Hiku said:
You don't see anything in that scene.
Since you could not do that 20+ years ago, they could dress characters in certain ways without having to worry about that. And that is something that has to be taken into consider when it comes to reimagining those characters on modern hardware. And for the record, Square Enix have allowed you to do that with some of their characters in recent games, like Nier: Automata.
I played through RE4 again recently, and thinking of this conversation I tried moving the camera while Ashley was crawling to see if it worked, and I couldn't get it to. Perhaps through a camera glitch, but I don't think it's intended during this section. While Ashley is jumping down a ledge to be caught by Leon, it is seen briefly, just like when you aim up at her and she covers up calling you a pervert. That's why I said maybe we will see this again in RE 4 Remake. But since we are using almost photo realistic characters at this point, who are also modeled by real people, unlike the cartoony PS2-era polygons, I'm not confident about that. But I think it would be fun to have Leon be called pervert again in 2023. China I know are really strict about things like that, but most of the world are not at that level. |
I somehow just saw the notification for this... Weird...
The fact that I no longer have any of the original stuff to check things out makes it super hard for me to say anything other than based off memory. Perhaps Tifa's was not as gratuitous as my words made it seem, but there's no denying it's a purposeful camera angle. Same thing applies to Ashley and you made the point exactly as it is: these moments are in full control of the developers. These are things that you literally no longer see occurring or that characters are given more "safe" clothing to avoid it even if it's on accident. While I don't have it in writing, there is absolutely 100% an effort to avoid these things now compared to the old days. It's less about the player being in control of the camera, and more a developer's willing choice to "be a little sexy" here and there.
Nier Automata serves as a bit of an odd one out, but it DID come out 5 years ago and the gaming climate continues to change rapidly: it actually did NOT sell that well out the gate, but thanks to some constant robot booty and panties, I'm pretty sure the fandom grew (har har). BUT, call me a pervert because I played it early on during its launch window on PS4: if you try to get the camera just under her skirt so you can look up at her panties, she turns and flips her skirt to block you... I think Nier Automata might stand as one of the last games to really let you be a bit of a pervert and make it funny.
Before we turn to an eventual circle in arguing, I want to be clear once again: I'm not asking for games to be all pervy anime waifu stuff. I'm just saying if the original game was a little pervy here and there, that was likely part of the charm for some of us. Ashley's whole panty shots here and there were funny to me, especially because I was said pervert who tried to look up her skirt and got her to yell at me for it and ended up sitting there lol'ing that they even "thought of that". I'm going to miss games being a little pervy and calling you out for it because I'm more than sure those occurences will be either relegated to straight up perverted games (or porn games for that matter), or be such an odd one out that no one except a hardcare fandom notices it.
Closing statement: let us be a LITTLE sexual. I mean, we're already slicing, dicing, shooting, bloodletting and spilling guts... But we keep shrinking cup sizes, keep desexualizing, and it's just getting a little out of balance with the amount of violence we're okay with.
