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Apr. 14th, 2010 03:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
person4Like I said in my last post, I've been replaying Dragon Warrior VII in preparation for Hardmode. When I first played it way back when I didn't really make much use of the feature that lets you talk to members of your party whenever you feel like it. I think I actually pretty much forgot about it completely, if I'm remembering correctly.
This time, since I'm preparing for writing fic, I'm hammering the talk button every single time I enter a new screen to get every detail out of the characters that I can. And I'm surprised by how much it changes my view of the characters.
Specifically, of the girl who's the female lead through most of the game.
Usually I'll avoid calling female characters bitches, just because the tendency of people in fandom to label almost every fictional female as either "weak and girly" or "bitch". That being said, dear God is Maribel a bitch. Just the section of the game I most recently finished has her insulting a character the party only had one conversation with no less than five times when he'd been perfectly friendly, if a little abrupt (and she continues to insult him throughout the chapter, but at least she gets a tiny bit more reason to after the next time they meet him), complaining about being asked to help out with burying innocent people so their corpses won't be left out for monsters to get at, insulting another character who only travels with them for about two minutes when he gave the party a valuable McGuffin for free in exchange for nothing but the chance to study the past, and insulted the queen of a kingdom who we'd just rescued after she'd been kept prisoner for months after her kingdom was demolished and almost all of her people slaughtered for not having a reward for the party then and there. And that's just what I can remember after a day away from playing! This is about a third of the way through a hundred+ hour game, so you can just imagine the long long list of other examples that came before. I've honestly been left with the feeling that she doesn't even like her supposed two best friends all that much, which actually might have made me like her a little more if I thought it was purposeful; they're the only three kids in their age group on the entire small island that they grew up in, and I know from my own experiences growing up in the middle of nowhere that when there's barely anyone around to play with you group up with what other kids there are regardless of how you really feel about them so that could've been realistic.
Playing without using the Talk function had left me liking her just fine. Well, maybe being more neutral towards her than really liking her, but the important thing was that I didn't dislike her; she was just yet another tsundere female character, maybe a little more insulting than average but otherwise unremarkable. But now I'm well on my way to outright hating her, and I almost never seriously dislike fictional characters that strongly.
Honestly, I'm mostly posting it because I'm becoming more and more amazed as the game goes on at how strongly the Talk function is turning me against her. The ability to chat with characters outside of scripted events is supposed to make you bond with them even more than you otherwise would! Other games with that ability--skits in the Tales of Series, PAs in Star Ocean, S-Links in the most recent Persona games, even the talk feature in DWVII's own sequel--end up with casts who are incredibly endearing to me because we get to see so much of them just bumming around being themselves outside of the life-or-death situations the plot wraps them up in. It's never backfired on me like this before! I am so glad that I'd only planned on having her show up in the story for all of one scene or I'd have had to scramble for some other story idea to sign up with.
This time, since I'm preparing for writing fic, I'm hammering the talk button every single time I enter a new screen to get every detail out of the characters that I can. And I'm surprised by how much it changes my view of the characters.
Specifically, of the girl who's the female lead through most of the game.
Usually I'll avoid calling female characters bitches, just because the tendency of people in fandom to label almost every fictional female as either "weak and girly" or "bitch". That being said, dear God is Maribel a bitch. Just the section of the game I most recently finished has her insulting a character the party only had one conversation with no less than five times when he'd been perfectly friendly, if a little abrupt (and she continues to insult him throughout the chapter, but at least she gets a tiny bit more reason to after the next time they meet him), complaining about being asked to help out with burying innocent people so their corpses won't be left out for monsters to get at, insulting another character who only travels with them for about two minutes when he gave the party a valuable McGuffin for free in exchange for nothing but the chance to study the past, and insulted the queen of a kingdom who we'd just rescued after she'd been kept prisoner for months after her kingdom was demolished and almost all of her people slaughtered for not having a reward for the party then and there. And that's just what I can remember after a day away from playing! This is about a third of the way through a hundred+ hour game, so you can just imagine the long long list of other examples that came before. I've honestly been left with the feeling that she doesn't even like her supposed two best friends all that much, which actually might have made me like her a little more if I thought it was purposeful; they're the only three kids in their age group on the entire small island that they grew up in, and I know from my own experiences growing up in the middle of nowhere that when there's barely anyone around to play with you group up with what other kids there are regardless of how you really feel about them so that could've been realistic.
Playing without using the Talk function had left me liking her just fine. Well, maybe being more neutral towards her than really liking her, but the important thing was that I didn't dislike her; she was just yet another tsundere female character, maybe a little more insulting than average but otherwise unremarkable. But now I'm well on my way to outright hating her, and I almost never seriously dislike fictional characters that strongly.
Honestly, I'm mostly posting it because I'm becoming more and more amazed as the game goes on at how strongly the Talk function is turning me against her. The ability to chat with characters outside of scripted events is supposed to make you bond with them even more than you otherwise would! Other games with that ability--skits in the Tales of Series, PAs in Star Ocean, S-Links in the most recent Persona games, even the talk feature in DWVII's own sequel--end up with casts who are incredibly endearing to me because we get to see so much of them just bumming around being themselves outside of the life-or-death situations the plot wraps them up in. It's never backfired on me like this before! I am so glad that I'd only planned on having her show up in the story for all of one scene or I'd have had to scramble for some other story idea to sign up with.