I'll give you that you can see the intent of the designer for an overly stylized Frazeta type look. But that only seems to apply to a few of the characters such as the Dwarf and Amazon. The elf, wizard and fighter are played pretty much straight, and the sorceress is pure classic Japanese fan service. So I ask again, where is the parody? What is the messaging? What is overall being deconstructed for amusement and commentary? Quite often the shortest and most direct answer is the true one. Yeah the artist may say "it's a parody of ... Something" once controversy hits. But really the most infect message there is " I like big boobs! Boing!"
How is the fighter not overly stylized as well? just look at his proportions which are some of the most extreme in hte entire game. His upper body is almost bigger than the rest of his body and his weapon is extremly small when compared to him. The elf and the wizard are the only ones who look remotely normal.
As for close analysis of the other parody elements; my copy is still on it's way so i personally can only go of the character designs so far. I might be able to bring more insight in a day or two when the game arrives.
Satire/parody that does nothing worthwhile, but simply contributes to the issue it's supposedly trying to criticize, is basically still a part of that very problem.
I always scratch my head when someone posts a picture of Ivy and then calls it: "That's the norm of gaming".
What? Okay. Apparently i'm living in a parallel universe but Ivy is still in the top league of silly characterdesigns.
And definitly not game standart. Even if i take a look at the mainstream AAA titles. Those are more dominated by the tall, muscular, stubby mid-30 action-hero duder-guy than by EE-Cup women.
I give you that these kind of women are more common in japanese games, but that's a sub-category of the whole gaming industry and definitly doesnt define the "norm of gaming".
And jeah, the asians have all kinds of over-the-top characters. It's their main design principle since.. well, as long as i read mangas and watch animes.
Tropes and Stereotypes all over the place.
I've only seen the trailers of DC, but just from lookin' at that it should be pretty clear that this is a parody.
I've been constantly told by both the developers and fans of Dragon's Crown that the game is a parody, but the actual game doesn't hold up. If you definite a parody as a piece of media that exploits the tropes and conventions of its genre for the purpose of humor or commentary (and I've never seen any other definition of parody), then Dragon's Crown is a failed parody. Sure, perhaps the intent to parody was there but I haven't seen any substantial evidence of humor in the game in the two weeks since it was first released. Fans keep saying the character designs are parodies but ridiculously impractical design isn't humorous in and of itself.
Dragon's Crown being a failed parody wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the material it was intending to satirize. Overwhelmingly sexual portrayals of women has been a problem for both fantasy media and gaming for ages and by following that trend and not really subverting it Dragon's Crown only contributes to the problem.
A misunderstood parody is still a parody, just a badly executed one. And is it a badly executed one? I never even heard that the maker of Dragon's Crown called his game a parody and I could tell you that it is one. It's not just the Sorceress, but -all- of the characters. All of the characters are designed in such extreme, yet stereotypical, ways that of course it's a satire. I got that much from looking at the Fighter alone, neverminding the rest of the cast and the way that the Dwarf and Elf are named after their race and not their class.
It doesn't have to be so extremely over-the-top that breasts literally kill a person; people just need to use their brains and stop being so overly sensitive because I can bet you that all of the people that are crying out now against Dragon Crown's design would still be crying out even with your idea.
I didn't hear anything about the Creator saying it was a parody or a satire, yet it is so damn obvious that it slaps you in the face multiple times. Everything is the overly exaggerated versions of the already overly exaggerated things within the Fantasy Genre. Gigantic, big muscled guys saving girls who pose in suggestive poses? Badass sexy warrior chicks? Have you even seen Conan?
Soul Calibur also had one of the best singleplayer modes of any fighting game for a long time. Do a few jiggling breasts automatically invalidate everything else about a game?
That gets a little difficult though when it becomes this blatant.
Like I said before, you could be playing the best game ever, yet when one aspect is such a thorn in the eye it'll refelect poorly on the experience as a whole.
I always scratch my head when someone posts a picture of Ivy and then calls it: "That's the norm of gaming".
What? Okay. Apparently i'm living in a parallel universe but Ivy is still in the top league of silly characterdesigns.
