Edit 4: The introduction to aforementioned retrospectives is up! You can read it here.
Edit 3: Update: I maaaay or may not have started writing a series of retrospectives entitled "Feminism and Final Fantasy" >.>. I'll link it when it's done.
Edit 2: thanks to Llyrwenne for this beauty. It'll come in handy for those coming into this thread for the first time.
.......
I originally planned to have this as one long post... then it got long. Obscenely so. So I'll post the first part here and add the rest in comments as I write them. So let's call this part 1: Introduction + Luna.
So, Final Fantasy XV is out in just over two months. It's been a long road and a real rollercoaster of emotion, veering from hype and excitement to misery and despair and back again many times over. As we see more of the final game, reactions are becoming increasingly split: some love what they're seeing and think it will be the greatest FF yet; some are tentatively optimistic; some aren't keen but are willing to go in with an open mind; some think it will be the series' death knell. Aside from graphical, gameplay, dubbing and story concerns, one thing I see pop up repeatedly in threads is the game's treatment of its female characters. And so, as a long-time FF fan and a Girl Gamer, I thought I would chime in. With the obvious caveat that, of course, the game is not out yet, and thus this is based purely on speculation and what we have seen of FFXV so far...
I think we (as women, gamers, feminists...) have ample reason to be concerned. Brace yourselves, guys. This might get long (and ranty). Within this post (/mini-essay/20k word dissertation), I'm going to give an overview of the female characters in the game, and analyse them from a feminist and narrative perspective, and explain why I am deeply troubled by what we have been shown, and why I anticipate that, as a woman playing video games, I am going to find myself very disappointed (probably even angry) with Final Fantasy XV when I finally play it.
A few notes, before I begin in earnest:
Now, without further ado, buckle your seatbelts, GAF. It's gonna be a long one. I'll start by giving a brief overview of each female character individually, then go into more detail afterwards about why I think FFXV is, essentially, a sexist game. I'll begin by saying that we cannot decry a work of fiction as sexist simply because one female character is in distress, or one female character is scantily clad. I'll quote my absolute favourite Game of Thrones critic, the incredible gotgifsandmusings, and say it now:
IT'S THE PATTERN.
One isolated incident does not necessarily make a game sexist. But in FFXV's case, the incidents are not isolated, and come together to form a pattern of sexism that is ingrained in the game's foundations.
Lunafreya Nox Fleuret
Lunafreya, or Luna for short, is the main female character of Final Fantasy XV. Luna is a princess from the kingdom of Tenebrae, currently held captive by the empire of Niflheim. She is an Oracle, able to speak to the gods, and is betrothed to Noctis.
Luna was first introduced to us in VsXIII as Stella Nox Fleuret, princess of Tenebrae, who shared Noctis' ability to "see the light of expiring souls" and found herself forced to reluctantly oppose him, for reasons we never learnt. We only saw Stella twice: once when she converses with Noctis during a party, and once when she and Noctis draw their weapons and face off against each other. I will briefly discuss these two scenes and what they show us about Stella's character (without making sweeping assumptions about her character and role in the story based off of only two scenes), then talk about Luna in more detail.
Stella and Noctis do not know each other when they meet during the party - or if they do, some shenanigans have happened to make them forget each other. Stella speaks frankly but politely to Noctis - she addresses him as "Lord Noctis", but does not hesitate to openly ask him if he had a near-death experience that let him see Etro's light. At the end of the scene, they part ways; Noctis asks Stella to call him "Noct", and Stella promises to show him around Tenebrae before rushing away.
In the other scene, we see several shots of Stella waiting alone in a seemingly abandoned city street at night, until Noctis arrives. They both draw their weapons, both looking obviously reluctant to fight each other (fitting in with Nomura's description of Stella as a reluctant antagonist), and dramatically face off.
