Policy Q: Does the appearance of a character's costume count..?

I was just browsing through the 40+ appearances of Solid Snake in games and felt Little Big Planet 2's inclusion on the list seemed a bit odd because I don't remember him being in it or even how he could be in it. Then I remembered all of those costume packs Sony sold. Sure enough, LBP2 has 84 characters associated with it, when really it only has Sackboy in it.

I guess an argument could be made for that in a vacuum, but what about when it happens in other situations? Ryu Hayabusa's armor is available in Halo 3's multiplayer. Kasumi's outfit is available in the Super Swing Golf games for character Arin, as well as in Fatal Frame II as an alternate costume for Mio Amakura. All the parts for KOS-MOS are available in Soul Calibur III to create her in Create-a-fighter mode. Additionally, Solid Snake can wear Altair's outfit in MGS4 if I recall correctly.

Does the appearance of a recognizable costume count as an appearance by the character? I'm inclined to say "no" in all cases, but it seems like many people have said "yes" in a lot of situations as well. I'm not sure if I should be removing links or not when I see them. Is there already a policy in place about this that I wasn't able to locate?

Thanks.

@onan said:

I guess an argument could be made for that in a vacuum, but what about when it happens in other situations? Ryu Hayabusa's armor is available in Halo 3's multiplayer.

That's different, there's an armor called Hayabusa in the multiplayer but apart from the sword that appears on the player's back and a bit of the helmet it's not that similar. It's inspired by Ryu's appearance a teeny bit but it's not like you are literally wearing his costume.

@EuanDewar: So if a Spartan wore black robes over their armor as well as the ninja armor and weapon bits, then it would count as an appearance of Ryu Hayabusa..? I'm not sure what you're saying.

@EuanDewar: And the stuff Sackboy wears is bits of cloth and burlap on a sentient toy. It doesn't make Sackboy become Snake, it's just clothes. I don't think it should count. Unless the actual character him/herself is appearing, it shouldn't count.

@The_Nubster said:

@EuanDewar: And the stuff Sackboy wears is bits of cloth and burlap on a sentient toy. It doesn't make Sackboy become Snake, it's just clothes. I don't think it should count. Unless the actual character him/herself is appearing, it shouldn't count.

I agree with you. It's simply a costume, not a character appearance.

@onan said:

Does the appearance of a recognizable costume count as an appearance by the character?

No. They're not the same thing and should not be treated as such.

Ok, so I split the difference here since it definitely IS something, but not a character appearence, so I just made the concept page for Guest Costume. I'll add all of the LBP character links before removing them from LBP since the work of noting all of those costume appearances seems to have already been done.

I oppose any decision that would lead to the deletion of the Kevin Butler page. Seriously though, costume != character appearance.

@LordAndrew said:

I oppose any decision that would lead to the deletion of the Kevin Butler page. Seriously though, costume != character appearance.

Pretty sure that's not going to happen. In my opinion, that's Kevin Butler wearing a Sackboy costume and not the other way around.

I went ahead and cleared out the LBP page of characters (Someone got to LBP2 before I did) and added them plus anyone else I missed based on the DLC for those pages. Haven't touched the PSP version or the Karting game (There's a Kart game??). I had no idea how much ridiculous costume DLC the LittleBigPlanet franchise had.

I was unsure about the Ghostbusters DLC as far as the four main characters since it's more of a uniform combined with existing hair, but did add Stay-Puft and Slimer.

It's actually a pretty fun concept to populate. I'm going to keep an eye out for more.

@onan said:

@EuanDewar: So if a Spartan wore black robes over their armor as well as the ninja armor and weapon bits, then it would count as an appearance of Ryu Hayabusa..? I'm not sure what you're saying.

Um... the Hayabusa armor in Halo 3 might have been inspired by Ryu but it isn't anywhere close to looking like him. That's all EuanDewar was saying.

@believer258 said:

@onan said:

@EuanDewar: So if a Spartan wore black robes over their armor as well as the ninja armor and weapon bits, then it would count as an appearance of Ryu Hayabusa..? I'm not sure what you're saying.

Um... the Hayabusa armor in Halo 3 might have been inspired by Ryu but it isn't anywhere close to looking like him. That's all EuanDewar was saying.

and my point was even if every element of the costume looked exactly like Ryu Hayabusa's, it still wouldn't BE Ryu Hayabusa. The quality or exactness of a costume is pretty irrelevant outside of a costume contest. The only real test of a costume actually being a costume is it's recognizable and intentional.

Also, I wouldn't say that's "inspired," either. If I selected custom colors on my character of red and blue, I could say it's inspired by the Superman costume. Using distinctive elements of an existing character's costume and then naming that armor set after the character is hardly just a case of Bungie using Ryu Hayabusa as inspiration. I'm pretty sure that Team Ninja and Tecmo agreed to that particular outfit's inclusion. It probably was hammered out as one of the terms for Tecmo to include a Spartan in DOA4 as a hidden character.

