crucia-airlines submitted to bikiniarmorbattledamage:

The MMO RIFT is one of the unusual cases I’ve seen in female armor. Why? Well, the armor is never consistently either plausible or outrageous. Many female NPCs (like Asha Catari up in center) are given the bikini battle armor treatment, but they don’t force the player characters to also wear such armor. Plenty of the female armor makes some sense (as shown by the cleric and mage shown above), and the inclusion of a wardrobe system makes it able for the user to make their toon as skimpy or well-covered as they want without effecting their armor. Heck, my male mage runs around shirtless. There’s also some male NPCs who show a lot of chest, so it’s not entirely unequal.

That being said, it still lacks a diverse body-shaping system (you can’t really change much besides height, though facial features are diverse). Again, a lot of the female NPCs are weirdly bare, and it only increased with the expansion pack. Whoever designed Queen Miela is a big offender, looking at the cover art for the expansion pack (although her actual game model is toned down…probably an intentional thing). Also, there are robots with nipples. Not obvious nipples, but they are there.

Anyway, I don’t know if this game was mentioned or not, but it now is.

I don’t think that game got mentioned on BABD so far, though its cover art appeared twice or thrice on eschergirls. Good to know the players aren’t forced to keep their female characters half naked (unlike some *side-eyeing Dragon Eternity*), though I’m still wondering if there’s any good reasons for NPCs to be under-dressed.

Gotta say the difference between the cover with Queen Miela and her in-game model is astounding and most definitely not accidental:

Seems like she was either dressed down on the cover because “sex sells” or dressed up in-game because… censorship? IDK

Edit: A reader pointed out inaccuracy in this post. (bolding mine)

Jon Camp:

The cover art for Rift is the human avatar of the dragon Crucia. She is a lightning/storm dragon from the Plane of Air who commands the Storm Legion (hence the expansion’s name) in their attempt to take over the world of Rift from the god of death. She isn’t the same character as Miela, though they do appear to wear the same “armor” just with Miela having it over a cloth bodysuit, while Crucia prefers to go au naturel. I vaguely recall some lore reason being made for them to look so similar, but I don’t recall if it was given as official lore or simply as speculation… .or if the art department simply re-used their (ahem) assets.

The in-game appearance of Crucia’s avatar is here: