I would like to share with you my opinion on the subject, explaining as well why I think you are wrong.
1. What's in a name?
Videogames are a very young media, and they were once aimed at kids and teenagers. As a results, they can often use juvenile methods to appease their public, one of the most overused being the sexualization of female characters. Japanese games, for example, do it all the time: Ivy from Soul Calibur, Gloria/Trish from Devil May Cry and obviously Bayonetta are all oversexualized characters... they were designed, from the very beginning, to appease players on a very basic level. To put it honestly, those "women" were designed to make players horny while playing.
See, that's the very purpose of sexualizing a character, appease the player with sexually oriented images. Now, what would be the purpose of sexualizing EDI? Mass Effect already has women and men with which you can actually have sex, the game surely doesn't need to appease players on that topic. Also, EDI is not a romanceable option, she is actually the only main character that has a compelling love story that does not involve Shepard. Why the hell BioWare would want to sexualize EDI? It does not make sense, and I'll tell you why: EDI's body is not an example of oversexualizing the female body.
2. "But she has high heels and huge boobs!"
(Technically, her boobs are smaller than Liara's, but that's just a side note to put things in perspective)
When you saw EDI for the first time, what were you thinking? Probably, "oh, this robot has high heels, huge bobos, looks almost naked... it's so sexualized!". I can understand this, this kind of thoughts probably comes from the minds of gamers who have been used to see characterse like Bayonetta everywhere, but that's not what I thought. My first opinion on EDI was: "Woah, she looks very vintage." And guess what? I was right!
EDI's body was based on Maria, a character from the 1927 Sci-Fi movie "Metropolis" that I recently had the pleasure to see. Here she is:
Add a couple of "shiny metal" effects like those on Shepard's new N7 Armor, the face of Tricia Helfer and you've got EDI. Now, Maria is obviously designed to look attractive, but not in the way you would think. She is not a "nerdbait", she is not there to stimulate your sexual desires. She is there to use her appealing looks as a functional part of the story (I'm not gonna spoil you how).
And EDI does exactly that. Her character development from incorporeal AI to something more "alive" is one of the primary themes of the game, and gaining an attractive body is one of the first steps that change her point of view on humans. With her new body she start interacting with people defeating their prejudice and starting to know how organics works. She is attractive, but not designed to make the player horny like oversexualized character: she is designed to appear attractive to the in-game characters. She is not "attainable", she cannot have sex with the player nor is interested in it.
Also, she's cleary a tribute to the very roots of the Sci-Fi mythos, and that already put her one step ahead of many other attractive female videogame characters.
3. In The End
I'm not forcing you to like EDI. I'm not telling you that you should go now and select Synthesis or Control to keep her alive. I'm just stating that EDI being oversexualized is a fallacious statement and is actually insulting both BioWare work and even the character development of any other LI. Because if EDI is a character made to appeal players through sexuality, then what does that make characters like Liara, Tali or Miranda, women with attractive bodies who actually want to have sex with you during the game?
I'm just asking you not to use double standards: you like Miranda because of her strong personality? Then please take in consideration EDI's character and not just her curves. Which are not out of place, and I just explained why.
4. TL;DR
- EDI's body is not an example of oversexualizing female characters. She is a tribute to vintage Sci-Fi designs.
- EDI is not a LI, so it would not make sense to oversexualize her.
- Please judge EDI according to her character development just like you do with people like Liara, Tali or Garrus.
Modifié par Jonata, 19 août 2012 - 04:18 .
Retour en haut
