Even when the camera unnecessarily zooms and focuses on her particular bits? I found the absurdity of how it's handled to be quite humorous, I'm surprised there weren't any nosebleeds; no way could you actually animate scenes like that without self-aware chuckling the whole time you're working.
The only way I found it absurd was "absurdly sexist". I certainly didn't find it funny at any stage. I'm not humourless I loved the hamburger tapes and some of Meryl and EVA's treatment in MGS1 and 3 was relatively good-natured.
Seriously,
thousands of hours will have gone into animating her. Someone, a group of people probably, sat at a desk and stared, seriously at a screen while animating her every move. And a supervisor (probably even Kojima a few times) will have come over and seriously scrutinised the animation and suggested alterations/improvements (no doubt to make her more sexy). They are professionals. Every aspect of Quiet and her movements/camerawork will have been professionally, humourlessly considered. The problematic thing comes from what they expected of the audience: they clearly expected people to enjoy it.
Quiet is just... A problematic character. As much as her motives and actions are pretty good.
Thinking about it, I don't think you're able to throw on the young snake headcamo for that scene, because it switches you back to default facecamo every act start, and that's kind of a bummer.
And I'd say the B&B squad was worse. Despite being fully clothed, they were WAY worse than Quiet even. Meanwhile Fortune wears a leotard in MGS2, but it ends up looking cool on her (emphasizing her muscle, rather than her ass) Again, it's a matter of execution, not the concept.
They were really bad, too. As others mentioned, the fact that you tranquillise them to get them to shed their clothes is dark af.
Honest questions, I'm genuinely trying to understand other people's views on this issue, so please bear with me.
I personally like Quiet. I think she fits into the silly MGS universe and I wouldn't want it any other way. To me, she's just another ridiculous MGS character. Does that make me sexist? I often want my games to be as unrealistic and silly as possible, I want to be surprised by things that are completely ridiculous and make me say "wtf". Quiet does that perfectly.
Would a solution be to have more sexualized male characters? Does it have to be in the same game, or would it be enough to have a different game/series that caters to that audience? Does every game have to be acceptable for everyone? If Quiet was replaced with a male almost naked sniper and the game zoomed in on his crotch, would that be preferable? Would including a larger amount of non-sexualized female characters that are on the same level as the protagonist be enough to excuse Quiet's inclusion?
I think people that are embarrassed by Quiet in MGSV are losing sight of the fact that it's supposed to be fantasy. It's supposed to be unreal. It doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't always have to reflect reality. Quiet is supposed to cater to a specific audience because there are people who enjoy this stuff. I think that's okay.
I can understand that people see her as problematic, as part of a larger issue, but is the only solution to the problem to make characters like Quiet more grounded, more realistic and less silly and sexualized or remove them completely? Am I part of the problem for liking her and not minding 3D boobs in my games?
Thanks for your post. It's great you're asking the questions.
No, it doesn't make you sexist. Of course you have an opinion and your opinion is valid. I also like Quiet personally - I'm replaying the game on PC and I've modded her to be fully clothed the entire time, and she's fucking great.
What we have to acknowledge is that we operate within a structurally sexist culture. It's far less pervasive than it used to be, but it's still there. And Japan is "further behind" (don't mean that in the pejorative) than us in terms of recognising structural sexism and addressing it.
Re the bolded: TL;DR:
yes. But it's not 'right' or 'wrong' remember. There is still a place for sexy characters.
The solution is to be consistent within your work:
> In God Hand, everyone is objectified. Plenty of men wearing sexy clothes and looking ridiculous. Plenty of women wearing sexy clothes and looking ridiculous. The camera work focuses on all of their sexualised aspects equally.
> In MGSV, the only female character is sexualised while not a single male character is. It's an inconsistent treatment of males and females heavily biased towards making sure the female is 'super sexy' while the males are 'realistic'.
Quiet is a particularly bad, heavy-handed example. Don't feel bad about it. It is fine to have highly sexualised or objectified characters just not when the women get a different treatment from the men.
