Elexis Sinclaire

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Elexis Sinclaire is a fictional character in the SiN first-person shooter video game series by Ritual Entertainment. Elexis is the main antagonist character in the cyberpunk-themed SiN series, where she is a rich and powerful mad scientist who is secretly engaged in organized crime and planning to make an radical artificial evolutionary advance to the human race, and enemy of the protagonist character, private security force commander John R. Blade. She was introduced in the game SiN in 1998.

Elexis is also the main antagonist in Sin: The Movie, an anime film produced by ADV Films along with Ritual Entertainment. In the 2006 game SiN Episodes, her design was based on the model Bianca Beauchamp. Elexis is often perceived as one of the most sexual (either sexiest or most sexualized) female characters in video gaming. As such, she received a polarized but mostly positive critical reception.

Appearances

In video games

At the beginning of SiN, the beautiful, promiscuous,^[1] charismatic and ruthless Elexis Sinclaire is a genius-level biochemist and genetic engineer who is the CEO of a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company called the SinTEK Industries. Elexis was born in 2006 and is 31-year-old by the events of the first game. Her biological mother Diane Kettle Sinclair abandoned her at an early age; during her upbringing she learnt from her devoted father, Dr. Thrall Sinclaire, and eventually took a position at SiNtek as a geneticist. Rising through the corporate ranks she eventually rose to supreme power after her father's mysterious disappearance. Elexis and SinTEK turned to illicit trades with their own brands of chemicals and drugs. Eventually her research led to the development of U4, SinTEK's most advanced chemical agent with mutagenetic properties. Ultimately, she secretly plans to overrun the world with her mutants and forcibly evolve the humankind, bringing about a new world order.^[2][3]

In the games, Elexis is nemesis of the player character, the private security force HARDCORPS commander Colonel John R. Blade, and they are both based in Freeport City, a "near-future mixture of San Francisco, Tokyo and New York."^[4] After her narrow escape at the end of SiN, she is missing in the 1999's expansion pack SiN: Wages of Sin but returns in SiN Episodes,^[4] of which just the episode Emergence was released in 2006 before the series' developer Ritual Entertainment ceased to exist in 2007. Ritual's community relations manager, Steve Hessel, said "the resequencing process that put her DNA back together made her a bit younger, but mentally she's still her brilliant and scheming old self."^[5]

Elexis appears only in cutscenes during the first game's single-player mode,^[6] including the pre-rendered ending cutscene. One of in-game character models of her is also available to use as a "skin" in the game's multiplayer mode, even as the players using it will always see Blade's hands holding the weapon.^[7] The first SiN also features an Easter egg scene of Elexis masturbating in a hot tub, which is only available after using a cheat mode.^[8][9] In SiN Episodes: Emergence, she only appears in person during the game's introduction cutscene that are run on the engine as she stands over the captured Blade while discussing her current plans with her henchman Viktor.^[10] She was supposed to appear in the next eight parts SiN Episodes, but the series was cancelled after only one.^[11]

Other appearances

Bianca Beauchamp as Elexis Sinclaire at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006

The character was used for the Voodoo2 advertisement "Death never looked so pretty."^[12] Fetish model Vanessa Upton was hired by the publisher Activision to promote the first game in 1998, including in an exclusive Elexis cosplay photo session for the magazine MegaStar.^[13][14] Later, the character was portrayed by French-Canadian fetish and adult model Bianca Beauchamp to promote SiN Episodes: Emergence in a photo session,^[15][16] and by appearing in person at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006^[17] where she was voted the E3's Hottest Booth Babe by Attack of the Show! viewers^[18] and noted by several other media outlets.^[19]

Elexis, voiced by Kaori Yamagata,^[20] also appears in the 2000 anime original video animation Sin: The Movie, which is a non-canonical retelling of the first game. In the film, her father was taken down by the government for his mad biological experiments that she continues (later it is revealed that she actually keeps her father as a huge mutated monster). She also has a lover named Vincent, whom she also turns into a monster and then vivisects. At the end of the film, she falls from a skyrise building, presumably to her death.

Character design

In the original SiN game, many of the official arts showed her portrayed as carrying handguns and submachine guns, including in the game's package European cover pictures,^[21] but she wields no weapons at any point in the actual game's story mode. According to Ritual Entertainment co-founder Richard Gray, Elexis and Blade "have kind of a strange obsession with one another for various reasons. It's almost like a love / hate relationship."^[22] For the game's sequel, initially titled SIN2, at least one re-design of the character has been created and publicily revealed in 2003,^[23] but then abandoned. Elexis' ultimate new look in SiN Episodes was closely based on Bianca Beauchamp, who then served as Elexis' real-life model for publicity and trade show appearances.^[15] She described the character as "the evil bitch".^[17]

According to PC Zone, Elexis had "clearly experimented a little too much on herself and is a self-styled Mad Genius. She wears a series of futuristic leather outfits, has a twisted sense of humour and may be bisexual."^[24] Voice actress Hannah Logan, who portrayed the character in both games, said she can have "a really low" voice and "do sexy vixens pretty well and it comes pretty easily."^[25] Logan commented on the character: "I think Elexis is very much in touch with her 'feminine' side, but uses it in a masculine way, as a weapon. A bimbo is, ultimately, a victim. Elexis knows exactly what she is doing - she uses her sensuality to win, not that it always works, but it is definitely a major piece of ammo in her arsenal."^[26]

