I think the question is why Tifa engaged in a slap fight when she could've punched/kicked the shit out of her and been done with it. lol
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On Final Fantasy XV and female characters
- Thread starter pashmilla
- Start date
I think the question is why Tifa engaged in a slap fight when she could've punched/kicked the shit out of her and been done with it. lol
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
The problem with Luna is that not only did she get shunned in Kingsglaive by seemingly lacking magic but she is seemingly getting sidelined hard in FFXV.
Not to mention that the scene is obviously being set up in an "aww yeah, catfight! Maybe they'll tear each other's clothes off and make out!" Sort of way.
Thinking back, almost every instance of FF marketing has focused on showing the lead heroine in some sort of peril in order to elicit cheap emotion.
Recall that at one point, THIS was an actual marketing image used in posters:
First of all, I agree with the complaints regarding Cindy being blatant pandering and how it's especially bad considering her profession.
That said, I have another, ridiculously nerdy, complaint about her. If her pawpaw is Cid, her name shouldn't be Cindy or Cidney or Sydney - it should be something like Mindy or Midney.
If you don't know, FFV featured Cid (duh) as well as his grandson, Mid. This is referenced in FFXII with Doctor Cid and
.
That said, I have another, ridiculously nerdy, complaint about her. If her pawpaw is Cid, her name shouldn't be Cindy or Cidney or Sydney - it should be something like Mindy or Midney.
If you don't know, FFV featured Cid (duh) as well as his grandson, Mid. This is referenced in FFXII with Doctor Cid and
his son Balthier, real name Ffamran mied Bunansa)
Clearly the trailer looks like a kind of "follow up" to Kingsglaive movie, so basically you know already that Luna is being kept hostage by the Nifhleim Empire. And you know already that Ardyn is the kind of character that won't easily loose his temper, so to be enraged she's supposed to have done something (probably
stopping Leviath-u-n from destroying Altissia or such
Anyway, what would you think about a flower girl, wearing pink dress and getting
killed (I'm even supposed to put this under spoiler tag?)
In the end, what bother me more are the tropes and stereotypes we have for the visual characterization of the main party: shady main character, strong six-packed dude, smart elegant guy with glasses and skinny extroverted dude. All wearing black.
I think it's more than fair to judge how a character will be portrayed in the actual game by basing it off of the marketing. In this last trailer we can get a generally decent idea of Noctis' character. An idea of the conflicts he has externally and internally. Same with Luna. If you don't think Kingsglaive tells you what you need to know about how they view women in this game (combined with that great "why have female party members that don't dress like whores?" line) with Luna being a mcguffin, everything pertaining to Crowe, Iris being relegated to doting over Noctis, Cindy's sex appeal and objectification VR mini game... then like...
dude I don't know what to tell you. Maybe these are all merely coincidences, though. Yeah. That's probably it.
dude I don't know what to tell you. Maybe these are all merely coincidences, though. Yeah. That's probably it.
Likewise, FF is not a product that is aiming clearly for just men, now is it? If that were the case its audience would only shrink. The idea is that the audience should grow. Criticism of Cidney is important to expanding the female audience. Everything you said you don't have a problem with (angry, upset, and talk about the character) is criticism! So what makes that all that different from criticism you find 'acceptable'? On top of all this, SE listened to feedback with discrimination. The male character design in Mobius was changed when men complained about it. The Cidney design was not changed even though people have been complaining about it much longer. This approach to responding is sexist, which all the more means the problems of Cidney have to be repeated and iterated, until it is heard and received and acted on.
Luna wears a dress in the game that dips to show her cleavage; movie Luna does not. Gentiana has multiple layers of clothing that somehow still don't cover her cleavage. Dragoon lady and Cidney are what they are. When you have four named female characters and all of them have cleavage lines but the male characters even in just the main four have more diversity in sartorial choices, I think it's safe to say there is a fanservice problem here. All the females have to be pander in some physical aspect, whereas the male characters are more free in design to wear things that reflect their personalities.
