic beauty ideals and body measurements.
Our colleague Heiko Klinge from GameStar has also commented on this:
Horizon Forbidden West: Those who criticize Aloy’s appearance never truly loved games
