Now, that’s not to say I disagree with your opinion on the issue; in fact, I think you’re spot-on, but I also have additional, slightly different reasons for why the IVA scene is far worse than the Nocturne scene, despite both being very similar jokes: the IVA scene removes agency from the player.
Shin Megami Tensei protagonists are all meant to be self-inserts. They’re a vehicle for the player to experience the story. It doesn’t matter whether his name is Nanashi, or Flynn, or Aleph; you are the protagonist, and they are simply your vessels. This is why the games rarely push choices on you; you get to choose your preferred answer to other characters’ questions, as well as the outcome to the story itself.
This is why it is extremely jarring when these games take control away from you and make you do or say something that you wouldn’t if you had any other choice, and for me, the IVA scene is one example of this. Simply put, as a woman, even as a woman who is attracted to other women, I would never look at a half-naked woman the way a horny teenage boy does. And I can imagine that the scene might be similarly jarring for a gay man or a straight woman who isn’t attracted to women at all, at least if they’re using the protagonists the way they were intended (i.e. as self inserts). I realize that not everyone may play these games that way, but it is certainly what the devs intended.
It’s frustrating, because the vast majority of these games force me to put myself in the shoes of a man, and I abide by that even though I really wish I didn’t have to, and I try to see these worlds through my own eyes despite this, but the games force me to see them through the eyes of a hormonal straight teenage boy nonetheless. I try my best to accept the conditions that the devs have set, and they still force their worldview (or the worldview or their target demographic, anyway) on me.
SMT isn’t the only game that does this; far from it. I vividly remember a scene from the original FFVII, where the party splits and you get to choose who accompanies you. I chose Barret and another of the male characters, and the game’s dialogue acted as if my choice was incomprehensible. Surely, as a straight, hormonal teenage boy, I should’ve chosen the female characters that the devs had designed specifically to be attractive to straight, hormonal teenage boys, right? Surely it is any straight, hormonal teenage boy’s fantasy to be surrounded by cute girls?
What the devs failed to realize was that I was neither straight, nor a teenager, nor hormonal, nor a boy, and I was choosing the only male characters available to me precisely to avoid as much of their tired, juvenile, male-pandering love triangle as the game would possibly allow.
I realize that I’m rambling, and that this is really part of a wider problem with how SMT games fail to consider the perspectives of people who aren’t part of the shonen demographic, especially in recent years. And really, the Incubus scene in Nocturne could be seen as problematic in other ways (I think it managed to stick the landing and be genuinely funny; others may disagree and find it uncomfortable, and that’s understandable too), but even if a game has a male character being weird and creepy towards a female character, I’d appreciate it if the game didn’t force me, a woman who knows the pain of being on the receiving end of that sort of behavior and would never inflict it on others, to be that character.
____________________
