And the XV VR demo managed to out-skeeve all the previous XV marketing, which is quite an impressive feat. This game just keeps sinking lower and lower.
Its kind of funny (and sad) to see Final Fantasy go from one of their more empowered female heroines to an all male party and "YEAAAHH! Look at that ass!"
I said this on the Twitters, but my biggest fear is that if FFXV succeeds, Final Fantasy will become the JRPG franchise for assholes.
So if you like FF15 you're an asshole?
That seems like a shitty thing to say and kinda hypocritical.
I don't think that's what Zython meant, actually. Or at least that's not what I read it to mean.
Maybe but if it's for assholes then how does that not make those who are fans assholes?
UNRELATED TO AVOID TRIPLE POSTING:
Brotherhood ep 2 was p cool.
The way they handled fat prompto was done well in my opinion. They never had him bullied or looked down at for being fat and he decided on his own terms he wanted to get in shape and built confidence doing so.
Between Brotherhood episode 2 and the news that Prompto will take photos throughout the game that you can save as screenshots is pretty much solidifying him as my favorite of the party so far.
Between Brotherhood episode 2 and the news that Prompto will take photos throughout the game that you can save as screenshots is pretty much solidifying him as my favorite of the party so far.
Interesting.
I hate Prompto from my experiences with him in the demo. He really annoys me and if it was my band of friends, he wouldn't be there.
XV is gonna be brilliant. Those visuals. That music.
Might end up being my favorite FF theme before the end.
Yea dude.
Looking hot as hellll.
Hypehype.
And seeing some other videos of the Titan fight from e3 without someone having stage jitters or whatever.
Yea. Looks fucking good.
Oh yeah, that fight and the battle system overall looks clean. I enjoy XIII's battle system because of how creative it allows you to be, if you feel like it.
XV looks to have even more freedom and creative potential.
And the XV VR demo managed to out-skeeve all the previous XV marketing, which is quite an impressive feat. This game just keeps sinking lower and lower.
Its kind of funny (and sad) to see Final Fantasy go from one of their more empowered female heroines to an all male party and "YEAAAHH! Look at that ass!"
I said this on the Twitters, but my biggest fear is that if FFXV succeeds, Final Fantasy will become the JRPG franchise for assholes.
So if you like FF15 you're an asshole?
That seems like a shitty thing to say and kinda hypocritical.
I don't think that's what Zython meant, actually. Or at least that's not what I read it to mean.
Maybe but if it's for assholes then how does that not make those who are fans assholes?
Well the quote was that if XV succeeds then FF would become the RPG franchise for assholes. This implies that it would take place after FFXV, so whether or not you like XV isn't really the topic.
I'm extrapolating on Zython's behalf here, but my reading (and also some of my fears) would be that, if XV succeeds, Square may take bad lessons away from the game. Comparing its reception to XIII's, they might decide that fans want dudebro heroes (no strong women protagonists), sexed-up women aggressively marketed at them, and light RPG elements for more mainstream-style gameplay. Doubling down on this for XVI, then, would make a game that's even less the Final Fantasy RPGs of old, turn away more and more women and middle-of-the-road players, and draw in more dudebro GG types into its fanbase. Thus, RPG franchise for assholes.
I think there's too many variables to worry overmuch about that sort of future being the outcome of XV's success, but it is at least one possible dark outcome. Of course there's always the possibility that a XV flop kills the franchise as a AAA series, so it's not like XV's failure prevents all dark timelines either.
So basically XV is Caius?
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
This is one of those situations where the vision of the artist is one thing, but the vision of the audience is something else. And the vision of the corporate suits is a third thing. Should the artist betray his vision for his work to appease the audience? Is money and mainstream success more valuable than the integrity of the art?
I dunno.
I would hate to be a game developer. Very rarely are these people allowed true 100% artistic integrity, because there are shareholders and executive suits telling them that they have to produce a marketable and profitable product. And there are ravenous fans telling them that they are doing it wrong.
But. And here's the part that really gets me.
I think that if the suits would just back off and let the storytellers and artists tell the story that they want to tell without meddling, I think the integrity of the product itself will draw the people in.
You can really tell the difference in the games that are a "labor of love" and a game that is generated by the corporate machine to sell millions.
Using FFXIV as an example - that game is definitely a labor of love. YoshiP took a game that the world had dismissed, dogged, and written off as terrible and turned it into something beautiful, something that is genuinely fun to play, and something that has a heart and soul of its own.
And I feel that with FFXV, if the suits at Squeenix would be a bit less meddlesome and a bit less "you need to make a billion dollars with this" and just leave it alone, I think we'd probably all benefit from it and the game would make a billion dollars anyway. (Numbers exaggerated).
This is one of those situations where the vision of the artist is one thing, but the vision of the audience is something else. And the vision of the corporate suits is a third thing. Should the artist betray his vision for his work to appease the audience? Is money and mainstream success more valuable than the integrity of the art?
I dunno.
I would hate to be a game developer. Very rarely are these people allowed true 100% artistic integrity, because there are shareholders and executive suits telling them that they have to produce a marketable and profitable product. And there are ravenous fans telling them that they are doing it wrong.
But. And here's the part that really gets me.
I think that if the suits would just back off and let the storytellers and artists tell the story that they want to tell without meddling, I think the integrity of the product itself will draw the people in.
You can really tell the difference in the games that are a "labor of love" and a game that is generated by the corporate machine to sell millions.
Using FFXIV as an example - that game is definitely a labor of love. YoshiP took a game that the world had dismissed, dogged, and written off as terrible and turned it into something beautiful, something that is genuinely fun to play, and something that has a heart and soul of its own.
And I feel that with FFXV, if the suits at Squeenix would be a bit less meddlesome and a bit less "you need to make a billion dollars with this" and just leave it alone, I think we'd probably all benefit from it and the game would make a billion dollars anyway. (Numbers exaggerated).
Actually, based on reports, FFXV has a lot more freedom than previous FFs, and that was largely due to the success of FFXIV (in which Yoshi-P was given 100% free reign and able to build his own team).
Remember that FFXII likely drove its director to quit "for health reasons" because they scrapped almost all of his ideas and forced in a focus-tested nothing character as the lead.
Here's a culture question. I genuinely don't know anything about Japanese culture.
Is Japan just more accepting of sexified female character designs than we are here in the west? I find these discussions of Cindy and that girl in Star Ocean with the excessive skin showing through her diamond-checkered dress to be very fascinating from the standpoint of a look into cultural differences.
Something that a woman in the west might view as being over-sexification or objectification seems like it might be culturally accepted in Japan since they're the ones creating it? I mean, don't get me wrong. The U.S. creates tons of "eye candy" and sexualized female characters too. Like Widowmaker in Overwatch.
But anyway, I'm just curious if the Japanese fans of FF are as outraged by all the ass-shots of Cindy and such as people here seem to be?
Here's a culture question. I genuinely don't know anything about Japanese culture.
Is Japan just more accepting of sexified female character designs than we are here in the west? I find these discussions of Cindy and that girl in Star Ocean with the excessive skin showing through her diamond-checkered dress to be very fascinating from the standpoint of a look into cultural differences.
Something that a woman in the west might view as being over-sexification or objectification seems like it might be culturally accepted in Japan since they're the ones creating it? I mean, don't get me wrong. The U.S. creates tons of "eye candy" and sexualized female characters too. Like Widowmaker in Overwatch.
But anyway, I'm just curious if the Japanese fans of FF are as outraged by all the ass-shots of Cindy and such as people here seem to be?
Well, yes, Japan is generally accepting of these things, but my sense is that "we" are perfectly accepting of it in the West, too. I'm pretty certain I've come across as "shrill" about this, and I've even had to argue in these threads with someone literally claiming that her (Cindey's) outfit was perfectly normal and wholly acceptable, and this is the typically-extra-progressive Penny Arcade forums. Go somewhere else with this and you'll get tarred and feathered as a SJW out to ruin games or whatnot.
Until that VR presentation amped up the skeeviness, people complaining about this were pretty much the minority of the minority.
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
+5
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
I think it was more older Japan though.
Like they are still more lax with the whole objectifying of women than we are, but a lot of this really bad stuff is likely the decisions of older directors who will never change their ways.
Because I think there is one thing about Japan culture I am almost certain of, is a lot of older people are very, very stubborn about their views.
Like they are still more lax with the whole objectifying of women than we are, but a lot of this really bad stuff is likely the decisions of older directors who will never change their ways.
Because I think there is one thing about Japan culture everyone I am almost certain of, is a lot of older people are very, very stubborn about their views.
I mean, hearing somebody worried that FFXV is going to turn the FF franchise into dudebro central sounds just as silly to me as somebody who would've said while FFX-2 was in development "I worry that if FFX-2 is successful, every game is going to be an all female cast with no male diversity, filled with cheesy j-pop songs and about playing dress up."
FFXV is FFXV. The next game will be a different thing. This particular game's story is about a road trip of a group of guy friends, just like FFX-2 was a story about those 3 girls.
I am not terribly knowledgeable about Japan, but the impression I get is that it has fairly similar attitudes re: women, objectification, proscriptive gender norms, etc. as the pre-Second-Wave US.
I remember Azrael at Gaijin Smash used to tell lots of stories about teachers casually telling female students that they should be housewives or good cooks for their future husbands and what have you. It's pretty common for both men and women to expect women only to work until they get married/pregnant. Stuff like that.
It's obviously not a 1:1 correlation since it's a very different cultural with very different ideas about sexuality and many other things (I once heard it put "the Japanese never accepted Christianity or Freud"), but the overall impression I get when reading about Japanese workplaces and cultural expectations is often, "1960-era Sterling Cooper". This is admittedly an impression I get without any firsthand experience.
EDIT: FWIW I've also read that this is somewhat different among the younger adult cohort (ie, the 20s-early 30s generation) partially for economic reasons, but they aren't on top of the social heap yet, and culture changes slowly.
Like they are still more lax with the whole objectifying of women than we are, but a lot of this really bad stuff is likely the decisions of older directors who will never change their ways.
Because I think there is one thing about Japan culture I am almost certain of, is a lot of older people are very, very stubborn about their views.
Its not really that its accepted, but rather that its ignored. One of the huge parts of Japanese culture is that you ignore things that don't "fit" what society says. If you find something offensive, embarrassing, awkward, etc, you just pretend it doesn't exist.
So, for something like sexuality, its open in Japan, and yet hidden because the people around it refuse to acknowledge its existence. My father did business there for a couple of years, and he told me how people would openly be reading porn on the morning commuter trains and no one bothered paying attention to it.
I don't think I've actually finished an FF game since FF7(!) now that I think about it. For whatever reason I rarely feel the need to see them through to completion, and I tend to lose interest in them in the endgame when you've figured out the plot/got all the cool items and abilities/gotten really powerful and things start winding down.
I think FF is the only series where I typically do this. Everything else I want to beat and see how it ends. Their journeys are typically better than the destination, I think.
Here's a culture question. I genuinely don't know anything about Japanese culture.
Is Japan just more accepting of sexified female character designs than we are here in the west? I find these discussions of Cindy and that girl in Star Ocean with the excessive skin showing through her diamond-checkered dress to be very fascinating from the standpoint of a look into cultural differences.
Something that a woman in the west might view as being over-sexification or objectification seems like it might be culturally accepted in Japan since they're the ones creating it? I mean, don't get me wrong. The U.S. creates tons of "eye candy" and sexualized female characters too. Like Widowmaker in Overwatch.
But anyway, I'm just curious if the Japanese fans of FF are as outraged by all the ass-shots of Cindy and such as people here seem to be?
I'm absolutely not an expert on Japan. My experience comes from the friends and roommates I had in college, many of whom I still talk to this day, and a few blogs and youtube channels I subscribe to. I think this board in particular has a culture, and tends to be very sensitive to things like sexified female designs that I just don't think are reflective of the greater Western community as a whole, though I do think that the Western culture is becoming more sensitive to these things than Japan is. My friends and I are all older now though so the younger generation I think is a little more sensitive to it. The impression that I get a lot from the Japanese is that "boys will be boys" meaning that such objective and oversexualized fantasies are just part of the male experience. In general my experience has been that Japanese women just don't have as many hang-ups about sex in general. An attitude that "if this is what gets your rocks off then go and do it." Once you're in a relationship they're pretty open and forward about what they want too. Not just sex, but really any hobby or interest (both covered under the same word "shumi"). For example, I had a girlfriend follow me to a D&D game I was running one time. She watched the whole thing and told me that while it wasn't her cup of tea, she understood why I liked it and saw that it was important to me.
This video is hardly definitive, but it shows some real examples of how the Japanese think about the related issue: https://youtu.be/wIvQKGaKItE?t=7m17s
edit: oh man that thumbnail... This is the topic referenced. The video has a few topics, but the link goes to minute 7:17 and is specifically about Western views about Japanese sex culture.
I mean, hearing somebody worried that FFXV is going to turn the FF franchise into dudebro central sounds just as silly to me as somebody who would've said while FFX-2 was in development "I worry that if FFX-2 is successful, every game is going to be an all female cast with no male diversity, filled with cheesy j-pop songs and about playing dress up."
FFXV is FFXV. The next game will be a different thing. This particular game's story is about a road trip of a group of guy friends, just like FFX-2 was a story about those 3 girls.
Like over half of the most popular FF characters of all time are female.
I really don't think they're just going to throw that away from here on out.
I mean, hearing somebody worried that FFXV is going to turn the FF franchise into dudebro central sounds just as silly to me as somebody who would've said while FFX-2 was in development "I worry that if FFX-2 is successful, every game is going to be an all female cast with no male diversity, filled with cheesy j-pop songs and about playing dress up."
FFXV is FFXV. The next game will be a different thing. This particular game's story is about a road trip of a group of guy friends, just like FFX-2 was a story about those 3 girls.
Like over half of the most popular FF characters of all time are female.
I really don't think they're just going to throw that away from here on out.
Now this does seem refreshing and something that would renew my interest in FF.
A thing I hate in JRPGs are male and females characters with no social circle of any kind. Especially males with no friends, make no effort to make them, don't talk to or with anyone but gather up an entire party and have chicks throwing themselves at them while they stare into space. And the girls who, in turn, have no social circle and have nothing better to do than throw themselves at a male protagonist. So I love the JRPG heroes who defy this. For example, Zidane, who is socially savvy, has large, established posse of friends, and demonstrates realistic wisdom and leadership skills, is my all time favorite JRPG character.
When a female character has a best friend in a JRPG, players go "ololol lesbians" and in this when a group of men are friends with each other they go "eww, bromance," because characters with typical realistic social circles are that uncommon in JRPGs.
I mean, hearing somebody worried that FFXV is going to turn the FF franchise into dudebro central sounds just as silly to me as somebody who would've said while FFX-2 was in development "I worry that if FFX-2 is successful, every game is going to be an all female cast with no male diversity, filled with cheesy j-pop songs and about playing dress up."
FFXV is FFXV. The next game will be a different thing. This particular game's story is about a road trip of a group of guy friends, just like FFX-2 was a story about those 3 girls.
Like over half of the most popular FF characters of all time are female.
I really don't think they're just going to throw that away from here on out.
Now this does seem refreshing and something that would renew my interest in FF.
A thing I hate in JRPGs are male and females characters with no social circle of any kind. Especially males with no friends, make no effort to make them, don't talk to or with anyone but gather up an entire party and have chicks throwing themselves at them while they stare into space. And the girls who, in turn, have no social circle and have nothing better to do than throw themselves at a male protagonist. So I love the JRPG heroes who defy this. For example, Zidane, who is socially savvy, has large, established posse of friends, and demonstrates realistic wisdom and leadership skills, is my all time favorite JRPG character.
When a female character has a best friend in a JRPG, players go "ololol lesbians" and in this when a group of men are friends with each other they go "eww, bromance," because characters with typical realistic social circles are that uncommon in JRPGs.
I'm with you. As much as I do understand being sad that there are no playable female characters in this title, it also feels like it's doing something I haven't seen in an RPG before: focusing on a small group of people who are already friends. Sure, most JRPGs will have one or two party members know each other beforehand, but I can't think of one where the group is just made up of people with established relationships already.
I mean, hearing somebody worried that FFXV is going to turn the FF franchise into dudebro central sounds just as silly to me as somebody who would've said while FFX-2 was in development "I worry that if FFX-2 is successful, every game is going to be an all female cast with no male diversity, filled with cheesy j-pop songs and about playing dress up."
FFXV is FFXV. The next game will be a different thing. This particular game's story is about a road trip of a group of guy friends, just like FFX-2 was a story about those 3 girls.
Like over half of the most popular FF characters of all time are female.
I really don't think they're just going to throw that away from here on out.
Now this does seem refreshing and something that would renew my interest in FF.
A thing I hate in JRPGs are male and females characters with no social circle of any kind. Especially males with no friends, make no effort to make them, don't talk to or with anyone but gather up an entire party and have chicks throwing themselves at them while they stare into space. And the girls who, in turn, have no social circle and have nothing better to do than throw themselves at a male protagonist. So I love the JRPG heroes who defy this. For example, Zidane, who is socially savvy, has large, established posse of friends, and demonstrates realistic wisdom and leadership skills, is my all time favorite JRPG character.
