How is Dragon's Crown a parody?

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

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.

But you're knocking on the door here. I think you're right there but we need to go further.

EVERY class is designed for a particular fetish. The top heavy bodybuilder who doesn't do a squat, The ample chested woman, Some people really do find muscles on a woman attractive, The big hairy man, The androgynous man (huge in Japan. It seems like the more you can't tell if a guy is a girl or a guy, the hotter he's considered), the young looking girl. These are all fetishes.

... Actually, Fetishes I think that are big in Japan.

Cho Anki and various other things in Japan so an... 'appreciation' of body types like the Fighter and the Dwarf. Watch one anime and you'll find the love of Bishounen like the Wizard. Likewise, watch that anime and see all the guys go crazy for a girl with big breasts like the Sorceress. Amazon isn't that weird. A Japanese poll [http://whatjapanthinks.com/2009/09/06/favourite-fetishes-of-japanese-men/] taken long ago gives a list of some men expressing their fetishes. If you add up some of those (2.) Athletic thighs 6.) Big bums 11.) Firm upper arms 16.) Broad shoulders 16.) Wide forehead 18.) Belly buttons)... you pretty much get the Amazon.

And easily enough, the Elf. We don't even have to talk about the Lolita complex. But how many of you know about Zettai Ryokiu, or the space between the end of the skirt and the top of over the knee length leg coverings? As sensual to the Japanese public as pure cleavage.

ALL of these seem like Japanese fetishes. Why are we judging them by our Non Japanese Standards?

 

[CloudAtlas]

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.

Did my comments seem anything near foaming or rape threads? Who is thinking in black and white here?

No. Your question just reminded me of this way of thinking.

 

[EternallyBored]

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.

ehh you seem to be only talking about the player characters, I am including NPCs and the sorceress barely breaks the top 10 list of silly portrayals when you include all the females in the game. crotch thrusting see-through clothing, and even the female enemies are generously proportioned, seriously go back and read my post on page 1 it isn't even close to equal exaggeration. Out of every female character in the game the elf and the princess are the only ones that aren't completely exaggerated for sex appeal, and even the princess is questionable as she spends the whole game with her breasts apparently attempting to break her corset.

Also seriously? bishounen faces is the best counter-example you have? Even if we forget that those faces are extremely popular with men in Japan, that isn't even close to the kinds of things you get from every female character in the game (again except the elf and maybe the princess) there are literally character art scenes where the character your being introduced to has 4 frames of animation and they are all spent on breast jiggling or thrusting her crotch in the cameras face

I like the game, the co-op is a blast, but it is extraordinarily dishonest to try and pretend there is an equivalency to the type and degree of exagerration between male and female characters in this game.

 

[Louzerman102]

I understand this conversation is about parody, however there is something being over-looked in this thread. The Dwarf, Amazon, Fighter, and Sorceress are all very identifiable. Dragon's Crown is a fantasy game, the genre that invented the phrase "generic fantasy adventure." By having the main characters and NPCs all be ridiculous they can be instantly recognized, without being mistaken for other fantasy games.

Back on the first page a picture of Ivy from Soul Calibur was posted. At a glance I can tell the character is Ivy because only Ivy looks like Ivy.

 

[Raison]

How does copying what already exists count as parody?

Do you even know what a parody is? I'd suggest you go look it up.

Perhaps you should be the one looking it up. Just stepping up the standard fantasy conventions (and not really by that much) doesn't make something a parody. A parody requires humor or commentary on the tropes it borrows and the genre it's imitating. Dragon's Crown does neither.

I understand this conversation is about parody, however there is something being over-looked in this thread. The Dwarf, Amazon, Fighter, and Sorceress are all very identifiable. Dragon's Crown is a fantasy game, the genre that invented the phrase "generic fantasy adventure." By having the main characters and NPCs all be ridiculous they can be instantly recognized, without being mistaken for other fantasy games.

Back on the first page a picture of Ivy from Soul Calibur was posted. At a glance I can tell the character is Ivy because only Ivy looks like Ivy.

If what you say is true then the characters of Dragon's Crown were purposefully designed to be generic. That's not much of a step up from failed parody.

