And that's a good thing. Overtly sexy women are a welcome change after 10+ years of deliberately ugly designs being pumped out by the western games industry to avoid offending psychologically fragile women. One-dimensional characters work just fine as video game protagonists in anything that isn't a movie game or a JRPG. Link, Leon S. Kennedy, Raiden (MGS series), Doomguy, (Pre-Reboot) Lara Croft, Mario, Donkey Kong, and Dante are all one-dimensional but still beloved video game protagonists. I could list even more if I wanted to. They work because video games are fundamentally different from film or books by virtue of being games. The purpose of a game is to be fun. A game doesn't need to tell a deep story to be fun. The protagonist is just a digital meat suit the player puts on to interact with the environment. They don't need to be deep. Leon and Raiden in particular were designed for the female gaze. Raiden only exists because Kojima was told by a high school girl that Snake was unattractive and she wanted a younger, cuter protagonist in the next game. His cyborg redesigns in MGS4 and Rising are blatant femboy fetish pandering, just look at the high heels built into his cyborg body. It was even more obvious in his first design for Metal Gear Solid: Rising before it was handed over to Platinum and became Rising: Revengeance. Yet the female gaze is fine, according to the industry. I'm really sick of being told that women can have attractive one-dimensional male characters, but men are evil for wanting attractive one-dimensional female characters.
The most damaging thing gamers ever did was trying to get video games recognized as art. After that movement took off, wannabe filmmakers flooded the industry and now everything has to be an interactive movie. Can a movie game be done right? Absolutely, Mafia: The Old Country is a great example of such. It's quick, well-acted, and to the point. But more often than not it's a detriment to the game, such as Hellblade 2's opening where you spend 30-45 minutes just running forward, Red Dead Redemption 2's pointless chores and long, unskippable skinning animations, and The Metal Gear Solid series' excessively long infodumps (especially MGS4, which had an ending cut scene that lasted 2 hours). And Sony has gone all in on the movie game bandwagon, so they've lost me.
Some IPs I loved that Sony abandoned were SOCOM, Resistance, and the Japan Studio works like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian. Do I want them to bring those back? Hell no. I don't want modern Sony touching those classics with a 10-foot pole. We need to let old franchises die for their own good. The modern games industry is Pet Sematary for video games. Yeah, you can bring them back, but they'll be different, they'll be changed. It won't be them anymore, just something dark wearing their skins. Sometimes, dead is better.
This might be the greatest post I've ever seen on this forum, and an award should be given for it.
I'm so tired of the "gamers need characters they can identify with" view. No we don't. The character onscreen isn't an avatar or representation of me, they're just the puppet I'm using to create the experience I want to see. Do I identify with an anthropomorphic bandicoot, a dude with a mushroom head, or a princess in a frilly pink dress? No, and that's okay. Am I upset that Way of the Samurai has no option to play as a non-Japanese guy who looks like me? Not at all.
If I can choose my own character, I pick a female most of the time. It's not from secretly wanting to be a woman, I just think sexy women kicking ass is entertaining. I don't think it matters if a design is realistic or not. Just make it fun, and it'll sell just fine.
After Dragon's Crown came out in 2013, most of the world forgot how to have fun.
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Is it even possible to beat the Bed of Chaos without getting knocked into the collapsing floors at least once?
