"Realistic" may be the wrong term in a fantasy RPG, but the armour style should be "credible", i.e. the player should think that a piece of armour both fits into the world and does its job. Of course, credibility largely depends on the player's background, so there is no "right" way to design armour.
I agree, but I disagree with your last point. The "right" way is to design armour that fits in with the aesthetics of the game world. Many fantasy games exist within a European world - therefore it's reasonable that the armour would also fit the European style. If a game was set in a world inspired by, say, Africa, then you would expect to see various African influences in the clothing and armour styles.
Oh, it is relevant. If you accept that armour isn't all that important for surviving combat in the game world, you can ask yourself which motivation one might have to still wear it. One can reason, for example, that armour is only necessary where being hit really hurts or where scars would be particularly undesired. And that's a possible explanation for wearing a helmet plus an armour bikini or "metal trunks".
That doesn't mean I want bikini armour, but it shows that it's not necessarily completely irrational to introduce it into a video game - though I doubt this has ever been the motivation behind creating bikini armour. And it wouldn't explain why men wear full armour when women wear bikini armour ... perhaps men are more fretful than women after all
If armour isn't all that important then it wouldn't exist on the scale it does in video games. You wouldn't have most of the characters wearing it, because it's largely obsolete. But even then, if it is just to cover more sensitive spots - why an armour bikini? It doesn't make sense. Why would a character walk out just in that? Would they not wear the protection underneath their clothing (like how male sports players wear cups)? That makes more sense.
Bikini armour isn't "entirely irrational", perhaps. But I personally believe that only a minority would - or should, even - be wearing it. A particularly self-confident or flirtatious leader, perhaps. She could wear it to enhance the sexual characteristics of her body and so on - it's a similar tactic to the explanation of Red Sonja's chainmail in Peter V. Brett's Red Sonja: Blue. But that doesn't work for every character.
Armour with boob cups isn't the only way to achieve that, right, but it is very easy to notice. When armoured NPCs are just standing around, animations won't necessarily indicate their gender. Both men and women can be tall or short. Wider hips and narrower shoulders can more easily be missed than boob cups.
Considering how close we are to the characters - even in games with cameras like NWN or Original Sin, it doesn't make a difference. Why do you need to know the gender/sex of the other characters anyway? And it's often very easy to tell the differences if the animations and models are constructed correctly. In Skyrim, for example, gender differences in armour are minimal for the most part (though there are feminised armours, and even a boob armour piece - Steel, I think) and you can still tell the difference should you need to.
I think demand plays a role. If a sizeable percentage of the target group wants revealing female armour, but almost nobody wants revealing male armour, the latter won't be implemented.
Just because something is demanded, it doesn't mean it should be implemented. Just because something isn't demanded, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be implemented. It isn't about "demand", it's about getting rid of these stupid, unfair, imbalanced, contradictory and even
sexist (again, not saying Larian are sexist) differences in design and implementation.
Anyway, women aren't forced to buy and wear revealing clothes, are they? If many still do it in the real world, it's not unreasonable to assume that many do it in a game world.
Okay, you go into any women's clothing store and tell me it's easy to buy a wide range of clothes that don't reveal, whether it's by their tightness or by being cut to show cleavage. It isn't a choice, trust me.
There is a whole generation that is still out there playing video games, and that has been heavily influenced by very scantily clothed pin-ups posing in front of cars on the first page of their magazines. One could attempt to hypocritically deny it, or blame marketing all day long, but as a matter of fact, female characters in rather revealing outfits used to contribute as a strong selling factor in the industry.
For the sake of integrity, I need to state that I am a male in RL, and probably belong to the aformentioned generation. Like any other heterosexual male, I keep a pronounced liking for the female anatomy, but it's been a while since I expected video-games to limit themselves to such trivial standards before catching my interest, and motivating a purchase. The same for novels, movies, magazines, etc.
Video-games need to evolve, like society has, like the population of their players has, no doubts. I would absolutely hate it though that we couldn't find some kind of sensible middle-ground in doing so.
Females characters in bikinis, with submissive psychés hiding in the background of the archtype of a Conan-like superhero belong to the past, but so does the stereotype that the slightest nipple showing would be inadmissible.
Female characters need to remain feminine, male characters masculine, as a whole (in their physical and psychological features), lest to portray everyone as some kind of horribly dull and boring asexual robots in our games.
I agree with everything but the very last paragraph. Why can we not have more feminine males in games? More masculine females? Not every woman is feminine, not every male is masculine. We need to show that you can be a strong woman and still feminine, yes, but it doesn't mean we can't also have - say - a tough, masculine woman who holds her own.