'Universal appeal' does not mean 'universal sex appeal'. You treating that term that way says how you regard character designs. Why do male players want to play as Snake, as Geralt, as Nathan Drake, as Ryu? Are they into the physical attributes of those characters? No. The Noctis crew has a rounded-out pile of generics intended to 'appeal universally' in the sense that they each have some personality and are inoffensive: the glasses smart guy, the hyper dumb guy, the buff guy, the main hero. A male or female can approach these characters with little complaint and follow their stories. In comparison a male and a female would approach Cidney differently because her design is so blatantly oriented towards sexual appeal for men. Luna in turn comes with the 'nice girlfriend' appeal for males as opposed to a more active, self-oriented design/personality that could appeal to women.
Congrats, you found Gladio and Vaan. Meanwhile, there is a sea of JRPGs, and in each of them you can probably find the busty sexy female character. Find me the equivalent number of scantily dressed guys. Are Auron, Wakka, and Kimahri 'pretty boys'? While Rikku, Lulu, and Yuna have to be slim, nice looking girls? What about 13? Is there equality there? 9? 8? Were Cid Highwind, Cait Sith, Red Xiii pretty boys, while Tifa/Yuffie/Aerith had to be slim pretty girls?
There is no parity. And to pretend there is, that's willful blindness.
Go to the blockbuster movies yourself and count how many cases of pandering to men there are compared to pandering to women. It's not equal.
I am not asking for more guys to be half naked. I'm asking for less female characters to be. For some reason, you find that objectionable. I can't imagine why.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
This series already had an all-female game.
The last trilogy of games started a woman.
I think it's telling that we can't allow them one all-male game before crying sexism.
The last trilogy of games started a woman.
I think it's telling that we can't allow them one all-male game before crying sexism.
#MRA lol
I think this argument, while holding some merit, needs to die. It's an incomplete statement, more so than the state of the game itself.
Final Fantasy XV doesn't exist in a bubble. Its marketing doesn't exist in a bubble. This game has had over 10 years worth of pre-release material in various formats and we have had nothing BUT that pre-release material to formulate an opinion of it based on only what they'll give us.
But FFXV is only the latest in a long history of games, many of them with some positive and not-so-positive portrayals of its female characters. It's a game in a series that often takes strong, powerful women and sticks them in "cutesy" or "sexy" outfits, no matter how misplaced, whether they be all-powerful mages or fallen royalty. Where designers routinely confuse "power levels" as what constitutes a "strong character" (rather than personality or character growth).
It's the first big new console release of a Final Fantasy title since Lightning Returns - a game that took its "strong female character" and whose director explicitly asked the team to make her chest larger and tossed in copious amounts of eye-rolling fetish costumes for her to wear, no matter how much they conflicted with her established personality (what little there was).
I'm not exactly expecting Cidney/Cindy to suddenly develop into this awe-inspiring character whose ridiculous outfit is somehow explained away,
and if leaks are to be believed, I'm not expecting much out of Luna either....
While I'm not expecting anything as explicitly embarrassing as "you'll be ashamed of your words and deeds" Quiet in MGSV, the gaming landscape for women, especially from Japanese developers lately, has been disappointingly dire by and large.
I'll be happy to be proven wrong, but the burden of proof is on THEM to do so. At this point, they don't get the benefit of the doubt.
Ordinaryundone
Member
She reminds me a lot of Ruby from FFIX. They were both scantily clad, outspoken women with heavy accents who primarily filled a comedy relief role. Maybe Ruby was more tolerable because the graphics were worse and there was no voice acting? Choco-lina from FFXII-2 was the same way, or LeBlanc from FFX-2. It's not really an uncommon trope for the series, but it's never gotten heat like this from what I remember.
Flame Lord
Member
I never said FF was targeting men, and I never said that I have a problem with criticism, I said I had a problem with people trying to get SE to change her or anyone else's design. Same with the Mobius design, I didn't like it but I wouldn't tell them to change it, especially when I wasn't going to play it anyway.
