Forum - View topicGAME: Dragon's Crown
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daveriley
 Posts: 117 Location: Philadelphia |
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There are two specific images in this game that really excel on the gross-o-meter. One is of a warrior nun who, while literally dying, lays there spread-eagled across the whole length of the scene so you can get a really, really good look at her chain mail chastity belt. The other is a chained up woman in a see-through dress who just sort of lays there placidly, like she's on quaaludes. Like "oh, shackles, whatever." Both can be poked with your cursor to induce discomforted squirms and awkward gasps. These scenes are unavoidable. You will see them every time you play the level (which is many times, given how few levels there are). By comparison, other interstitial NPCs, like Roland, stand in front of piles of dead orcs and flex their manly muscles so hard it looks like they have cerebral palsy. If you're making a gender essentialist claim of "this is what men like, this is what women like!" then your argument is that women like steroid beefcakes pretty much exclusively and men like helpless women on the verge of death and/or rape. There's absolutely no comparison. Which is why I posed the comparison of the dwarf's stunned animation and the sorceress's stunned animation. The dwarf's is a powerful warrior regaining his composure, the sorceress's is "omigosh I got hit so hard, my boobies are going eeeeeverywhere!" Or how about the elf's "grabbed" animation, where she makes a face of pure terror, like she's steeling herself for a sexual assault, while a snake wraps around her tits? Or how about the Amazon's "get up" animation. I said this to Zac on twitter a few days ago. As she stands up she crouches on all fours and presents her vagina like a preening dog's. I am being extreme with my examples to prove a point, but I'm not hyperbolizing: these all exist in-game, exactly as I've described them. Which is not to say Dragon's Crown isn't cool, in a way. When the Amazon isn't submissively flashing her crotch for the camera she can be kind of cool, and it's nice to see a character design that's at least a little different. When my wife picked up the box for Tales of Xillia she was like "well, at least with the Dragon's Crown stuff you can tell the dude who drew those characters was really, really into them." Whereas Xillia just feels like samey old whatever. Excess can be fun, and this sort of softcore pornography can be fun. But, in the absence of any sort of internal life, we can only interpret these characters through their physiology/physiognomy. So maybe the sorceress holds a double PhD from Yale, but: when 90% of the her animations are her bobbling around like a moron, like her ridiculous fru-fru running animation, or when every move she does requires her to stop her hat from flying off of her head while her tits bobble around like water balloons and she makes an O.o;;; face, how can you say "oh, these are some ass-kicking women! you guys are just focusing on the tits!" Because it's not about the tits, it's about what's behind the tits, which is nothing. |
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spankminister
Posts: 15 |
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Or, they like parts of those characters and have to gloss over the parts they don't because of what's available. The incorrect assumption is that something has to be complete feminist/progressive or harmful/sexist. A female character can have a kickass persona and ALSO be visually designed exclusively by and for straight men to find sexually alluring.
It's really pretty amazing how often this gets trotted out. Remember Me was a terrible flop because it was a bad game. But here's the difference: when Too Human flopped, people attributed it to bad gameplay and a bungled development cycle. When Mad World flopped, people attributed that to a game aimed at the wrong market on the wrong console. But when Remember Me flops, people attribute that entirely to the female protagonist. Surely you must see the double standard there? Tomb Raider makes 3.5 million sales, yet somehow the publishers' sexist view was "correct"? You are claiming that Remember Me had a female protagonist, and it sold poorly, therefore it sold poorly because of its female protagonist. This does not logically follow. You said money talks, so I'll just end with this. The best selling PC game of all time is not Battlefield 2 at 11 million, or Diablo 3 at 12 million. It's The Sims 2 at 20 million copies sold. I know girls/women who play all 3 of those games, but I think we can all agree that the latter has the largest female audience. Even purely from a financial standpoint, marketing exclusively to men means you are leaving money on the table. |
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Kakugo
Posts: 163 |
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This. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I'll take bizarro distorted art with passion over technically sound but dull stylings any day. Hey Chagen, you know who draws great boobs? Kentaro Yabuki. You know what franchise I couldn't give two craps about? ToLoveRu. He's a decent artist by any technical measure, I just find it uninspired and boring.
