One good thing about Japanese games in the days of sprites

[Mr Khan]

Khuutra said:

Mr Khan said:

Khuutra said:

Mr Khan I swear to God if you make me start listing male western gaming heroes who aren't He-Men I am going to blow a gasket.

"Masculinity" need not be the primary identifier of a character if they are good as a character. Of course they're going to be either huge or sexually potent if their defining characteristic is masculinity, but that's true in Japan too.

My lack of exposure to Western gaming doesn't help my case, though perhaps i'm using He-man too broadly. As i ponder, however, the only things that pop into my head are Gordon Freeman and Alan Wake (and both yet fall within the same general art style)

They do not belong to the same general art style - that's like saying all anime (or even all shonen, if you prefer) looks alike.

Try Guybrush Threepwood, Garret from Thief, Sam Fisher (really), any character you can define for yourself in a WRPG of that type, the Nameless One, the Exile (dude versions), Gabriel Belmont - and yes  I'm including GHabriel Belmont here in spite of his beard because even though he's a knight in armor he's no more hyper-masculine than is Kaim from Lost Oddysey.

Those are starters, and represent only the barest part of what I'm driving at here. Treating Western portrayals of the masculine as being homogeneous is just as erroneous as doing the same for Eastern portrayals.

Ah, of those i'd only even heard of two of them (Threepwood and Fisher, and Fisher i would consider that way, but again my definition might be overly-broad)

so we can just chalk all of the whining on both sides in this matter to ignorance like my own?