Final Fantasy XVI

Theozilla

Theozilla

Kaiju Member
Mr. Ite said:
Super cringe that the Japanese line says “A woman on the battlefield? LOL.” Jesus fucking Christ.
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Unless I am misinterpreting Hito’s translation, isn’t the line more about how it would be difficult to mix up/make a mistake on identifying the target because she’s woman (and thus easy to spot), I didn’t get the implication that the dialogue line is questioning/deriding the notion of a woman being on the battlefield in the first place?
 
Strangelove

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
Theozilla said:
Unless I am misinterpreting Hito’s translation, isn’t the line more about how it would be difficult to mix up/make a mistake on identifying the target because she’s woman (and thus easy to spot), I didn’t get the implication that the dialogue line is questioning/deriding the notion of a woman being on the battlefield in the first place?
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this is my reading of the line, that she will be easily identifiable as a target since it’s a woman in response to the line about not mixing up targets. but that does imply that women aren’t generally part of wars in this setting. which is a bit patriarchal, kinda cringe, not sure this is it chief
 
Wol

Wol

None Shall Remember Those Who Do Not Fight
AKA
Rosarian Shield
Given the points criticised and praised regularly in FF trailers, I would say FFXVI falls on substance over style category.

Its showing to be a potential solid entry in story gravitas, voice acting, battle system (which for a reveal looks polished already), there isn't long flashy CGs or target render fog over-promising things. This is a good sign.
 
Glaurung

Glaurung

Forgot the cutesy in my other pants. Sorry.
AKA
Mama Dragon
Mr. Ite said:
Super cringe that the Japanese line says “A woman on the battlefield? LOL.” Jesus fucking Christ.
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Repeat after me: "The words and thoughts of a character don't always reflect what the author believes, and most of the time, if said author is good, it will be the opposite."

It's fine and I'm quite happy to live in a society where I can do with my life as a woman whatever I please, but when creating a fictional setting you are allowed to go wild. In fact, it's part of a cultural enrichment to present, in a safe sandbox such as fiction, what happens when you have a sexist society, or one who plunges into eugenics, or (as I discovered when writing Caligo), what can go through the mind of a xenophobe. That way you can learn what you've gotten so far from your surroundings, and know what would happen if we went backwards.

Just because our society has advanced a lot in terms of social equality doesn't mean that fictional settings have to do that too (especially those based on a time when you would have been garroted for suggesting anything concerning civil rights). You can do whatever.
 
Wol

Wol

None Shall Remember Those Who Do Not Fight
AKA
Rosarian Shield
Glaurung said:
Repeat after me: "The words and thoughts of a character don't always reflect what the author believes, and most of the time, if said author is good, it will be the opposite."

It's fine and I'm quite happy to live in a society where I can do with my life as a woman whatever I please, but when creating a fictional setting you are allowed to go wild. In fact, it's part of a cultural enrichment to present, in a safe sandbox such as fiction, what happens when you have a sexist society, or one who plunges into eugenics, or (as I discovered when writing Caligo), what can go through the mind of a xenophobe. That way you can learn what you've gotten so far from your surroundings, and know what would happen if we went backwards.

Just because our society has advanced a lot in terms of social equality doesn't mean that fictional settings have to do that too (especially those based on a time when you would have been garroted for suggesting anything concerning civil rights). You can do whatever.
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Indeed, just because characters kill other human beings in a story doesn't mean the author endorses murdering, and the same counts for any other erroneous or questionable act.
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

Donator
Thanks, Glaurung. I wanted to say something similar but couldn't find the words. One doesn't have to look far nowadays to find plenty of representations of women soldiers and women on the battlefield, both in fiction and in reality. If works of fiction sometimes harken back to a previous age, I'm fine with that. e

(The thing I really hate is when history is re-written to align the past with modern beliefs and sensibilities, make it more palatable. I really hate that.)
 
Ite

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
Glaurung that might ring more true to me if the story isn’t about dudes having dude feuds with other dudes. I don’t trust that the patriarchy on display there is going to be used in a sophisticated or productive way, the same way I don’t believe that the white male’s status as the lead is setting us up for a subversion. It’s going to be normalized, so normalized that mentions of it don’t even bear translating. That’s not exactly the Handmaid’s Tale commentary you’re making it out to be.
 
Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
Given the story writers at the head of this project and the reputation of Final Fantasy in general, I think it deserves at minimal, a pause to see it's actual story details and full cast before indicting it as a stale male-centric perpetuation of masculine power fantasy and conflict.

It's okay to be critical, but see what it actually is first.
 
Fade

Fade

SHR
Repeat after me: "The words and thoughts of a character don't always reflect what the author believes, and most of the time, if said author is good, it will be the opposite."
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This is starting to become a fucking endemic issue in fiction discourse lately, to the point that creating anything has become something of a thankless job. And I'm as lefty as they come, so I'm not ranting about SJWs ruining everything, here. I think the word "milquetoast" has popped up in this thread already, and it's exactly the word to describe what would happen to all fiction if we keep crucifying artists for adding dramatic tension to their story based on norms that differ from ours.

Given that this trailer was a few chopped up minutes from a game that could number its playtime north of a hundred hours, let's maybe hold our chocobos on making grandiose assumptions about whether it tells a socially responsible story for now.
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
While I understand the perspective provided by everyone in response to Ite, I at least agree with Ite that the line is a sign to take caution. I'm certainly not ready to write it off, but XV's handling of its female characters was so shockingly poor that I don't have a lot of trust in Square in that regard any longer. And before anybody starts - it's nothing to do with the fact that there were only four dudes as mains. All that said, this is YoshiP, and in YoshiP we absolutely trust until proven otherwise.
 
ForceStealer

ForceStealer

Double Growth
I don't know what it says about the game itself, but I think it's pretty obvious why they translated the line differently in English, and my thought upon reading it was "Oh, Japan."

Lex said:
but XV's handling of its female characters was so shockingly poor that I don't have a lot of trust in Square in that regard any longer.
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I mean VIIR and Shadowbringers have both come out more recently than XV.
 
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Makoeyes987

Makoeyes987

Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
AKA
Smooth Criminal
XV was an entirely different team with an entirely different storytelling ethos. Tabata isn't even at Square anymore, and Luminous Studios is doing God knows what. As a series entirely, I don't see why XV would somehow erase or weigh more heavily than the entire history of the series overall, when XV was clearly the outlier.

And anyways the team responsible for Shadowbringers should be who you're looking at for precedent, and there's zero reason to affix XV's development choices for its characters to XVI. The last thing I've ever heard was XIV being a sausagefest with zero strong and compelling women characters.
 
L

leowhy77

Rookie Adventurer
AKA
LeoWHY
In the trailer I believe some gameplay sequence are shown but I don’t seem to find anything related to showing the HP/MP bars or whatever in those screens... is it some how being hidden?
My next curious questions would be is this game all action driven? No atb?
 
Fade

Fade

SHR
leowhy77 said:
In the trailer I believe some gameplay sequence are shown but I don’t seem to find anything related to showing the HP/MP bars or whatever in those screens... is it some how being hidden?
My next curious questions would be is this game all action driven? No atb?
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My gut says they're just hidden for the sake of aesthetics and an incomplete UI. I didn't notice (on my single watch) anything that would preclude a VIIR-style ATB system, though. I wouldn't be surprised if they went that route as it seemed relatively popular. I'm actually more surprised this different team didn't attempt something more classic, given that there are plenty of examples of modern JRPGs still using the basic guts of JRPG combat while remaining popular.
 
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Prism

Prism

Pro Adventurer
AKA
pikpixelart
Another thing to keep in mind: For FFVII-R, Square had a whole ethics department dedicated to making sure they didn't fuck up sensitive social issues. Hard to believe they'd just do that for Remake and not their next blockbuster game.
 
Obsidian Fire

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
The other way to read the "it'll be hard to miss her on the battlefeild" is that it has more to do with her being "Shiva's Dominant" than with her being a woman. The summons in this game are not... subtle... in any size, shape or form. If someone is summoning a Shiva as tall as a ten-story building (or transforming into her more like it), then that's going to be really obvious on a battlefield. And low and behold, the next frame is Shiva getting in a fight with what looks like Titan with everyone scrambling around beneath her.

I really wouldn't take FF7R as an example as how Square is going to handel this. FF7 had a lot of... controversial portrayals of things by today's standards that would have to be thought about. FFXVI is being made from whole cloth. Also, looking at the other games this creative team has put out before and what kind of stories the rumored scenario head has worked on, they have a very good track record with writing non-passive female characters. These are the people who gave us Y'shtola, Alisae, Kann-E, Nanamo, Merywybb, Ysalye (Iceheart), Yugiri, Fordola, Yotsuyu, Ryne, and countless other female side characters who aren't doormats for anyone. There is going to be strong female characters, we have just seen zero cut-scenes relative to the overall length of a 40-60 hour game.

Judging the gender split for FFXVI based on this trailer is like judging the gender split of FF7 based on the trailer that only had bits and pieces of the bombing mission in it. We just knew what the cast of FF7 was going to be before seeing that trailer, so no one bothered mentioning there was only one girl in it. Like seriously, can you imagine what people would have said about FF7 in regards to gender ratios if the first trailer they got of it was bombing missing footage that was designed to hide all of the main class except the main character? And they had no idea what the rest of the game would be about yet?
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
Makoeyes987 said:
And anyways the team responsible for Shadowbringers should be who you're looking at for precedent, and there's zero reason to affix XV's development choices for its characters to XVI. The last thing I've ever heard was XIV being a sausagefest with zero strong and compelling women characters.
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This is why I said "in YoshiP we trust". Right now I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not about to ignore red flags either. The truth is we don't know how this game is going to go with regard to its female characters, so we shouldn't be getting down on people for feeling some kind of way about potential issues when the last mainline entry did set a poor precedent. It's absolutely right though that that's probably Tabata's fault and he's gone now so it should be less of a worry.

I'm personally surprised the protag isn't female, I thought they'd have another. But I like the look of the new one, so I'm not complaining :monster:
 
Obsidian Fire

Obsidian Fire

Ahk Morn!
AKA
The Engineer
I think it's more that it's been a long time since we've had a totally new FF game to get trailers for. As in, one where we didn't have some idea with what was already supposed going on it or who the cast already was. FFVIIR is obvious: we've known who the cast of that game was for over 25 years now.. FFXV, we knew who the four main party members were going to be before FFXIIIVerses was even rebranded as FFXV.

Here, I'm thinking about what the very first FFXIII or FFXII trailers looked like. And from what I remember, we never saw the full party or cast in those. Just the main character. Then subsequent trailers revealed more and more of the main party and the actual conflict going on. And since when are the very first teaser trailers of a 40-60 hour game with no extra info said about the story/cast/setting ever considered good representatives of what their game is actually about?
 
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