Board Thread:Metal Gear Solid V/@comment-146.90.86.5-20150917130942/@comment-1971498-20150919102421

Fantomas wrote: She's sexualised. There's really no two ways about it. It's not wholly surprising because Kojima is atrocious with female characters (I can literally count on one hand the amount of female characters in Kojima's MGS games who aren't sexualised). The camera leers at her in a disgusting fashion at every opportunity, and the flimsy "after-thought" of an excuse which the game provides as to why she wears so little clothing actually doesn't make sense in the context of the series (her powers are compared to The End, a character who wears full body camo).

I think Kojima was desperately trying to mimic the "sexy but bad ass" approach of Bayonetta or similar, but he missed what made Bayonetta so interesting and empowering: at almost every turn Bayonetta feels completely in control and dominating; whereas Quiet feels more like a victim and when the camera zooms in on her inappropriately it feels like we're ogling her.

It doesn't help that Quiet is also immediately shuffled into the "she's a female character so naturally she's the male characters love interest" cliché in such a poor and half-assed fashion. Again, not completely surprising because Kojima is also atrocious at writing romances (the eye-rollingly stupid Mr & Mrs Smith homage in Guns Of The Patriots, the embarrassingly and tonally bizarre "lovey-dovey" dialogue between Meryl & Snake at the end of Metal Gear Solid). Fantomas nailed exactly what's wrong with Quiet as character.

I love Bayonetta, and even if she's sexualized, the character is shown with a lot of control over the way she carries herself. It promotes a healthy mentality of sex and body positivity which is actually a good thing. Quiet is the reversal of that. We're told that it's bad to criticize her "sexiness" because she's subjected to a ridiculous plot contrivance that prevents her from wearing much clothing. A plot contrivance that is specifically designed to force the character unto undress. This wouldn't have been so bad if the camera didn't zoom on her breasts and ass every couple of shots when she's in a cut scene.

It's as if Kojima gets worse as the franchise kept going. Numerous characters in MGS1/MGS2 weren't so bad  (Olga being a huge standout) and of course, The Boss and EVA were really the closest we got to any female characters that served active roles just as much as the guys on the field while being treated with great respect in the story. Which is funny because even if EVA herself was sexualized, the manner in which it was portrayed was actually in-character and fit the Bond-style theme that MGS3 was going for. Even then her role as Big Mama served to actually tie MGS3 and MGS4 in massive, which is pretty amazing in of itself. The Boss of course serves as a huge lynchpin in the story and her unrelenting conviction and battle prowess is exactly why she's so charimastic as a character. And that's even with her having a very motherly role similar to Olga, and yet neither of those two are hampered by those at all.

Come the time of MGS4, it's like Kojima slowly descends into this divided priorities of tragic female figures with incongruous fan service thrown in. FIrst there's the B&Bs which while seemingly fine at face value, becomes incredibly creepy when you find out the amount of Easter Eggs you can pull off which essentially sexualizes victims of war to a ridiculous degree. While the raw personality and background of characters like Paz and Strangelove are genuinely interesting and 3-Dimensional, their outward treatment as well as their given fates reeks of so much bad writing it's not even funny. Then finally we have Quiet who, for all intents and purposes, could have literally had the same solid character arc in MGSV without all the awkward fanservice thrown in.

As much as I love Metal Gear (and I REALLY do) Kojima's treatment of his female characters leaves a lot to be desired.