I like that as a framing question, and it helps me to further understand why it is that scenes like the RE4 one feels so weird to me.

I think the thing that makes me uncomfortable in that scenario is the fact that Leon is the hero. I'm a woman who has loved gaming for basically my whole life, so I'm used to playing as someone who doesn't look like me — there's a certain amount of abstracting away of gender that's necessary if I want to be able to participate in some heroic escapism. That's why scenes like Leon being a creep are so jarring, because he's the hero. The narrative of the game is endorsing this kind of behaviour because it's being done by the hero.

Dead Rising is a somewhat more ambiguous example, but still weird overall. I don't necessarily even mind that the photography intro quest highlights the fact you can take sexy(?) photos, because the NPC in that quest is written in a way where it's like the game itself is saying "yeah, this guy is a weird creep". Getting points for "erotic" photos is a bit weird though, because whilst you can choose to not take photos like that, it feels like the mechanics of the game are endorsing the creepy dude's mentality overall.