Is there anyone reading this that laments the loss
of the game’s bust slider?
Just before Xenoblade
Chronicles X hit store shelves in the west, there was that controversy over
“censorship”, i.e. gamers couldn’t raise or lower the size of their created
female characters’ breasts. The
argument, or something like it, was that Nintendo decided that gamers weren’t
capable of handling those matters. Or,
if you want to play strawman, they didn’t want to deal with outcries from the
“dreaded” SJWs. It was either that, or
they caved into demands as part of an overly-PC culture, even if it meant
sacrificing artistic merit.
I think that -- as usual -- there’s no right or
wrong answer to this controversy. On one
hand, I can see the issue; as a guy who hopes to write about characters of all
shapes and sizes, including the improbably buxom, it’s disheartening to know
that I can’t create whatever I want because somebody decided to take certain
tools away from me. And again, it
implies that the mere presence of
sexuality (such as it is, given that breasts are simply body parts) is the
problem, not the context or execution of it.
On the other hand, it’s still possible to define a character by more
than just a body type, especially since the potential is definitely there to cause a controversy. Although given that the default bust size is generous, I wonder if it would make for
some little girl avatars that raise a lot of questions.
But enough about that. Let’s talk about my avatar for the game,
Lariat.
Note: picture may only be tangentially related to the subject at hand. Still funny, though.
I didn’t exactly go in with a list of demands or
requirements. True, I usually take
character creation pretty seriously (I went full ham with a handful of
wrestling games), but with the knowledge that Xenoblade Chronicles X would prominently feature a silent
protagonist, it wasn’t a high priority to have every feature molded to my tastes.
Not at the outset, at least. But
once I actually got my hands on the GamePad, certain elements came together.
Like I said, I didn’t have a list of demands, but
there were a couple of things I wanted to nail.
The plan (or something like it) was to have my character play the tank
and/or meat shield, in the same way that Reyn -- the character I used 90% of
the time -- did in the original Xenoblade. So I thought, “I need to make a grown-ass
woman”, because it’d be more than a little strange to have a tiny girl wielding
massive weaponry and absorbing hits like a steel wall. And then the game trots out Lin, who does
exactly that.
In any case, the character. Continuing a recent trend of naming my female
characters after wrestling moves (like a hostess in Yakuza 4 I dubbed Pile Driver…which in hindsight is rather
unfortunate), I christened her “Lariat”.
True to the concept of “grown-ass woman”, I maxed out her height,
partially to see just how tall that would make her in-game. (For the record: taller than every other
female character so far, but beat out by a few men.) I gave her curly, shoulder-length hair and
shaded it a deep red, and added a pair of serious-looking green eyes. Well, relatively speaking; you could argue
that she still looks comparatively young.
Things went awry before I wrapped up, though. For starters?
You may be able to change eyes and hair and add little extra features,
but in the US version, the only mod you can make to your (female) character’s
body is the height. In an ideal world,
Lariat would have a height and build
that’s practically Amazonian, as you’d expect from a tank -- and especially if
she’d follow in the footsteps of beefy battler Reyn. It’s a shame, but not a deal-breaker. Besides, my lack of a plan going in forced a
detour; I noticed that there was an option for freckles, so I slapped them onto
Lariat’s face and didn’t look back. It’s
not that I have anything against freckles, but in terms of image -- especially
in the magical domain of Anime Land -- freckles aren’t exactly commonplace on
what might as well be a super-soldier.
Except she wasn’t really a
super-soldier. Not yet. Honestly, given the classes that were in the
game, I could’ve gone in any direction.
But then I noticed that you can give your female
character the
voice of Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. And
I hammered the A button as hard as I could, because why the hell wouldn’t you?
To my surprise, those elements ended up really
coming together -- and as they say, everything went better than expected. I knew some stuff going into XCX, but of all things, I was not prepared for basic movement. For the uninitiated: you can run and jump as
you would in any other game, and there’s also a sprint toggle on the left
stick. But what shocked me was that when
you sprint, you seriously
sprint.