 

[Louzerman102]

I understand this conversation is about parody, however there is something being over-looked in this thread. The Dwarf, Amazon, Fighter, and Sorceress are all very identifiable. Dragon's Crown is a fantasy game, the genre that invented the phrase "generic fantasy adventure." By having the main characters and NPCs all be ridiculous they can be instantly recognized, without being mistaken for other fantasy games.

Back on the first page a picture of Ivy from Soul Calibur was posted. At a glance I can tell the character is Ivy because only Ivy looks like Ivy.

If what you say is true then the characters of Dragon's Crown were purposefully designed to be generic. That's not much of a step up from failed parody.

If you remove the hand drawn artwork by Vanillaware, the story is generic fantasy, and the characters are generic. The character design and world visuals are what makes the game uniquely identifiable.

Purposefully generic is not a description I would use. I would describe the game as deliberately fantasy, like how DOOM is deliberately a shooter.

 

[Ipsen]

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.

You sure do give the label 'sexy' to the women in this game easily...

But really, I think your problem's problem, and really this entire controversy's problem is that you argue about a game that's in a medieval fantasy setting. It's not only a time bereft of our current period striving for social equality, but it's also fantasy, that thing that happens in your head. While fantasy does not discount that sexual bias does happen (which I'll bank on fitting pretty well with medieval history), I would give fantasy the license to be more free in that regard.

For that, if you REALLY want to make a difference in the game industry, my gaming industry soldier, I advise doing so at the source.

 

[BarkBarker]

Well, the game says over the top character designs, but over the top character designs is a lot of gaming, hell it's VANILLAWARE THEMSELVES pretty much, it's hard to be viewed as a parody if it doesn't do so without self awareness AS WELL AS bring some other things to the table, if you do something ironically, but still do it anyway....you are just doing it, it's amusing someone makes fun of a qucktime event or a silly feature in a game such as them....but when you do it in a manner that means I still have to do it, I find you have clearly missed the point, a parody of quicktime events that kill you instantly would be Assassins Creed 2, you CAN press buttons to influence minor things in the cutscenes, but never actually change the game, nor do you suffer from failing, it's chucking them in and pointing them out without sticking a sign over it nor do they force me through the same fate I despise while giddily saying "Oh you QTE you~".

 

[RJ Dalton]

It's an attempt at parody, but the problem with it is that designs like those in Dragon's Crown have been done with a straight face so many times that it is unrecognizable as parody. Now, if he's wanted to make it an obvious and effective parody, the women should have had boobs so large that they constantly get in the way, while the men are so massively muscular that it actually looks uncomfortable to walk. That would have been obvious parody because it would have been visibly showing how ridiculous the designs are.
The design may be intended as parody, but it's not effectively presented as parody.

 

[lapan]

It's an attempt at parody, but the problem with it is that designs like those in Dragon's Crown have been done with a straight face so many times that it is unrecognizable as parody. Now, if he's wanted to make it an obvious and effective parody, the women should have had boobs so large that they constantly get in the way, while the men are so massively muscular that it actually looks uncomfortable to walk. That would have been obvious parody because it would have been visibly showing how ridiculous the designs are.
The design may be intended as parody, but it's not effectively presented as parody.

Look at Dwarf and Warrior and tell me it's comfortable to walk for them...

 

[Stephen St.]

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.

Those are good points, but I think there are a couple of things you are not accounting for:
While the author may know his work inside and out, he cannot escape himself, his own preconceptions and his own subconscious. So even though he knows his work inside-and-out, his view still isn't objective. It remains as subjective and as limited as everyone else's. It is entirely possible for an author to create something great without realizing why it is great, why it resonates with so many people etc. In that sense, he doesn't know "how it ticks".

Furthermore, all communication between subjects is inherently subjective. In that sense, there is really no objective scale of how "well you understand a work" (despite schools grading on that issue). The question is do you understand the same things as the author. I don't see how it follows that an author has any interpretative authority over his work by virtue of being the creator. What rule does that follow from?

The restriction that any interpretation needs to hinge on a "hint" by the author also seems rather meaningless to me, because as I said, every communication is subjective. There can therefore be no objective standard as to what the author has hinted at, everyone will see different "hints". What interpretations we consider apropriately based on the work is mostly a matter of convention.

On Topic: The question I haven't seen asked very much in this thread is why does it matter whether or not it counts as "parody"?

