Mog and Chips

At first I set aside all the “OMG! It’s going to be another FFX-2!” on the FFXIII forums of GameFAQs, most of whom come across most arrogantly. But then, I watch the trailer. And oh dear.

Oh I’m all for having a woman lead - it’s about time, for an RPG. Hell, even Shadow Hearts from the New World supposedly had a woman lead, but it was most POV of some teenage kid. You could argue XII’s lead is Ashe, but it’s from the POV of Vaan. (I suppose we can’t complain about women characters being skimpily dressed after that disaster of painted-on abs.) Of course the majority of the audience is male - that I don’t have a problem with, though I would welcome the change.

But the music gives it all away. Fast, upbeat battle music… that’s cheery. Also, the main character’s hair is (faded) pink. But we’ll let that pass, for now.
There is no need whatsoever to get rid of seriousness or gore just because you have a girl protagonist. No need for unneccessary upbeatness or optimism. FFXIII-Versus looks much more appealing, with things much darker and macarbre and bloody. And the character looks interesting because instead of impossibly dodging bullets and having slow-time acrobatics, you get a sense of mystery from that “What is that he’s using as a shield? Who are those people? Is that a throne?” instead of “There’s a train. And now there’s a girl jumping around… OMG SOLDIERS!” with no background to the environment.

Unfortuneatley Versus is an action-RPG (or hack n slash) which I completely suck at. But still, at the moment if I had to choose between one of the two, Versus looks a lot more interesting. I couldn’t even beat Kingdom Hearts. Although, I’ll give it another try yet.

Also I find the “female Cloud” thing of the FFXIII protagonist annoying - an original design please, rather than marketting it to the FF7 fans, a good number of whom blinded by fanboy/girlism. And can’t a woman have her own personality instead of being a female man? (If that makes any sense at all). That just makes it worse - if you design a character of a specific sex then keep it that way, don’t turn it into the other sex just to attract a different audience because 70% of your male fans (that is the squealing pre-teens probably make up 70%, not “70% of men are dumb enough” or anything) are following you religiously enough not to care. (That said, I’ve learnt my lesson after X-2. I am going to stab someone at SquareEnix for every obvious butt-shot or massage sequence that makes its way into XIII)

Speaking of X-2, one point you’ve got an overly girly theme with dress-ups and singing (which I’m sure puts off most men) and romance (not that romance is bad, but it was more mushy than usual), at another you’re bum-shotting (which probably annoys most women from the sheer concept of “lets zoom in on her bum REALLY OBVIOUSLY) and have someone moaning unusually loud for a back massage? I kid you not I had to mute the TV, living with parents at the time and worried they were going to think I was watching something I shouldn’t have been. They don’t know who their audience is, so they’ve pushed away men and women gamers instead of attracting both. Also (going by the GameFAQs forum, again) it’s completely obliterated the chance of female-protagonist getting taken seriously because “It’ll be another X-2!”

Oh, and it was really patronising, the way the story was told, like “Lets go save the world! Yay! *GIGGLE*”

And goddamnit, we girl gamers like our gore and emo-ness as much as the guys do. And don’t dumb down the storyline for us, please. Our heads haven’t exploded from any other complex-plot RPGs so far, really.

Again I’ve nothing against the male-protagonist RPGs, just the way when they try to aim for a female audience, they get it so horrifically wrong.

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