Hunter5024

@mutha3: I guess if you use a walkthrough you're a Mary Sue? You can really piss off people in social links so that it takes a really long time for your relationships to grow, you can reverse the social links so that they don't want to hang out with you until you make it up to them, you can create a horrible situation for yourself by dating 2 girls at the same time, you can bomb all of the tests, you can say the wrong thing and be forever friend zoned, and I fail to see how the bad endings don't count.

@Terramagi: True, but they were still figuring out the whole social link system, and as it came from dating sims, and they fixed it in the sequel, I think we should forgive them for that.

This thread got me thinking about how the whole theme of Persona is about the different Persona's you display around others, and discovering the identity you have beneath those facades. So while giving the main character a personality may create a narrative that allows those themes to be brought forward as a more central part of the story, I wonder if maybe sacrificing the ability for the player to choose the facades you exhibit during your interactions with people, may take away from the aspect of the narrative that makes it such an interesting gamestory rather than just an interesting story.

Also I think maybe you duders are overestimating what a playboy the MC was. You could just be friends with most of the girls. Maybe you shouldn't have played as such slutty guys?

@mutha3: How are you using the term Mary Sue? That means a lot of different things at this point.

@Terramagi said:

Though the "never hang out with anybody in his dorm who is a guy" part is totally legitimately in the game. The male SEES members straight up DID NOT HAVE social links until P3P... and even then, you could only access them on a female main character. Who STILL had social links with the female main characters.

I blame the other members of SEES for that. Junpei thinks he's too cool for you, Akihiko won't make time for anyone but a girl, and Ken's too busy getting it on with high school chicks to worry about some dude he lives with.

@Bocam said:

@Hunter5024 said:

@Bocam said:

While Japanese fans have a strict view on this, I want to know how you guys think.

What are their views on it?

They are the main character and the girls like them.

Well let's not change that. A social link where you're trying to get with a girl you like, but she turns you down at every turn because she's completely disinterested and unnattracted to you would be too much like real life depressing.

@A_Talking_Donkey: Well I don't think that's the video game industry's fault, I think its just a byproduct of your own personal upbringing. I have no trouble relating to characters of a completely different ethnicity, social position, or gender. Nariko in Heavenly Sword for example, was a character who struggled for her father's approval, which is a universally relatable character trait, and so I was able to identify with her even though she couldn't possibly be more outwardly different from me. Not that I wouldn't be incredibly pleased if the number of white male leads dropped significantly.

@Terramagi said:

They should be silent.

You can give them a personality without giving them a voice. The P3 dude had a "feel", just as Charles did.

Though the P3 dude ended up feeling like a fucking psycho to me. Never hangs out with anybody in his dorm is a guy, only sees girls until he fucks them, delicately handles social links in order to gain the most amount of power...

Y'know what, fuck that guy.

Wait, isn't all of that stuff your fault?

I certainly don't want them to give him (or her) a voice, though I feel like with their silent protagonists in the past that the dialogue options they gave you conveyed a lot of personality. This is really obvious when comparing Persona 3's male and female protagonists. The only reason Charlie gets a pass in the anime and the fighting game is because he's so deadpan that you could transpose whatever personality you want onto him anyways.

@Bocam said:

While Japanese fans have a strict view on this, I want to know how you guys think.

What are their views on it?

The DLC they put out for Tiger Woods that gave you max stats. You're essentially paying them to change some numbers in your game to different numbers, it costs them nothing, and they aren't doing any work to produce that content. That would've just been a cheat code before this generation, but in modern gaming it's something they charge you for. The horse armor was at least excusable on the grounds that DLC was so new that they were still figuring stuff like that out.

Dude that's a great idea. I'd totally play that.

@A_Talking_Donkey said:

@kashif1 said:

@A_Talking_Donkey said:

You're both missing the point. It's not about a few games that present women poorly. It's about an industry wide lack of positive female narrative. Playing up tropes as story devices is expected, they're tropes for a reason. What's bad is the seeming inability to escape those tropes. The constant repetition ingrains them to the point of alienation, and the lack of positive female narrative means those who are alienated by the constant barrage of negative portrayal don't really have another (good) game to turn to. It's essentially the industry, and to some extent the player base, saying that they don't want intelligent women playing their games.

While I'm not a female, as a minority I have a similar struggle with gaming. I've never found a video game character I can relate to and the lack of characters I can project on and attach myself to means that the majority of video games I enjoy are either extremely abstract or enjoyed in a strictly strategic or analytical way.

You really have not found anyone in the entire medium? The industry does have a problem with this but I find it hard to believe you havn't found some character somewhere to relate to.

Not many lower class native American/Caucasian mixed characters in gaming, and I'm pretty sure natives are one of the groups with the least representation and almost all of it being some sort of crazy stereotype.

So a character has to be the same social class and ethnicity as you before you can relate to them? I just don't see the logic in that.

It feels like some people make this too white and black. It's either breaking down preconceived notions about gender roles, or its sexist bullshit. I can understand wanting to have cool feminist protagonists who completely buck all of the stereotypes associated with their sex, but does every game have to be that? Ico is supposed to be a story that calls back to simpler fairy tales, and if Yorda were some badass warrior then wouldn't that completely clash with the feel they were going for? Yes she's kind of a helpless character, but that was basically what defined the gameplay. Had she been a different character then they would have had to completely reinvent how the game worked, and who knows if what they had come up with would have been as special.