@Marius Voinescu: please put your images in boxes (or spoiler tags) your text is hard to read, cause of the jumping text-line
Originally Posted by Marius Voinescu
I want to play a evil knight protecting a equally evil witch, and if Larian made a set of cloths like this id be extremely happy. I could hardly find any female mage pics that didnt look overly sexualized
This leads to another endless discussion, like the one why nearly any fantasy female warrior looking like a barbie who would nearly unable to lift the long two-hand sword...
Originally Posted by Marius Voinescu
I appreciate your reasoning mate, I can live and let live if people want some pure fantasy metal bikini fine, but at least have some reasonable outfits for people who want them. This is my biggest fear...
Your Picture shows the central point of this topic: in a fantasy game, there is no relation between the appearance/shape/material of an (so called) armor and its stats. To make it extream, there could easily be an "invisible unbreakable armor" (make a picture your own :D) in the game and its just "fine" in "fantasy logic"-way. It simply "magic".
As soon as this fact is accepted, there appearance/look of an armor is only choosen by the designer for some reasons. This leads to the question what reasons are meet by "armor design":
Primary target for (ingame) Bikini-Armors (and the only reasons why my "invisible unbreakable armor" would never happen are prudish american market ;)) are young boys. I can't figure out another target. In all RPGs i know, you see your character from above (isometric like fallout, BG2, JA2), from behind (third person like wow, and all other grinders...) or never, cause its an first person view (like oblivion). So in the best case (3rd person) you see the naked back and butt ... all the time (during fight)... very uhm ... don't know, i don't get it.
I think it's simply the old way of owning a pretty nice/sexy looking doll.
In DOS the Characters are not that present (iso-view, multiple characters under player control) and not that high polished (low polygon-count) so i think we can rule out this point for DOS.
A main goal for handing out Armor (and any other item) to the player is: be a reward. If any armor in the game is a bikini armor, you only have a few options to make a difference. As written above, in real you have no chance to make a difference, cause the player is unable to see the armor. But if you have the "full body armor" aka "walking tank" you can make a difference and the new item can look a lot more different than the old one.
Additionally: if there are a few count of bikini armors in the game, it's completely vice versa. Like in reality, then you have your "special dress for the special moment"
But (imho) the most important reason for armors are: show progression. In a good RPG you can face an character and easily predict what level he has, what kind of armor stats to expect and simply answer the question (pvp): I'am able to stand my ground or should i run?
With Bikini Armors "in mind", the question might be another on, but at the end you're unable the notice any progress. From the distance the characters looks always the same: naked