You move fast enough to potentially outpace
speeding cars. If you jump while
sprinting, you’ll jump incredibly high, and leap even farther horizontally if
you so choose. On top of that, you can
sprint infinitely -- and as an added bonus, you can seemingly fall from any
height without having your shins shoved through your shoulders.
So imagine my surprise when my unusually tall,
freckled redhead could clear entire city blocks in a single bound, and run at
sixty miles per hour from one end of a valley to the other, while also casually jumping from cliffs twenty
stories high. All of that is before
taking into account her combat skills.
She’s got hundreds, often thousands
more HP than her comrades.
Her melee weapon of choice is a shield, and no
matter its size she uses it to punch giant insects in the face for huge
damage. Her ranged weapon is a Gatling gun she can cart around on her back, and
wield without tearing her arms off.
Coupled with her class-specific auras -- Supershield to reflect enemy
attacks, and Enhanced Stand to boost power while regaining HP -- Lariat is
virtually un-killable. So basically, I
stumbled ass-backwards into making a super-soldier. Not that I’m complaining.
Well, I say that, but there are some things that
have been on my mind.
Despite being a newbie in-universe -- the game
starts with your avatar getting rescued from a downed space pod -- Lariat
arguably slots into the role of cool female soldier (which, of course, is
helped by the voice). The problem is
that the role is filled by default; Elma is your first party member, and one
that sees a lot of play in the story. So
even if Lariat takes on a commanding role as a soldier, she’s still stepping
all over the feet of someone with a far greater presence -- since, you know, Elma actually talks. But in all fairness, I actually like Elma a
lot. She brings a level of maturity and
professionalism to the party -- and the game at large -- but she’s still capable
of things like compassion and camaraderie.
It still leaves Lariat in a weird situation, but the circumstances could
be a hell of a lot worse.
Except they kind of already are, in a way. Elma forces Lariat to lose some of her impact
as a character story-wise, but then Lin goes on to do the same gameplay-wise. Despite looking like she belongs in middle
school, Lin can lug around the same Gatling guns and giant shields that Lariat
can -- and since both of them are basically following the same character tree,
some of their moves in battle overlap.
How is Lariat supposed to express her individuality when the two
individuals joined at her hips are constantly doing what she does?
I had a conversation once with my brother, and he
revealed that he absolutely hates silent
protagonists -- Ludger from Tales of
Xillia 2 being a prime example. I
can’t say that I share his hatred, but I do see things his way. Setting aside the barely-justified way games
handle silent protagonists (apparently everyone can understand Link, because
he’s secretly speaking in full), dialogue is one of the ways a character
conveys his or her personality. Take
that away, and you’re taking away a very important tool. Talking isn’t necessarily a requirement, but
you don’t have to be a world-renowned novelist to know that it’s pretty
beneficial.
But video games are in an audiovisual medium, and
so they can take advantage of that. It’s
still more than possible to communicate nonverbally, for example -- and even then,
it’s not as if Lariat is 100% mute.
During battle, she’ll call out all sorts of actions and commands, and
help make fights in XCX feel like a
coordinated team effort; like the original game, it really helps sell the
synergy when your character of choice is actively directing the flow of
combat. It’s through even the most
standard of battles that Lariat’s personality shines through, coupled with the
level of activity the player can influence.
Elma may act like a cool soldier, but Lariat is bursting with authority and power -- almost as if the former is the
newbie, while the latter is a veteran that not even a towering mech should
trifle with.
Here’s where things get complicated, though. Like other RPGs, XCX extends its customization to armor, wherein you’ll deck out
your avatar with gear for his/her head, torso, legs, left arm, and right
arm. That can potentially mean you’ll
strut around wearing a getup that’s less coherent than a patchwork quilt
knitted by a moose, but you’re still very likely to create a solid outfit for
your avatar. For the longest time,
Lariat managed to look like the super-soldier I had long since started to
envision.
