Poll What Do You Think Of Jo's New Look In Perfect Dark?

New Joanna is hot, and looks ready to kick more butt than ever.
That's good enough for me.

It's fine.
She looks like a normal actual human being in the new design.
Like somebody that can blend in like a spy should.
And not like the raver with dubious fashion sense from Zero.

The new design takes its cues from the original render for the N64.
The size and shape of her face and jawbones, her hair style, the basic shape of her nose.

I think personally, the best version of Joanna is from Perfect Dark Zero.

Well her head is a lot squarer

I am biased because I have a financial stake in the game through Crystal Dynamics, but I will say that the game would be vastly improved if she was a wisecracking Gecko that made references to old movies and celebrities

Never liked her designs. But she looks like a man now. Not very feminine, which was one of the appeals of the character. She’s no longer a femme fatale with that jaw line.

@Carck One interesting fact is women of all sorts of genetic backgrounds have jaws of different shapes in real life.

New Joanna is modeled after a real life woman, for example.

@Carck

Women do look different you know ?
And she is supposed to be a spy, not a femme fatale . being able to blend in actually works in her favor

This Joanna Dark looks like a normal person, not a super model.

And if she has a square jaw well, so do may other people .
The n64 render has a pretty square jaw too.

All I’ll say is she looks like a British woman so mission accomplished. Looks better and closer to the N64 version than the crappy faux anime Zero version.

@KitsuneNight @LadyCharlie
You're both implying i said she wasn't a woman. She is very obviously a woman. I said she doesn't look feminine because of her huge chin, and i don't think the character looks as nice because of it.

Not all feminine looking women are super-models either. You're probably assuming i share the same views of the knuckleheads mentioned in the article. I don't. Doesn't make it obligatory to think the character looks good. Don't think she does, she looks manly now

Quotes from the article above.

“That's right – the knucklehead brigade appears to be out in full force because this version of Jo Dark (a character who, lest we forget, looks almost entirely different in each game she's starred in) doesn't meet their own personal fantasy of what the video game heroine should look like.”

“We'll refrain from posting some of the more eyebrow-raising takes”

Clearly there’s not going to be an open discussion on this if you’re going to refer to people who prefer the more “sexualised” look to Jo as the “knucklehead brigade” and then moderate it by removing replies that argue this.

Massive jaw and beady little eyes. So unappealing its comical.

@Carck
No, I am saying that she looks like a woman with a square jaw.
That's all.
Women come in all shapes and sizes.
And if you dont find this design appealing, well that's okay

To me this new redesign looks more like an actual person now.

I also don't assume anything about you.

@KitsuneNight That's fair. I agree the old designs weren't great either. It's not a character i have ever found appealing, and this redesign won't change my mind :/
But i'm glad other people enjoy it

@jamess modern game journalism at it's finest!

Not a fan. She has a bit too much of a masculine shape to her face that doesn't work for me. I think it's maybe in her jaw and chin or something.

I'm not sure why so many modern artists don't seem to understand what makes a classically beautiful and more universally aesthetically appealing female face and form and such. Or, if they do, they're certainly not creating that as often these days imo.

If she looked more like say Gillian Anderson from the first few seasons of the X-Files, I think that look would work perfectly for this character:

https://c.tenor.com/vETcjT5HmSgAAAAd/tenor.gif

But I think this new design would fit much better into a game like The Last of Us 3 or something.

It seems like a decent enough redesign that takes cues from the previous designs- but really, does it actually matter much either way when the game is first-person?
As far as I'm concerned if the game delivers on the promise of the trailer with smooth Mirror's Edge-ish parkour combined with solid combat and gadgets, then I don't care if they make the player model look like Tommy Pickles.

I do not find her look appealing at all and NO, I'm not in the "knucklehead brigade" either for thinking so. Some people need to be reminded that it's still okay for a heterosexual man to have an opinion on whether a woman is attractive or not, without eliciting the ire of the silly-minded woke - anti male gaze - mob.

Brie Larson might want to have a chat with her lawyers

My opinion on aesthetic preferences is not up for debate and neither are yours. What we find attractive or beautiful or unappealing are largely decided for us when we were born based on our environment.

These straw man arguments about beauty are ludicrous. "You don't like it because it's not your fantasy" BS.

