Cool to see were on the same page.

Not really a spoiler about Xenoblade 2 and somewhat off-topic but...

Have you, by chance, played any of the Bayonetta games? If affirmative, do you mind sharing your thoughts about them regarding this fan service/misogyny context we reached? I mean, Bayonetta/Cereza is obviously oversexualized at various cutscenes and battle animations throughout the game, but she's also the protagonist, a very powerful and badass witch that eventually saves the whole universe from destruction, and the way the game's story unrolls definitely made me admire her as a strong woman personality once the game ended. In other words, maybe there's a boundary before a female character in a video game actually becomes fan service, do you think Bayonetta breaks this boundary?

I always wanted to talk about that since I finished the games but unfortunately most -- to not say all -- women I had contact until now don't go much farther than casually playing F2P games such as Candy Crush and the likes on a smartphone =/

Aaaand the core crystals are lootbox-y. It has all the same mechanics. It's random so even a "rare" can give just a dud, and it has the same extremely dramatic opening that lootboxes do to appease those who are susceptible to gambling. ...not me really, I mean, my brain is haaardly normal, but you know!

So far I haven't seen a way to buy more core crystals but, which is kind of the most important part of lootboxes, but I don't like that its borrowing from that very bad mechanics set.

Also, I don't like how chains and elements work. In Xenoblade 1, arts had effects, and you chain them together in battle. Like, break to break their stance, then toggle to knock them over. Awesome. That's still there, which is great (though you have much less control over the battle and orchestrating it since you only control one character and can't switch in battle), but now it has a new system of elements assigned to blades, and use us it in the blade combo system for MASSIVE damage. Basically the game wants you to swap blades to get the elements you need for a combo. Bleeeeh. I have zero interest in that entire core crystal and blade swapping mechanic. From how it was introduced (let's force the player to create life!) to how it works (let's swap this interesting character for a boring one to get the type you need! ugh) to the rare system (they have big boobs and revealing outfits, gotta catch em all? ), just, everything about that system is NOPE NOPE NOPE from me! But it's impossible to not use the blade combo system, it's way too much damage to ignore! So I'm just using the same trusty combos over and over and over again. The game punishes that to try to make you mix it up with bosses but, I can just rotate between two combos if I need to, and just ignore the whole blade swapping thing entirely. For now at least. I understand the game will give you rares during the story and prooobably force you to use them,
so um, I guess we'll see how that goes. >_<

Just, gawds, they really, really blew it with the blade swapping mechanic. I get it, they wanted to have swappable weapons, but then they were like, let's make them people too, with personalities! Except all but the story rares are just generic cardboard cutout tropes with boobs. Ugh! I really, really wish they were just weapons. I think this whole "but what if the monado was a PERSON" thing really got away from them!

I have played bayonetta 1 and 2 very little (45 minutes for bayonetta 1, like 15 for bayonetta 2), they are very much NOT my kind of games, but I have played both of them, and I thought a lot about how it represents its characters. And um, it's complicated. On the one hand, Bayonetta is a lot better than the typical objectified women that are so SO common in media. She isn't some passive object waiting to be consumed then discarded, she is her own person, with her own opinions, thoughts, and goals, and she's extremely confident, powerful, and forceful at that. That is way better for representation and cultural influence than the typical passive object!

...but, this is a video game. That sexuality may be true to her personality, so she's a genuine character but... her body and personality were built by men for men, apparently men who want to be dominated by a dominatrix. The camera and her posing shows that. She is coooonstantly being posed and the camera posing with her in extremely suggestive, totally nonsensical spine-crunching positions that make absolutely no sense for a fighter to do in combat. Not to mention the mechanic of the game where her clothes are her hair, and her hair is her weapon, so she's literally striping, all while she and the camera pose in seriously suggestive ways, in just basic attacks. The game is very, VERY clearly aiming for the male gaze. So even though she is not a passive character... she was still made for male consumption, and being presented for male consumption, which in a way still makes her an object.

