[quote=The Imagination]
Grand Theft Auto has a funny way of portraying a variety of females. From the run of the mill obese America to the slutty, bad decision making teenager, realistically at that. Who was Niko's love interest, a girl named Kate who was both mediocre in attractiveness and actually developed positive/negative opinions on you depending on your greed? GTA V is a bit worse though, what with the dating of silly strippers and what not. And I don't quite agree with Assassin's Creed's portrayal of women, and men for that matter. Some of their historical paintings show them to be rather uh...unattractive. Except Anne Bonny, who actually looked like a sex symbol in most of her paintings.
[/quote]

I think a thing to keep in mind about those historical paintings is sometimes, it's based more of what the artist thought the person should look like than actually having a reference. In Anne Bonny's case, I don't think she sat down long enough to have someone commission a painting about some commoner Irish woman turned badass pirate, for instance. I'm sure a lot of the character portrayals are 'sexed up' for the audience benefit, so that does lend nicely towards the topic. 

Either way, I tend to groan when I see things like your impractical female fantasy armours and the like. It's kind of embarrassing and juvenile. The best female characters are usually the ones that are designed to look practical and they're just as capable as the guys, if not more. There's a reason people think of Metroid: Other M as an abomination. Samus shouldn't be an emotional bag who only does things when she's ordered. She's a badass bounty hunter with one of the coolest suits of armour in video game history. Don't take that away by trying to humanize her, for fuck's sake. Gordon Freeman became plenty popular without one shred of dialog. 

Likewise, the latest incarnation of Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider reboot is definitely seen as a step in the right direction. She wasn't designed to be a sex object, she was a terrified 20-something who was in a survival situation where she slowly became hardened to the things around her and was driven to save her friend. I thought that was a pretty cool game, and I want to see more with that franchise. 

Like, game designers don't have to make female characters male power fantasies or basically make a male character with a pair of tits. There's nothing wrong with a female character having plenty of normal feminine traits and being empowered in the sense that they can star in their own games in a similar fashion to any male character. There's more female gamers than ever before now, and there's no reason that hobby should feel like it has to cater to one gender over another. And I kind of want to punch the dicks over online games who lose their shit when a girl joins the game. Cut the sexist shit, you insecure twat.