Actually, this is a pretty interesting topic for a couple of reasons. Just looking at the OP's first post - I'd say the second example is fairly tacky, but good body and pretty face (hats off, too, to the chap that coded the physics). I really like the drawings of the girls in the later artwork, though. Doesn't seem sleazy or over-the-top, and it's good art, let's be honest.
I'm not bumping this to endorse the 'sexy armour' thing - I think that's best left to modders. I'm bumping this because I think the female models in some of these fantasy games (eg. dragon age inquisition and now BG3) aren't exactly good looking. Witcher 3, I think, got women right - very feminine looking and attractive for what's effectively a pixelated mannequin. And never over-sexualised, unless it suited the scene.
Don't really care what women look like in games. But playing dragon age inquisition, it was always at the back of my mind that the female models - in terms of body shape, femininity of the faces etc - were particularly unappealing. Again, they're just pixels - but as the OP demonstrated, pixels can be as easy on the eye as a good painting, even if it's not the real thing.
We've two female companions so far, Shadowheart and Green Girl (forget the name). They're both unattractive. Shadowheart, in particular, has a somewhat masculinised face for a woman - even her arms in the loading screens are sort of male looking. Green Girl - ok, she's an alien elf. But look at the art for Viconia in BG2. The kid version of me wanted her in my party because she looked like that, and it was that simple. Nice voice actress too.
In other words, the girls don't need to have the skimpy armour etc, but I do think they need to look more like the girls in art the OP has posted. Because most girls look sexy, let's be honest - the art isn't embellished. You'll see great looking girls all the time, on the streets, in the pub. Except in dragon age inquisition and BG3, where natural selection went for the plain janes.
I don't even come from a country that's noted for its beautiful women, and there's still a lot more women here who are at least good looking than there are plain janes, or masculinsed women. But if they want to sample average female faces/bodies from any of the Slavic or Baltic countries, I'd biasedly endorse that 100%.
Anyway, it is an interesting topic, as I say. By no means crass at all. The girls in the game shouldn't have to look like they walked off a porn set to be sexy. But they should have the sexy shapes and faces you'd see every day while walking about.
