It doesn't distract from the game aspect of it. It wouldn't make sense to me for people to play this to just look at the character or something.
It literally does distract me, actually.
The game might be absolutely fantastic. Furthermore, it sounds exactly up my street. I love puzzles, I love difficult games, I love old school Tomb Raider.
But every minute I'll be looking at that ridiculous ass and thinking "... why?" It's flagrant. And I enjoy watching player characters, especially in third-person games, to appreciate their animations and increase the immersion.
In this case, there's no answer to the "why" question, which will piss me off, and repeatedly make it clear how little thought was put into it, compromising the whole endeavour for me. Even if the quality of these animations is pretty excellent, and is indeed sexy. It's just evidently meaningless.
I mean, there are a few posts in this thread that are along those lines, and this is neogaf, where you see less of that sentiment than most other communities. I didn't say I agreed with it, but there's clearly a audience for this game that is the 2edgy4me crowd.
Fair enough, and yeah I was on board with the rest of your post.