But what I’m starting to suspect about XCX is that it’s not exactly conducive
to dressing sensibly. I don’t want to be
that guy, but I have to be honest:
the skimpy and scintillating armor that people have complained about for ages
is here, and in full force. Well, maybe
not for the guys (I wouldn’t know, since as of writing everyone in my party is
female), but I put on some armor for Elma to boost her stats, only to not
realize until a cutscene later on that -- despite having legs that wouldn’t
look out of place on Jehuty
-- it shrouded her ass in a sparkling latex sheen, and capped it off with a
protruding metal thong. And I was just
like, “Aw, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.”
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given that a
female villain shows up early on and struts around in what might as well be
alien dominatrix gear -- complete with a slow and deliberate pan up her
thong-laden backside. Again, the concern
has been there for years, but not since Prince
of Persia: Warrior Within have I been forced to stare it in the face
(relatively speaking). Some of the armor
in this game makes me cringe, because every time I see a new piece of armor and
watch as it puts the ladies’ assets on display, I can’t help but think, “Come
on, guys. You’re better than this.”
Not all of the armor is like that, for sure. And yeah, you could make the argument that it
makes sense contextually; alien technology is bound to have some unusual
designs, after all…though that argument breaks down when you remember that said
armor is specifically designed to
reveal the skin of an entirely different species. Alternatively, Earth-based companies are
replicating alien tech to create “stylish” “armor”, but it doesn’t explain why
that armor is being sold to people who’d want to boost their defenses, not strut their stuff in front of monsters.
And the disparity between male and female armor is
even more depressing. Again, I haven’t seen everything that armor
for the guys has to offer. But I do know
this: there’s a guy named Phog you can recruit if you do his sidequest. By default, he’s wearing a basic shirt and
shorts -- and if you add him to your party, you can switch out those clothes
for better armor. Notably, it’s possible
for male and female characters to wear the same armor -- so I thought I’d see
what Phog’s equipment looked like on Lariat.
As it turned out, it looked nothing
like what Phog had on. When Lariat
put it on, it suddenly turned into a tanktop several sizes too small; a toddler
would’ve had trouble squeezing into the shorts she got. Hell, they
weren’t even the same color as Phog’s outfit.
The problem here isn’t necessarily that the
costumes exist; it’s that they threaten to act in stark defiance of established
context. Remember, I came to understand
Lariat as a super-soldier, an iron-willed (and iron-bodied) woman exploding
with authority and force. The idea of
putting her in armor that dove deep into her cleavage made me wince. Is it something that she would wear? Every fiber of my being said “No, it is not,
and you’re stupid for even asking.” The
same goes for Elma; nothing about her character suggests she’d be okay with
going out to battle in what might as well be titanium floss. I would sooner dress up Lin as The Littlest
EVA (and did) than show exactly why her
clothes got edited.
And yet, despite all that, maybe it’s not as big a
deal as I make it out to be.
It took me a while to remember this, but in XCX there’s a special function: you can
put your equipment into the “Fashion Gear” slot so that it overrides whatever
armor you’ve got without losing any
stats. So for example, if you really dig
Elma’s starting shirt, you can set it to her torso Fashion Gear slot and let it
rock. Certain equipment takes up
multiple slots -- like a couple of uniforms -- but the important thing is that
if there’s a certain combination of equipment that you feel captures the
essence of your avatar (or others), you don’t have to junk it to keep a
competitive edge.
But a funny thing happened the other day. Like I said, I forgot about the Fashion Gear
option because I’d only found it at random on Day 1. Once the possibility of a dedicated costume
crossed my mind, I felt relieved. Lariat
could be the soldier I envisioned! At
long last, her persona would be intact!