I'm not going to declare Stella as a ~~~~strong female character~~~~, because we hardly know anything about her. What we saw was a character who presumably had her own agenda, with her own reasons for facing off against Noctis. Her reluctance indicates that she cares for Noctis (my speculation based off the comments about them being like Romeo and Juliet) but finds herself obligated to oppose him (for reasons we will now never learn). During the party she is polite, addressing Noctis with respect, but bluntly and persistently questions him despite his attempts to shrug her off.
Some people claim that Luna cannot possibly be a strong female character because she has shown no martial skill, and because we have twice seen her get physically assaulted in trailers. The idea that a woman must be a good fighter to be a "strong" character is ridiculous. We have seen many, many examples across FF of female characters who are not skilled fighters (outside of gameplay) but are still "strong", through their intelligence, determination, courage, kindness, et cetera: Rosa, Aerith, Rinoa, Yuna, Penelo, Vanille, as well as minor characters such as Sara and Elia the Water Maiden from FFIII. Most of these fit the same mould: they are not physically strong, but have powerful magical abilities that allow them to fight and protect themselves. Luna also fits this archetype - gentle, kind, determined, with strong magical powers. I am not hopeful that Luna will be a good character, but that is less because of what we've seen of her and more because of the dreaded *spooky fingers* pattern. I don't find Luna particularly interesting, but I'm not going to claim she's a bad character. We haven't seen her do anything yet! We have no idea what she will do! I will say, however, that the marketing of her since the rebranding has been downright awful.
Tabata originally claimed that the story and characters carried over from VsXIII had been left untouched, but this soon proved to be untrue - Stella was cut from the game, and replaced with a new heroine called Luna. People had been impressed by what we'd been shown of Stella - her design was unique, she was willing to fight, and the Romeo and Juliet vibes between her and Noctis appealed to a lot of people. No matter what Tabata did with Luna, people were going to be unhappy. He claims that while Luna is not a physical fighter, she remains a strong female character who is very determined and brave. I see no reason to doubt the claims of her bravery - some guy has a gun in her face and she just shoves it away like a boss. She faces off against motherfreakin' Leviathan. That's awesome! It doesn't change the fact that we have now twice seen Luna be physically assaulted in trailers. Putting aside discussion of whether this makes her "weak", because it's so ridiculous I'm not even going to touch it: why is this necessary? Why do we need to see our main heroine get slapped around in marketing? What purpose does this serve? It's certainly not appealing to anyone. Is this meant to make the villains appear more evil, because they'd be willing to ~hit a girl? Ardyn has already been well established as a Not Nice Person. Why the hell does Tabata think we need to see Luna getting shitkicked? If it happened in the game, that'd be one thing. Girls get hit too, of course; I'm not saying that you can never ever show violence against women, because that would be just mindblowingly stupid. But so far, Luna has been marketed to us as a character who: sits in a chair (fine), dramatically stands up from a chair and shoves a gun away (cool), summons/battles/I don't really know Leviathan with her magic powers (yeahhhh), and repeatedly gets the shit kicked out of her (wait WHAT). Not even during a dramatic battle scene - she gets kicked around as a child, then gets pimp-slapped by Ardyn. I cannot even begin to express how monumentally bad this looks from a game that has many, many problems with its female characters. Jesus Christ.
Coming next, part 2: CINDY. Hoo boy.
Edit: And here she is. Oh, what fun I had writing this.
Here's my Cindy bit, as promised. Idk when I'll get the rest out; I have to brace myself mentally before tackling it.