Of the three images at the top, I find zero appealing. I've never cared for western character designs when it comes to video games. I almost always feel like they missed the mark or didn't have an artist that was skilled enough for the task(Mortal Kombat 1&2 for example).

On the left - her head is too big and her eyes, nose, and mouth are out of proportion to her big head.

Center- She looks like she had a cold and has been blowing her nose for days, probably needs some sleep.

On the right- Probably the most solid of the three, is just kind of meh to me. It's okay but it screams forgettable bargain bin title to me.

I've always had a bias in favor of Asian character art(they just have better sensibilities when it comes to blending realism and "cartoon" features imo) and no one is going to shame me into changing my tastes, which is kind of impossible to do anyway.

I like the new design, it's much more realistic. I always thought the Perfect Dark Zero design looked silly but the original was pretty good. More importantly the game is looking very promising and it's first person so you won't be seeing her much anyway.

In any case, where's the Doom guy comparison articles?

Look, all I’m saying is that, if I had her chin, I could lose the beard.

I always feel a bit of the uncanny valley effect in modern games that try to make the characters look as real as possible. But game models like that are quite common now. This one is fine. It's based on a real person who many would consider attractive. The character looks good in this image and in the trailer.

Regarding the removed comments. I know it's fun to jump to conclusions, but I saw them before they were removed. They were not removed for simply having a different opinion.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/05/perfect_darks_joanna_dark_was_based_on_winona_ryder
She was apparently first based on Winona Ryder?

I don't think this new design is that far from the in-game model in the first game (which also had some more sexualized/non-realistic outfits, the game was more james bond-esque and not as self serious), it's fine but not particularly appealing to me. We'll see about the character herself and the story/setting of the game, it seems a bit bland so far.

This article is disingenuous clickbait though, from the juxtaposition of full body sexualized/cartoony shots and the realistic portrait view in the new design, to the framing of the discussion and antagonizing part of your audience. I expected better from this site.

Bad, she looks like a man with that square jaw, he's more manly than me, even I didn't have that perfect square jaw lol.

Western studios have no idea how to render women.

As a fan of the original all the way back to 2000 I only have two requirements for Joanna Dark: that she’s British and that she kicks arse.

That is all.

@PopetheRev28 The render is literally based on a real living woman.

It’s always so weird watching folks have a meltdown about what a woman looks like. Dark looks like a woman who according to the franchise lore is gonna go shoot a bunch of bad guys. Works for me. The only time people should be up in arms is a dating sim as that is the point. And even then mildly so because beauty standards aren’t universal. Otherwise go outside. Women come in various shapes and sizes and appearances.

It looks fine. I just wish the game was more stylized.

I like her PDZ look best but I don't mind the new one. It's a first person game anyway. I'm more concerned about if it's going to be fun to play. I like what I saw but the proof will be finally getting to play it which is probably quite a ways off.

OMFG why did I read these comments? 😒

Considering there have been three original Perfect Dark games in 24 years and only the original is any good, it’s hard to really care about this series. And I say this as someone who was so desperate to buy the N64 original it on day of release, I made my Dad drive over an hour into town when the local game shop had already sold out when I got back after school.

@LadyCharlie That Jawline though... something is way off

Fair comparison from another western studio: Senua at least looks feminine

i think she looks fine but the trailer didn’t inspire confidence in the game for me. They announced this game like 4 years ago? And all they had to show what some heavily scripted “gameplay”? Yikes

@Carck she’s based off a super model. How much more “feminine” can she be??

her jawline is too sharp. her face is more squared than aloy's. sorry, but she could easily pass for a man and that is not something to be proud of when discussing "sexy" female characters (that is the precendent they set with the original character designs afterall).

As a gay dude, I miss the days when characters of all sexes were unapologetically going for sex appeal. By making characters more true to life, they're looking lazy, boring and forgettable to me. Besides, real people irritate me these days, why would I want them in video games I play?

So yup, not a fan of the new Joanna. I have a soft spot for early 2000s Joanna, because the Y2K styling was ON POINT, haha!

@PopetheRev28

Here's a genuine question: Will she put on any makeup at any point in the game?