When a female character has a best friend in a JRPG, players go "ololol lesbians" and in this when a group of men are friends with each other they go "eww, bromance," because characters with typical realistic social circles are that uncommon in JRPGs.
I'm with you. As much as I do understand being sad that there are no playable female characters in this title, it also feels like it's doing something I haven't seen in an RPG before: focusing on a small group of people who are already friends. Sure, most JRPGs will have one or two party members know each other beforehand, but I can't think of one where the group is just made up of people with established relationships already.
In general my experience has been that Japanese women just don't have as many hang-ups about sex in general. An attitude that "if this is what gets your rocks off then go and do it."
I don't mean to snipe, but this bit stands out from the rest of the post in a rather stark manner, and it seems to be coming from a fairly common misconception about why sexualization makes a lot of people uncomfortable. So I just want to address this idea, hopefully in a way that doesn't leave you feeling attacked.
It's not about sexual hang-ups at all. I'm totally for sexual things. In fact the West (or at least the US) is way too reserved about this in general. We should have a healthy market of games rated Adult Only that are just straight-up porn games, and no one should be judged for creating or playing them. I also wish more developers took the BioWare approach, where they write realistic characters that do realistic things like have sex with each other. BioWare puts R-rated sexuality in their games, and it's not the feminists that criticize them for this (when they do take flak it's for awkward costume designs like Samara or poorly-conceived camera angles in non-sexual situations like with Miranda).
More sexuality is a good thing, but that's not the same thing as asking for sexual objectification. Tifa's back-arching victory pose and exaggerated breasts bouncing at weirdly dissonant times in FF7's FMVs were unfortunate, out-of-place, and degrading to her character. But if the remake takes a mature approach with the writing and storytelling, I'd be all for her and Cloud having a clothes-free scene before the final dungeon. I'd also fully support a separate Adult Only game featuring (18+) characters from FF7. Why not? Sounds like a good time. (yes there's lots of ways that could and probably would go horribly wrong but I'm assuming here that it doesn't for sake of argument)
I even support optional outfits that let the player choose between sexualizing characters or not (especially when this is applied equally across characters instead of just limited to the "babe," if the game has multiple viable characters for this). In many cases like this (Lightning Returns) I honestly choose the sexual outfits. My Skyrim is modded to the point where it is effectively AO, and I spend time working on my avatar to make her as beautiful and hot as I can. Because this is something I'm doing by my own choice, it feels free and even empowering. But I avoid games that impose this on me as the default, because it's a very different sort of message and emotional outcome. I couldn't get more than a couple hours through Two Worlds 2; after the third or so time the camera lovingly panned up the body of some bikini-clad lady while I'm forced to be some random douche, I was out, and with a bit of nausea.
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
He didn't say anything to suggest they couldn't. Just that it's cool that XV is about a group of people who are already close, not just getting thrown together by the circumstances, which is the way most JRPG parties develop. FFX-2 was the same way as FFXV, difference being we already knew Yuna and Rikku were friends from the first game.
For better or worse, they wanted XV to be about a group of guy friends. And yes, men are different when it's just men around, and women are different when it's just women around, period. The conversations you have in mixed company are different from those you have with just the guys or just the girls.
And yes, men are different when it's just men around, and women are different when it's just women around, period. The conversations you have in mixed company are different from those you have with just the guys or just the girls.
And nearly every one of those differences and conversations revolve around or are sourced from problematic gender relations and/or gender roles, which is precisely the sort of thing I like to get away from when I'm playing video games. If a game is going to delve into that territory, it should be doing so from a perspective of commentary where it's saying something useful, which is absolutely not what FFXV is going to be doing if its marketing is any indication.
Also, video games are flush with dudebro stories showing us what guys are like when there's no women around. The No-Girls Club history of video games is kind of the problem, which is why making a game like this right now is so tone-deaf.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
No they aren't. When it's just my guy friends around, we roast each other harder and talk about our interests that our wives/female friends don't typically share, from how excited we are about the upcoming NFL season to whatever else. When my wife and her girlfriends are around without guys, they openly discuss the annoyances of menstruation and talk a lot more about sex and they'll be talking about books and movies that they know we don't care about so they wouldn't discuss them as much in mixed company.
