Let’s check the score
card here. That’s one game that’s
extremely divisive (yet universally acknowledged to have faults). There’s another game that fixes some problems
while adding several more -- an incomprehensible story, adding the
controversial DLC plan into a once-adored franchise, and an ending suggesting another sequel. There’s a third game that’s such a mess,
Square-Enix has to do some serious clean-up work just to make it passable. And there’s a fourth game that was announced
no less than five years too early, with hardly anything to show for it
since. Do you see how this might be
problematic?
Even the box art is broken.
Square-Enix and Final Fantasy have stumbled this
generation -- and as the premiere JRPG company/franchise, the entire genre has
taken a hit because of it. “JRPGs are
dead!” the naysayers claim. “JRPGs are
stupid, boring, and clichéd!” the detractors yell. They wouldn’t be saying that if we had a
good, generally well-received Final
Fantasy on our hands. If we had an
awe-inspiring, meaningful adventure, people could still point to the franchise
as a bastion of the genre. But we don’t. All we have are a series of tubes that look
pretty, a sequel befuddled by time travel, and an MMO that’s the laughingstock
of gamers everywhere.
It’s like nothing else
matters but that one name -- in spite of all the other games that have eclipsed
it since. Persona 3 and 4 are
utterly amazing. The recent Xenoblade Chronicles is similarly
astounding. There have been three
releases in the Tales Series this
past generation (and another one still lies in Japan), delivering consistent
quality. Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon
did JRPGs right years before 13
screwed it all up. Even weaker releases
like Infinite Undiscovery and Star Ocean: The Last Hope had their
moments. You’d expect a big release, one
with ten times the resources and pedigree than some companies combined, would
be able to pull something together.
You’d think wrong. And now here we are, sitting at our
computers, scouring the internet for information about Versus 13, hoping -- praying
-- that the magic finally comes back.
Will it? God, I hope so. I want to heal these wounds that 13 inflicted upon me; I want to believe
in Square-Enix again. I want this wait,
this tale of a game in the works for more than half a decade, to have a happy
ending. I want others to be able to
believe.
Well, enough about
that. Let’s get Austrailian. (That was my best segue ever.)
Eternal Champion of the “Meh” and Queen of Contradiction: Fang
Also a world-class mime.
When Fang was first
announced, I wasn’t sure what to make of her.
I was still fangasming at the thought of playing the Monk-like Snow, and
being from a different generation/console era I never experienced the Dragoon
class of earlier FF games
firsthand. In spite of that, I was
willing to give Fang a chance. Between
her and Lightning, though, I could see a trend.
Square-Enix was moving forward; not content with having RPG ladies
designated solely as white mages or love interests, they would have their girls
deliver on the action every step of the way.
They’d be bold. They’d be
brave. They’d make me lament ever being
born a man.
And then the game
happened. I will forever associate Fang
with one certain line:
Shut up and come quiet…shut
up and come quiet…shut up and come qui- is that some kind of Australian
thing? Like, is that what people that
are native to Australia say? Do they not
like adverbs? Was the localization team
trying to make it sound like slang or shorthand speech? Shut up and come quie…why couldn’t she just
say “quietly”? Wait a minute, why does she have an accent in the first
place? This is a fantasy world, there’s no such thing as Australia. Why the fu-
No, no, no…calm
down. Don’t…let one…lack of an adverb…get
you down…
I’d better move on to a
different subject before this drives me insane.
Anyway, Fang. What can I say
about Fang? Well, first and foremost,
she’s here to be a tough, competent woman.
Just look at her description from the manual:
Fair enough, I
suppose. I guess that, unlike a lot of
character descriptions in manuals, this one’s fairly accurate. She’s tough and competent, and she’s sharp
and smart-alecky, and…uh…
Uh…
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
…………………………………………………Well,
damn.
