Players noticed an abundance of attractive heroines in trailers at gamescom, but almost all the games turned out to be Asian
A roundup of seven shots featuring female characters from Gamescom Opening Night Live trailers caught the attention of a certain corner of gamers.
In the original post on X, the trend got linked to audience pressure on the industry – the poster claimed heroine designs had become noticeably more attractive. But the community quickly set the record straight.
Commenters pointed out that almost every game in those shots comes from China, South Korea, or Japan, where Western inclusive design practices never really took hold in the same form.
That suggests any supposed shift in course at Western studios has nothing to do with it, and the roundup simply reflects the lineup of the show itself.
Others just note that this year Opening Night Live featured very few major Western releases with female protagonists.
The lineup does skew heavily toward Asia. Here are the games featured in the roundup and shown during the broadcast:
Tides of Annihilation – a slasher from Chinese studio Eclipse Glow Games
PUBG: DED.NET – a multiplayer shooter from South Korean Krafton
Nodusfall – a co-op action game from Hoyoverse, a division of Shanghai based miHoYo
The Blood of Dawnwalker – an RPG from Polish studio Rebel Wolves
Aion 2 – a Korean MMORPG gearing up for a Western release
Showa American Story – an action RPG from Chinese studio Nekcom
Nodusfall actually opened the show – Hoyoverse new co-op action title trades the anime look of Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail for a darker, more detailed dark fantasy style reminiscent of Elden Ring.
The only shot from a European game in the roundup belongs to The Blood of Dawnwalker, the vampire RPG from Rebel Wolves, a studio built by Witcher 3 veterans. The game launches on September 3, 2026.
Debates over how trailer heroines look have flared up at every major show since 2023, but this time it collided with a more obvious shift. Chinese and Korean publishers took up a huge chunk of Opening Night Live airtime, including the opening slot. Krafton alone showed off five new games, among them PUBG: DED.NET, NO LAW, Project ZETA, Age Twisters, and TARAE: The Unbound.
One curious detail is how closely some of these heroines resemble Eve from Stellar Blade, which makes it look like plenty of developers now treat her design as an easy shortcut to grabbing attention.
