Dear Toriyama,

I picked my garbs and weapons purely for their stats and abilities, so far I' ve looked effin ridiculous 99% of the time. One of my usual garbs is an evening dress that comes with high heels, looks like the most impractical thing ever. The other has more holes than a pasta drainer, lets me glimpse boobs whether I want it or not.

But yeah, garb-age palooza aside I' m not sure what makes XIII more of a cliché storm than any other FF.

 

I'm actually specifically recalling a trailer that showed off the transformations and I remember laughing because unlike every other anime clothes transformation ever the clothes they had her change into was less revealing :P

 

FFXIII is an inoffensive, decent game. It doesn't live up to other Final Fantasy titles in my opinion but it's not awful trash either. I've not played XIII-2 but given what I know about it, it's about the same. LR is a whole other story, not only a frustrating sequel that very few people wanted (its sales are pitiful), but a mediocre one at that judging by reviews. There are people far better equipped than me to discuss the flaws of all three FFXIII titles, but I'm just going to leave it at: I don't personally dig them.

I'm not a fan of Toriyama because he makes Lightning his computer generated sex doll, playing dress up games with her and plotting to put her in every piece of Square branded media for the next 3000 years. It should be a surprise to no one that I (and many others) was excited to see the Final Fantasy series finally get a female MC (not to say that there are not excellent female characters in other FF games), and I think Lightning did have some strong points there, but seeing that Toriyama boils it down into "mm yeah lightning so sexii" is frankly sickening.

 

I DO NOT get this dress up argument. Changing costume has been a thing in Final Fantasy since the FIRST game, and the Job thing has been around since FF3. What makes THIS game so much worse? The fact that ONLY a woman plays dress up?
I'd also consider Yuna the main character off FF10 but that's another topic >.>
But yeah, you're about right in your assessment of the 13 series overall. The first one was inoffensive, the second one had better gameplay but the story took a turn for the Kingdom Hearts, and nobody wanted Lightning Returns but you can't really blame Square Enix on that because the first two games sold pretty well (from my research, the only games that outsold the first one were FF7 and FF10) but I'm glad that they made this sequel rather than leave the story on that massive cliff hanger.

And I guess while we're talking about all this stuff. I found Lightning bland from the start, but I figured that was intentional, since that's generally what happens to main characters in well... anything, really. Leave them vague and they'll resonate with more people. But honestly, unlike a lot of people, I find Serah to be a pretty good protagonist. She has personality, and they're not afraid to give her flaws, which is a pretty big deal when portraying women in ANY media, never mind video games. Paired up with Noel, who is basically 20 year old Sora, I actually really liked the part of 13-2... and was disappointed to see all oft he spotlight beign hogged by Lightning in the sequel

 

Yeah, if there's ANYTHING that's wrong with Final Fantasy XIII-3, the dress up aspect is the least offensive thing. Hell X-2 had dress up and that game was the ****ing bomb. Not story wise of course but everything else about it was pretty tits on ice.

The thing with XIII-3 is that nobody really wanted it. It had a whole bunch of **** like real time gameplay and towns and open worlds and NPC's and whatnot. But those shouldn't be SELLING points to your third game in a series, those should staple things that were already in your first game.

And of course the story is pretty AssyMcGee too but I tuned out of it as soon as I heard the word travel and time.

 

Terra and White Mage would like to have a word with you.

 

And Celes
I thought White Mage was male and everybody just assumed it was female

 

You're talking about a game made 22 years ago. The bunny a sprite. Move 22 years forward, when the game industry has started to mature a bit more, making a hyper realistic 3D model of a woman wear a sexualised bunny suit is... immature.

Japanese games still aim to appeal to these teen boys who then grow up into men who obsess over fantasy characters, it's unhealthy reinforcement. Sexist because Lightning is not a deep character, she's a model to wear this clothes. One of flipping battle finish lines is literally "Destiny is destiny", how much more can you make a character sound any more idiotic or lacking a grasp of in depth thought? If the story or character development was actually up to scratch in the series, I'd be less likely to ridicule its choices, but it's just not and that leaves us with great graphics that show of Lightning in short skirts, tight clothes with big breasts. Serious games devs are not porn tycoons, why the heck Toriyama has to play like that Idk.

 

You've been reading from fanfiction again, haven't you?