 

[Thebazilly]

I understand this conversation is about parody, however there is something being over-looked in this thread. The Dwarf, Amazon, Fighter, and Sorceress are all very identifiable. Dragon's Crown is a fantasy game, the genre that invented the phrase "generic fantasy adventure." By having the main characters and NPCs all be ridiculous they can be instantly recognized, without being mistaken for other fantasy games.

Back on the first page a picture of Ivy from Soul Calibur was posted. At a glance I can tell the character is Ivy because only Ivy looks like Ivy.

There are other ways to make a character visually distinct than slapping giant boobs/muscles onto them. Sure, body shape can do it, but so can color scheme, clothing, weapons, or accessories. And even if the body shape is the identifiable feature, that doesn't mean it has to be so ridiculously sexualized as Dragon's Crown's characters. This is the silliest argument I've ever heard.

 

[EternallyBored]

snip

You sure do give the label 'sexy' to the women in this game easily...

But really, I think your problem's problem, and really this entire controversy's problem is that you argue about a game that's in a medieval fantasy setting. It's not only a time bereft of our current period striving for social equality, but it's also fantasy, that thing that happens in your head. While fantasy does not discount that sexual bias does happen (which I'll bank on fitting pretty well with medieval history), I would give fantasy the license to be more free in that regard.

For that, if you REALLY want to make a difference in the game industry, my gaming industry soldier, I advise doing so at the source.

I give the label sexy easily because I've actually played this game, and it seems like you haven't. What other purpose do you think the designers had in mind when they made the shop keepers entire animation consist of thrusting her chest at the camera dressed only in wispy almost see-through cloth, or when the battle nun thrusts her metal-thong crotch at the camera, or the mermaid whose entire portrait is just one concentrated shot on her strangely human ass. I'm sure the designers also had additional goals in mind when designing these characters, but they were undeniably designed to be sexy. Hell even the games inspiration in aping 70's and 80's fantasy covers shows this, those covers were specifically designed to attract the (at the time) target audience of white, straight, male, nerds, so the men were always powerful and the females always sexy, that's what sold.

Now to the second part of your post, I see this "but its based on Medieval history, and women's right weren't around back then" argument all the time, and it's always conveniently used to cherry pick what the dark ages were actually like. Here's a fun little bit that argument always seems to conveniently miss, women actually lost rights in many areas after the start of the Renaissance. In the dark ages so many men were out fighting crusades and wars for the crown, that it became the norm to leave running many businesses to the women when their fathers or spouses were gone. Many of those women consolidated their power in that age and at one point women held an organized monopoly on the entire beer brewing process and sales for the entire British Islands. Many women were also well educated by the church, oftentimes moreso than men as women who became nuns or headed abbeys and churches at the time were essentially considered leaders in the community. Around the time of the Renaissance population started booming and new ideas were being introduced much faster than they used to the church in fear of losing it's power became much more reactionary and conservative in some of it's policies. Then we got movements like puritanism that brought all that over to America. When people use the Historical Accuracy argument, they are almost always using Hollywood history rather than what the middle ages were actually like (much of the modern sexual repression thing was also a consequence of reactionary church policy in the Renaissance as well, the middle ages was actually pretty damn free in some respects).

As another point Dragon's Crown has pretty much zero historical accuracy, and it's titillation is pretty much all following modern standards and practices with a thin veneer of renfair style medieval setting laid over the top. The game is Fantasy through and through, but then that's where we run into problems again. Fantasy has no limits (it certainly isn't even required to be set in the middle ages) so again the developers choice to make the game so chock full of blatant sexualization was their choice and their choice alone. The characters fit typical medieval fantasy archetypes, but the choice to give the mermaid a human ass, the nun a plate mail thong (and have her thrust it at the camera), and to have the fairy lay towards the camera with open legs in a goblet giving the camera a sultry look, was all on the developers, and pretty much anyone with an ounce of honesty will admit that it's blatant sexualization, and it only consistently applies to female character (unless musclebound men with near invisible nipples is your fetish, and even then the barbarian doesn't even have the decency to flex for the camera).