Men and women ARE different, and for the most part don't discuss the same things in mixed company as they do in single gender scenarios. That is a fact of life, and is not about any gender relations issue. I don't want to be part of discussions about how sucky it is to have your period, and my wife doesn't want to be part of discussions we might have about the specifics of how badly my balls hurt while I recovered from my vasectomy.
When I'm hanging out with my friends who are girls, we talk about whatever interests we share, but they're not going to talk to me about the same things they talk about to their girlfriends, just like I'm not going to talk to them about the same things I talk to guy friends about. That's ridiculous to expect.
I 100% agree that games need more cool women in them, and things are going that way. FFXV not being one of those games is not a problem. The problem is industry wide, and it's not on FFXV to feature women in the main cast. Not to mention, from what we've seen XV features women in cool roles, at least one of the trailers had a badass lady villain, and there are others we don't know that much about yet, so they may feature heavily in the story.
Meanwhile, I'm playing Bayonetta 2, Mirror's Edge, Overwatch, and a million other games with kick ass women as main characters, and things are only getting better on that front. Diversity doesn't mean every single property individually needs to represent all groups.
Posts
Maybe but if it's for assholes then how does that not make those who are fans assholes?
UNRELATED TO AVOID TRIPLE POSTING:
Brotherhood ep 2 was p cool.
Between Brotherhood episode 2 and the news that Prompto will take photos throughout the game that you can save as screenshots is pretty much solidifying him as my favorite of the party so far.
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
Might end up being my favorite FF theme before the end.
Yea dude.
Looking hot as hellll.
Hypehype.
And seeing some other videos of the Titan fight from e3 without someone having stage jitters or whatever.
Yea. Looks fucking good.
Interesting.
I hate Prompto from my experiences with him in the demo. He really annoys me and if it was my band of friends, he wouldn't be there.
Oh yeah, that fight and the battle system overall looks clean. I enjoy XIII's battle system because of how creative it allows you to be, if you feel like it.
XV looks to have even more freedom and creative potential.
Haven't been this excited for a game in a while.
Me too. I've so badly wanted international zodiac for years, I can't even begin to describe it. XII's also my favorite art directed game ever.
Possibly my most anticipated game of 2017.
I'm extrapolating on Zython's behalf here, but my reading (and also some of my fears) would be that, if XV succeeds, Square may take bad lessons away from the game. Comparing its reception to XIII's, they might decide that fans want dudebro heroes (no strong women protagonists), sexed-up women aggressively marketed at them, and light RPG elements for more mainstream-style gameplay. Doubling down on this for XVI, then, would make a game that's even less the Final Fantasy RPGs of old, turn away more and more women and middle-of-the-road players, and draw in more dudebro GG types into its fanbase. Thus, RPG franchise for assholes.
I think there's too many variables to worry overmuch about that sort of future being the outcome of XV's success, but it is at least one possible dark outcome. Of course there's always the possibility that a XV flop kills the franchise as a AAA series, so it's not like XV's failure prevents all dark timelines either.
This is one of those situations where the vision of the artist is one thing, but the vision of the audience is something else. And the vision of the corporate suits is a third thing. Should the artist betray his vision for his work to appease the audience? Is money and mainstream success more valuable than the integrity of the art?
I dunno.
I would hate to be a game developer. Very rarely are these people allowed true 100% artistic integrity, because there are shareholders and executive suits telling them that they have to produce a marketable and profitable product. And there are ravenous fans telling them that they are doing it wrong.
But. And here's the part that really gets me.
I think that if the suits would just back off and let the storytellers and artists tell the story that they want to tell without meddling, I think the integrity of the product itself will draw the people in.
You can really tell the difference in the games that are a "labor of love" and a game that is generated by the corporate machine to sell millions.
Using FFXIV as an example - that game is definitely a labor of love. YoshiP took a game that the world had dismissed, dogged, and written off as terrible and turned it into something beautiful, something that is genuinely fun to play, and something that has a heart and soul of its own.
And I feel that with FFXV, if the suits at Squeenix would be a bit less meddlesome and a bit less "you need to make a billion dollars with this" and just leave it alone, I think we'd probably all benefit from it and the game would make a billion dollars anyway. (Numbers exaggerated).
I wouldn't count on it. X/X-2 HD didn't have cheats and XII HD is definitely going to be more in that vein.
Actually, based on reports, FFXV has a lot more freedom than previous FFs, and that was largely due to the success of FFXIV (in which Yoshi-P was given 100% free reign and able to build his own team).
