6th April 2017, 9:25 PM
No, not the one about how BotW doesn't have a playable female character because "if Zelda was the protagonist then what would Link do?", or how The Last Guardian or Shadow of the Colossus don't have one because women don't have strong grip strength, etc. There are a lot of Western games with only male protagonists too, but probably because Japan is more sexist than the West, their excuses for why games don't have them often are way worse; here it's usually stuff like "because marketing says male characters sell better".
So anyway, what is it this time?
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/...ra-hashino
It's Persona 5... and Persona 4 as well. So why don't Personas 4 and 5 have female protagonist options, after Persona 3 Portable added a female character, and her campaign was pretty good and is considered by some as the better of the two? Well, they give two reasons, one understandable and the other as bad as the worst of my first paragraph:
First, that it'd have cost a lot more to do two protagonists -- this is a writing-heavy series with a relationship component, so yes, that is true, you would need a lot more script, two versions of many scenes, etc. They could have done it though, as they have before and many Western dialog-heavy games do have gender-choice options.
And second...
Wait, what? Japan, no, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever anywhere other than super-sexist-land where somehow it doesn't make sense to have a female move from one town to another or something? What?
(Oh, and like most games in the series, Persona 5 doesn't have any same-sex romance options either.)
Now, personally this isn't too big of a deal because based on the two I have, P2EP (which is a quite different game) and P3P I find the Persona games boring after a little while, since the visual-novel half is not a genre I have ever liked much and I don't find the dungeon-crawler side all that much either, but still, this is a pretty popular series now and this kind of thing needs pushback every time or it is not going to change.
So, I wonder, will Japan ever realize how far behind they are on gender relations and actually start to catch up on this? Because this is yet another example of how badly that needs to happen, tossed on the huge mountain of other such absurd comments we have heard before; even if we just look at games, the excuses why games like P4, Zelda BotW, The Last Guardian, and such don't have playable female characters are insanely bad and sexist! And then there's their frequent inability to even get the concept of a female character that is not sexualized... ugh. That problem's bad enough in Western games so I can undertstand why it is even worse in Japan, but it is often disappointing.
Of course, things like games, anime, and such are just a reflection of the culture of the nation that creates them though, which is why I asked the question I do, but regardless of that there need to be pushback every time says something like this or nothing will ever change.
So anyway, what is it this time?
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/...ra-hashino
It's Persona 5... and Persona 4 as well. So why don't Personas 4 and 5 have female protagonist options, after Persona 3 Portable added a female character, and her campaign was pretty good and is considered by some as the better of the two? Well, they give two reasons, one understandable and the other as bad as the worst of my first paragraph:
First, that it'd have cost a lot more to do two protagonists -- this is a writing-heavy series with a relationship component, so yes, that is true, you would need a lot more script, two versions of many scenes, etc. They could have done it though, as they have before and many Western dialog-heavy games do have gender-choice options.
And second...
Quote:With the way that game's world worked, it was okay for the protagonist to be female. With Persona 4, though, we needed the character to come from a big city to a small country town to be the driving force of the story, and it seemed more natural for a male character to fulfill that role. There are story aspects to this decision, as well.
Wait, what? Japan, no, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever anywhere other than super-sexist-land where somehow it doesn't make sense to have a female move from one town to another or something? What?
(Oh, and like most games in the series, Persona 5 doesn't have any same-sex romance options either.)
Now, personally this isn't too big of a deal because based on the two I have, P2EP (which is a quite different game) and P3P I find the Persona games boring after a little while, since the visual-novel half is not a genre I have ever liked much and I don't find the dungeon-crawler side all that much either, but still, this is a pretty popular series now and this kind of thing needs pushback every time or it is not going to change.
So, I wonder, will Japan ever realize how far behind they are on gender relations and actually start to catch up on this? Because this is yet another example of how badly that needs to happen, tossed on the huge mountain of other such absurd comments we have heard before; even if we just look at games, the excuses why games like P4, Zelda BotW, The Last Guardian, and such don't have playable female characters are insanely bad and sexist! And then there's their frequent inability to even get the concept of a female character that is not sexualized... ugh. That problem's bad enough in Western games so I can undertstand why it is even worse in Japan, but it is often disappointing.
Of course, things like games, anime, and such are just a reflection of the culture of the nation that creates them though, which is why I asked the question I do, but regardless of that there need to be pushback every time says something like this or nothing will ever change.