Looking at God of War 3 video, holy crap that takes things to a new level.
As I've ranted in the past, from the "Kratos is a horrible person" perspective, God of War 1 it wasn't so bad. Now make no mistake; I'm not backpedaling on the female point. What I am saying, however, is that Kratos in GoW1 was, despite being a horrible person, was clearly the lesser of two evils, so you wanted him to win because the alternative was worse. It makes him all the easier to stomach when the game well establishes the opponent is clearly way lower on the moral spectrum than your hero, even if your hero is on par with many villains. On top of that, Kratos had personal beef with Ares, who stabbed him in the back in such a cruel, horrible , unforgivable way, you do feel Kratos is justified in metaphorically returning the favor.
God of War 2, it's kind of all lost at this point. The villain has shifted from Ares, to Zeus. As I said, Ares they made it very clear was awful, but Zeus? They really failed here. The game opens by stating "Kratos, you're going TOO FAR, if you don't stop, we WILL have to intervene and you will won't like that." So you can't even use the "Kratos didn't know and the gods pulled a fast one!" argument, he was warned ahead of time, and basically ignored them. Honestly, an accurate analogy for GoW2's plot is effectively a parent punishing their child for breaking the rules and the child being angry that they were punished despite knowing exactly WHY they were punished, and deciding the parents must suffer. Insert "Greek Gods" into the mix and you have an accurate portrayal.
The fact that God of War games got only worse on female portrayal says more. It sounds like Aphrodite is the only God he doesn't kill, so HE SPARED A FEMALE!? Also sounds like he had sex with her, which ok, it is Aphrodite so totally in character, but that sounds more like a safety net excuse than actually justifiable instance. Sex works if it's handled properly; if you want a way to show how intimate two characters are in a way that shows how close they really are, and the "Romantic Kiss" just isn't enough, then sure! Just don't play it up as "hurr durr sex cool right?" Kratos screwing a woman because "she's hot and seductive!" is not that.
I think something worth noting is the evolution of Fighting Game female representation. If nothing else, look at Street Fighter:
SF2's Chun-li stood out specifically because she was female; she became the most well known character in the franchise after Ryu and maybe Ken for that reason alone. Likewise, Cammy was a big deal when SSF2 hit because "A second female character!" The roster by then was 16 characters large, 1/8th of the roster was female.
Jump ahead of USF4, and there's a lot more females. It's still predominantly male, but on top of Chun-li and Cammy, we have C. Viper, Juri, Poison (...please keep the tranny arguments out of this...), Elena, Makoto, Ibuki, Sakura, Rose and Decapre. That's 1/4th of the roster, so double the amount percentage wise. Is it ideal? Hell no, but the shear number of females to pick from and the male to female ratio being cut from 7:1 to 3:1 is a big deal in itself. Also these characters do have variable designs, ranging from Chun-li who dresses like an actual female warrior, to C. Viper's secret agent "with rocket boots and electric gloves" to Juri's "evil fanservice" outfit, there's a good range of designs to appeal to females. Again, it could be better, I don't deny this!
Then I look at a game like Mortal Kombat 9, and what do I see?
It has 31 characters, two of whom are guest characters granted (Kratos and Freddy Kreuger), so they were pre-established. Otherwise?
We have 7 females if my count is right out of that total, a little less than Street Fighter's ratio to be fair, but the difference?
We have 4 Female Ninjas who look like
this but in different colors, a member of
special forces, an monstrous
6 armed freak of nature who I am willing to give a pass to because she's too ugly to be sexy, and I think that was intentional since "Goro's Wife" or something. And then we have
Sindel who...just speaks for herself.
Not only are the designs less varied, I don't think the combined amount of clothing on all 7 women equals that of what most of the Street Fighter females wear. It says something when Cammy and Juri dress more modestly than every single female in your game.
Basically, what I am getting is I don't think "shear number of females" is enough, but you also need variety. Every single MK9 female clearly was made to be half-naked fanservice, and the fact that 4 of them have very similar designs further suggests "HOT WOMAN! PLAY AS THEM BECAUSE HOT!" When I look at Street Fighter, only a handful seem questionable, and at least their outfits look some degree of practical; I can't say the same for like any of the MK9 females, and more importantly, every single female (...sans Decapre, but that's intentional) is visually very different. It shows "yes, there are various ways females can dress and look! They don't need to be Ninjas to be capable fighters!" ...yes I know Ibuki is a Ninja, but that's ONE female out of 11.
When you think about it, this is why Smash 4 getting so many female newcomers was actually a big deal really. Brawl had 6.5 characters if we include transformations (functionally different characters), and Jigglypuff, with Nana being the "0.5' because you don't actually play as her, but she's still a female. Smash 4 practically doubled the number of potential playable females if we include Miis and situations like Wendy Koopa. I know someone tried to argue once that "female versions of male characters don't count" but my counter point is that the raw number of potential playable females is more important than the proportions. Even if Robin defaults to Male, the fact that you can play as the female version still adds another character of that gender to the roster that you can choose to use instead. Considering the game could have just had only the male version in for simplicity sake and dedicated 4 more color schemes, them putting that extra effort, voice acting, etc. to put Fem!Robin in just shows a nice gesture.
I know this wasn't really brought up, but just thought I'd start a quick analysis of Fighting Game female representation in modern times. I didn't even realize just how bad a game like MK9 was in this regard until I saw all the females; I knew the Ninjas were bad, but forgot there were 4 of them and that's over half the female representation in that game.
Considering who made it, it feels like the only reason Injustice wasn't filled with girls running around in bikinis was because these characters had pre-established designs in their comics, and they wanted to at least be somewhat accurate to that.