Remember that FFXII likely drove its director to quit "for health reasons" because they scrapped almost all of his ideas and forced in a focus-tested nothing character as the lead.
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
Is Japan just more accepting of sexified female character designs than we are here in the west? I find these discussions of Cindy and that girl in Star Ocean with the excessive skin showing through her diamond-checkered dress to be very fascinating from the standpoint of a look into cultural differences.
Something that a woman in the west might view as being over-sexification or objectification seems like it might be culturally accepted in Japan since they're the ones creating it? I mean, don't get me wrong. The U.S. creates tons of "eye candy" and sexualized female characters too. Like Widowmaker in Overwatch.
But anyway, I'm just curious if the Japanese fans of FF are as outraged by all the ass-shots of Cindy and such as people here seem to be?
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
2x and 4x speed mode. And on PC, you can always use cheatengine.
Until that VR presentation amped up the skeeviness, people complaining about this were pretty much the minority of the minority.
Like they are still more lax with the whole objectifying of women than we are, but a lot of this really bad stuff is likely the decisions of older directors who will never change their ways.
Because I think there is one thing about Japan culture I am almost certain of, is a lot of older people are very, very stubborn about their views.
Having her tits out even as she's working underneath a car is where things get dumb.
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
FTFY
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
FFXV is FFXV. The next game will be a different thing. This particular game's story is about a road trip of a group of guy friends, just like FFX-2 was a story about those 3 girls.
I remember Azrael at Gaijin Smash used to tell lots of stories about teachers casually telling female students that they should be housewives or good cooks for their future husbands and what have you. It's pretty common for both men and women to expect women only to work until they get married/pregnant. Stuff like that.
It's obviously not a 1:1 correlation since it's a very different cultural with very different ideas about sexuality and many other things (I once heard it put "the Japanese never accepted Christianity or Freud"), but the overall impression I get when reading about Japanese workplaces and cultural expectations is often, "1960-era Sterling Cooper". This is admittedly an impression I get without any firsthand experience.
EDIT: FWIW I've also read that this is somewhat different among the younger adult cohort (ie, the 20s-early 30s generation) partially for economic reasons, but they aren't on top of the social heap yet, and culture changes slowly.
Its not really that its accepted, but rather that its ignored. One of the huge parts of Japanese culture is that you ignore things that don't "fit" what society says. If you find something offensive, embarrassing, awkward, etc, you just pretend it doesn't exist.
So, for something like sexuality, its open in Japan, and yet hidden because the people around it refuse to acknowledge its existence. My father did business there for a couple of years, and he told me how people would openly be reading porn on the morning commuter trains and no one bothered paying attention to it.
X and X2 HD definitely has cheats. You can set encounter rate, game speed and restore full hp/overdrive every turn.
Not on Vita/PS3. Not sure about PS4.
You were almost done.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I think FF is the only series where I typically do this. Everything else I want to beat and see how it ends. Their journeys are typically better than the destination, I think.
Ahh, I had no clue about the PC version. Well, beats the hell out of me, then.
I'm absolutely not an expert on Japan. My experience comes from the friends and roommates I had in college, many of whom I still talk to this day, and a few blogs and youtube channels I subscribe to. I think this board in particular has a culture, and tends to be very sensitive to things like sexified female designs that I just don't think are reflective of the greater Western community as a whole, though I do think that the Western culture is becoming more sensitive to these things than Japan is. My friends and I are all older now though so the younger generation I think is a little more sensitive to it. The impression that I get a lot from the Japanese is that "boys will be boys" meaning that such objective and oversexualized fantasies are just part of the male experience. In general my experience has been that Japanese women just don't have as many hang-ups about sex in general. An attitude that "if this is what gets your rocks off then go and do it." Once you're in a relationship they're pretty open and forward about what they want too. Not just sex, but really any hobby or interest (both covered under the same word "shumi"). For example, I had a girlfriend follow me to a D&D game I was running one time. She watched the whole thing and told me that while it wasn't her cup of tea, she understood why I liked it and saw that it was important to me.
This video is hardly definitive, but it shows some real examples of how the Japanese think about the related issue:
edit: oh man that thumbnail... This is the topic referenced. The video has a few topics, but the link goes to minute 7:17 and is specifically about Western views about Japanese sex culture.
Like over half of the most popular FF characters of all time are female.
I really don't think they're just going to throw that away from here on out.
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
Now this does seem refreshing and something that would renew my interest in FF.
