Shinji Mikami, the man behind Resident Evil (well, the good ones, anyway) and the recently-released The Evil Within, told The Guardian just how he’d prefer to portray women in games.
Before you jump to conclusions, the guy’s got his head and heart in the right place.
“I don’t know if I’ve put more emphasis on women characters, but when I do introduce them, it is never as objects,” he said to The Guardian. “In some games, they will be peripheral characters with ridiculous breast physics. I avoid that sort of obvious eroticism. I also don’t like female characters who are submissive to male characters, or to the situation they’re in. I won’t portray women in that way. I write women characters who discover their interdependence as the game progresses, or who already know they are independent but have that tested against a series of challenges.”
The female character he’s said as disliking? None other than Rebecca Chambers, the protagonist of Resident Evil 0 and side-character in the original Resident Evil.
“If I had to name the woman character I most disliked in my games it would be Rebecca Chambers. She’s submissive, she’s not independent. I didn’t want to include her but the staff wanted that kind of character in the game, for whatever reason. I’m sure it made sense to them. And in Japan, that character is pretty popular.”
We recently reviewed The Evil Within here.
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