DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...
My point is that it's nice if the characters wear clothes that people in the real world would actually wear (vs. clothes designed for sex appeal for the player) regardless of whether they take those clothes off to have sex. Witcher 2 is a borderline example, anyway - Saskia, for instance, gets on my nerves because she wears plate armor with cleavage. But it's still (based on my playthrough - I hear the path I didn't take has a couple pretty sexist character designs) a game that didn't annoy me nearly as much as Mass Effect 2 and DA:O.
Sexy design =/= sexist design. Miranda, Jack, Samara, they all wear what they wear for a reason. Hence, you have your "realism".
The girls in Ninja Gaiden are wearing sexist designed clothing, and are completely objectified. There is no context for why they wear what they wear. There is no practicality for it. There is no character behind their eyes to help us overlook it (or very little character). They wear bondage and fetish outfits, with absurd proportions.
Miranda wears a catsuit because she uses it to enhance her looks. This gives her a (lore) advantage in situations where individuals need to be outsmarted. She also gets an alternate armor that looks excellent, so anyone not comfortable with her catsuit can have her wear that.
Samara wears a relatively revealing outfit, because it is her Justicar attire. She wears that outfit mostly in Asari space. Now, I could be wrong, but it seems to me that Asari (being A sexual) probably don't care one way or another about seeing another Asari's breasts. Attraction between Asari probably lies in other physical and hormonal traits. Hence, it is probable that her suit is open to relieve sweat, in the similar fashion to how a man (even armored) can go sleeveless to relieve sweat. We can assign similar reasoning for Saskia. As a designer this is great, because it allows you to maintain a sexy and visually appealing design, without sacrificing the lore of the universe you helped create.
Jack was probably wearing something slightly heavier before she was put in prison. Unfortunately, Jack was brutally raped while on the Purgatory by the guards, then the inmates. I always imagined them ripping her clothes off. She got pissed (understandably), killed a bunch of people (or tried) and got a time out in cryo. They probably didn't put more clothes on her in the event that she might hide something on her person. I imagined that the Normandy only had Cerberus clothes, and I don't think she'd want to wear those. But she gets two extra outfits that completely cover her up.
In the end though, I find that Jack is so tattooed that it hardly matters that she starts off shirtless. She looks like she's wearing clothing, because she doesn't get that feminine "fleshy" look that I associate with the female figure.
The larger point is that you have games that are pushing the envelope with how much nudity you can get away with in a video game, games that are hyper-macho gorefests targeted at dudebros, and games that are so mainstream that they created the mainstream - and all of these games feature designs for their female characters that are far less demeaning than what we let Bioware get away with. You also a game (Human Revolution) that is competing directly with Mass Effect 3, and seems to take its female characters much more seriously in terms of visual design. That strikes me as somewhat of an issue.
I still think you're putting too much emphasis on appearances, that's all. What HR is going to be great at isn't something superficial like well dressed characters. It'll be well portrayed characters. Same with ME3.
Also, when I think of the dude-bros (believe me, I hate them all), I don't think of Gears of War, Halo, or Witcher. These games may have many of the traits that appeal to dude-bros, like gore and nudity, but they also have fairly mature stories (or stories that try to be mature). They have their own lore, expanded universes, and character conflicts that you don't find in dude-bro games. Bulletstorm, Duke Nukem, and COD I see as dude bro games. They are just silly, loudmouthed, foul, and entertaining. They appeal to the "I drink beer and fart on my couch while making fun of homosexuals after a football game" sort of people. COD is a little more mature, but it is the victim of its own success in my opinion, as it is the head of the "social shooter" genre, and has many buyers who won't even touch the SP.
Which brings me to my final question. If so many big budget developers are now portraying their female characters in a less degrading manner--hell, a great manner it looks like, and only a few games are portraying females as sexual objects, then isn't our medium growing up?
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