A thing I hate in JRPGs are male and females characters with no social circle of any kind. Especially males with no friends, make no effort to make them, don't talk to or with anyone but gather up an entire party and have chicks throwing themselves at them while they stare into space. And the girls who, in turn, have no social circle and have nothing better to do than throw themselves at a male protagonist. So I love the JRPG heroes who defy this. For example, Zidane, who is socially savvy, has large, established posse of friends, and demonstrates realistic wisdom and leadership skills, is my all time favorite JRPG character.
When a female character has a best friend in a JRPG, players go "ololol lesbians" and in this when a group of men are friends with each other they go "eww, bromance," because characters with typical realistic social circles are that uncommon in JRPGs.
I'm with you. As much as I do understand being sad that there are no playable female characters in this title, it also feels like it's doing something I haven't seen in an RPG before: focusing on a small group of people who are already friends. Sure, most JRPGs will have one or two party members know each other beforehand, but I can't think of one where the group is just made up of people with established relationships already.
Men and women can also be, you know, friends...
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
It's not about sexual hang-ups at all. I'm totally for sexual things. In fact the West (or at least the US) is way too reserved about this in general. We should have a healthy market of games rated Adult Only that are just straight-up porn games, and no one should be judged for creating or playing them. I also wish more developers took the BioWare approach, where they write realistic characters that do realistic things like have sex with each other. BioWare puts R-rated sexuality in their games, and it's not the feminists that criticize them for this (when they do take flak it's for awkward costume designs like Samara or poorly-conceived camera angles in non-sexual situations like with Miranda).
More sexuality is a good thing, but that's not the same thing as asking for sexual objectification. Tifa's back-arching victory pose and exaggerated breasts bouncing at weirdly dissonant times in FF7's FMVs were unfortunate, out-of-place, and degrading to her character. But if the remake takes a mature approach with the writing and storytelling, I'd be all for her and Cloud having a clothes-free scene before the final dungeon. I'd also fully support a separate Adult Only game featuring (18+) characters from FF7. Why not? Sounds like a good time. (yes there's lots of ways that could and probably would go horribly wrong but I'm assuming here that it doesn't for sake of argument)
I even support optional outfits that let the player choose between sexualizing characters or not (especially when this is applied equally across characters instead of just limited to the "babe," if the game has multiple viable characters for this). In many cases like this (Lightning Returns) I honestly choose the sexual outfits. My Skyrim is modded to the point where it is effectively AO, and I spend time working on my avatar to make her as beautiful and hot as I can. Because this is something I'm doing by my own choice, it feels free and even empowering. But I avoid games that impose this on me as the default, because it's a very different sort of message and emotional outcome. I couldn't get more than a couple hours through Two Worlds 2; after the third or so time the camera lovingly panned up the body of some bikini-clad lady while I'm forced to be some random douche, I was out, and with a bit of nausea.
For better or worse, they wanted XV to be about a group of guy friends. And yes, men are different when it's just men around, and women are different when it's just women around, period. The conversations you have in mixed company are different from those you have with just the guys or just the girls.
Also, video games are flush with dudebro stories showing us what guys are like when there's no women around. The No-Girls Club history of video games is kind of the problem, which is why making a game like this right now is so tone-deaf.
Men and women ARE different, and for the most part don't discuss the same things in mixed company as they do in single gender scenarios. That is a fact of life, and is not about any gender relations issue. I don't want to be part of discussions about how sucky it is to have your period, and my wife doesn't want to be part of discussions we might have about the specifics of how badly my balls hurt while I recovered from my vasectomy.
When I'm hanging out with my friends who are girls, we talk about whatever interests we share, but they're not going to talk to me about the same things they talk about to their girlfriends, just like I'm not going to talk to them about the same things I talk to guy friends about. That's ridiculous to expect.
I 100% agree that games need more cool women in them, and things are going that way. FFXV not being one of those games is not a problem. The problem is industry wide, and it's not on FFXV to feature women in the main cast. Not to mention, from what we've seen XV features women in cool roles, at least one of the trailers had a badass lady villain, and there are others we don't know that much about yet, so they may feature heavily in the story.
Meanwhile, I'm playing Bayonetta 2, Mirror's Edge, Overwatch, and a million other games with kick ass women as main characters, and things are only getting better on that front. Diversity doesn't mean every single property individually needs to represent all groups.
Skip to 4:50
tl;dw: About a second, give or take.
I'll take it.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy