I try to see games as having a distinct point and reason. Sure that might be lost on some people, but I don't think games should pander. Let them tell the story they want to.
Question of the Day, May 22, 2010
- Thread starter The Escapist Staff
- Start date
I'm a little upset by the whole question, really. It's insulting that the suits think that I, as an American, can only relate to improbably-muscled Viking types. Even more than that, it's sad that the world's wealthiest developer of JRPGs doesn't seem able to think of character designs other than "tough, older, grizzled Western hero" and "svelte, androgynous, teenage Japanese hero".
To put it more generally, I wish developers would stop relying on hackneyed stereotypes (and trying to manipulate them to make the characters appeal to players superficially) and just trust that if they design an interesting/compelling/relatable/etc. character, players will appreciate it.
I hold up Atlus' Persona 3 as a great example from my personal experience; described in bullet points, I'd have expected all of the characters in that game to irritate me, especially the main character. Yet the writers took the time to flesh out and develop their characters, realizing their potential both fully and gradually, and as a result I've never cared more about what happened to a cast of characters in a video game than I did about Persona 3's collection of Japanese high school "stereotypes".
In summary: Concentrate on making good characters, and you won't have to worry about the appeal to individual audiences of the stereotypes they might resemble.
To put it more generally, I wish developers would stop relying on hackneyed stereotypes (and trying to manipulate them to make the characters appeal to players superficially) and just trust that if they design an interesting/compelling/relatable/etc. character, players will appreciate it.
I hold up Atlus' Persona 3 as a great example from my personal experience; described in bullet points, I'd have expected all of the characters in that game to irritate me, especially the main character. Yet the writers took the time to flesh out and develop their characters, realizing their potential both fully and gradually, and as a result I've never cared more about what happened to a cast of characters in a video game than I did about Persona 3's collection of Japanese high school "stereotypes".
In summary: Concentrate on making good characters, and you won't have to worry about the appeal to individual audiences of the stereotypes they might resemble.
It's fine to tweak the game for different audiences, but it would be nice if developers would make different versions available in all languages so that if one version is vastly different, the other can still be played by those who would like it more.
It mainly depends on the game for me, but Nier is one of those games where it is clear that both character types would work for the story (more-emo kid looking to cure his sister versus slightly-less-emo man looking to cure his daughter). In this case, it probably was just easier to use the father archetype for western audiences to make the game not simply be glossed over as "another JRPG with the same cast of characters in every other JRPG."
It depends on the game. It could certainly create a nice competitive advantage, and possibly achieve more sales.
Preferring a macho muscle-man protagonist over an androgynous teenage protagonist isn't macho homophobia any more than preferring the sexually-ambiguous protagonist over the brawny protagonist is.. uh, well, gay.Krakyn said:
You can't have it one way and not the other. If you're going to call America a bunch of homophobes for preferring manly men to girly men as protagonists, you also must call Japan a bunch of gays for preferring things the other way. Now, I don't think you want to do that do you?
That said, does any of this really matter? Do these characters actually have character, or do they just have one-liners to justify (very, very thinly, very vaguely justify) the next level of the game? HMMMMno. So then it really doesn't matter. Does it matter in something like Half-Life? Well, yes, I'd say it matters there a bit more than in Nier.
also I'm pretty sick and tired of all these japanese characters. learn to draw something else, come on. the japanese protagonist of Nier is not an original creation, we've seen the same ladyboy in a few FF games, in DMC, in... yanno honestly there's a lot more that I seem to have successfully purged from my memory. And while you're at it, stop making 12 year olds with tits the size of a Yugo. That's just weird.
If you MUST make a teenaged ladyboy character, could you at least do it without utilizing bits of garbage stuck to them at random as a costume and maybe consider using a normal color of hair. Baby steps; you can start with a color that hair could actually be dyed. Totally opaque titanium white? Not possible.
I rather enjoyed played as the older man in Nier, that being said i would have still played the younger one if they had brought him over. I was kind of hoping they would put both versions out so i could get both because i would.
EDIT: I forgot to say that i don't really care what the protagonist looks like or acts like in a game so long as it fits the story well.
EDIT: I forgot to say that i don't really care what the protagonist looks like or acts like in a game so long as it fits the story well.
I know I'm a girl and I'm supposed to technically be the target audience for the girly emo kids in JRPGs, but I'm honestly just so sick of them at this point. I prefer someone a little older and masculine. That's not to say a 50 year old grizzled dude either, but someone who looks older than 15 at least and with a bit of a stronger jawline or some stubble. That's all I'm asking for.
I like options. I think it's great to see the localization team coming up with new ideas to appeal to the western audience, but there are a lot of western gamers (such as myself) who prefer the eastern atmosphere, or who want to see the original story with as little change as possible (because no matter how good the translation is, some concepts and ideas that are perfectly understandable in Japanese just sound awkward or wrong in English). So just as I hate seeing Japanese games where I'm forced to hear the English voices, I'd hate to see the game forced into a western-specific main character, even though I'd probably prefer him over whiny-McEmo.
I know that disc space could be an issue, and I really like how that was handled with the new Sakura Wars - they couldn't fit all the English and Japanese voices on one disc, so they released a deluxe edition of the game that included a second disc with the Japanese voices on it. So while that means it was more expensive to get the version I wanted, I probably wouldn't have bought the game at all if the option wasn't available.
I know that disc space could be an issue, and I really like how that was handled with the new Sakura Wars - they couldn't fit all the English and Japanese voices on one disc, so they released a deluxe edition of the game that included a second disc with the Japanese voices on it. So while that means it was more expensive to get the version I wanted, I probably wouldn't have bought the game at all if the option wasn't available.