Cindy
I can sum up my thoughts on Cindy with a single gif:
Female Cid? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP! Then we saw a full-body shot. Oh... oh no. This is not good. I'll head off the obvious rebuttal (which I already saw in the trailer discussion thread): I'm not looking for female characters to wear burqas or anything ridiculous like that. Plenty of female FF characters have had revealing clothes: Lightning, Fran, Ashe, Fang, Tifa, Lulu, Rosa. The difference between them and Cidney boils down to two things: context and presentation. I'll kick off with context. Let's take Ashe. Ashe wears clothes that she apparently found in a skip, including a very short hot pink miniskirt. Ashe's design is frankly ridiculous, but among the rest of the designs in FFXII, it doesn't look especially outlandish, because everyone wears ridiculous clothes! Basch appears to be wearing a potholder under his shirt; Fran is wearing a metal leotard; I'm not even sure what is going on with Larsa's shoes. Similarly, Lightning wears a short skirt and a coat that shows her midriff... and many other characters in the game, male and female, dress similarly. Cindy, meanwhile, sticks out like a sore thumb. It doesn't help that she's a spot of colour against the all-black main cast, making her even more noticeable. The main crew's clothes don't look particularly practical, sure, but at least they don't look downright uncomfortable to wear. Not to mention... Cindy is a mechanic (a mechanic) in a low-cut crop top and hotpants. She works with hot oil all day. There's a reason mechanics wear overalls, is all I'm saying. One of the popular arguments I see to defend scantily-clad female characters is, Well maybe she CHOSE to wear that! Look, Im all for women wearing whatever the fuck they want to wear, as long as theyre not being forced into it. You want to walk around in a bikini? Go for it. You want to walk around in a burqa? More power to ya. But you cannot say to me with a straight face that a bunch of pixels created and designed by a group of middle-aged men chose to wear something. You cannot. Cindy is dressed the way she is because the developers wanted her to be dressed that way. That is it.
Next, lets talk about presentation. Fran in Final Fantasy XII, as I have already mentioned, is wearing stilettos and a metal leotard that exposes her breasts and backside rather generously. The reason this doesnt bother me whereas Cindy does is because we are not repeatedly treated to long, loving camera pans up and down Frans body. She is presented the same way as every other character in the main party, male or female, and is never deliberately sexualised by the game. Her design is revealing, but it is not sexualised. Furthermore, she is never sexualised by the other characters. Balthier and Basch treat her as with respect and never seem to view her in a sexual light; Vaan is clearly intimidated by her, but that seems to be mainly because hes a street rat who doesnt interact with Viera much. Contrast this with Cindy. Her breasts and backside are repeatedly placed front and centre of shots, and she drapes herself across the Regalia in a completely unnatural way to facilitate said shots. Then theres the VR trailer, which I cant talk about without feeling a red mist descend upon my vision, in which the developers gleefully tell us that WOW! We (as Prompto, who practically pops a boner every time she shows up) can use the VR to ogle Cindy even more. Amazing. Theres also an alternate skin for the Regalia featuring Cindy, for all your fapping needs.
Lovely.
Look, sex sells, I get it. Sexy characters appeal to people. The problem lies in the fact that Cindy is purely there for her sex appeal. Her pawpaw is the actual Cid. So what purpose does Cindy serve, then? Eye-candy. Thats it. And sure, one fanservice character doesnt make a game sexist. Its the pattern. Where are the scantily clad male mechanics who cover their bare chests in grease and drape themselves over the hoods of cars? Oh wait, they dont exist, because games are made for straight dudes. Silly me. Even so, even if Cindy were a purely fanservice character, whats really so bad about that? Why is that offensive? Well, aside from the sleaziness of it, theres that one comment that the games marketing director made during that one ATR
Because the only reason people could want playable female characters is for sex appeal. Naturally. Brb, jumping off a cliff.
Next up, Iris. Give me strength.
Edit 3: Update: I maaaay or may not have started writing a series of retrospectives entitled "Feminism and Final Fantasy" >.>. I'll link it when it's done.
Edit 2: thanks to Llyrwenne for this beauty. It'll come in handy for those coming into this thread for the first time.
.......
I originally planned to have this as one long post... then it got long. Obscenely so. So I'll post the first part here and add the rest in comments as I write them. So let's call this part 1: Introduction + Luna.
