On his best day Kratos could be the prettiest guy at a haunted house. Marcus Fenix can generously be described as a dump truck with a jaw line. Power fantasy characters are not actually designed to be attractive. This one gets a little bit tricky for a lot of people. We can talk more about this one if we need to but I imagine that it's really just such an obvious similarity that it'll be boring if I harp on it too long. She uses her hair and fabulous shoe guns to slay angels, demons, and even the creator himself. I don't believe for a second that a chainsaw is practical against aliens twice Marcus Fenix's size or that Kratos widdle biddy blades could ever slay an immortal god but it feels cool to do it so by god we're gonna do it!īayonetta makes this one fairly easy too. They effortlessly mow down ridiculous enemies often in completely impractical ways. Marcus Fenix, Kratos, Duke Nukem and pretty much every muscle bound action hero with a sharp object makes this one pretty easy. I think the most obvious one is that the player character needs to be almost comically powerful.
To start, let's try to get at some of the main themes that really make the male power fantasy. Let's see where it works, where it doesn't work, and maybe we can get a little closer to deciding if Bayonetta is a kickass feminist or is just really the "fighting fuck doll" trope. So I'm coming to you guys to see if we can flesh this theory out a little bit. I've had this theory kicking around for a while that that the themes and design choices in Bayonetta almost perfectly mirror the male power fantasy so common in video games, except with a woman at the forefront.