“My appearance may frighten you..."
No, I am not frightened by the appearance of "Zero Suit Kerrigan".
Seriously, it's like the team behind her model and splash never even talked to the story team.
85 Comments
I feel Kai'Sa might just be like Quinn in terms of how underdeveloped she is on release, and I feel she may have been rushed along the development process. This is perhaps not the place to criticize her kit (though I personally think it's disjointed and full of generic mechanics), but her appearance, VO and even backstory feel similarly boring, and incongruous with what she's meant to be. What we all hoped for with Kassadin's daughter was to have a human experience the Void's corruption harder than any other, and come out visibly changed from it. What we got instead was a conventionally attractive young woman in a catsuit, with a generically friendly/bubbly female personality and a monotone voice. Many players have pointed out how she has no personality conveyed through her VO or story, particularly for someone whom everyone expected to have PTSD (which would be unique), but her appearance is probably the biggest contradiction: by intentional design, she looks sexy to the average player, with the skin-tight suit and heavy emphasis on cleavage, but one of her few defining characteristics is that she's meant to look monstrous to people in Runeterra. Perhaps the devs wanted to create a sexy female champion, but Kai'Sa really wasn't the right opportunity for it, at least not when we're constantly informed of how physically repulsive she's meant to be.
On that note: what exactly is the difference between Kaisa and Kai'Sa? Her backstory makes it seem like a big deal, but phonetically the two names are exactly the same, so the entire idea of Void corruption there falls flat. If, at the end of the day, the biggest change the Void brought to Kai'Sa is that it made her mentally add an apostrophe when spelling her name, there's worse things one can suffer.
Overall this kinda reminds me of several sexy medusa characters,where they are described as monstrous in the world,but look absolutely beautiful to the watchers.
However one has to keep in mind that seeing a woman like this in a video game or movie and actually being near one are 2 different things.
If a shuriman saw only her head,they likely wouldn't think that she's odd in any way(or at least nothing to be scared of). But seeing this organic THING sitting on her body,feasting upon her,is something different.It might look cool from a distance,but being close to it is bound to make you scared. Especially when you know from what kind of horror dimension it comes and how dangerous such a monster is.
Literally if she had her cleavage covered up (she can still have well-defined boobs if they really want), her face was a little more "alien" (we're talking Gamora-levels of alien, nothing drastic), and/or her helmet was on 99% of the time, I would understand this sentiment of "she's somewhat frightening to the average human."
I've seen a few people argue that seeing a character like this in a video game, and seeing them in real life are totally different, arguing she would be scarier in person. I agree. However, there is a point where you have to at least try to convince the audience of something. Since Kai'Sa reads to us like a pretty normal-looking human, we are of course going to be confused when other characters and even herself treat her appearance as horrific. Some subtle design cues--something like a third eye or her helmet being up more often--would have the audience at least pausing to think "yeah, that would be kind of freaky".
Visual designs are meant to clue us into important elements of the character, and if Kai'Sa being disconcerting to the average Runeterran resident is important, then her visual design needed to address that more.