Personally I much prefer ladies in heavy armor. I prefer it this way for many reasons... Aesthetics, equality, fresh change from tired tropes and cliche's.

Now this might be counter to some of the outcry of the controversy... But I like a lady in full armor. Personally I find that more attractive than the striperrific (and I don't mean that in a mean way) outfits that most games put their women into now adays and I feel that . I've just become so insensitized that most of the "tittilation" is lost on me. So if the skimpy armor isn't attractive to me I am left to judge the outfit based on its merits. When I do this I have to ask myself...

Does the outfit fit the character? How does the outfit hold up without the tittilation? How do the outfits look compared to the male characters?

Most of the time I have to answer no. Skimpy character designs are largely boring. Everyone has the same design and there are only so many ways you can draw a bikini on a character before it gets boring. At least with armor you can design and decorate it in so many different ways that it is hard to get bored.

Now I can't comment on Larian's design as the game isn't out yet and we have had a limited pool of npc's seen... But from what I can see I didn't really like the design. It was rather ridiculous.

To sum up my feelings though... The artist has the right to make whatever he wants. However he is beholden to the company, who is beholden to its playerbase. If the company wants to appeal to a larger audience... (an audience that includes women probably sick to death of this kind of character design) then they will want to change the cover. If the artist doesn't want to do that its his right to find work somewhere that will let him express himself rather than where he is right there.

Personally I support the change because I like the change. I am sorry the artist doesn't feel the same and understand his distress.