I really don't see how having cleavage all all is fanservice, especially when they're pretty modest. I never really noticed the cleavage from Luna and Gentiana until you brought it up. A lot of dresses have cleavage, but that doesn't mean that any woman that wears them are always trying to appeal to men.
I don't remember saying anything about universal appeal, and if you're talking pure personality appeal, I'd say both Cidney and Lune are just as inoffensive as any of the male characters.
A list of dudes in JRPGs that appeal to women would be a ridiculous list that couldn't even be contained in one thread. And you seem to be showing some bias there, you list all the freaks and old mean but leave out Tidus, Cloud, Leon, Seifer, Sephiroth and others who I can't name because I haven't played much of those older FF games.
Completely depends on the movie you're watching. Clearly a series like Transformers which just from the concept will appeal more to boy and men who grew up with it would trend more towards pandering men, but other movies, like once again Twilight, pander to their obvious audience, women. And I find it objectionable because I think people should be able to design whatever they want. If the designs put people off, people won't buy it, it won't make enough to get a sequel, and that's that. Maybe it dies, but I rather something die than turn into a plain flavored paste trying to appeal to every audience out there.
I don't think you understand just how much this game is fujoshi-bait. The way I see it, the game is absolutely primarily fanservice aimed at women. Cindy is just there to appeal to the other demographic, but it's incredibly lopsided toward the other side by having an all-male cast of bishounens. Feels more like a shoujo manga than a mainline game in a major franchise.
And if you don't think they'll be sexy alternate costumes for the male cast, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
And as a bisexual woman, I got no problem with all that.
I mean I'll take this bait just to explain that while there was an all-female game in X-2, they didn't have the cast be largely female. That game was mostly fanservice with the women dressing up in various different clothing as part of a game mechanic. The entire quest was to find a boy. There was a villain in Leblanc who barely wore clothing.
And like, what a lot of people in this thread don't seem to get is that people are concerned/upset/pissed not because there are a lot of dudes in the game, but the ladies in the game are disproportionally small to the male cast and all of them so far appear to have their motivates centered around men in some way, or their relationship is defined through men.
For as much as people want to try to make an Aerith comparison because she was a pretty girl wearing pink selling flowers, she was also a woman who had enough agency to choose to sacrifice herself for the greater good of not just one boy but the entire world. Her motivations were defined not by male characters, but by her own choosing. So far we have seen little to think that will be the case with Luna. The plot moves her, not the other way around.
You know what those characters are? Joke characters, one note characters, or side characters. One dimensional characters made to fill a role. There are several of those of both sexes throughout games, so it's fine. Ruby in IX is barely a character, despite her having implied backstory with Zidane and the other Theatre members. Leblanc is a joke character not to be taken seriously. She wasn't marketed. Chocolina was also a joke character who had some utility, but was clearly not meant to be taken as a serious character.
Cindy, by contrast, is hotly featured in marketing, was rumored to be XV's Cid character way back when, and is given a rather crucial role in the story and has a direct relationship with the main characters and seems to be something like on the level of Brother in X - someone who is around and has a decent function who is tangentially related to the story and the main characters.
tl;dr she's kind of as main a character gets in XV that isn't the core four and she is treated like a one note, flat character. There will be backlash when she is featured so prominently to market the game because there's only one reason they're using her and it ain't her accent.
Neoleo2143
Member
Just because people are complaining about it now, doesn't mean their impressions won't change when they get the final game. I often leave "as currently" or something along those lines at the end of trailer opinions because I want to give the impression that my opinion is dynamic, I think that quite few people are like that, they just don't phrase it that way.
Though, I think people have a good reason to be skeptical here and they're simply voicing it.
This is a mainstream game with a "goal" (yeah yeah I know the story) of selling 10 million copies. Fujoshi-bait (and fanservice that alienates audiences) isn't going to do much to get it there.
I'm saying the fanservice is secondary, but the fanservice that does exist is primarily aimed at women. Cidney's existance is to slightly balance it out, but it's still lopsided.
rackham
Banned
one million percent agree with you. I've noticed it for a long time with JRPGs in general.