I’ve stared at this
page for about three minutes now, and haven’t come up with anything substantial
to say about Fang. That’s generally not
a good sign…but, fear not. I think I can
explain myself (and prove to myself that my memory hasn’t gone the way of the
stegosaurus.) See, I think that the
problem with Fang is that she falls prey to what I call “The Naoto Effect.” The effect is as follows: a character’s importance and impact on the
plot is directly proportional to how early they appear in the story.
It’s named after Persona 4’s Naoto Shirogane, a
gun-toting high schooler who’s the last party member you gain in the game. The problem is that by the time she joins the
group, she’s missed several important events -- the school trip, the diving
scene, extended time with little Nanako, etc.
She (and it’s obvious it’s a she as soon as you hear her speak for the
first time -- heck, even the first time you see her art) is supposed to be the
group’s brain, filling in the details and leading them to the culprit; by the
time she’s an official member, you’re already well on your way to the
ending. While she’s suitably strong once
you get her, you only have two or three dungeons left to use her; by then,
chances are you’ve already got your team defined and don’t want to disrupt your
synergy. While she does get her moments
in P4, I couldn’t shake the feeling
that it was too little, too late. The
Naoto Effect rears up even more ferociously in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn; the eighth party member, Himi, only joins up
after most of the game is done, you’ve already got most of your equipment set,
and you just need someone to handle MacGuffin detail. She doesn’t even know who some of the main
villains are by the time she’s encroached in the action.
Even on her worst day, Naoto knew that much. And yes, this is most definitely a girl.
Fang has the same
problem. The beginning of the game has
five of the six playable characters all meet, going from groups of one or two
to an eventual party of five. All five
of them meet at one critical juncture; all five of them are sexually
harassed by godbot tentacles brought before a divine being and have their
adventure set into motion; all five of them learn quickly just what they’re up
against, and what the stakes entail. All
five. Not Fang. Fang misses all of that doing…doing who knows
what. She misses the most important event in the story because she’s faffing about
elsewhere; you don’t recover from that, no matter how sassy or Australian you
are.
The insular, personal nature of FF13’s character development (sure, let’s
call it that) means that the more the characters interact, the more likely they
are to come together and show off what they’ve learned. The problem is that Fang doesn’t get to
buddy-up with anyone. Yeah, she and her
group of…whoever those guys are supposed to be…take Snow onboard their
ship. But they’re largely enemies at the
time, so that doesn’t count for much.
The plan is to have Snow, Lightning, and the rest publically executed
(though that doesn’t make any sense; why not just kill them on-sight? What if they use their powers to try and
escape? Why would you bring them to a
heavily-populated area if you treat them like infectious monsters? Do you think U.S. soldiers dragged bin Laden
back to America just so he could be shot after the latest episode of The Cleveland Show?). Eventually, she meets up with Lightning --
earning a bitch slap from her; class act, Lightning -- and ultimately…decides
to join up with Lightning and the group.
Uh…right, moving on.
Look, you guys know I’m
doing my damnedest to remember something substantial about the game,
right? You know that if I could mention
something that left an impact, I would?
But I can’t. I just can’t do it here. Fang’s job is to smash things and snark
(well, one other thing, but we’ll get to that).
When she’s not doing that -- even when she’s doing that -- she’s a
background voice with no impact on any of the proceedings. When she does do something, it’s in stark
contradiction to what she did earlier in the plot. She acted like she was an enemy to the “heroes”
and then suddenly decides to join the heroes -- and then never makes use of the
resources she enjoyed as an elite soldier again, in spite of the obvious
benefits it would offer, like an airship, supplies, sanctuary, allies, or
someone who can listen when they say the
pope is trying to kill everyone in the world.
"He looks trustworthy. Let's give him the highest seat of power possible!"
Nowhere is this more
obvious than in her Eidolon fight.
