Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Not to mention that MGSV takes itself more seriously than any other metal gear game. So the difference is incredibly jarring even for metal gear standards.MGS is full of oddly comical or out of place elements. The problem with how Quiet is handled is that the bizarre, overdone cheesecake isn't fun, likeable or entertaining enough to justify its dissonance with the rest of the narrative. So it comes off as creepy instead.
And honestly, it probably still would have went over fine if the game wasn't constantly ramming the players face in Quiet's boobs like a 40 hour motorboat. It's like, OK, we get the point. Even the DoA franchise is more subtle.
Characters like Quiet aren't par for the course or a cultural Japanese thing, sexism isn't only prevalent in Japan nor should we use culture as an excuse to justify it. Just like we wouldn't justify racism as part of our culture as an excuse to feature racist media. Kojima isn't a naive young man who didn't know what he was doing at all or what western audiences want, otherwise he'd do things like put in a HUD as ridiculous as XCX's.I'm not disputing that some of the Quiet scenes are daft, I said as much already. I think Kojima was aiming for romantic, sultry and mysterious with Quiet, but unfortunately fell well short of that in her execution - at least from a Western pov. Perhaps it's a cultural thing and from his perspective he absolutely nailed it, but then there comes an odd juxtaposition considering that this forum loves Japanese games so much: if we're pushing creators to dilute aspects of their culture to prevent offending anyone, we will end up with "games by committee" where every component of a game is a result of focus group testing and the end product is a bland, homogenous success. The very aspects that make Japanese games so great disappears. .