Well, it did sell below expectations... but that has far more to do with insane greed rather than the viability of female protagonists. Friend of mine was all excited to play REMEMBER ME. Got about three hours in before he gave up. A shame it was a mess; it sure sounded like an interesting idea. |
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belvadeer
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What's wrong with Xillia's box art? |
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HitokiriShadow
 Posts: 6251 |
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Milla's outfit, I assume. It *is* rather silly. Although (this barely counts a spoiler) spoiler[she's actually a (genderless? male?) god that made a human form 20 years ago for reasons. It's revealed in an early optional scene that she/he/it chose a female form specifically for the purpose of its visual appeal to influence men. ] Not that that necessarily justifies it, but there ya go. I'm not a big fan of the outfit myself, though my bigger problem is how ungodly thin she is. That's distracting in its own way. |
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belvadeer
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That's not what I was referring to. He stated, "When my wife picked up the box for Tales of Xillia she was like 'well, at least with the Dragon's Crown stuff you can tell the dude who drew those characters was really, really into them.'" That makes it sound like Fujishima and Inomata were not into designing the characters at all. |
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HitokiriShadow
Posts: 6251 |
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Aaaaaaah, yeah, I misread that. |
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GVman
 Posts: 729 |
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It looks like pretty standard anime fair. Dragon's Crown looks a bit different from the general anime stuff you'd see. |
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daveriley
Posts: 117 Location: Philadelphia |
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belvadeer
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That's not how most Tales characters dress. A general majority of the main casts wear pretty normal clothing or armor, with at least one standout design, like Luke's open midriff coat in Abyss. As for hair, well it's anime style; some of it tends to be crazy, but some characters do have normal hairstyles like Farah or Elize. |
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Oranges
Posts: 4 |
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Although I agree, there is definitely risque and overly sexed poses, gestures and scenes the problem is how you're interpreting them. Depicting women in provocative poses in no way equates to sexual assault. Though it is true that the female characters do offer more 'fan-service' then the males -- I never once thought these poses or scenes were welcome mats for sexual assaults -- and I'd hope any healthy male wouldn't either. When it comes down to it, why can't it just be that the developers are pervs? It can be offensive to some people, and that's fine. This just isn't the game for them if it's offensive stuff outweighs the good. Also, your dwarf and sorceress comparison focuses merely on physicality. You can just as easily claim that the dwarf being unable to casts spells has the intelligence of a 3-year old and so men are just buff bumbling idiots. It's the glorification of physical strength that makes this comparison work when you can just as easily glorify intelligence as the dominant trait. As a male, I don't claim to know what women find attractive and generally, it comes down to people having their own tastes in what they like physically. Obviously, many men and women find the sorceress' proportions disgusting as I'm sure there's both men and women who think the dwarf is grossly buffed up looking too. The point is, they're just exaggerations in physicality and sexuality, in this case women more than men. But I do not believe sexuality alone equates to demeaning women. Women can be sexy and provocative, but it's up to how men see them that ends up demeaning them. If all someone can see out of these characters are sex objects then that's literally their own interpretation of it and their own problem. Eluding that just by merely showing women in sexy poses and exaggerated anatomy will somehow promote other men to treat women badly or merely as sex objects is both terrifying and inaccurate. My argument has always been that there's a difference between sexuality and what really constitutes promoting inequality between men and women. Personally I find it more harmful to continuously depict women as someone to be protected, that they should stay behind, or otherwise stay out of the way in whatever story driven conflict.
Yes while there's very little behind the sorceress' tits, the point was that there's very little behind everyone. When it comes down to it, this game isn't some intelligent, thought provoking piece (that's not to say the developers are not intelligent) but rather it was a game that was just made purely for fun. That said, every playable character is literally a blank slate -- it's really up to you to decide who they are past their looks. There's no deep pre-defined back story, personality or anything else past their nuances and gestures and really, it's up to the player to fill it in or not. It comes down to this, these characters serve as eye-candy and nothing more. The male characters have no more personality than the female characters. So how are they being specifically targeted and demeaned? They live and die on the same field and all have their strengths and weaknesses. But I get it, sex can be an awkward thing and overly exaggerated sex makes it that much more awkward. But really, that's all it is -- there's no agenda or message in it. If you find it awkward or gross that's fine and you're entitled to your tastes and preferences. But it's taking up the banner of fighting for women's rights to validate your own opinion and your distaste that annoys me. PS I respect your opinion and views on this matter daveriley and this was not directed specifically at you either |
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xeroth
Posts: 37 |
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Bad publicity is better than no publicity
The designs really are just meant to stand out from the crowd, which they've succeeded in doing. Personally I find the Amazon and Sorceress designs off-putting but there are 4 other characters and I don't suppose that matters if the game is fun. plus all the backgrounds look freaking amazing. |
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daveriley
Posts: 117 Location: Philadelphia |
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I don't see a way to take "chained up woman in see-through dress averts eyes and shakes her tits when you poke her" as anything other than sexual assault.
When you talk about intelligence vs. physicality: a large percentage of my post was devoted to how the sorceress acts like a 3 year old in an adult's body. That speaks more to the intelligence of the character than her ability to cast Ice Prison. There are no markers for intelligence aside from how the characters act, and the sorceress acts like an idiot. Think of it this way: the animations of all the male characters all express some form of prowess or strength. By comparison the sorceress looks barely capable of eating breakfast let alone casting a spell. If that's the sort of thing Person X finds attractive, then I don't want to meet Person X. Not that I am not discussing sex characteristics here. I think a lot of people would have less qualms about the art if the characters were depicted with a similar amount of fetish, but also as being a competent warrior (a competent human being would be a start, for some of them). You can make a character who is both sexy and cool. Offending someone does not require intent. George Kamitani probably didn't sit at his drawing board and go "yeah, time to really piss some people off!" However, that doesn't mean a person can't be hurt when they feel like an entire gender is reduced to a ballooning butt stomp. Dragon's Crown is probably taking so much flack because it's very technically proficient, both artistically and mechanically, and it has some amount of nuance, despite it being basically archetypes all the way down. That is okay, too! An essential part of growing as a human being is accepting that things you like can also have things you dislike, and the ability to identify which is which is paramount. I wouldn't expect the same reaction to Senran Kagura, for example, which is pretty much boilerplate garbage from what I've seen of it. |
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Oranges
Posts: 4 |
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Yes that scene itself is very perverted and overly sexualized. I won't argue that. Though it is worth mentioning it's not something encouraged or otherwise forced on the player. If you poke her, that's you. You can get through that scene without doing such a thing.
Again this is all just personal interpretation of what you see. Her gestures and nuances and design is all you're bothering to interpret and although not wrong, it's still just your own interpretation. Though I don't see how you came to the conclusion that the 'sorceress is barely capable of eating breakfast let a lone casting a spell' when obviously she both eats and casts spells... regardless, her animations don't make her any less effective and in no way hinders the player so I don't see the problem other than you think it's stupid. You can act cute and innocent and be intelligent and strong. You're just assuming that because the sorceress is bouncy and makes 'childish' expressions that she is nothing more than that. And perhaps to you she isn't, but I don't think assuming everyone sees it that way is accurate either.
Like I said before, you're basing your interpretation of the females on physical prowess and their stability as the dominant trait. It's a male perspective and some men like physically strong and confident women, while others would prefer cute or charming. It doesn't demean women to show a single female character (in a decent roster of physically strong women) acting 'childish' anymore than a real woman acting childish and claiming she represents women as a whole. What I'm trying to say I guess is that, yes you might not find anything attractive or strong about the sorceress' design and animations -- but you're focusing ONLY on that. She is a capable character and she hold her own in the game. If she was purposely scaled down to be weak and in need of constant escort, then yes -- she's demeaning women but none of those apply to her.
Again, I have no problem with people being offended because it's their right to be offended. I don't believe I've tried to denied anyone that. But it's like this, men are allowed to enjoy women who are sexy or provocative and George Kamitani clearly likes drawing exaggeratedly sexy women. It doesn't mean he see them ONLY as that, it just something has grabbed your attention, what you do with that afterwards is up to you. When I look at the sorceress, I see a large breasted woman who, in a way acts 'childish', but in a 'trying to be cute manner'. But if you play her character (which I have), there's literally nothing wrong with her. It's like deeming someone's personality as demeaning and representative of a whole group. So you're saying there's nothing else for you to evaluate her other than her looks, and that's the problem: everyone is so hung up on just the looks that they fail to realize there isn't anything inferior AT ALL to the character other than what they deem as offensive or inferior visually.
Agreed. The sorceress is overly ridiculous and I truly believe it's also the lack of depth or personality to her character (and each character) that is causing such a controversy. Because of this, it's totally true, the sorceress can be seen as nothing more than eye candy so it's easy to interpret it as 'oh, it's just showing women as oversexed idiots' at a glance. So my argument is that she is how you interpret her and she isn't singled out in the game as the only one being 'idealized' and lacking a true personality or depth, so why single her out to make a point? Last edited by Oranges on Wed Aug 07, 2013 5:59 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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The "bigger market" is both men and women. You're acting like this is some kind of binary equation. "Well we have to alienate women because we obviously can't afford to alienate men". But why not do neither of these things? I mean, are you suggesting that waving a giant pair of water balloon breasts around is the only way to not alienate male players? I give them at least a little more credit than that. |
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