>For such a male-dominated industry creating a game for a largely male audience, it is impressive how well and positively women were portrayed in the MI games.
Wait a second, why is that surprising? As if to you, something being male dominated must usually mean women being portrayed negatively by men, and if they're not then it's a surprise.
Sorry, but your comment just reeks of sexism by assuming mens' default is to not have a positive portrayal on women.
I do think it is more about wide feedback than 'men can't portray women well'. It's easy to overcorrect or make weak characters (not only women) when you're in a monoculture and your feedback come from the same kind of people. My example is Raymond E. Feist. His characters (especially female, but not only) were really weak before he partnered with Wurts (which, in my opinion, gave birth to their best work), and in all his following books all his characters were way better than in his first works.
It's not sexist to acknowledge reality, and back in the 90s male-dominated media very much did have a tendency to portray women badly. The further back you go, the worse the problem gets.
In general, society has moved to be less and less tolerant of bigotry over time. Given that, you should expect that older media will be more bigoted than we currently tolerate.
This ignorant attitude about the past is currently shaping a trend of 2 dimensional characters in culture. All female characters must be strong and good, all males must be weak and evil. The same with racial depictions; whites are evil, blacks are good. The bigotry hasnt gone away, it's reversed, and become stronger.
I mean, go back far enough and people used to own black people and thought women weren't fit to vote. The extraordinary claim here would be that everything was resolved by the 90s
Wait a second, why is that surprising? As if to you, something being male dominated must usually mean women being portrayed negatively by men, and if they're not then it's a surprise.
Sorry, but your comment just reeks of sexism by assuming mens' default is to not have a positive portrayal on women.