Maybe I just think about biology and physics too much, but when a character's bust size goes over maybe a B, I can't help but think "Wow, that must be awkward in a fist fight." as well as "poor lady, she's going to have lots of back trouble in the near future." I mean, I think Ivy's armour is seriously designed to put the weight of her cleavage on her hips, since it most certainly isn't doing any actual protection.
Maybe it's just the story/literature based wuss in me that says I'd like to have a well defined character before I have a well rendered character, but maybe I'd like some personality and individualism. Take Lara Croft, she's about as shallow as a river in the Sahara during a drought. "But," you might say, "she's witty, and has one liners, and shoots guns!" Yeah, just like every single other hero in her position, take away her breasts and she's back to being the brown-haired, tanned, generic hero number 5,639. This isn't the days of "Jill of the Jungle" (yes, I went there), where having a person with two X sex chromosomes is something unique. Now is the time to really turn these people into something unique. Perhaps give the characters, I dunno, motive?
Okay, let's say... Rather than Lara Croft going into ruins for personal fortune and glory (and save the world, but that's sorta a side effect than a goal), let's say, she's going in there because the Baddies have her child. Sure, it sounds like every other Harrison Ford movie, but the girl's been pinching out of the man's top dresser for cash and knick-knacks so long, might as well steal a pair of his briefs. This way she has some more reasoning to be interested in the characters. Granted, Eidos might not approve, the "MILF" wanting audience certainly isn't as large as those that would want to be the first to besmirch Lara's tomb, but that wouldn't have been a big deal had you not made Lara a sex symbol first, and a character second.
But, children and breeding are far too easy, besides, Women are more than just baby producers, a lot more. They're human beings. One should make a character first, and then flavour them with sex, attributes, and such later. The problem is that both the movie and the game industry tend to think a "MORE is More" approach is good. Take Super Princess Peach. Yay, now it's Peach Toadstool's turn to go and save Mario Mario's stereotypically Italian rump... with the power... of overly powerful... emotions. So, to set fire to things, I need to make Peach PMS, or make her sob to make plants grow. Wow, Nintendo, two steps forward, twelve steps back as far as Equality is concerned.
Granted, this rant has little to do with the titular topic (*sigh...* pun intended). But, that's unfortunately where we're at, female characters are merely generic characters with breasts attached to them, and waist lines that would require a couple kidneys and a number of metres of intestine removed.