Your last comment about changing things at the source makes no sense to me, have you read any of my previous posts in this thread? I bought the game, I like it as well, but I won't sit around and make excuses about parody this or homage that, the female characters were sexualized in this game to an extreme degree, and I won't make excuses for it, it is what it is and prospective buyers should be aware that the sorceress is only the tip of the iceberg in this game. I don't want to change the sexualization in the game even if some of it is eye-rollingly bad, again, it is what it is. Now if we are talking about the occasionally clunky combat, or the screen that gets so cluttered at times I can lose track of my character for a good 20 seconds, then sure point me at this mythical source so I can get some changes made.

Seriously don't know how many times I have to hammer this in to people, criticism is not equivalent to hatred or disliking something as a whole, that's not how discussion works, only the tiny tiny minority exist on the extreme ends of a spectrum and actually sees things in black and white.

 

[TrulyBritish]

A parody might have been the intention, but, as others pointed out, how can you distinguish a parody when it looks pretty much the same as a lot of stuff that is not?

Does Dragon's Crown provide any signals that it is a parody? Does it, for instance, poke fun of the impracticality of its outfits and the impossibility of its anatomies?

It kinda actually does. Sometimes. There's a feature where you find some ex-adventurers bones and bring them back for resurrection. And besides every set of bones is a little message that adventurer left before he died. Amazon's bones might say something like "I should've worn some armor". Not sure if that counts though.
Also, sometimes Sorceress' bones might say "tell HER that I loved her".

Well, I'd say the first message certainly qualifies. The second, I don't know, aren't lesbians sort of a staple?

If it is indeed a parody and nobody realizes it, it would be a pity, really. I'm doubtful it really is, but who knows... when I first saw these designs, I thought those can't be meant serious, not in a mainstream game, but then again... the game is from Japan, and a lot of stuff in mainstream games does not look that different, especially not in games from Asia. And having real trouble to imagine that if, in the west, people already don't recognize it as parody, that people in Japan would. And if it was meant to pander to one audience but to be a parody for another, that would be... worrisome.

Well, concerning Sorceress' homosexuality, wouldn't that be kinda funny if the most male-pondering character was lesbian? I think it's funny.
Also, game just went full-on parody by the way. The latest boss I defeated was little, fluffy, white rabbit on the mountain of knight corpses.

A rabbit you say? Perchance was it a Monty Python reference?

 

[Louzerman102]

I understand this conversation is about parody, however there is something being over-looked in this thread. The Dwarf, Amazon, Fighter, and Sorceress are all very identifiable. Dragon's Crown is a fantasy game, the genre that invented the phrase "generic fantasy adventure." By having the main characters and NPCs all be ridiculous they can be instantly recognized, without being mistaken for other fantasy games.

Back on the first page a picture of Ivy from Soul Calibur was posted. At a glance I can tell the character is Ivy because only Ivy looks like Ivy.

There are other ways to make a character visually distinct than slapping giant boobs/muscles onto them. Sure, body shape can do it, but so can color scheme, clothing, weapons, or accessories. And even if the body shape is the identifiable feature, that doesn't mean it has to be so ridiculously sexualized as Dragon's Crown's characters. This is the silliest argument I've ever heard.

Bad vs. Good character design is not being debated in my statement. Bad characters can be memorable just as easily as good characters can be bland/forgettable.

The point of my post was to demonstrate that there are a lot of fantasy fiction in the world yet very few people would confuse a Dragon's Crown character with a Dungeons and Dragons character (for example), regardless of the quality of character design.

 

[Altorin]

It's a parody of Frank Frazetta's art-style. If you can't see it as that, I don't really know what to tell you, it's not even a subtle nod. Frazetta is the guy who painted those outlandish Conan the Barbarian paintings that are perhaps hiding in the back of your subconscious. He's known for muted colors and hilarious anatomy and lots of naked skin.

you take something like this

Spoiler

which is already sort of pumped up in terms of its content, and you take everything about it, pump it up to 15, and view it through a slightly manga-like mindset, and you get this

Spoiler

and yeah, it's ugly, but if you don't at least accept it as the parody it's clearly intended to be, then you're going to miss the whole point. It seems like their goal with the Amazon was to reveal as much skin while being absolutely the least titillating character ever conceived. But that's just what it is. Their whole art designed is basically lifted from Frazetta and other Fantasy artists.