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 AdeptSister wrote:
So how on the whole do we think FF has done with their Female characters? And what could other games learn from them?

I wish they would learn from American McGee's Alice, rather. Who does not like a psycho running at you with a huge knife and the clear intention to remove your head from your shoulders?

 AdeptSister wrote:
So how on the whole do we think FF has done with their Female characters? And what could other games learn from them?

They're all over the place on character design with both good and terrible examples, often in the same games.

They've done a good job with variety, you can't put them into any one box. Heck It's not even easy to definitively put any two in the same box. They've all got different roles to play and all are as fleshed out as their male counterparts in whatever game they're in. Women have been portrayed in leadership roles, with varying levels competence. Women have been protagonists and antagonists, likable, unlikable, experienced an inexperienced. None of them even Rinoa (who is literally an inanimate object for like 30% of the game), is strictly a love-interest, or player titillation and nothing else.

With the exception of 4 & 8, none of them are reduced to mere plot devices for any period of time.

FF has probably done more right than wrong on the whole, at least to compared to the average for video games. It's just when they do things wrong they do it so spectacularly wrong it makes my head spin. You know like making a character an inanimate object for a third of the game or Fran's character design.

Over the years, many have complained that Cloud does not deserve to be the main character of FF7. I would say that is probably the point of the character. Cloud is white and male and the central protagonist. But he's also seems to criticize the white male protagonist trope given he lacks confidence and conviction and is not 'the chosen one' or even a super soldier. He turns out to be a washed-out mook.

 Manchu wrote:
Over the years, many have complained that Cloud does not deserve to be the main character of FF7. I would say that is probably the point of the character. Cloud is white and male and the central protagonist. But he's also seems to criticize the white male protagonist trope given he lacks confidence and conviction and is 'the chosen one' or even a super soldier. He turns out to be a washed-out mook.

But then he shows that even washed out mooks can do amazing things when they are fighting for the right things

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
But then he shows that even washed out mooks can do amazing things when they are fighting for the right things

Or perhaps more importantly, he can only do amazing things with his amazing friends.

 Manchu wrote:
I think Lightning from FF13 is a great character. [Full stop.]

Really? The one who had pretty much "Lack of emotion and slightly emotes"?

Even Cloud in Advent Children, which played up his "depressed nature" that fans enjoyed had more emotion then that.

Lightning clearly has a rich emotional life whether or not she wears it on her sleeve.

 Manchu wrote:
Lightning clearly has a rich emotional life whether or not she wears it on her sleeve.

Bit of a difference between living a rich emotional life, and emoting like the common brick.

Tifa might not be as tomboyish as Yuffie, but she's definitely a tomboy (but then maybe that just gets to the point that the idea of a 'tomboy' is itself kind of sexist?)

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Bit of a difference between living a rich emotional life, and emoting like the common brick.

There's no reason why a character can't do both. Plenty of male characters do.

 LordofHats wrote:
but she's definitely a tomboy

How so? Do you just mean she is not super girlie?

 Manchu wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Bit of a difference between living a rich emotional life, and emoting like the common brick.

There's no reason why a character can't do both. Plenty of male characters do.

And they do, and thus pretty boring as well.

It might be because I haven't played the game fully (Chapter 10, disc broke but after playing it I couldn't care to buy another to finish it), but Lightning is just one of the poorer protagonists for a FF game to me, alongside Squall though he gained a personality later.

Doesn't help that Toriyama have this obsession with her, trying to get her into everything FF now and making her the "Face" of final fantasy.

 Manchu wrote:
Do you just mean she is not super girlie?

That's pretty much what a tomboy is. A girl who doesn't act like a girl (hence my pondering realization that the concept itself probably isn't the most unbiased around XD, cause yeah, never really thought about that one before )

If the phrase "act like a girl/boy" is itself sexist then I would say sexism isn't necessarily a bad thing because I don't think the concept of a gender norm is bad in and of itself. But if "act like a girl" can only mean being totally passive, delicate, vulnerable, etc., that strikes me as bad. And to me, it's not sexism unless it goes further than simply restating a gender norm. I realize there are plenty of people who would say that gender norms are all negative/hurtful/oppressive and therefore are the problem but I can't agree.

 Manchu wrote:
But if "act like a girl" can only mean being totally passive, delicate, vulnerable, etc., that strikes me as bad.

Yeah I think this is kind of what I'm getting at, but then now that I look back, I can't even remember the last time I actually used the phrase 'tomboy' in a conversation. It must be years now for me to have no clue.

It's generally something you hear about children so it may be a time of life thing. I have recently started hearing it again now that more of my friends have kids in the 5-10 year old range.

 Manchu wrote:
I think Lightning from FF13 is a great character. [Full stop.]

I thought she was, too (and I especially loved it when she punched Snow) until she started basically being the mother in the Oedipus complex of that STUPID WORTHLESS *bleep* *bleep*ING *bleep*ITY *bleep*bleep*ER HOPE, WHO I JUST WANTED TO STRANGLE WITH MY BARE HANDS FOR BEING THE MOST USELESS PIECE OF TRASH I'VE EVER SEEN* IN AN RPG.

