I understand your reasoning but I think the entire reason for women's character models being over exaggerated (more like in the case of Mass Effect than that chick in a tin can) is that game developer's want you to be able to connect with your character, and in some cases for other people to be able to differentiate between genders on the fly. The best example I can think of off the top of my head is that one of my friends is constantly gaming but the way most people describe her voice is something around "like a 8 year old boy's". Most people that she ran into in Halo 3 and CoD think she's a little boy but the character models in Halo Reach, and 4 sometimes help people connect the voice with the appropriate gender.
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You don't need boob outlines in order to connect with a character. Physically, there are a multitude of ways of expressing that someone is female. You could usually tell between male and female Reach models, especially considering how the bust was [i]not[/i] overly expressed.
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I was less thinking about boob outlines and more thinking about how in Reach, the male and female (for lack of a better word) butts were exactly the same size, but because they made the female Spartans slightly slimmer, it gave the illusion of a large butt and slim body... which some how made my brain think "female!" or something like that... And before saying anything further I'm going to come out in the open and just say I'm one of those dudes that was clueless about the black magic worked by these "sports bras" until I saw that video... >_>
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Well I'm talking about outlined breasts, akin to the Mass Effect armor. And the female spartans weren't just slightly slimmer. There were curves in different places and weight was carried differently.