But there were two issues. First
off, by that point I had already put her in some alien armor -- a skirt, top,
and heels that wouldn’t look too out of place at a beachside resort. And also, she had neon headgear that looked
like petals; basically she looked like some kind of gigantic fairy
princess. It was weird…but kind of
fitting, in a way. I put it on her for
the stats, but I could still imagine Lariat scowling and going “This is
complete horseshit” all day long. And it
was actually pretty cool.
Then when it came time to put on the Fashion Gear,
I didn’t immediately go straight to the soldier outfit, but instead cycled
through some of my options. And you know
what? For a little while, I actually put
Lariat in “Phog’s clothes”. To my
surprise, I didn’t cough up viscera and cry bloody tears at the sight of a
woman in fewer clothes. If anything, it
seemed fitting (and not in the obvious physical sense). It made me imagine Lariat going out on a mission
after an extensive workout session at the gym -- and not even giving a damn
about it. I didn’t stick with it for too
long, though; I traded it out for a camo tank top, a ribbon on the arm, and
cargo shorts.
Then I finished up a quest that earned me some
glasses. And when I slapped them onto
Lariat, it was
practically a revelation. Suddenly,
infinite possibilities opened up to me; in that moment, I realized that I could
see Lariat as more than just a super-soldier.
She could take on a life of her own, well beyond the bounds of her
non-committal creation. True, she
started off as a blank slate, but I could chisel her into something much bigger
and better.
Thinking back, there’s a part of me that’s
embarrassed that I had to learn that lesson.
I’m the guy who’s argued that Samus’ alternate costume -- and the Zero
Suit, by extension -- is much more than just a shot at fanservice. I’ve also argued in Bayonetta’s favor, still
think that Juliet Starling is one of gaming’s best female characters, and even
say that Senran Kagura is better than
its bra-busting image would suggest. So
who the hell am I to say that this costume or that pair of pants is off-limits?
Yes, context is important. But playing as Lariat reminded me that
context isn’t this unflinching, immutable thing. The circumstances can change it, informing
both the particulars and the results -- what works, and what grinds against it
like a brick in a grandfather clock. The
different elements in the game are all there to act as means of nonverbal
communication, taking advantage of the medium to characterize in the absence of
dialogue. The tools may not always be
what you asked for, but they’re still tools.
And indeed, any one of them has a probability -- however high, however
low -- to open minds.
Who is Lariat?
She’s big and strong, freckled and redheaded. She’s a superhuman soldier out to help
colonize an alien planet, and rescue humanity from a fatal end. She has a commanding presence, befitting a
soldier that opens fire on wolves the size of charter buses. But there’s more to her than that. She’ll geek out at the sight of a fancy
robot. She’ll point out that one of the
natives is incredibly cute. She’ll boast
that she’ll kick enough asses for everybody.
And she’ll wear whatever the hell she feels like wearing. As expected of a grown-ass woman.
But there’s one moment in particular that, to me,
is incredibly strong. Occasionaly when a battle is won, Lariat will
nonchalantly comment that the barren winds aren’t good for her hair. The first time I heard that, I was genuinely
shocked -- shocked, but no less amused.
And depending on the party member, she’ll get a different response. A guy like Lao will gruffly tell her to cut
it off, because she shouldn’t care about her coiffure when lives are on the
line. But Elma will join in on the fun,
saying that she knows a treatment and that she should ask about it when they
get back to New Los Angeles. (Also, Elma
will opt to go out shopping with Irina during their spare time -- so the cool
soldier and a cooler soldier have
made a date to paint the town red.)
So the lesson here is that characters don’t have
to be exactly what you expect or demand.
The qualities you never expected or even wanted can be the ones that you
secretly wanted the most. Or if not
that, they’re the ones you can appreciate the most. Lariat is a soldier, but she’s more than just
a soldier -- and she can become much
more than a soldier. The blank slate is
a representation of infinite possibilities, of avenues that lead to countless
smiles. That’s what it’s all about.
And I have Lariat -- and one kickass game -- to
remind me of that fact.
Now enjoy this picture of Zangief. Thanks to this, the subtitle makes slightly
more sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment