Shocked and Appalled

Star Wars: The Old Republic launched about a month ago (motto: "What Would WoW Do?"). There is much that can be said about the game, like EA's general jackassery, the fact that it is simultaneously the fastest-selling MMO and failing to meet sales projections, whether or not a game of that scale is sustainable, how successfully Bioware integrated their "fourth pillar" of story, or myriads of other topics. Many others are talking about such things, and perhaps I will weigh in later. But for now, I wanted to focus on one particularly shocking and appalling aspect of the game.

The artists at Bioware decided, it seems, to give one of the six Star Wars movies particular attention. One scene from one of the six movies. One costume choice from one scene from one of the six movies (I think you see where this is going).

Slave Leia costume, seen modeled here by the Murloc's cosplay friend Christy Marie.

Apparently, Bioware thinks that this costume comprised fully three quarters of the Star Wars films, despite the fact that the costume only has a combined 150 seconds of screen time, "including facial closeups and shots of stunt doubles and visual effect images," according to Wookieepedia. Every planet in the game has at least one scuzzy dive populated by alien slave girls doing erotic dances while wearing this costume.

So shocked and appalled by this blatant objectification of women, er, aliens, er, females, that I decided to bring this shocking and appalling art choice of the game to your, and hopefully national, attention. And to properly convey the shockfulness and appallation of this singular-minded part of the game, I had to, for the greater good, record the shocking dancers doing their appalling stripteases, then go through, frame by frame, to find the most shocking and appalling segments, which I have saved to animated images, so you to can be made aware of how shocking and appalling this game is.

Shocking and appalling images after the jump.
(Maaaaaaybe NSFW, unless you work at a strip club.)

(Click on still images to see animations. Note: animations presented as animated png files. Requires Firefox or Opera to view, or a suitable extension for Chrome.)

  

I had to study these looping images for hours on end, to find all the shocking and appalling details. For instance, note the shocking fluidity in the rhythm of her hips, the appallingly hypnotic sway of her lekku, the... excuse me, I have to clean completely-unrelated-to-the-conversation drool off my keyboard.

The shockingly appalling smoothness of the animations tells me they must have used motion capture to create them. I wonder where they got their mo-cap performers?

Actually, scratch that, I think I know.

And there you have it. This game is nothing but shocking and appalling filth. Now if you'll excuse me, I don't think I'm, um, sufficiently shocked and appalled. I need to study just how shocking and appalling these dancing slave girls are. Perhaps for many more hours.