Microsoft mercilessly mocked for 'masculine' remake of female Perfect Dark hero — Xbox calls it 'modern' opportunity

Microsoft and Xbox were dragged through the mud after revealing a reboot of their beloved Perfect Dark franchise that featured a very different looking main character.

The original game was released on the Nintendo 64 in 2000 as a spiritual follow-up to the massively successful James Bond Goldeneye game that sold more than eight million copies.

The original Perfect Dark, which sold a reported 3.2 million copies, featured one of the most iconic female protagonists in video game history, Joanna Dark.

After years of development, Microsoft, Xbox, and their studio decided to reboot the franchise and revealed the never-before-seen gameplay during a 2024 showcase.

What fans saw was a far more androgynous-looking and far less feminine-looking lead character. Their reactions were less than positive.

"Perfect Dark transforms you into the ultimate secret agent. Joanna Dark's perfectly symmetrical, masculine jawline makes her the ideal candidate for disguising herself as a man on the most dangerous missions. One day, she's Joanna; the next, she's Jonathan," an account with 20,000 followers wrote.

The X post compared the female character's face with a strikingly similar male character.

"I will never forgive them for this, Joanna Dark gets the 'modern audience' treatment. The disrespect," wrote Melonie Mac, a gamer with 250,000 followers on X.

'I think Joanna offers a lot of modern opportunities.'

Many viewers have begun labeling woke character reboots as giving them the "modern audience" treatment, which has essentially meant taking once feminine characters and making them uglier or more masculine.

In fact, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer revealed that this may have been the plan all the way back in 2021. During an interview with IGN, Spencer said that character offered an opportunity to focus on a female lead.

"I think it's awesome for us. We can focus on a female protagonist in our lineup. We don't have a lot of that in our first-party [lineup]," Spencer explained. "I think Joanna offers a lot of modern opportunities that I love to see the team kind of focusing on, having a strong protagonist," he added.

The treatment of Joanna Dark, who was originally a feminine, Eastern European-looking woman, mirrors a pattern in the gaming industry among major studios that appears to be weeding out femininity in major characters.

This was no more true than in the latest Star Wars game Outlaws, which was widely criticized for turning its character model into a product of "activism."

'It's not enough to make the female models look plainer, they have to be 'buffed up' and made to look more like men.'

Inversely, a South Korean developer behind the game Stellar Blade was accused of making his main character a sexist stereotype of a female, despite the character being a body scan of a real person.

"There is a trend to make older games more 'realistic' in updates and remakes. Unfortunately, they have taken this to mean that women should be dialed back from their stylized ideals, something they never seem to do to the male characters," said game designer Mark Kern.

"It even goes to an extreme. It's not enough to make the female models look plainer, they have to be 'buffed up' and made to look more like men. This is from the mistaken belief that in order to have equality, women must be painted to have male physical virtues, to be able to do everything a man can do in fighting or physical strength. But this is not the fantasy that female or male gamers want," he continued.

The new Perfect Dark game is being developed by Crystal Dynamics, a studio known for giving the "modern audience" treatment to its own female hero, Lara Croft.

As for the reason why studios are doing this, Kern added:

"I believe there is a secondary reason for the remaking of so many female characters into male analogs, and it is the current war on defining what a woman is, and giving the trans community something more in between. Redefining the standards of feminine beauty to suit modern definitions of what a women can look like."

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