Well, here we go then. The topic of this musing is fairly clear from the title, the distractingly gratuitous major boobage on display in pretty much any game that features a woman. From Lara Croft's triangular tits to Nariko's pneumatic norks, it seems that we've reached a point where the depiction of women in almost any genre of game is based entirely around huge, implausible displays of cleavage in the most utterly inappropriate situations.

Now before anyone asks, i'm a male. A man. A dude. A bro. A proud owner of external genitalia, chest hair and a toilet seat which remains defiantly vertical and who's lust is directed at the ladeez (and Solid Snake, but everyones allowed one gay fantasy - right? RIGHT?!). I take the same giddy fascination with mammary glands that any man would, I'm just saying that theres a context. Silly hack 'n' slash combat? Fine throw in a hot rack. Involving and emotive RPG (i'm looking at YOU, 'Lost Odyssey').....perhaps not.

My viewpoint crystallised during a cutscene in the aforementioned Lost Odyssey. One of the characters approaches a guard, attempting to gain access to a powerful ruler in order to plead her case to him. In order to prove her royal blood, and thus her right to meet with said ruler, the character resorts to removing a pendant from her neck that covers a glowing birthmark. The guard is convinced and much humour is supposedly drawn from another characters childish reaction to the cleavage now being shown off in comparison to the reverence with which this ladies knockers are treated by the now-humbled guard.

This didn't work.

How am i supposed to believe that Jansen is so amazed, so delighted at the glimpse of flesh afforded to him by the pendant's imminent removal when the tits have been on display FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THE FUCKING GAME. It's pointless, it trivialises a serious moment and removes both the drama and the comedy from the scene. Indeed, huge sections of lost odyssey are rendered utterly ridiculous by the constant cleavage on display. Even a young girl in the group dresses like the skankiest of skank-hos. It's like Travis Bickle taking his date to a porn flick, an almost laughable misplacement of sexuality and sexual content. Now i'm not saying it's harmful in any way to the viewer. No rapist or mysoginist will be born of Lost Odyssey, it just detracts so sharply from the ability of a player to take whats happening on screen seriously.

I'm fine with boobs in another context. Wanna show me them in FHM or Playboy? Fine, thats why i bought the magazine in the first place. Wanna jiggle them around whilst my character weeps over their dead child, with whom they have only just been reunited? Fuck off. If we really want people to take gaming seriously, we need to treat the men and women depicted in these games with some level of respect. Don't end the boobs, i love 'em! I just want them to be assigned their proper place - Dead or Alive games.