ElBoxyBrown
Banned
We saw that in The History of Trunks. He died.
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Polygon examines the really limited roles Moms are afforded in most games
- Thread starter Crossing Eden
- Start date
We saw that in The History of Trunks. He died.
Corronchilejano
Member
Emma Honeywell from The Last Remnant.
If you're into tactical RPGs with tens of people on the field at the same time with little control over the advance of your NPCs, this is the game for you.
Chrono Trigger for Magus and Robo, technically.
And now that i think about it, Ayla technically is a mother, since it's revealed she is Marle's ancestor.
UncleSporky
Member
I recently played Citizens of Earth which is an Earthboundish game where you play as the recently-elected vice president of Earth, and you pick up like 40 party members throughout the game.
Your first two party members are your mom and little brother, who works for UPS. They're both pretty critical for the early game and even further on, mom is an awesome healer. She can heal the whole party with hugs!
Your first two party members are your mom and little brother, who works for UPS. They're both pretty critical for the early game and even further on, mom is an awesome healer. She can heal the whole party with hugs!
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Presicely. We're seeing the dadification of games, but not its counterpart
lol.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Thanks to Nirolak for changing the title as it seems that's what most people reacted to initially.
This reminds me of someone asking Togashi about Gon's lack of parents in Hunter x Hunter and I believe he gave the reasoning for the lack of parents or parental influence as this,"Parents get in the way of sending a young kid out int the dangerous world to have crazy adventures they might die from". I think parents are often absent because they get in the way of just sending your protagonist off to do as they please.
Uncharted
wouldnt putting 'UC4' in there kinda heavily imply who the spoiler tag person is? There is only 1 or so positive/alive female characters in the game. Doing it anyways.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Unfortunately yes.
I never relate to this logic as my mother was always super open about letting me and my friends explore even late at night.
I think it was more about kids/teenagers going on missions and adventures where the world or something huge is at stake and they could very well die a horrible death and not so much your parents letting you out to go hang out with friends around the neighborhood. No parent worth their salt that isn't insane is going to go let their kid go fighting, stealing, escaping and so on with grown adults while they are nearly killed. Its basically the premise of the Goonies.
FunkyPajamas
Member
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
We'll here's the metaphor of a "party" being your group of friends. In most anime and RPGs everyone is usually incredible casual about the whole joining up to fight evil thing.
Yep.
Is probably why in games they usually rely on the absent or death parents, or the single/sad stay at home mother that has a disease, etc. Portraying "normal parents", even a single hardworking parent would bring the problem of said parents even letting their children walk to their possible demise just because.
In the Mortal Kombat X example I mentioned that kinda got in the way and some pointed that back then, recving critiscm for that.
In the story, you had Sindel's love towards Kitana as the reason in the original timeline the invasion was stopped. In the new timeline, Kitana tries to work around that to bring Sindel to her senses, but didn't worked.
Then in X, Sonya despite been authoritary didn't liked sending Cassie into dangerous missions, while Johnny was a bit more open to that; while Jax stopped talking to Johnny and Sonya for what he assumed as them convincing his daughter to join the special forces.
Then you go to the actual game and they murder and rip each other to pieces.
So sometimes the "solution" is to basically kill the parents or remove them from the story, since in reality most parents wouldn't allow their kids to go to grand adventures. Or if they did, they would tag along...and sacrifice themselves to avoid seeing the children killed (which will result in tropes and clichés too).
It would be great seeing more of both mother and fathers. But the "dadification" we're seeing now is the result of years of male centric roles.
Sadly we're in 2016, and prominent female roles are still rare. Which by default results in a lack of "momification" or any mothers on most games.
TeddyShardik
Banned
Seems to me that with less female main characters in general there's automatically less moms in important roles. One is slowly improving I think, I hope the other follows.
Wanted to mention the lack of mom's in gaming is probably related to the issues of sex and representation in the industry but I know a lot of designers and story tellers often don't have parents as a way to let their young protagonist go out into a dangerous and intimidating world without anyone making a stink about it. It just lets them off the hook for throwing a kid into mortal danger as there is no one to look out for them or tell them otherwise. That or the parents die fairly early on thus leaving them free of control or maybe that death in of itself sent the kid out into the wide world itself. Full Metal Alchemist kind of does this.
Obligatory
LOL, I didn't know that was a thing.
Agree that Gohan would be more stupid without Chi Chi however, I think he would have been stronger because Goku would have pushed Gohan into being a martial artist rather than a scholar.
Reverend Funk
Comfy Penetration
Lmao this shit again
You make it sound like a bad things that video games have to mature...
Games about shooting were boring anyway.
I liked stabbing and slicing way more.
Seth Balmore from Lost Odyssey.
Yes, as well as Sarah from the same game (well, she's more of a
grandmother
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
So yea why're you implying that being inclusive and maturing is a bad thing for an artistic medium? Being more inclusive and mature=innocence disappearing? What?
This came before the overwatch leak.
More so the continuing uptick of Dad games in general, with God of War being the one that got the discussion over the edge.
But...Moms are tough!
It would have been an entirely different story. Elly is slow to trust Joel, where that relationship would have taken a different path if you were playing as a woman (Elly would have likely warmed up to you faster and looked at you more as a mentor than someone she doesn't want to deal with. She's closer to the women in her life at the start of the game.) And the way the story turns out for Joel has a very masculine tone to it. I feel like the lie he tells Elly at the end wouldn't have worked for the same reasons with a Maternal role. Part of the core of the story is that Joel and Elly are as different and unrelatable to eachother as you can get.
I'm not saying I wouldn't have liked having a story about a woman (Because I absolutely WOULD have liked that) but a direct comparison of "it woulda been more powerful" doesn't really work because the narrative direction would have been a different arc. (You can take it to similar places, but the initial point of contact and the character path would likely have changed because of who Elly is as a person.)
It would have been an entirely different story. Elly is slow to trust Joel, where that relationship would have taken a different path if you were playing as a woman (Elly would have likely warmed up to you faster and looked at you more as a mentor than someone she doesn't want to deal with. She's closer to the women in her life at the start of the game.) And the way the story turns out for Joel has a very masculine tone to it. I feel like the lie he tells Elly at the end wouldn't have worked for the same reasons with a Maternal role. Part of the core of the story is that Joel and Elly are as different and unrelatable to eachother as you can get.
I'm not saying I wouldn't have liked having a story about a woman (Because I absolutely WOULD have liked that) but a direct comparison of "it woulda been more powerful" doesn't really work because the narrative direction would have been a different arc. (You can take it to similar places, but the initial point of contact and the character path would likely have changed because of who Elly is as a person.)
When I saw this thread linked in the Ana thread, I was hoping that Crimson Viper would be brought up. I was not disappointed.