Reception

Elexis Sinclaire was received mostly very positively. In 2000, she was voted the ninth best female character in the history of PC gaming by readers of GameSpot.^[28] Polish edition of GameStar voted her at 15th place in the 2006 poll for the title of "Miss of the Video Game World",^[29] In 2007, she was included in Tom's Hardware list of 50 greatest female characters in video game history, adding that "with the brains of a mad scientist and the body of an underwear model, Elexis is one of a kind."^[30] That same year, "Elexis' curvy physique" in SiN Episodes "easily squeezed her" into fifth place in ActionTrip's list of top "video game chicks".^[31] In 2008, GameDaily ranked the SiN Episodes version of Elexis as the 21st top "hottest game babe",^[32] while German magazine PC Games Hardware included her among the 112 most important female characters of PC games twice (separately for her appearances in the original SiN and in Episodes).^[33][34] In 2010, UGO listed her as one of the 50 "hottest" women games in video games, stating: "Elexis Sinclaire is charming, brilliant, and an absolute fox with nigh-impossible proportions."^[35] That same year, UGO's K. Thor Jensen included the hot tub Easter egg on the list of top 25 sexy video game secrets,^[36] and she also placed seventh on machinima.com's list of the gaming's top cleavagey characters.^[37] In 2011, GameHall gave Elexis a special mention before the countdown of the ten most beautiful and deadly video game villainesses,^[38] while Wirtualna Polska listed her as one of top ten female antagonists in gaming,^[39] and Virgin Media included "the improbably proportioned Elexis" on the list of top ten "game girls you wouldn't dare to date".^[40] In iiNet's 2012 list of the "seven deadly sins of FPS gaming", Elexis represented lust.^[41] In 2013, Gameranx ranked her as the fourth sexiest female villain in video game history^[42] and GRY-Online included her among the ten most toxic women in video games.^[43] GamesRadar discussed her in the article about the best breasts in video games, commenting that "more than sinful, these magnificent mammillae ought to be illegal,"^[44] and featured "Elexis’ sizzling flesh" in the article about video game franchises "founded on boobs".^[45] She was ranked as the 17th best looking game woman by GameHall's Portal PlayGame in 2014.^[46]

Elexis Sinclaire as seen in the original game's notorious final cutscene. UGO featured Elexis escaping by distracting the protagonist Blade "with the concept of her vagina" among the weirdest game endings^[47]

According to the book Story-Driven Character Design, the "beautiful, sexy" Elexis Sinclair was the main selling point of the first game.^[48] German magazine Power Play introduced SiN with "only two words: Elexis Sinclair [sic]!"^[49] and the review was titled "Elexis arrives";^[50] Destructoid's Andy Dixon recalled how back in 1998, he bought SiN instead of Half-Life for one reason: "That's how badly I wanted to see Elexis Sinclaire's polygon boobs."^[51] The book Gendered Bodies and New Technologies found Elexis' character to be fascinating for transforming technology into "Mother Nature."^[3] According to the book Game Design, "it's hard not to argue that sex appeal had something to do with the success of Sin's Elexis Sinclaire."^[52] Computer Games Magazine's Jason Cross wrote Elexis has "a body that would make Lara Croft blush."^[53] A 1999 article about female video game characters in Polish magazine Gambler opined that Elexis was a "tremendous" challenger for Lara, as she was "even better built, with even greater bust and with a beauty mark like Cindy Crawford," and a character that would be rivaled only by Zanthia from the second part of The Legend of Kyrandia and Liz Taylor in the film Cleopatra.^[27] Power Play called her the most attractive "Bitch" (in English) of computer games^[50] and another German magazine PC Action stated that Elexis and not Lara should be now a game symbol of "female power".^[54] In 2008, MSN featured her among the five characters described as "some of the best-looking game characters with perfect figures", including Lara Croft among others.^[55] Elexis was also compared to the 'evil dominatrix' type video game characters Dark Queen and Ivy Valentine,^[56] as well as to actress Charisma Carpenter,^[30] and held as a high point of the SiN series overall.^[40]

However, there was also some negative reception of the character, described by Matt Slagle of Associated Press as "outrageously proportioned".^[57] In a review of Emergence, Computer Gaming World criticized the "cringe-inducing scenes [of] villainous sexpot Elexis Sinclaire's digitized boobs practically slapping you in the face."^[58] Phaedra Boinodiris from WomenGamers.com, talking to GamesRadar in 2007, used Elexis as an example of game characters "sexualized to the point of deformity" as she looked "like she crawled out of an S&M club."^[59] In 2011, Wirtualna Polska ranked Elexis from the original SiN as the sixth "most unrealistic and sexist depiction of women in games".^[60] In 2012, Shelby Reiches of Cheat Code Central included "Elexis' Hidden Button" scene among the four worst cinematic scenes in games, commenting that "the player's final confrontation with villain Elexis Sinclaire, already dolled up to look like a stereotypical sex worker, involves her 'out-smarting' the player by evoking Basic Instinct's Sharon Stone. Elexis, however, lacks her inspiration's sophistication," and calling it not as much as provocative but rather "awkward and nonsensical".^[61]

References