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The unfairness of female body armor illustrated

Holly Conrad dons her Commander Shepard uniform for PAX. Clearly, FemShep is a space commander who knows that both legs and arms need to be properly armored before battle.
Holly Conrad dons her Commander Shepard uniform for PAX. Clearly, FemShep is a space commander who knows that both legs and arms need to be properly armored before battle.Winda Benedetti
By Winda Benedetti

Here's what I want to know: Where did the rest of the above woman warrior's body armor go?

No really. The dude across from her — his leg and backside aren't flapping in the wind now are they? So what gives?

The 14-foot high sculpture, created by famed artist/creature designer Steve Wang for the forthcoming game "FireFall," earned a lot of attention at the Penny Arcade Expo — the gaming festival that just came to a close in Seattle.

"FireFall" — which is being helmed by Mark Kern, former team lead for "World of Warcraft," and Scott Youngblood,  lead designer for "Tribes" and "Tribes 2" — is a massively multiplayer online shooter that is free to play and just about to open its beta test to the public. (Check it out the official site here.) And it was a huge presence at this year's PAX, with artwork splashed throughout the convention center and a sprawling booth where players were given hands-on time with the game's sci-fi gunning and role-playing action.

Anyone else feel a cool breeze in here?
Anyone else feel a cool breeze in here?Winda Benedetti

In fact, the "FireFall" sculpture was something of a centerpiece at PAX — what with it being situated in the middle of the main entrance — and it was quite striking, both in its enormous size and life-like detail. (Check out G4's video about the process of making it.)

Still, I couldn't help but notice that the female half of this battle-hardened equation seemed to have gotten the short end of the armor stick.

I admit, this is something of an ongoing pet-peeve of mine. Why must so many badass female video game characters get stuck wearing utterly preposterous outfits into battle?

All you have to do is watch the following trailer for "FireFall" and you can see that the game features some tough-as-nails women characters — despite the, eh, flaws in their gear.

But just imagine if you were about to fight off an army of enormous mutant crabs and someone handed you the above armor. You'd be all like, 'WTF? Where is the otherhalf?'

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe wearing all that armor makes a hard working lady soldier overheat. And maybe that lady soldier needs to strip off half of her armor just to cool down. Or maybe she has some kind of force field covering that left leg and arm of hers and we just can't see it. Because it's invisible.

Holly Conrad dons her Commander Shepard uniform for PAX. Clearly, FemShep is a space commander who knows that both legs and arms need to be properly armored before battle.
Holly Conrad dons her Commander Shepard uniform for PAX. Clearly, FemShep is a space commander who knows that both legs and arms need to be properly armored before battle.Winda Benedetti

I'm just saying, my favorite video game woman warrior — Commander Shepard from the "Mass Effect" games — would never go into battle wearing something like that. In fact, check out the photo of the FemShep costuming I caught at PAX.

Now that's what you call body armor.

For more PAX coverage and related game news, check out:

Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things here on Twitter or join her in the stream here on Google+.And be sure to check out the In-Game Facebook page here.

Winda Benedetti