Also, I don't really believe there's anything in the games for women. For one thing, it very, very much aims at the male gaze with its camera work and posing, and women can spot that *instantly*. We know how this works, we've seen it a million times, and we know to stay away. So immediately, its pushing women like me away from the game. But ignoring that, some have said that Bayonetta is a sexual power fantasy of sorts for women, but, I don't agree with that at all. If it was a female power fantasy, it wouldn't be about her, it would be the player doing things through her. She would not be the focus, and the game would try to everything it could to shift away from her toward what she (and thus the player) are doing in the world. You can see this to the fullest extent with first person games, where the character you play as is literally invisible so it is entirely focused on what the player is doing for maximum immersion. But this is also common in third person action games, where the camera is pushing the character out of the frame as much as possible (like say, gears of war) to focus on the action. Bayonetta, on the other hand, absolutely does not get her out of the way! The game demands the player to look *at* Bayonetta, not through her. With that camera, and the suggestive poses, and how the game deliberately highlights them... it is definitely not a female power fantasy. She exists for the male consumption, just a different type than the usual. She is a person and has personality, so it's a little better but, still not great.

Aaanyway, those are my thoughts! To be fair, I didn't play them much, I couldn't really stomach it for long... but I imagine most other girls would respond similarly!

You don't regret buying Xenoblade Chronicles 2, do you? Well... I guess not every game can live up to it's hype and predecessors.

There is nothing wrong with a female protaganist for me. In fact, I rather have an interesting lead character than the next random white macho dude just because males only play video games. Some of the best games I played such as The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC and SC had a female lead. Estelle was one of the best leading characters I ever experienced in a game. Since then, I became a fan of the developer Nihon Falcom.

I am not really that fond of fan-service myself as well... Most of the time... But it is not really such as big issue for me personally, I can live with that. To put it simply, there are mechanics and ideals that are way more evil. My opinion is just that gameplay should come first, and I don't want my experience to be clouded with political statements such as racism and sexism and I don't want to empty my wallet for the complete experience that should have been complete from the start. I just WANT to play my games... Sometimes you just long for the good old days such as the SNES or N64, in those days it was just you and the game (at least a lot of games did back then that I experienced). Today... Microtransactions, scenes that demonstrate your awesome your white muscular bad-ass dude is, stereotypes such as giant swords and evil church religions, more microtransactions, DLC, waiting times, language cursing, forced multiplayer components, lootboxes, even more DLC, sexist character models, the list goes on. There are still plenty of games avoiding these issues, but there are many more games that just embrace it. That mostly applies to triple AAA games *glares with evil eye towards Overwatch, Call of Duty and Star Wars: Battlefront 2*.

Anyway, I can tolerate these annoyances up to a certain point, until it is no longer about the game itself but the message it tries to convey... There is no avoiding it. I wouldn't almost be able to play a single game anymore if I threw it out of my window every time I got annoyed by it. Likewise I am equally annoyed by pre-rendered scenes when real-time scenes could have been used. That is just a waste of hard-disk space. It is even more annoying if there has to be a separate set of pre-rendered videos for each language... Soooo much wasted space. Just have your games technically correct. A port done wrong is the worst.

There is always Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild! Can't go wrong with that, one of them will be game of the year, I can agree to that. At least my experience of Breath of the Wild on the Wii U demonstrated how a game should really be. No nonsense, just running around the world, exploring, a lot of shrines, quests as they should be, killing monsters, having the adventure you as a gamer should have.

I am all about the best experience in gaming, nothing more, nothing less. Anything else just disturbs the gaming experience. I just wish the real world works would work the same way as well, that would make life easier for everyone.

Do you mean this literally? Because Bayonetta's character designer is well a woman... I think Kamiya added the glasses though. The way that's written also kinda makes it sound men are some sort of hive mind. I assume that wasn't your intent. About the game though, yeah the cutscenes, specifically the early and late game cutscenes can be a little much. Not saying you should go back to it though if you're not into those type of fast action games anyway. I personally love the way Platinum makes action games though. Still haven't played one made by them I haven't thoroughly enjoyed (Wonderful 101, MadWorld, Vanquish to name a few).

Funnily enough (and this is an anecdote so bear with me) out of my personal friend group, the only person I know that isn't annoyed by fanservice is a woman. She actually really enjoys it.
Also I had to look up what dominatrix meant. Thanks for killing my innocence.  

Well, it's mostly her animation and posing, how she's presented and how the player uses her to interact with the world. Especially in the cinema scenes! And just because a woman was involved in one step of the game's creation doesn't change what the game is doing, especially since the director was male.

The game is a fabulous brawler, no doubt about that! I tried the game specifically because of all of the incredible reviews out for it. But um, yeeaaa, from the presentation to the gameplay, it just is not for me.

And I know men aren't a hive mind, silly! I was just referring to the developers and their target audience.