Edit: I've seen Kingsglaive. Let me break down Luna for you
at one point she jumps off a high building or something with no plan whatsoever just because 'herp derp I'm a just stupid silly girl who doesn't think" then is saved by the main character. but it's ok. she can just clasp her hands together and say some stupid monologue and there's your characterization.
second edit: and poor Lena Heady having to voice that awful dialogue. Getting shit thrown at her was a better role.
Edit: I've seen Kingsglaive. Let me break down Luna for you
at one point she jumps off a high building or something with no plan whatsoever just because 'herp derp I'm a just stupid silly girl who doesn't think" then is saved by the main character. but it's ok. she can just clasp her hands together and say some stupid monologue and there's your characterization.
second edit: and poor Lena Heady having to voice that awful dialogue. Getting shit thrown at her was a better role.
What really irks me about Luna's depiction: It is just so derogatory and miserable.
It's really uncomfortable to watch. That's exactly what the writers want and why the trailers are presented to us the way they are, I know. The way Crowe was treated in Kingsglaive too...
If Luna isn't going to fight back at one point I will be really pissed off. So far the only important women in this game (and film) seem to be just punching bags.
By the way, I mentioned this in another thread, do you guys think Luna was abused by Ardyn all this stime, since she was a girl and Tenebrae was taken over by Niflheim? The guy abusing her back then could be very well be Ardyn too.
It's really uncomfortable to watch. That's exactly what the writers want and why the trailers are presented to us the way they are, I know. The way Crowe was treated in Kingsglaive too...
If Luna isn't going to fight back at one point I will be really pissed off. So far the only important women in this game (and film) seem to be just punching bags.
By the way, I mentioned this in another thread, do you guys think Luna was abused by Ardyn all this stime, since she was a girl and Tenebrae was taken over by Niflheim? The guy abusing her back then could be very well be Ardyn too.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I actually do think this game minimalizes female roles, consiously. They've outright stated this. It's the bromantic road trip movie.
But to worry about it being problematic (gender politics, female representation etc etc) I think is unfair.
It's not the result of an unconscious sexist tendency to want to favor male roles: it's consious. It's a design decision to specifically focus on male bonding.
And it's not the only direction for this series. For one game, they have decided to make a game that focuses on male friendship. I know the next one won't.
I know we only get one FF every 5-10 years, so I'm a little sympathetic to people who think of this as the whole direction for the FF series. But it does look to me like they wanted to take one stab at videogaming's "Stand By Me" or "The Outsiders" and some people won't let them have it.
I say this as someone who'd inherently prefer FF to focus on strong women: I forgive them one entry where they focus on males on purpose.
But to worry about it being problematic (gender politics, female representation etc etc) I think is unfair.
It's not the result of an unconscious sexist tendency to want to favor male roles: it's consious. It's a design decision to specifically focus on male bonding.
And it's not the only direction for this series. For one game, they have decided to make a game that focuses on male friendship. I know the next one won't.
I know we only get one FF every 5-10 years, so I'm a little sympathetic to people who think of this as the whole direction for the FF series. But it does look to me like they wanted to take one stab at videogaming's "Stand By Me" or "The Outsiders" and some people won't let them have it.
I say this as someone who'd inherently prefer FF to focus on strong women: I forgive them one entry where they focus on males on purpose.
Well said first post. We really need the nitpicking to stop before the game is released.
Exactly. Each final fantasy is different. I'm looking forward to this game more and more and I think it's all due to the brotherhood anime. I really disliked the whole road trip ideas but once I saw the anime I understood the characters more and even came to liking prompto. I want to see how these characters go together know and it's nice having a game with a more tight team. After how horrible XIII was I'm finding the direction of this a refreshing pace.
Why don't you wait yourself until you have played it? Maybe OP is right about how she perceives the pre-release material. Wait, what?
This is some kind of zero-sum BS.
Because if they focus on males, females have to be shit, durr.
Pretty much. I don't think many people would look at a group picture of the main cast and say "This game is only directed at straight dudes"
What ?
The series has a long history of strong and effectual female characters.