So, Final Fantasy XV is out in just over two months. It's been a long road and a real rollercoaster of emotion, veering from hype and excitement to misery and despair and back again many times over. As we see more of the final game, reactions are becoming increasingly split: some love what they're seeing and think it will be the greatest FF yet; some are tentatively optimistic; some aren't keen but are willing to go in with an open mind; some think it will be the series' death knell. Aside from graphical, gameplay, dubbing and story concerns, one thing I see pop up repeatedly in threads is the game's treatment of its female characters. And so, as a long-time FF fan and a Girl Gamer, I thought I would chime in. With the obvious caveat that, of course, the game is not out yet, and thus this is based purely on speculation and what we have seen of FFXV so far...
I think we (as women, gamers, feminists...) have ample reason to be concerned. Brace yourselves, guys. This might get long (and ranty). Within this post (/mini-essay/20k word dissertation), I'm going to give an overview of the female characters in the game, and analyse them from a feminist and narrative perspective, and explain why I am deeply troubled by what we have been shown, and why I anticipate that, as a woman playing video games, I am going to find myself very disappointed (probably even angry) with Final Fantasy XV when I finally play it.
A few notes, before I begin in earnest:
- I am aware that the majority of GAF users are cis, heterosexual, white, American men. I am also aware that GAF is a much more liberal, welcoming and open-minded place than most others on the Internet when it comes to discussions of women's and minority rights. I am perfectly happy posting this here because I know that even if people disagree, discussion is going to be civil and respectful. Many men on GAF would even refer to themselves as feminists, which I think is great! However, I have to argue that, when it comes to the rather touchy topic of female characters in video games, men tend to approach this discussion from a place of inherent male privilege. Even if your knee-jerk reaction is to disagree with everything I'm saying, I would love it if you could think over what I've said and perhaps take some of my comments into consideration.
- It is all but impossible to discuss Final Fantasy XV without at least mentioning Final Fantasy Versus XIII. I know many users find this aggravating. My intention is not to pine over "what could have been" (rollinginthedeep.gif), but I believe that in talking about FFXV in metafictional terms, you cannot not mention Versus XIII. I apologise in advance, and will attempt to remain as unbiased as possible.
- I will not be mentioning Kingsglaive in this essay, as I have not seen it. Anyone who has is more than welcome to chime in!
Now, without further ado, buckle your seatbelts, GAF. It's gonna be a long one. I'll start by giving a brief overview of each female character individually, then go into more detail afterwards about why I think FFXV is, essentially, a sexist game. I'll begin by saying that we cannot decry a work of fiction as sexist simply because one female character is in distress, or one female character is scantily clad. I'll quote my absolute favourite Game of Thrones critic, the incredible gotgifsandmusings, and say it now:
IT'S THE PATTERN.
One isolated incident does not necessarily make a game sexist. But in FFXV's case, the incidents are not isolated, and come together to form a pattern of sexism that is ingrained in the game's foundations.
Lunafreya Nox Fleuret
Lunafreya, or Luna for short, is the main female character of Final Fantasy XV. Luna is a princess from the kingdom of Tenebrae, currently held captive by the empire of Niflheim. She is an Oracle, able to speak to the gods, and is betrothed to Noctis.
Luna was first introduced to us in VsXIII as Stella Nox Fleuret, princess of Tenebrae, who shared Noctis' ability to "see the light of expiring souls" and found herself forced to reluctantly oppose him, for reasons we never learnt. We only saw Stella twice: once when she converses with Noctis during a party, and once when she and Noctis draw their weapons and face off against each other. I will briefly discuss these two scenes and what they show us about Stella's character (without making sweeping assumptions about her character and role in the story based off of only two scenes), then talk about Luna in more detail.
Stella and Noctis do not know each other when they meet during the party - or if they do, some shenanigans have happened to make them forget each other. Stella speaks frankly but politely to Noctis - she addresses him as "Lord Noctis", but does not hesitate to openly ask him if he had a near-death experience that let him see Etro's light. At the end of the scene, they part ways; Noctis asks Stella to call him "Noct", and Stella promises to show him around Tenebrae before rushing away.
In the other scene, we see several shots of Stella waiting alone in a seemingly abandoned city street at night, until Noctis arrives. They both draw their weapons, both looking obviously reluctant to fight each other (fitting in with Nomura's description of Stella as a reluctant antagonist), and dramatically face off.
I'm not going to declare Stella as a ~~~~strong female character~~~~, because we hardly know anything about her. What we saw was a character who presumably had her own agenda, with her own reasons for facing off against Noctis. Her reluctance indicates that she cares for Noctis (my speculation based off the comments about them being like Romeo and Juliet) but finds herself obligated to oppose him (for reasons we will now never learn). During the party she is polite, addressing Noctis with respect, but bluntly and persistently questions him despite his attempts to shrug her off.
Some people claim that Luna cannot possibly be a strong female character because she has shown no martial skill, and because we have twice seen her get physically assaulted in trailers. The idea that a woman must be a good fighter to be a "strong" character is ridiculous. We have seen many, many examples across FF of female characters who are not skilled fighters (outside of gameplay) but are still "strong", through their intelligence, determination, courage, kindness, et cetera: Rosa, Aerith, Rinoa, Yuna, Penelo, Vanille, as well as minor characters such as Sara and Elia the Water Maiden from FFIII. Most of these fit the same mould: they are not physically strong, but have powerful magical abilities that allow them to fight and protect themselves. Luna also fits this archetype - gentle, kind, determined, with strong magical powers. I am not hopeful that Luna will be a good character, but that is less because of what we've seen of her and more because of the dreaded *spooky fingers* pattern. I don't find Luna particularly interesting, but I'm not going to claim she's a bad character. We haven't seen her do anything yet! We have no idea what she will do! I will say, however, that the marketing of her since the rebranding has been downright awful.
Tabata originally claimed that the story and characters carried over from VsXIII had been left untouched, but this soon proved to be untrue - Stella was cut from the game, and replaced with a new heroine called Luna. People had been impressed by what we'd been shown of Stella - her design was unique, she was willing to fight, and the Romeo and Juliet vibes between her and Noctis appealed to a lot of people. No matter what Tabata did with Luna, people were going to be unhappy. He claims that while Luna is not a physical fighter, she remains a strong female character who is very determined and brave. I see no reason to doubt the claims of her bravery - some guy has a gun in her face and she just shoves it away like a boss. She faces off against motherfreakin' Leviathan. That's awesome! It doesn't change the fact that we have now twice seen Luna be physically assaulted in trailers. Putting aside discussion of whether this makes her "weak", because it's so ridiculous I'm not even going to touch it: why is this necessary? Why do we need to see our main heroine get slapped around in marketing? What purpose does this serve? It's certainly not appealing to anyone. Is this meant to make the villains appear more evil, because they'd be willing to ~hit a girl? Ardyn has already been well established as a Not Nice Person. Why the hell does Tabata think we need to see Luna getting shitkicked? If it happened in the game, that'd be one thing. Girls get hit too, of course; I'm not saying that you can never ever show violence against women, because that would be just mindblowingly stupid. But so far, Luna has been marketed to us as a character who: sits in a chair (fine), dramatically stands up from a chair and shoves a gun away (cool), summons/battles/I don't really know Leviathan with her magic powers (yeahhhh), and repeatedly gets the shit kicked out of her (wait WHAT). Not even during a dramatic battle scene - she gets kicked around as a child, then gets pimp-slapped by Ardyn. I cannot even begin to express how monumentally bad this looks from a game that has many, many problems with its female characters. Jesus Christ.
Coming next, part 2: CINDY. Hoo boy.
Edit: And here she is. Oh, what fun I had writing this.
Here's my Cindy bit, as promised. Idk when I'll get the rest out; I have to brace myself mentally before tackling it.
