Gorrath said:
Basically, the only argument that I think is justified in most of these discussion is the argument that the tastes of many people are not well represented in games because of creative stagnation brought about by corporate meddling and outdated (or bizarre) ideas about what constitutes a viable game.
This is well said.
Gorrath said:
The arguments that a specific character are or are not sexy are, to me, pointless as they really don't demonstrate anything but the personal preferences of the person making the argument.
Though, I'll add to this that it isn't really about which character is sexy to someone, but was the character designed with the idea to make him or her look sexy to the core intended audience. And I wouldn't say that Kratos was designed with that idea. I can't imagine that his appearance stemmed from "Let's make a hot dude" rather than "Let's make a threatening murdering action-movie ideal dude". Of course, someone is going to find him sexy, there's a fetish for everything. But I doubt that was the main intention of his design. What also matters is the posing and the camera; Kratos never really poses around for ogling and I wouldn't say that the camera pans towards him in a way for us to get hot and bothered. It's more like that the entirety of his design tells us "This guy can rip you apart, he is dangerous and scary". Again, someone will find that sexy, no doubt. However, I wouldn't say that sexiness is in the core of his design and/or appeal.
Other than that, sexualization is not inherently bad, but there should be a time and a place for it. The problem is the abundance of it and when it's present in situations where it really makes no sense (when male armors are fully covered and female armors are not, for example. That smacks me in the face immediately, these characters clearly don't exist in the same universe). I'm generally not bothered by it, but there are far too many examples in all forms of media and at this point, it's just lazy and boring.