@onan said:

Ok, so I split the difference here since it definitely IS something, but not a character appearence, so I just made the concept page for Guest Costume. I'll add all of the LBP character links before removing them from LBP since the work of noting all of those costume appearances seems to have already been done.

This seems like a good solution. I'll keep an eye out for more.

To clarify, though: Do we add the game the character cameo is from and the game the character makes a cameo appearance in?

In regards to the LBP stuff, there was a MGS story pack that specifically said character names and whatnot. So, at that point, they are all within that universe and not just costumes or stickers.

@Ravenlight said:

@onan said:

Ok, so I split the difference here since it definitely IS something, but not a character appearence, so I just made the concept page for Guest Costume. I'll add all of the LBP character links before removing them from LBP since the work of noting all of those costume appearances seems to have already been done.

This seems like a good solution. I'll keep an eye out for more.

To clarify, though: Do we add the game the character cameo is from and the game the character makes a cameo appearance in?

If it makes sense. It might be a bit of a hassle, but I'm sort of tempted to make a table like I did with Guest Characters, but LBP alone would probably break it. From a usage standpoint, it might be interesting to note on any given character's page that they have had their costume borrowed for another game, or if they've made cameos or guest starred in other games. Same goes for games, things like knowing Dragon Age 2 featured a guest costume (in this case, Isaac Clarke's engineering suit from Dead Space).

@N7 said:

In regards to the LBP stuff, there was a MGS story pack that specifically said character names and whatnot. So, at that point, they are all within that universe and not just costumes or stickers.

All of their packs are like that. Of course the entire concept of LBP is putting on a little puppet show and everything in it is meant as decoration, set dressing, and little outfits.

Like, are they trying to tell anyone this character is actually supposed to be Rogue, or just dressed up as her? As a player, you're controlling the exact same sackboy or girl and have the exact same abilities, burlappy facial features, etc, and you can swap or alter all of these outfits at will. It's like what they did with X-Men Destiny, where your character can put on anyone's outfit, like Wolverine or whoever. They don't actually become that person.

@onan said:

Roguelike

@Ravenlight: I think you just won at the internet, sir. Well played.

Edit: I'm SUPER tempted to replace the default image for "roguelike" with her now.

How about 'skins', do they still count? Like for example Scorpion in Psi Ops; you're still naturally playing as the main character using guns and telekinesis ect., but you're also 100% cosmetically playing as Scorpion. It's not like in MGS4 where it is clearly just Snake dressing up as Altair.

Would that count as Scorpion still guest starring in Psi Ops, or should that be placed up on this page?

@Yummylee said:

How about 'skins', do they still count? Like for example Scorpion in Psi Ops; you're still naturally playing as the main character using guns and telekinesis ect., but you're also 100% cosmetically playing as Scorpion. It's not like in MGS4 where it is clearly just Snake dressing up as Altair.

Would that count as Scorpion still guest starring in Psi Ops, or should that be placed up on this page?

I think that's more of a gray area, and that specific instance I wouldn't be able to say for sure because I haven't really played Psi-Ops (or I barely remember playing it), but I'd say as a rule of thumb if a game has some sort of narrative and the skin is just covering up the main character but they still execute their dialogue in cutscenes in the exact same way as they would otherwise, it should be treated as a costume. i.e., If they're only superficially replacing someone that has an established personality and identity within the game world.

An alternate example would be the appearance of guest characters in the Tony Hawk games. Yes, at no point in canon does Darth Maul ever skateboard, but he doesn't say or do anything to make me think he's actually a reskinned Bob Burnquist in Tony Hawk 3, so I'd consider his appearance in that to be a guest character situation. Meanwhile if Cole Phelps in L.A. Noire was replaced by a red-faced man with horns, I'd call that a costume, even if they mo-capped original Darth Maul actor Ray Park.

The only instance of what you're saying that I can think of that happened for real would be the replacement of Chuck Greene with Frank West in Dead Rising 2: Off the Record.

This is a very new concept that's come up in recent hardware generations where we're able to differentiate between characters enough that we can make the distinction of one character merely looking like another character (Ms. Pac-man, or Pac-man in drag? Who can tell?), but in this case I think children have the right idea: The guy at the mall is Santa because they have no reason to believe it isn't Santa and everyone is telling them it is the real Santa (Who should totally be at the North Pole but whatevs), however if daddy dresses up as Santa, they know for sure it's just daddy in a Santa outfit because they can recognize their daddy (hopefully).

Of course, the mods would have to have the final say on that. @Gamer_152 , thoughts?