Cindy
I can sum up my thoughts on Cindy with a single gif:
Female Cid? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP! Then we saw a full-body shot. Oh... oh no. This is not good. I'll head off the obvious rebuttal (which I already saw in the trailer discussion thread): I'm not looking for female characters to wear burqas or anything ridiculous like that. Plenty of female FF characters have had revealing clothes: Lightning, Fran, Ashe, Fang, Tifa, Lulu, Rosa. The difference between them and Cidney boils down to two things: context and presentation. I'll kick off with context. Let's take Ashe. Ashe wears clothes that she apparently found in a skip, including a very short hot pink miniskirt. Ashe's design is frankly ridiculous, but among the rest of the designs in FFXII, it doesn't look especially outlandish, because everyone wears ridiculous clothes! Basch appears to be wearing a potholder under his shirt; Fran is wearing a metal leotard; I'm not even sure what is going on with Larsa's shoes. Similarly, Lightning wears a short skirt and a coat that shows her midriff... and many other characters in the game, male and female, dress similarly. Cindy, meanwhile, sticks out like a sore thumb. It doesn't help that she's a spot of colour against the all-black main cast, making her even more noticeable. The main crew's clothes don't look particularly practical, sure, but at least they don't look downright uncomfortable to wear. Not to mention... Cindy is a mechanic (a mechanic) in a low-cut crop top and hotpants. She works with hot oil all day. There's a reason mechanics wear overalls, is all I'm saying. One of the popular arguments I see to defend scantily-clad female characters is, Well maybe she CHOSE to wear that! Look, Im all for women wearing whatever the fuck they want to wear, as long as theyre not being forced into it. You want to walk around in a bikini? Go for it. You want to walk around in a burqa? More power to ya. But you cannot say to me with a straight face that a bunch of pixels created and designed by a group of middle-aged men chose to wear something. You cannot. Cindy is dressed the way she is because the developers wanted her to be dressed that way. That is it.
Next, lets talk about presentation. Fran in Final Fantasy XII, as I have already mentioned, is wearing stilettos and a metal leotard that exposes her breasts and backside rather generously. The reason this doesnt bother me whereas Cindy does is because we are not repeatedly treated to long, loving camera pans up and down Frans body. She is presented the same way as every other character in the main party, male or female, and is never deliberately sexualised by the game. Her design is revealing, but it is not sexualised. Furthermore, she is never sexualised by the other characters. Balthier and Basch treat her as with respect and never seem to view her in a sexual light; Vaan is clearly intimidated by her, but that seems to be mainly because hes a street rat who doesnt interact with Viera much. Contrast this with Cindy. Her breasts and backside are repeatedly placed front and centre of shots, and she drapes herself across the Regalia in a completely unnatural way to facilitate said shots. Then theres the VR trailer, which I cant talk about without feeling a red mist descend upon my vision, in which the developers gleefully tell us that WOW! We (as Prompto, who practically pops a boner every time she shows up) can use the VR to ogle Cindy even more. Amazing. Theres also an alternate skin for the Regalia featuring Cindy, for all your fapping needs.
Lovely.
Look, sex sells, I get it. Sexy characters appeal to people. The problem lies in the fact that Cindy is purely there for her sex appeal. Her pawpaw is the actual Cid. So what purpose does Cindy serve, then? Eye-candy. Thats it. And sure, one fanservice character doesnt make a game sexist. Its the pattern. Where are the scantily clad male mechanics who cover their bare chests in grease and drape themselves over the hoods of cars? Oh wait, they dont exist, because games are made for straight dudes. Silly me. Even so, even if Cindy were a purely fanservice character, whats really so bad about that? Why is that offensive? Well, aside from the sleaziness of it, theres that one comment that the games marketing director made during that one ATR
Because the only reason people could want playable female characters is for sex appeal. Naturally. Brb, jumping off a cliff.
Next up, Iris. Give me strength.