And definitly not game standart. Even if i take a look at the mainstream AAA titles. Those are more dominated by the tall, muscular, stubby mid-30 action-hero duder-guy than by EE-Cup women.
I give you that these kind of women are more common in japanese games, but that's a sub-category of the whole gaming industry and definitly doesnt define the "norm of gaming".
And jeah, the asians have all kinds of over-the-top characters. It's their main design principle since.. well, as long as i read mangas and watch animes.
Tropes and Stereotypes all over the place.
I've only seen the trailers of DC, but just from lookin' at that it should be pretty clear that this is a parody.
It's character designs are a parody yes, that is fairly evident, but everything else in the game is played straight, and the parody itself is extremely shallow when it comes to the games female characters. Like I said on my post on page 1, the male characters parody various fantasy tropes (the old wizard, the barbarian, the young king, the grizzled knight, the repulsive beggar, etc.), but females only have one setting, the sexy (insert fantasy archetype here), there is no parody of common fantasy female characters like: the old crone, the homely chambermaid, the fiery barmaid, or really any female archetype that requires a character be old, disfigured, or really anything other than busty supermodel. out of every character and NPC in the game, the elf is the only thing that stands out as different from the rest of the female character designs.
Saying the female characters are a parody is like saying sexy (insert profession here) halloween costumes are a parody. It's technically true, but that doesn't make it a very good parody.
Which also like I said earlier, I like other people's interpretation of imagining the characters as played by various D&D players, it makes the more stupid character designs unintentionally hilarious.
"this is my new character sheet"
"Why is there a stick figure with two giant circles drawn on the front of it?"
"That's what my character looks like, she's a beautiful red-headed sorceress that raises the dead"
"how does she even walk if her breasts are the size of her torso?"
"magic, duh"
*Headdesk*
The first question I'd like ask is why do you assume exaggerated character designs automatically mean it's a parody meant to take the piss out of female portrayal of characters in video games? All of the art in the game is exaggerated and out of proportion.
It couldn't possibly be doing something else?
As far as I can tell, the designs are very purposefully breaking the golden ratio. What that means artistically doesn't necessarily have anything to do with parody.
I don't even particularly like the art design of this game, but the way this discussion has gone is kind of annoying.
The developer came out and flat out said that the characters were supposed to be a parody of characters in the Golden Axe age. Though I still think they look stupid, quite a few commenters have cleared up some issues about them and I kinda see how they would work.
What an author intends isn't necessarily what a work of art actually says though. It doesn't matter what the author says it says because if they could say it any other way than making the art, they probably would.
There are no other "words" than what was "written"
And the death of the author is a load of postmodernist BS brought on by snobbish literature professors who were jealous that they didn't write these "great works" themselves. If the work doesn't say what the author intended, it just means the author didn't get his message across. It doesn't mean he (or she) intended some other message entirely.
That's assuming they're saying anything that's "theirs" to say. If a work of Art has Truth with a capital T in it as opposed to being subjective, then where is that idea coming from? It's a representation of reality, it has some actual truth in it. The author isn't creating that, they're just "presenting" to as they've seen it.
Just because they've seen it though doesn't mean its really understood. If a dude who's never seen an elephant before takes a picture of it, that doesn't necessarily mean he understands what it is. If someone who does know what an elephant is, then sees that picture and explains it, they know more even though they didn't take the picture.
It really doesn't matter what the artist thinks it says, only what it says.
The truth is entirely in that picture. The artist is just the dude with camera.
It sounds like it diminishes the role of the artist, but it really doesn't.
...Then that is how we think of you, Ion, the lovelier way: it's as someone divine, and not a master of a profession, that you are a singer of Homer's praises.
-Socrates in Ion
That's basically a vast oversimplification of the kantian idea of genius but it'll suffice. An artist is more or less a conduit through which truth can show itself.
If Art is subjective, then it matters even less what the artist says it means since beauty and meaning are in the eye of the beholder, not in what the creator says or wants.
No. I categorically refuse to accept that. The author can fail in his attempt to get across his point, he may even accidentally cause people to believe the opposite of what he intended, like a bad politician scaring people off of his own party. But that doesn't make his opinion on what the work means anything but the highest authority on it -- indeed, the /final/ authority on the subject. It just means he screwed up.