... ahem. Until she started being a mother figure for THAT THING instead of smacking him upside the face.


*And I have played a LOT of RPGs

 Manchu wrote:
If the phrase "act like a girl/boy" is itself sexist then I would say sexism isn't necessarily a bad thing because I don't think the concept of a gender norm is bad in and of itself. But if "act like a girl" can only mean being totally passive, delicate, vulnerable, etc., that strikes me as bad. And to me, it's not sexism unless it goes further than simply restating a gender norm. I realize there are plenty of people who would say that gender norms are all negative/hurtful/oppressive and therefore are the problem but I can't agree.

IF the gender norm is sexist, trying to enforce it is also sexist. And a lot of gender norms ARE sexist-- for both men and women.

The above may be one of the most tolerant appraisals of Hope I've seen on the internet

And everyone hates Hope is really all I remember about that game XD. I found it so utterly forgettable I never finished it, and can't even remember what the character's were like, though... I remember Snow having really big feet.

Snow was an eternal idiot who said things like "real heroes don't need plans!" right before getting his ass kicked.

 LordofHats wrote:
The above may be one of the most tolerant appraisals of Hope I've seen on the internet

And everyone hates Hope is really all I remember about that game XD. I found it so utterly forgettable I never finished it, and can't even remember what the character's were like, though... I remember Snow having really big feet.

Yeah. Final Fantasy 13 was the first Final Fantasy game my friend had ever played. So I leant him Final Fantasy VII. Took him a while to get the hang of it (he died like 10 times against the roboscorpion, literally the first boss ) but once he got going, he loved it.

Can remember I got a facebook message from him immediately after he'd finished disc one. He'd somehow managed to avoid all of the spoilers on the internet so his reaction to the in game events was the same as players from when it first came out.

Once he'd finished it I asked him which game he thought was better, 7 or 13. He agreed with me that 7 was the better game and that 13 suffered from corridor syndrome for a lot of it.

Snow was an eternal idiot who said things like "real heroes don't need plans!" right before getting his ass kicked.

Sounds like he just wasn't manly enough to be Kamina;



Nah, the only Final Fantasy I remember is VII. VIII, X, and XIII I played didn't like, never finished, and have apparently completely purged from mind.

JRP's just don't fit with me (except for Pokemon )

I can't believe so many people in this thread actually got deep into 13. I lasted all of 5 or 10 minutes. I feel weak.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
So I leant him Final Fantasy VII. Took him a while to get the hang of it (he died like 10 times against the roboscorpion, literally the first boss ) but once he got going, he loved it.

Yeah I played the others after XIII. Only JRPG I think I ever really enjoyed was Skies of Arcadia. I liked VII enough, but I can't really say playing it in 2013 really makes for an enjoyable experience. The times were not kind. I'm sure I'd be more found of it if I played it when it first came out.

He'd somehow managed to avoid all of the spoilers on the internet so his reaction to the in game events was the same as players from when it first came out.

That lucky bastard

I honestly thought the worst part of XIII was the combat system though. The characters were boring (evident that I remember none of them) but the combat system I do remember because I thought it was so atrociously boring.

The combat system was bad because it tried to take the player out of it.

 Chongara wrote:
I can't believe so many people in this thread actually got deep into 13. I lasted all of 5 or 10 minutes. I feel weak.

I am in that party as well. I have no idea what these people talk about. It just felt like an average Anime rip off to me. So I stopped playing and went on started playing WC3.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
I can't believe so many people in this thread actually got deep into 13. I lasted all of 5 or 10 minutes. I feel weak.

I am in that party as well. I have no idea what these people talk about. It just felt like an average Anime rip off to me. So I stopped playing and went on started playing WC3.

Which show specifically? I wasn't really picking on any specific inspirations when I dropped it. For me it was having no idea what was going on with the combat system.

 Chongara wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
I can't believe so many people in this thread actually got deep into 13. I lasted all of 5 or 10 minutes. I feel weak.

I am in that party as well. I have no idea what these people talk about. It just felt like an average Anime rip off to me. So I stopped playing and went on started playing WC3.

Which show specifically? I wasn't really picking on any specific inspirations when I dropped it. For me it was having no idea what was going on with the combat system.

I don't it felt sort of similar. I couldn't put my finger onto it, but felt similar to an average anime where the main character is a female and leads a rag tag crew of peeps.

 Melissia wrote:
The combat system was bad because it tried to take the player out of it.

Also time-wasting animations when changing paradigms, that didn't stop the enemy attacking you. Strike a pose!

 Chongara wrote:
I can't believe so many people in this thread actually got deep into 13. I lasted all of 5 or 10 minutes. I feel weak.

Same, I had put more time into the crappy MMO than I did 13.

13 was horrible....

 Sasori wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
I can't believe so many people in this thread actually got deep into 13. I lasted all of 5 or 10 minutes. I feel weak.

Same, I had put more time into the crappy MMO than I did 13.

13 was horrible....

I thought I was the only one who felt that.

It just was... Terrible.

How did you manage to think you were the only one who hated FF13? Whenever the game is mentioned (as here) people come out of the woodwork just to mention how much they hate it.