Most recent example? FFXIII was almost entirely female led and male characters were sidelined pretty hard.
Are we in grade school? Op was prejudging many characters before we even know how they are portrayed in game. Cidney excluded.
I don't think using any of the XIII series as an example is beneficial to your argument as they were the worst designed and worst written games in the series.
rackham
Banned
Luna was absolute trash in Kingsglaive so I think it's safe to say how shit she will be in XV.
LOL if anyone expects anything above mediocrity for Cidney.
I don't know. I think they needed to explain the Oracle angle a bit more but she just knew that everything will work out because she knows the future. If they explained that a bit better it would've explained her actions.
The point in listing only the "freak" characters is that, by and large, male characters are allowed to be imperfect, be past their prime, or have a variety of body types. Whereas by and large, female characters must be young, slim and attractive. I can't think of a single female FF party member that didn't fit this mold.
You've got some outdated ideas about gender. There's no reason women can't enjoy giant robots and explosions (and many do).
What do you mean? Fanservice is hardly a zero-sum game, but let's not pretend that a sexy mechanic cancels out the entire cast of pretty boys. Ask any prospective FFXV buyer in Japan which gender is getting more fanservice in the game and they wouldn't even entertain the idea of it being to men.
And it's her goddamn right, because the marketing material is made for people to prejudge the game.
I don't care about who gets more fanservice or how many stupid mechanics you need to cancel out a six pack, Cidney is shit and Prompto isn't.
Then let's throw in Rydia from FFIV, Faris from FFV, Terra and Celes from FFVI, Tifa and Aeris from FFVII, Quistis from FFVIII, Garnet and Freya from FFIX, Yuna and Rikku from FFX, and Ashe from FFXII.
Final Fantasy has a lot of great women. They're not always treated right, but they've definitely pulled it off before.
Dude keep a clear mind.
The fact remains that FFXIII was female led and said female characters were not sexualized and the entire plot hangs on theit actions.
It could be the worst game in the world ,but these are simply statements of fact.
FFXIII has much better female characters than what was shown of XV so far.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Honestly, I don't know why everyone brings up Lightning from that game. Fang was clearly better.
jshackles
Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Exactly. I think we might have drawn the same conclusion about Celes in FFVI if the marketing machine back in the day kept showing us this scene before release:
But in the end after playing the game I don't think anyone really saw Celes as some sort of punching bag character
sensui-tomo
Member
for all of disk one? hell she gets thrown to the curb as soon as disk 2 happens. but your point remains for everyone else though , Would have used beatrix myself (since she's one of the few good things about ff9 that i liked .. not a fan as you can tell)
Flame Lord
Member
I don't really have a problem with that, but I can understand how others would.
I didn't say they can't, but due to the way things currently are, where both men and women are pointed to certain interest deemed befitting of them at an early age, things like Transformers will likely have a larger male audience than female.
It really feels like it, sometimes.
Not to mention that the scene is obviously being set up in an "aww yeah, catfight! Maybe they'll tear each other's clothes off and make out!" Sort of way.
Thinking back, almost every instance of FF marketing has focused on showing the lead heroine in some sort of peril in order to elicit cheap emotion.
Recall that at one point, THIS was an actual marketing image used in posters:
That's not even the case, there's tons of advertisement material that show off females strong and in a capable position.
As for that poster your referring to, that has more to do with pushing cloti than pushing any kind of sexism IMO.
This thread is about those few moments and more about what they did there than what they didn't. Are you pulling an ashamed-of-your-words-and-deeds?
Exactly. I think we might have drawn the same conclusion about Celes in FFVI if the marketing machine back in the day kept showing us this scene before release:
But in the end after playing the game I don't think anyone really saw Celes as some sort of punching bag character
I think the title might be slightly off. This is more about the marketing of the game, which can also be considered a statement on what they feel is valuable or appealing or intriguing in their game. It's a discussion worth talking about, especially since marketing also sets expectations.
Until the game is out, we can't really talk about it's treatment of female characters because we lack the context to the scenes we find problematic. But we can think about the marketing, why it's chosen, and what possible negative connotations it has.