Now if he's backpeddling on something after the fact -- again like a politician caught out saying something he shouldn't have -- that's different. But to just flat out ignore what the author says his work meant is both absurd and pretentious, and I mean that in the literal sense -- you are a pretender to a level of authority you have no claim to.
I haven't said anything about what I think the artwork in Dragon's crown means T^T
What I'm saying is what IS art what is it doing and what is it saying? Where does the aesthetic experience lie. If it is in objective truth, then what is the artist doing? Logically you should conclude he's a presenter of sorts.
He's presenting the thing he's seen to an audience the best that he can. The same holds for art as a presentation of the good.
The artist doesn't create those ideas. You can't make something good or true, it just is. And the artist presents that (or tries) in all its complexity.
I'm not saying the artist's word is meaningless, they probably do know it better than most through sheer virtue of being exposed to it much longer in their mind during creation, but that's not because they're the artist. That part isn't important.
If aesthetic experience lies in the perception of the viewer, if meaning and interpretation lies in the subject experiencing it, then it genuinely doesn't matter how the author percieves the work because no one can share their experience.
But don't you see? You are claiming that authority. You are claiming the authority (or at least reserving the right, which is another way of saying the same thing) to tell the author "no, you're wrong, this is not what your own work means. I know better because while you may have created this, you're not that great at interpreting it." The death of the author is the worst kind of critical arrogance.
How does any of that matter in the face of what art is? What exactly does the author know? That he made a thing? What is it?
That definition is important. It determines whether or not an artist knows "better" about what they're talking about than someone who carefully reads or studies something.
Because if art is either of the two ideas I've already put forth, I don't see how it can be the case that the artist is inherently priviledged.
Besides you CAN have several interpretations of a work and have them both be right or have truth in them due to the complexity of the messages art sends. There can be good interpretations and bad ones, but there can be many.
And this may seem petty, but I would appreciate you stop insinuating I'm arrogant simply for holding a different definition of art than you. It's unnecessary. Even if I'm wrong that doesn't make me arrogant.
Whether you personally are arrogant or not, saying the author has no idea what his work means is the height of arrogance. I just can't fathom the kind of pigheadedness needed to tell an author, to his face, that he is wrong, that his opinion on his own work doesn't matter any more than that of anyone else.
I never said he has no idea what his work is about. I'm saying he doesn't know by virtue of being the author alone. Most authors are likely the most qualified to speak on their work since they're the ones who are always thinking about it.
But that's essentially from study. Yes learning their own work.
I would really recommend reading the whole of Plato's Ion to see what I'm banging on about. We're not quite AS opposed in our ideas as you might think.
I understand what you're saying, but I disagree, and here is why. An author may go through multiple drafts of a work, and the work may exist in many different forms in his mind. Essentially a work is nothing more than a loose collection of thoughts and ideas in the artists mind until he/she can hammer it out into something solid. It's the raw material. The author is the creator of the work, and understands every aspect of it inside and out. He understands how it ticks. There are any number of ways a single scene could be written in order to show the authors ideas, and as a result the author tends to understand the work on multiple different levels.
The critic, on the other hand, only sees the finished work. They get a one dimensional view, and are unable to see all the different levels of meaning that went into creating the work in the first place. In reality it is the audience who holds the camera, not the the author. The author is like the creator, engineer, and mechanic behind the car. The critic is simply the one who gets to take the picture of the car and try to derive meaning from that picture. Their critique isn't necessarily meaningless, they may find faults in the car, or see where it could have been improved, especially if the creator was rather poor at his job. However, he will never understand the car as well as the creator from such a shallow glance at the car, and if the car is created from an absolute master, than the critic can have no hope of ever fully understanding the car in it's entirety, not as well as the creator. The critic doesn't typically have access to various drafts to the work, and more importantly, they can never have access to the thought processes of the author. Therefore the purpose dominated control of the author is king.
Even if a work has multiple interpretations, those interpretations are typically pre-chosen and hinted at by the author. Otherwise you'll end up with imagery that seems to mean something, but doesn't mean anything at all. In Silent Hill 2, for instance, there are multiple interpretations of the work. However, all those interpretations are supported by evidence placed there by the creators. Therefore he has an understanding and control over every single interpretation, because he's the one who allowed for there to be certain interpretations from the beginning.
It's character designs are a parody yes, that is fairly evident, but everything else in the game is played straight, and the parody itself is extremely shallow when it comes to the games female characters. Like I said on my post on page 1, the male characters parody various fantasy tropes (the old wizard, the barbarian, the young king, the grizzled knight, the repulsive beggar, etc.), but females only have one setting, the sexy (insert fantasy archetype here), there is no parody of common fantasy female characters like: the old crone, the homely chambermaid, the fiery barmaid, or really any female archetype that requires a character be old, disfigured, or really anything other than busty supermodel. out of every character and NPC in the game, the elf is the only thing that stands out as different from the rest of the female character designs.
Saying the female characters are a parody is like saying sexy (insert profession here) halloween costumes are a parody. It's technically true, but that doesn't make it a very good parody.
Which also like I said earlier, I like other people's interpretation of imagining the characters as played by various D&D players, it makes the more stupid character designs unintentionally hilarious.
"this is my new character sheet"
"Why is there a stick figure with two giant circles drawn on the front of it?"
"That's what my character looks like, she's a beautiful red-headed sorceress that raises the dead"
"how does she even walk if her breasts are the size of her torso?"
"magic, duh"
*Headdesk*
If "bigger" is enough to pardoy the fighter, i don't see any problem with "sexier" for the sorceress. In the contrary it would actually parody the real thing way better like this.
It shows both the absurdity in male and female depiction of modern gaming. Men need to be big and burly and dem ladies need to be sexy and nearly undressed. Which tells us more about the quality of current games than about the quality of the parody. Gaming is as shallow as it can be in 9 out of 10 games, so there's not alot to parody in the first place.
It's character designs are a parody yes, that is fairly evident, but everything else in the game is played straight, and the parody itself is extremely shallow when it comes to the games female characters. Like I said on my post on page 1, the male characters parody various fantasy tropes (the old wizard, the barbarian, the young king, the grizzled knight, the repulsive beggar, etc.), but females only have one setting, the sexy (insert fantasy archetype here), there is no parody of common fantasy female characters like: the old crone, the homely chambermaid, the fiery barmaid, or really any female archetype that requires a character be old, disfigured, or really anything other than busty supermodel. out of every character and NPC in the game, the elf is the only thing that stands out as different from the rest of the female character designs.
Saying the female characters are a parody is like saying sexy (insert profession here) halloween costumes are a parody. It's technically true, but that doesn't make it a very good parody.
Which also like I said earlier, I like other people's interpretation of imagining the characters as played by various D&D players, it makes the more stupid character designs unintentionally hilarious.
"this is my new character sheet"
"Why is there a stick figure with two giant circles drawn on the front of it?"
"That's what my character looks like, she's a beautiful red-headed sorceress that raises the dead"
"how does she even walk if her breasts are the size of her torso?"
"magic, duh"
*Headdesk*
Only one of the female (player) characters is exagerated in a sexy way, unless you find children or the extreme amount of muscles on the amazon attractive.
If anything i see a fair mixture between the exageration of the characters between genders.
Elf and Wizard look almost normal.
Amazon and Dwarf are extremly muscular and dressed in little more than a Conan the barbarian cosplay.
Sorceress and Knight have exaggerated chests.
EDIT:
Not even to mention the bishonen faces of Fighter and Wizard, an anime trope that is made to be attractive to women.
Soul Calibur also had one of the best singleplayer modes of any fighting game for a long time. Do a few jiggling breasts automatically invalidate everything else about a game?
That gets a little difficult though when it becomes this blatant.
Like I said before, you could be playing the best game ever, yet when one aspect is such a thorn in the eye it'll refelect poorly on the experience as a whole.
I'm sorry, that was supposed to be addressing the person you were quoting, not you.
