I think your take here is pushing some very heavy stereotypes, and assumptions that everyone else wants the same things you do.
I am quite comfortable falling on my own sword with this assumption with respect to the mainstream male audience in gaming (what actually makes money w/ men and interests them).
When I said "mainstream appeal" that doesn't mean "guys want to look at women who are beautiful" (heavy paraphrasing here), it's more like female characters who are easier for guys to relate to?
Part of the problem surrounding more modern depictions of women in gaming isn't just that they look noticeably less attractive (e.g. 'uglified' in order to appease female jealousy) but that their behavior seems unnatural or erratic given their sex. e.g., women do not typically behave like men and vice versa. I suppose speaking for me personally here, and others can chime in, seeing a woman behave like an extremely enraged male does not help me identify with her. It actively pulls me out of the experience and makes me scratch my head.
Even males acting like some of these women would be strange in many instances, and not something I would identify with.
Maybe others are more rage filled than me? Sound off men, I guess. I welcome what others have to say about it.
Appeal doesn't always have to be about sex and visual design. Maybe looking at women entering different roles (matriarchal, siblings, friends) is what takes men out of their comfort zone?
But it often typically is. This is why despite women, as a trend but not a rule, being 'uglified' in gaming you don't see the male leads become equally less visually appealing. Because men don't complain about attractive male protagonists like women do when they see a character like Bayonetta or a busty Samus. It's sexual rationing behavior.
Also, why is it some sort of goal to have men 'taken out of their comfort zone' during gaming? The way you made this remark makes it seem as though it is self evident why this is desirable; I am not condemning, I just don't understand.
Again, heavy conjecture here -- I'm not a guy,
I can tell actually, and I do not mean any offense by that. You
seem very opinionated on what it is like to think as a male, and there is nothing wrong with that. It's appreciated that someone would try to get into the headspace of another that isn't like them.
Still, I would say you're possibly projecting feminine sensibilities onto men that we might not share as a group (this is not to rule out individual preference, but there are such a thing as group characteristics).
so I can't say for sure what guys want out of a "good" female character outside of sex appeal. Your example with Samus falls a bit flat -- she's a silent protagonist and, playing through the mainline Metroid games, you don't see a lot of her as a developing character.
The point with Samus is that her character's sex was a surprise reveal and nobody cared. She was proven to be a bad ass, but she was also apparently gorgeous and very feminine. She didn't exude male rage or anything that would try to 'make men identify' with her. Men identified with the highly trained female in power armor killing aliens the same way that they would have if she were male: killing aliens.
She was a bad ass because the player was completely immersed in her capabilities throughout the entire game with not a thought given to her biological sex. The games also didn't go out of their way to make some sort of political statement about it- after all, one would imagine that crazy advanced power armor is something of an equalizer when it comes to eliminating xenos.
[[Adeptas Sororitias Intensifies]]
To wit, she didn't need freakish Abbie muscles and rage fueled monologues to try and make guys get that she was tough. Samus isn't a try hard 2D political caricature of 'strong woman'. She's just strong and is very much a woman, and her design out of armor embraces that femininity.
I feel the bit about women taking more masculine traits to curb appeal/pander is a different conversation.
I personally believe it is one and the same conversation, at least in this instance.
There can be good female characters that can be strong and have good feminine virtues that don't cross any lines, like the examples I gave in my initial post. Not everything exists in a binary, or comes from a coastal city.
Of course there can. But the objective is for them to be strong women, and not all strength is explicitly within an overtly masculine context (or with masculine attributes taken to extremes). Ellen Ripley is a perfect example.