Woman often actually do that, especially if they're trying to use their feminine ways and sexuality to appeal to, distract, and manipulate men in the kinds of situations that I fully expect an agent type character like Joanna Dark to find herself in at times. Even if they're just attending posh dos or going out for a nice meal and stuff, they do indeed tend to put on some makeup and get all dressed up to look their best. It's really perfectly normal stuff that literally multibillion dollar industries are based on.

Because, no offense, but this person ain't gonna be distracting anyone.

I guess she will be totally cool for blending into a crowd without anyone giving her a second look though, or infiltrating a modern university and fitting right in with the average person there.

But, just to double check, because I might have missed some development blog on this where they've specifically said they're trying to update the character for a modern audience: She is still being portrayed as a hetronormative hetrosexual biological women who uses she/her pronouns and is totally cool with using her female sexuality to get her way in certain situations in the field as just one of her non-violent methods of infiltration and so on, yes?

I mean, it wasn't made explicit in the original game that this was what she was doing as I recall, but her look, outfits, demeanour and so on certainly gave an impression of the type of character she was, which is one who knows exactly what she's doing and is fully aware of how to use every tool in her box to get her way. And, much like classic James Bond's unapologetic masculinity and oozing of sexual charm and such, which he used to great effect on multiple occasions, she certainly didn't seem afraid to dress up and play the part in the first Perfect Dark game.

https://youtu.be/qnfiilL_Clk?si=HdQl7aRaoD_qQjrV&t=1046

https://youtu.be/qnfiilL_Clk?si=dRRIebm3CA9JwUae&t=1477

Note: I just realised that this version of Joanna Dark I linked has a very [young] Victoria Beckham look about her.

So, yeah, I genuinely want to know if this Joanna Dark is going to, dare I say it, sex it up at any point in the game.

As long as the game doesn’t play like Perfect Dreck, I don’t mind!

@Ganner I don’t think it’s a coincidence that IGN acquired Hookshot Media (Nintendo Life, Push Square, Pure Xbox and Time Extension) in May.

"That's right – the knucklehead brigade appears to be out in full force because this version of Jo Dark (a character who, lest we forget, looks almost entirely different in each game she's starred in) doesn't meet their own personal fantasy of what the video game heroine should look like."

(question: why the insulting in this part of this article)

Nah, don't like it.
But netherless, don't trusting a Reboot.

It's really difficult to build a franchise around a character that doesn't resemble their past self in each new iteration. I get the feeling that they just don't really care about the characters or in keeping Perfect Dark as a viable property. But they needed to show SOMETHING at Xbox to complete that milestone. Something to keep up the appearance that Xbox gives a hoot about video games. But it's really just corpo key jingling. Having played a ton of the original on N64, this just screams generic future shooter which happens to have the PD IP plopped in. QUICK! Bust out the "things aren't what they seem" trope!, Oh! and make the protag have a head hurty scene! They'll chug that slop up!

Sorry, I'm tired of these uncreatives. The whole thing looks like trash. And her appearance is but a distraction.

@Zeebor15 I miss Gex.

@Grail_Quest I'm still mad and confused Embracer didn't get him in the sale. Literally, it took the worst division of Embracer to get Gex out of the Square dungeon anyway.

This doesn't even look like a Perfect Dark game.
It feels like they made a mediocre Hitman/Deus Ex styled game, and just threw the Perfect Dark name on it, to save the project.

She doesn't sell a game to me visually and I wouldn't know it was the character from Perfect Dark unless you told me so it's gonna be a hard no, I think it's a failure of a main character on those fronts.

I think the vision always was that she is hot... she isn't anymore and the reason for that is likely the screaming minirity that it's not ok anymore for women in media to look good.

She looks like a female Brock Lesnar now.

@jamess Yeah I notice their sites have been feeling a lot more "mainstream gaming industry in the 2020's"

@Damo Thanks for clarifying.

FYI I used the following link, which is IGN’s own reporting of the acquisition. It gives “IGN Entertainment” as the acquiring division and gives the impression that IGN is now in control of the Hookshot media brands.

https://www.ign.com/articles/ign-entertainment-acquires-eurogamer-gi-vg247-rock-paper-shotgun-and-more

It’s good to hear you’ve retained your editorial independence though. I’ve enjoyed your work for the Hookshot Media sites for a number of years and really like what you’ve been doing with Time Extension. Long may it continue.