Remember how I mentioned that the magic Transformers appear in times of
emotional distress? Well, Fang’s fight
actually follows that rule overtly, unlike Snow’s. The problem is that it’s due to ass-backwards
reasoning. Whereas the others decide to
fight their fate and try to not turn into crystallized zombies for failing or
crystallized statues for succeeding, Fang decides to fight them and save them
from turning into said zombies. Ignoring
the fact that she’s threatening to kill them if they try and save themselves
from a horrible fate, why wouldn’t Fang want the same? Did she want to succeed and turn into a
crystal statue (again)? Was that her
idea of a good time? Why wouldn’t she
give it a try? Why would she raise her
lance, especially if it meant potentially hurting the one party member she had
a reason to care about -- the one party member she’d sworn to protect?
I guess it doesn’t
matter. What’s important is that she got
her robo-dragon, and nobody among the main cast is smart enough to ever bring
up her ploy at attempted murder again.
And Fang reciprocates by not only admitting “All right, I guess trying
to overcome two fates worse than death is better than turning into an ice
sculpture”, but also deciding that the people she just tried to kill -- four of
which she hardly even knew and bonded with before the game proper -- are “her
new family.”
"The dragon made me do it."
Now I remember why I
hate this game so much. When they don’t
explain anything -- the world-building, the rationale of the characters, the
importance of one group over another -- it makes the story irritating and
shallow. When they DO explain something,
the reasons given are contrived, bewildering and obtuse; it’s as if they exist
solely to get players back into that pretty, pretty tube without any thought of
what happened an hour ago or what will happen an hour later. (Consider that the “heroes” go from “we have to
protect that…that robo-baby thing Orphan to avoid the world’s end” to “let’s
kill the shit out of Orphan! FOR THAT IS
WHY WE LIVE!”)
The final boss. I just saved you fifty joyless hours.
But I digress. Back to Fang.
Here’s an interesting little tidbit:
“Tetsuya Nomura and
Motomu Toriyama have dished out the latest on Final Fantasy XIII in this week's
Famitsu. For those who've been keeping up with the game, the comments from the
two are particularly revealing this time.
Let's start off with some
character trivia. Recently, we shared details on Oerba Yun Fang, the sexy black
haired girl from the Tokyo Game Show trailer who, although a l'Cie like Snow
and the rest of the main cast, appears to support the government. It turns out
that she wasn't so sexy when the FF project began. According to Nomura, she was
originally scheduled to be a male character. When they switched her to female,
they decided to give her a sexy quality, which they removed from Lightning in
order to differentiate the two. So remember -- Lightning originally had sex
appeal, Fang was originally a guy.”
Huh. Well.
Yeah, I guess it’s great for them to have admitted that. I mean, yeah, it’s not like anything like
gender is important to a character, right?
It’s not like there’s any discernible difference between a male warrior
and a female warrior, right? It’s just
aesthetics! All you have to do to make a
female character is give them longer hair, less clothes, and breasts! That’s all there is to it, am I right? It’s not like insinuating anything of the
sort is inviting yourself to start a quagmire of monstrous proportions at any
given moment while simultaneously shattering your credibility and immediately
signaling the fact that you’re taking a huge shortcut for the sake of
expediency at the cost of a story’s quality, you know what I’m sayin’?
This is a complicated
subject. I may know writing, but I know
that it’s better for me to bow out now than try to argue any further. I will say this, however: writing a character
of the opposite sex -- no matter what your own gender may be -- is a very
tricky business. You need skill as well
as sensitivity, and the foresight to know when or if there are going to be some
nasty implications. Can you imagine what
scenes like this would be like if Fang were a man?
IIRC, they're standing on the outside of a flying airship here.
Furthermore, would you
see Fang in a different light if you played through the game, knowing that she
was supposed to be a man? And can you
think about the implications of her relationship,
knowing what she very nearly was?
Think about that for a
while. Because for now, I’m taking a
break. When I get back -- IF I get back
-- I’ll continue exploring not-Australia with another Final Fantasy girl.
May God be with me.
No comments:
Post a Comment