Whenever someone criticizes a game for something, especially if it is for sexism, some mouths start foaming in an instant. Doesn't matter if you say the game is otherwise really good, a rape threat is the appropriate response. That's the kind of black/white thinking I wanted to criticize.
Now how much weight a certain negative aspect carries for you for the overall experience, that's for nobody to decide but yourself. That is, by the way, why I find the negative response to the polygon review of Dragon's Crown so baffling: why is it such a big deal if one review out of dozens reflects the opinion of those who really dislike that amount of sexualization? It's not like that's just some tiny fringe of the audience.
I have never seen a character as grossly exaggerated as the Amazonian from Dragon's Crown, so I'm willing to believe it's a pretty good parody; either that or the artist has only ever seen humans by way of a fun house mirror. It's interesting that people only seem to focus on the buxom Sorceress and not the aforementioned Amazonian or the Warrior, both of whom look like Tetsuo in the last ten minutes of Akira.
But really, why do people care about this so much? OP has already said several times that there are any number of scantily clad women in games, so why is Dragon's Crown getting so much shit?
It's character designs are a parody yes, that is fairly evident, but everything else in the game is played straight, and the parody itself is extremely shallow when it comes to the games female characters. Like I said on my post on page 1, the male characters parody various fantasy tropes (the old wizard, the barbarian, the young king, the grizzled knight, the repulsive beggar, etc.), but females only have one setting, the sexy (insert fantasy archetype here), there is no parody of common fantasy female characters like: the old crone, the homely chambermaid, the fiery barmaid, or really any female archetype that requires a character be old, disfigured, or really anything other than busty supermodel. out of every character and NPC in the game, the elf is the only thing that stands out as different from the rest of the female character designs.
Saying the female characters are a parody is like saying sexy (insert profession here) halloween costumes are a parody. It's technically true, but that doesn't make it a very good parody.
Which also like I said earlier, I like other people's interpretation of imagining the characters as played by various D&D players, it makes the more stupid character designs unintentionally hilarious.
"this is my new character sheet"
"Why is there a stick figure with two giant circles drawn on the front of it?"
"That's what my character looks like, she's a beautiful red-headed sorceress that raises the dead"
"how does she even walk if her breasts are the size of her torso?"
"magic, duh"
*Headdesk*
If "bigger" is enough to pardoy the fighter, i don't see any problem with "sexier" for the sorceress. In the contrary it would actually parody the real thing way better like this.
It shows both the absurdity in male and female depiction of modern gaming. Men need to be big and burly and dem ladies need to be sexy and nearly undressed. Which tells us more about the quality of current games than about the quality of the parody. Gaming is as shallow as it can be in 9 out of 10 games, so there's not alot to parody in the first place.
The problem is that according to the game, not all men need to be big and burly, there are old and decrepit characters as well as scarred and weak characters even grotesque and deformed, there's quite a few different representations in the game that run the gamut of physical description, except for women, there is only big and sexy all the time, except for the elf and only the elf.
If the game was making some sort of metagame parody of the games industry itself and the poor representation of women then that sort of works, but I seriously doubt Kamitani was making that sort of meta-commentary.
But really, why do people care about this so much? OP has already said several times that there are any number of scantily clad women in games, so why is Dragon's Crown getting so much shit?
Dragon's Crown is not the first game that received a lot of flak for its portrayal of female characters, and I'm pretty sure the next somewhat-mainstream game featuring similar portrayal won't be treated more gently.
But really, why do people care about this so much? OP has already said several times that there are any number of scantily clad women in games, so why is Dragon's Crown getting so much shit?
Dragon's Crown is not the first game that received a lot of flak for its portrayal of female characters, and I'm pretty sure the next somewhat-mainstream game featuring similar portrayal won't be treated more gently.
Oh I know that, but it feels like the Dragon's Crown flaying has been going on, in earnest, for months, now; people just can't seem to let it go.
I've never really understood the internet's attitude towards complaining about aesthetic stuff like this, especially once the game is out, what are they hoping will happen?
Whenever someone criticizes a game for something, especially if it is for sexism, some mouths start foaming in an instant. Doesn't matter if you say the game is otherwise really good, a rape threat is the appropriate response. That's the kind of black/white thinking I wanted to criticize.
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