Soldiers In Love and a Bunch of Heroines: How Games Are Changing in 2012

Personally, I’m still a little sore that FFXIII-2 designers gave Sera a bow to “preserve her femininity.” 

i mean, i agree about the article, but isn’t it fair that Torchlight is compared to Diablo seeing as 2 of Runic games’ co-founders are co-founders of Blizzard North, the Blizzard studio that develops Diablo games? 

Is there supposed to be a second page?  The link at the bottom links back to the same page.

There is.  The link is busted though.  Try this one:
http://www.themarysue.com/soldiers-in-love-and-a-bunch-of-heroines-how-games-are-changing-in-2012/2/

http://www.themarysue.com/soldiers-in-love-and-a-bunch-of-heroines-how-games-are-changing-in-2012/2/

100% fair. I should’ve been more clear about that point.

Giving some more credit to SquareEnix where it’s due, I loved the sphere grid to build up the characters in FFX. You could do some serious role-reversal, depending on how you filled in the grid for each character, and how you decided to equip them. That made for some great replay value to the game. FFXIII goes much further, of course, which is great. (I’m currently stuck in this game, and the guide isn’t helping, but that’s my sucky game play ability, not the fault of the game. I want to finish it before FFXIII-2 comes out, but that’s not looking very likely at the moment…)

Every time I read about Mass Effect, it makes me sad I gave up on the first one. Maybe if I can get my hands on a console version instead of the PC, but I just couldn’t handle the clunkiness of the controls, especially the stupid tank thing.

Mass Effect 3. Oh yes indeedy. Also Aliens:Colonial Marines I suppose. But most deffo #ME3 Wonder if my FemShep’s uneasy sexual tension with Liara will be resolved despite her resolute standfastness with bloody standoffish Kaiden lol

Still disappointed that my Shep cant share my specs in-game tho! Suppose eyes are lasered from birth IN THE FUTURE !

http://yfrog.com/ochqvmej 

and “…
I played the original Tomb Raider when I was eleven..”

Oh God. Feel so… old.. so.. old lol

I got to talk with one of the devs of Wildstar at Pax Prime 2010 about the game and the whole bunny girl thing. The discussion both gave me some hope for the game and caused a minor bout of facepalming. Firstly, only three races have been revealed so far, and of those races only one gender for them has been shown so far (human and rocky men, bunny women). From the conversation, it seems like there is a somewhat decent chance that the other women of the game are not so… bunnylicious. I say this because the dev explained to me that they choose the most cute, sexy, and anime of all the women to showcase because that’s totally what gamers, men and women alike, want from their female characters (that’s where the facepalm came into the equation btw), but that there were a variety of looks to match the variety of ways to play the game.

I’m very excited to be excited about a Tomb Raider game again! RebootedLara is FIERCE!

Yes, definitely play it on console instead of PC. Much better.

Sigh. What about bunny men? I’ll bet they’re cute, cuddly, and sensitive.

Not to get personally defensive about it, but this: “Frodo and Sam are fantastic, but Commander Shepard is my character. I have guided her every step, her every action.”

I don’t get it. Doesn’t the fact that their behavior and decisions are based on the external control of a disconnected user, as opposed to resulting organically from their psychology and situation, lessen their impact as characters? They’re literally audience surrogates. I admit to not being much of a gamer, but it seems to me a much more experience-driven medium than a character driven one.

Not so!  PC much better in looks and controls lol – but I guess its all about what you’re used to.  I played it first on Xbox.. but HATED the controls.  Bought it cheapo later on the PC where I felt much more at home.  

Note that the tank thingmabob isnt in the 2nd one… dont know about the third!

I remember reading that and thinking “Really?  That’s the reason you gave her a bow?”

I dunno. In FF13-2, they’re taking Lightening OUT. The very premise of the game is that she’s missing. That seems to me like “strong female heroine didn’t work – back to the cutesy giggling types!” It wasn’t Lightening’s fault that FF13 blew. I definitely don’t think FF13-2 is going to be more of the same awesome. I am not looking forward at all to playing as Serah, someone who repeatedly demonstrates she’s just a feminine ideal, and who I know is still going to be in love with a creepily larger man.

The reason you could be more moved by an interactive story than a linear story is the reason you could be more moved by a book than the movie that’s based on the book. Your own mind is more powerful than anything anyone can ever give you. Nothing will replace your own personal brilliance. When you make a choice in a video game, it’s like visualizing the character’s bedroom in your head when you’re reading a book. It’s both your own design, and therefore the best kind.

