This post is not to say how female protagonists shouldn’t exist, as I feel this is in no way the case; it is more the women are poorly represented in video games today. In most cases video games are portrayed as girls with big boobs and a massive ass, but you also get them as these overly sexual characters which I feel are used to appeal to the younger players which want to see all this.
In some cases nowadays I feel that this ruins the immersion as the characters do not feel like they would fit into the scenario of the game.
I good example of this is TERA; a male’s high level armour would bulk them up with lots of metal, whereas with the female high level armour you end up with less than when wearing no armour at all. This makes me feel that the developers are congratulating players with more bare flesh each time they get some new gear.
I feel a lot of this is down to Anime and some of the extremely over the top themes; they sometimes could be seen as pornographic due to their content. This has an effect on the way that people develop women in the video games; they end up getting a huge ass and set of breasts and then an absurd personality.
I think that what the industry needs to break this mold is to have a female character with a not so over the top body, but she has a really good personality to carry the story. I feel it is going to start going more in that direction with the release of the new consoles meaning that developers are willing to push more to get a realistic game, which can be supporting both genders in the right way.
However there will never be an end to the development of JRPGs, as they still have a very large audience.
