There's still plenty of turn based games though like Dragon Quest, Persona, Trails, Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler, Fire Emblem, etc. And even games that aren't turn based but aren't action either. I like that we have a healthy variety now.
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Looking at SNES final fantasy sprites, I can say with a good amount of certainty that the pandering has been around from the beginning. Barbarricia or whatever her name was is pretty blatant.
It might be an uncommon take, but a LOT of stuff happens in the story.
It's unfortunate that Xenogears didn't get the dev time that Takahashi wanted it to. Back then, Squaresoft had a rule that games needed to be finished within 1.5 years. Takahashi got extra time, but it still wasn't enough to finish disc 2.. and so to keep his vision alive all he could do was make the second disc the way it ended up.
The difference is the pandering is now front and centre in templated character design tropes, the marketing, the cut scenes, the animation, the use of the camera, as increased technology has allowed an increased focus on it. Sure, it's always been there, but pixel art and animation technology back then didn't allow for the camera to go zooming in on dumb outfits and to whizz around showing off characters' chest and arse in several hours of cut scenes and dumb anime skits. That it's way more evident across the visual elements of the game now than when it was just pixels means designers spend a ton more hours pandering to it. It's why so many shit design tropes like all the bridal and maid and zetta whatever shit is more evident now. 'It's always been there', while technically true, is ignoring the way it's gone from something barely noticeable that you might only have seen in the art in the instruction manual to something pushed to the front of the genre to appeal to otaku fantasies and sell statues etc as the characters on screen become something they can sexualise way more easily through HD art and animation now. I mean, I've watched it happen across so many of my favourite series, even just from the 00s to the 2010s, the difference between Trails in the Sky and Valkyria Chronicles 1, to Cold Steel 3 and VC4, in the treatment of their female cast, is like night and day in how much the more recent games lean into the shitty stuff.
I mean that's true, and I completely agree that it is a problem in JRPG's as well, I just think that it would have been around from the start if it could have been. My personal point of view is that as time goes on, more of the grime under the hood is just being revealed. Which is why I think Redcrayon feels the same way. It has ALWAYS been there, but was in the art booklets and unlockable cg, where people could ignore it. The only thing that has changed is that it is more visible now.
Your game Cosmic Star Heroine does nicely capture that 16-bit era essence but there aren't enough indie games that do. And those don't fill the void of the type of ambitious high budget stuff people want. I would like to see modern AAA equivalents to stuff like Panzer Dragoon Saga and Parasite Eve but it's not looking likely to happen.
DING DING DING!!!