You know you can use the XBOX 360 controller in the PC version right? That way you get the best of both worlds. Direct X 11 Gaming and Wireless controller all in one package. 

Yeah, but in FFX, doesn’t each character start off at a certain part of the grid which more or less means you have to play that character as a certain class until you can move them around the grid to something else? I pretty much gave up on trying to make the characters anything other than their default character class.

FFXII tends to get overlooked a lot, but one of the things I loved about it was that you can easily make a character whatever class you want. (I always make Penelo my tank because there is something awesome about a cute little girl beating the stuffing out of the bad guys with weapon bigger than she is.) FFX-2 lets you play around with the classes pretty easily too, but then again, the only characters you have are female so you’re really just playing dress-up.

wait when were bows considered  feminine?

Because it distances you from battle, probably. Also, in ancient Japan, women traditionally used a bow instead of swords. However, they also used halberds, but giant phallic symbols are apparently only for teh menz.

It’s true, but it’s still better than FF12, in my opinion. Everyone started out the same and so all the characters ended up the same. Yes, Fran would stray into magic or something, but if you played long enough, everyone did! I really didn’t feel anyone was good at anything in particular. They were all the same type of fighter, and I had to pretend that they weren’t.

I definitely liked the individual flavor of FF10 characters, and I enjoyed it even more when they deviated (turning Kamari into a mage, for instance). It took playing the game long enough to unlock the gates separating the paths, and by then, it felt really interesting when they did grow in odd ways.

In summary, FF10, you start off with mostly linear classes, and then can do whatever you want later. In FF12, you start off with whatever you want, but then everyone ends up the same at the end (except for the summons).

FF debates FTW.

See I think the purple bunny ears rule but it’s lame that it’s only an option for females.

Not really.  Naginata just connotes a different type of character.

The problem with FF12 is that characters still came with stats inherent.  No matter what, Penelo was always going to be a better mage than everybody else, Basch was always going to be the best physical hitter, and Fran was always going to wind up somewhere in the middle not really shining anywhere.

Woe.

I felt the same, and suffered through ME1 on principle.  ME2 plays a lot better and feels a lot more vibrant, I’d give it a try (but don’t suffer any more over ME1)

Lightning wasn’t really a “strong female heroine.”  She was apathetic, taciturn, mostly incapable of showing emotion, and ganked from the post-Advent Children Book Of Cloud Strife pretty much completely.

That said, I’d prefer to be spared Serah and her crystalline waif tears as well.

A more masculine one.

Yuna, Aeris, Rinoa, Garnet were always the damsel in distress, clinging to the male lead because they wuved him. Ashe is a bit weird, like the prelude to Lightening, but she was clearly the central character, but we were told is was Vaan. The fact that Lightening was the lead in her own story and didn’t need constant saving, wasn’t sexually objectified, and owned a spine is what made her strong in my eyes. Also, the fact that uses a sword by default. That shouldn’t be remarkable, but it is.

You obviously haven’t come anywhere near completing even 30% of the game if you believe that.

I’m a bit wary of another FF main game sequel after the mess that was FFX-2.

I guess this is just one of those Your Mileage May Vary things, because when I play a game, I don’t feel like I’m imagining anything. I’m thinking very much in terms of, “How do I attain the next game objective?” rather than, “How does my character feel about this situation?”

Please.

Aeris abandoned the male lead to go save the planet herself – she flirted with him, but she didn’t cling, and when she was “in distress” it was because she was putting herself into trouble in order to accomplish something.

Rinoa was the leader of a resistance movement, and granted the whole thing kind of fell down rather rapidly, but she was no more of a wreck than everybody else in that game.

Garnet was also not clingy – she basically spends most of the game arranging a coup.  Her emotional trauma has nothing to do with Zidane, but her mother.

And as for Yuna, I can’t believe you’d even argue that.  She’s the only person in that game, on that quest, who is NOT a tagalong.  Everyone else are her “guardians” and she is the person on a mission to save the world – and opts out of pointlessly throwing herself on a sword by the end of it, too.