You know that because you've played or seen FF XIII in its completed form.
Most female characters in FF XIII were sexy and slim, yet for some reason, this aspect didn't seem to bring people up in arms the way FF XV does.
I feel like the politically correctness the vocal forum dwellers are clamoring for is never going to be met for them no matter what. Some people can't seem to go through a single day without being offended by something, as inconsequential that thing may be.
F0rneus
Tears in the rain
I can't wait to explore Eos with my bros and am counting down the days 'till release, but I will say that the female characters in FFXV (or lack thereof) are weighting heavily on my mind. It's one thing to say that it's the direction of the game. If I felt Tabata was legitimate in his desire to tell a male bonding story, I'd be very happy about it. But I don't believe him. Never have, never will.
IMO it's clear that this isn't truly the issue here. From the comments about Cindy and sexy female party members (the only women they think we think about), from women apparently not being approachable enough...The issue here to me is that Tabata and his team seemingly just don't want women to be playable. Or to be in any position of power. Crowe, Lunafreya and Cindy are all there to prop up their males counterparts's lives as damsels in distress or
or fanservice.
A full year of US press asking them about the lack of playable women, and their reaction? To add more playable characters via DLC. All men of course. Would it affect the "bromance" of FFXV to have DLC staring women in it? Would it affect the story they want to tell? Nope. But they didn't do it.
IMO it's clear that this isn't truly the issue here. From the comments about Cindy and sexy female party members (the only women they think we think about), from women apparently not being approachable enough...The issue here to me is that Tabata and his team seemingly just don't want women to be playable. Or to be in any position of power. Crowe, Lunafreya and Cindy are all there to prop up their males counterparts's lives as damsels in distress or
fridged women.
A full year of US press asking them about the lack of playable women, and their reaction? To add more playable characters via DLC. All men of course. Would it affect the "bromance" of FFXV to have DLC staring women in it? Would it affect the story they want to tell? Nope. But they didn't do it.
Because nobody was being slapped around without a hint of agency or panned up camera ass shots. We were more insulted by the fact that the characters were braindead in general outside of Sazh and Fang.
Its dangerous for you to claim that social criticism can ONLY be political correctness, because you don't like what is being said.
YankeeDonB
Member
I'd say this poster definitely paints Tifa as a damsel in distress. She needs Cloud to come to her rescue and shelter her. Of course, in game, it's often quite the opposite.
I keep thinking about this too:
This stuff is tough to watch, but it makes Celes' final ascendancy as the true WOR protag potentially all the more potent. Celes has had a damn hard life, and the hardest parts stemmed from her choice to stand up and do what was right, instead of easy. Same could easily happen with Luna. Or not. Certainly I don't remember Celes' getting slapped around in the ads for VI, and one does wonder about current choices in how Luna is being portrayed.
Hey real nice discussion point:
Of course it does. It does nothing except that. It's not that she get hit that makes her seem weak, it's the way she takes it.
You know, you can get bitchslapped and shrug it of, clinch your teeth, look evil, talk back or something OR you can simply fall down with a moan:
You can say all you want about "we don't know if Stella was strong" "we don't know if Luna is weak", but the IMPRESSIONS we have are pretty clear about it and that's all we have to go by. THEY chose to show her that way, it's not that we just want to see it that way. And yes, you can be a powerful mage and still be weak-minded or frail. That's exactly what Luna seems to be from the footage, she is certainly powerful, but that doesn't automatically makes her "strong".
I'm sure in the final game she will be very important and powerful and maybe even strong, but I don't have that impression from the footage yet.
Well said. They chose to represent the scene and her reaction this way and, to boot, focused on the guy's face.
Exactly. I think we might have drawn the same conclusion about Celes in FFVI if the marketing machine back in the day kept showing us this scene before release:
But in the end after playing the game I don't think anyone really saw Celes as some sort of punching bag character
This sort of eventuality is totally possible.
There's an argument that the FFXV trailers still betray a bias in terms of how they want to portray these characters, but there's no be-all-end-all answer here until we play the game.