 

All the characters are super androgynous to make it open to interpretation, but I'm pretty sure White Mage is female in canon.

 

Isn't the main character from The Third Birthday based off of Lightning? Is that why her clothes get torn up in the game?

 

Aya Brea was created long before Lightning. One gratuitous shower scene aside, she wasn' t pimped up in PE1&2.

Her torn up clothes in 3rdB made zero sense considering she was just a consciousness jumping from one body to another. Her basic outfit was all torn up to begin with anyway, even when you "repaired" it.

She also acted like a total doormat in 3rd birthday, which is highly uncharacteristic, but then plot twist ! Aya' s body was parasited by her adopted daughter' s consciousness all along.

Anyway, we owe that travesty to Hajime Tabata, not Toriyama.

 

While I don't like Lightning, your reasons are incredibly silly.
First of all

That is an INCREDIBLY huge assumption that you are making for an entire countries worth of video game based only on a single Final Fantasy character.

This is called grasping at straws.
What the translators decide to translate the Japanese line as doesn't mean that they're trying to dumb her down or something. The line itself probably makes tons more sense in Japanese and things were either
A: Lost in translation
or
B: It's suppose to sound cool. It's a one liner after all, it's something that's been in entertainment across the world since the 50's. It's suppose to be something cool you say after a battle, what would you have preferred? "Let's rock and roll"? It's the same thing that gets the same point across.


Seriously, the outfits are the least of anyone's concerns. They aren't even that skimpy, she gets a full suit and Cloud for godssake.
X-2 had skimpier outfits then Lightning ever gets and that game is fantastic.

 

Personally I don' t care one bit about Lightning' s outfits being skimpy, I just find a lot of them fugly. She does have incredibly silly lines but whatever, as long as the game is fun I don' t really care.

 

What're you talking about, this makes TOTAL aesthetic sense!

 

Broken images are in season.

 

But Ashe ;~;

For real though, I always considered her the true MC to FF12. When she ended up joining the party, her actions/decisions ended up being what drove everyone forward, and Vaan (and also Penelo) seemed to be much more of a foil to her if anything. Mainly in that they were both commoners & had given up on their revenge while she was very much the opposite, lol.

 

I actually don't see a "main character" in any of the main party. I think the main character is actually Dalmasca itself. I'll talk more about that later when I'm on my next break.

 

Talking about a game made 22 years ago, sure, but people all around are calling for a return to those good old days, which baffles me because those days were BASICALLY the same.
Honestly, I'd say it's a lot more immature to think it's immature for something sexualized to exist, in pretty much the same way that people pretend they're mature by pretending works like penis or boob don't exist.

1- As stated above, that's a HUGE, ridiculous generalization based on one character, in a trilogy no less, to make about an entire country and their games. And it's not like anywhere else is different. You act like every other country has transcended poor stupid Japan, but we're all about pandering, doesn't matter where

Lightning exists to model clothes? So the first two games, where she had one costume? Seems legit.
Now that I think about it, KH characters are really just models for showing off clothes too, how sordid.

That quote has nothing to do with... anything. It's a... somewhat dumb one liner? **** JAPAN

Yeah, this game is WAY lower standard than the other games. Such lines as "Son of a submariner", "TURTLE", "Oh poopy" "This guy are sick" "Let's mosey" "Welcome to Cornelia" "m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-MAGIC" "Everybody, love and peace!" "HA HA HA HA HA" "I'm Captain Basch!"

Yeah nom it's THIS game that really pushed them over the edge of stupid.

Porn tycoons? Okay, not my area of expertise, but isn't the purpose of porn for the person to NOT wear clothes? Unless there's a fetish out there for super elaborate dresses that look like somebody took a hole puncher to.

I thought people complained about Lightning's breasts and butt being tiny. Personally never could tell becuase most of her clothes ahev capes or some such that cover her back, and I tend to be running towards my objectives, not the camera.

But no, no, you're RIGHT. This is just porn. Definitely has nothing to do with Japan's fashion fixation or anything[DOUBLEPOST=1395160225][/DOUBLEPOST]

It's broken for you? Working fine for me. Anyways, it's the stupid Moogle costume

Originally Basch was planned to be the main character, but someone along the way decided players wouldn't be able to relate to him. Vaan and Penello were added late in development so they could fill their teen hero quota, and that's why they hardly impact the plot