None of them were sexually objectified, all of them had their own stories, and most of them had very interesting and memorable character arcs.  Aeris and Yuna are messiahnic figures, even.  So what if they’re feminine?  They’re still better and more realized characters than Lightning, who has about the depth of a Kingdom Hearts character and exists in a context that makes absolutely no sense.  I don’t give a fuck if she uses a sword and punches people in the face.  I’d rather have a good and compelling character in a dress who needs to be saved once during the game than ACTION HEROINE, cardboard flavour.

I played plenty of the game – I just don’t jibe with pointless melodrama.

Those are all fair arguments, and trust me when I say I actually love those characters.

However, being a damsel in distress is very much a real part of who they are. You can get into specifics, about Yuna not being a “tagalong” or whatever, but the point is that she, and the others, needed to be constantly protected. The fact that Yuna needed a ton of guardians, as her rival says, speaks a lot about her (even if I disagree). She is repeatedly kidnapped and bends to the will of those around her all the time – everything, that is, except her resolve to do the right thing. And that is great and I love that about her, but, again, I’m still tripping over how she’s a precious princess that must be protected. Not just because of her in specific, but because that’s the recurring trend in most heroines. I can’t remember FF9 too well, but she is literally a princess, and she did need to be saved even if she didn’t want to be.

You focused a lot on my word “clingy” and I threw that in there as an afterthought, so I take it back. (Rinoa was totally clingy, though. :D) 

To be fair, all of the characters in FF13 had the depth of cardboard, so focusing on her comes off as spiteful for some reason. Which leads me back to my original argument: Lightening is not the reason that FF13 sucked. Her archetype isn’t a bad one, and I would like to see more of it. Just because they executed it poorly doesn’t mean I want her immediately replaced with the Holy Girlfriend™ again.

Whoa, what? Are you talking about me, or the game?
Edit: Sorry, I think you were talking about the game. Yes, no one is arguing that FF13 was awesome-sauce. I don’t think Lightening’s archetype is to blame, though.

I don’t think it’s just playing dressup simply because they’re all female. After all, you can get quite melee and play classes that people usually go “Oh that’s for the menfolk!” about. You can play your team however you want, with whatever class you want, and that’s quite nice! :)

I agree, I find the PC versions much better myself. But it does depend on what you’re used to. To each their own, as they say.

Preach it. I’m glad to see someone come to these character’s defense for a change. They get bashed a lot, which always surprises me since they, while being Staff Chicks, are actually pretty strong examples of their trope, versus the usual simpering ones.

She was pretty much Squall then.  I think they were trying to play up an anti-hero of sorts but you really gotta do the anti-hero thing right for it to work.

Good point. I liked FFXII, and you’re right about making characters whatever class. I never got all the way thru the game though, because the story never grabbed me the way FFX did. FFXIII’s story so far is really good, but like I said above, I’m stuck, the guide isn’t helping, and I haven’t had time to go on gamfaq and pour through it to find out what to do.

I agree, but I have to defend Yuna for a moment (please bear with me). SPOILER ALERT! Since Tidus wasn’t even real, it could be argued that she was the hero.

True, although I think I liked FFX-2 better than you did. Hated the idea of “dress spheres” and “garment grids”, but I warmed up to it after awhile, and played all the way through it. Paine was fairly badass, but otherwise not interesting. Didn’t like Brother, Yuna’s COUSIN, coming on to her. It was a let-down after FFX, though, and I’m afraid that FFXIII-2 might do the same.

That’s fair, then.  Sorry for getting my back up, it just becomes very frustrating to see genuinely good characters overlooked because of imperfections (or god forbid, femininity). 

I would like to see some more tough girls who bend to gender stereotypes a little less, and certainly as lead characters… I just really don’t want to have to trade in a personality or some kind of meaningful personal goal to get that.

Definitely about the game, sorry for that.

Lightning’s “archetype” isn’t the blame, but the fact that she never becomes anything more than an archetype is part of the problem.  People complained about the linearity and it was a problem, but for me the bigger issue was that they spent all that time streamlining to focus on plot and characters, but the plot and characters were pretty much awful.

Same here. Of course I never finished the game (and I’ve replayed it about three times already) more because I didn’t want the experience to end.

The weakest part of FFXII is the story. I found it rather, uh, unrealistic. I mean, the motivation of the heroes (technically, Ashe’s motivations since everyone else is just along for the ride) is pretty weak, selfish and indulgent. On the other hand, the “villains” of the story actually had a cause worth fighting for, granted they went about it in a horrible, ends-justify-the-means way (plus they went all crazy-cakes at the end).

However, the world of FFXII was incredibly appealing, so was the gameplay. I hear a lot of complaints about the gambit system, but it made the battles flow more realistically and did require a bit of skill. I’ve been tempted to get into the Tactics games since I know they also take place in Ivalice.

The official guide for FFXII is horrible. Simply atrocious, really. The guides for FFX and FFX-2 are much, much better. The only thing I use the FFXII guide for is the section in the back showing where to buy/find what spells/items. The rest of it is only good for kindling.

Yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stick with the classes those stats work with the best. I don’t pay much attention to the stats and from what I understand, those stats are only slightly different for each character. They certainly aren’t good enough to force you to make Basch the tank and Penelo the mage.

lol, I guess so! It’s a shame, though, that FF10, and 12 both had female central characters, but they weren’t given the title. I’m really happy that FF13 finally just admitted that women could be leads, too.

One thing that bugs me about the reinvention of Lara Croft is the implication that smaller-breasted Lara equals more well-rounded, less objectified Lara.  I understand this is because of the fixation on large breasts in western culture, but implying that a smaller-breasted woman is more inherently intellectual/feminist/realistic than a fuller-breasted one is about as annoying to me as the idea that small-breasted women are perceived as unattractive or jealous of their more buxom friends. Objectification is objectification no matter what the person being objectified looks like: Kat
Dennings, Regina Spektor and Sophia Wolff are far more voluptuous than the average Victoria’s Secret model, but they aren’t objectified.

Lara’s cup size shouldn’t matter at all: what matters, or what should matter, is how her physique is portrayed.   In the first game, her physique was inconsequential, but the marketing hype and Tomb Raider 2 turned her from an uncompromising action heroine into a sex symbol. Then Crystal Dynamics made her wear even less, exposing more cleavage and wearing shorter shorts, but because her bust shrank, somehow this equated to being more “realistic.” Riiiiight.

In any case, I hope that this reboot of Lara brings her back to the kickass action heroine rather than the insulting character derailment from the recent games.

Oh, Mass Effect! Can’t wait to get my hands on all three installments as both BroShep and FemShep! I hope they continue the Tali and Garrus romances from 2, though all the romances have their points.
But the romances are actually the least of my concern, as fun as they are, the story of Mass Effect itself is what really sold me (and Jennifer Hale’s acting as Femshep :D). Hoping to see the exciting conclusion to this fantastic RPG!

Samurai daughters and wives learned to use weapons that negated men’s size, reach, and strength advantages. Thus the bow and naginata were traditionally associated with women.

I’m not sure what to say considering never played a FF game

I recommend FFX, if you have a PS2 or PS3 that’s backwards compatible. Still my favorite. Great story, and I cared very much about EVERY character. I can’t say that about any other game I’ve played. Of course, I’m an almost 50-year old with a full-time job and responsibilities, so my game playing time is quite limited.

To be fair the battle system for X-2 was actually really excellent. But the plot… and the characters… and the decoration fluff they put in. Bleh. That’s not my Yuna from FFX. :(

Ugg maybe it’s just a personality conflict but I didn’t connect with ANY of the main characters in FF8. Best characters were Fujin & Raijin. lol

Kudos to the Mary Sue for writing a video game centric article. I’d love to see more articles about them, as they are too few and far between at the moment, and I want more reasons to love this blog!

I was a die hard FF fan up until X, and have come to terms that my relationship with the franchise is over. I tried XIII and it did not enthrall me enough to play past a couple of hours, even with all of its glitzy graphics and trite, but fondly enjoyed and aesthetically appealing character designs. Props to Square for making a female heroine that wasn’t a damsel in distress trope like the majority of FF girls, or reducing the sequel to a dress up game a la X-2. I still don’t think that’s enough for me to get back into the franchise. It just hasn’t been the same in a long while, though the music is still beautiful.

I’ve never gotten into Tomb Raider, but just seeing the videos posted about that game intrigues me.

Ah I see it’s a japanese thing. When I think of bows I just think of Native Americans offing some cowboys.

From the list, I’m curious about Diablo III. I gave Diablo II a try, but the extra-old graphics kinda put me down….

I liked the take charge yuna from X-2 better. Also like the mech things you could jump into towards the end.

X-2 isn’t a “dress up” game it’s a game that allows you to change classes mid combat and ride giant robots. It’s not without its flaws but it was still fun.

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