Don't You Want Somebody to Love?

When I first heard that Lightning, the lead protagonist from Final Fantasy XIII, was intended to be a female equivalent of the legendary Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, my first thought was:

What does this mean she is going to have to contend with the attentions of two guys? And will one of which get killed off by the main baddie while the player is helpless to intervene?

Okay so maybe that previous sentence was me being silly (personally I had no idea how to word it for the purposes of this post) but my initial reaction got me thinking: Has there ever been a decent gaming romance where the female is the focal point?



Now I have spoken about romance in games many times. True I may be a hopeless romantic but because I feel romance is such an over-looked element in games. Most of the time it is something of a player motivation (You control Mario to rescue Princess Peach being one such example) but when done right a romance can work wonders. True there may not be many hopeless romantics here in gaming but personally if romance in video gaming is an alien concept, maybe there could well be some potential worth realising.

But going back to that thing called the focal point: Many games I‘ve found, the male half seems to have the greater say: It is them doing all the work and them trying hard to win the female half over – who seems quite willing to along with it all. Thus, Mario continually rescues Peach, Link keeps saving Zelda and Cloud has the option of going on a date with either Tifa, Aerith or Yuffie.
Strangely, you never see the female half do the chasing. Why is this so? Has years of being a male character rescuing their partner from an antagonistic figure been imprinted in our minds? Is having a female actively seeking a relationship a threat to the need to a hero and save the day?
Really, being a female in a video game romance is really getting handed a raw deal: You’re pretty much there to be some kind of romance to the main character and to provide some notion that at the end of the journey will be all the more worth it. You don’t have much of a say – no you’re only abiding to wishes of the player and the designer. And if you’re a female character actively working to getting the male’s attention, you’re setting yourself to be dismissed as a horny wench.
Personally, I like video game heroines to be more than sex objects but that’s not to say that a female character can’t be allowed to work as hard as the males to find herself a romantic partner.
Are we so used to active males working hard to win over passive princess figures? Anyone can challenge the nature of this theory – by way of example look at Ico and Shadow of the Colossus – so why not more of it?
But as video games are a male-dominated market, seeing a woman in some degree of control can be labelled as a threat - case in point: I heard that Enslaved: Odyssey to the West earned some backlash for placing the male lead in a servitude role.
Why can’t the woman actively pursue a relationship?! Is it true that we may laud the chasing male as a stud whilst dismiss the chasing female as a whore?



Now that I think of it, what makes a video game romance command attention? Is it determined on how much say the player has in its growth and development? Indeed, many people seem willing to accept Tidus and Yuna but others grow passionate when debating whether Tifa or Aerith is the better fit for Cloud. Perhaps having name, a face and an identity on both sides makes for a more compelling romance than, say, Morrigan being won over by (the Grey Warden).

And speaking of Bioware, I think the only example of a female character actively perusing a relationship (or at least I can think of) would have to be the female Shepard in Mass Effect 2. As stated before, she has the better selection of partners and is helped by a great performance from her VA Jennifer Hale. And whereas anyone would dismiss the active female as a whore, no one would say the same for Shepard – perhaps she’s a tough cookie. The type that can use a gun, kill the baddies and take command of chaotic situations - just as easily as trying to get into Garrus’ pants. It may be a single step but it’s one in the right direction – I just hope more developers catch onto this idea and expand on it.

That being said, would I play a game where I control a female lead who finds herself drawing the romantic attentions of two guys? Possibly – such a game may not get made but that idea has some potential to say the least.

Go West

When I was a kid, one of my favourite shows on TV was Monkey. Like so many other children of the eighties I’ve known, I would watch this show religiously after school. Whilst I watched many cartoons during my school years, I do recall Monkey, along with the original Dr Who, as being one of few live-action series I really enjoyed. I recall Monkey fondly with its sense of adventure, the action sequences involving gardening implements and the Buddhist philosophies that served as a framing device for the entire episode. It was only years later that I found out this series was an adaptation on the classic Chinese story Journey to the West – and was not the only one at that.



This now brings me to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West: a game made by people who boldly claim to have taken more than a few inspirations from Journey to the West. Well why not? There have been many adaptations of the text so why not a game? The only problem I can see is that a classic seventies TV show did the job so well that anything else is left in the dust. Indeed, I recall being ten years old and reading a comic adaptation where the story was missing one of the pilgrims (Sha Wujing/Sandy) and immediately thinking it wasn’t the same story I’d come to know.

Being an anime geek, I can name quite a few adaptations of Journey to the West. Aside from the obvious, Saiyuki and the original Dragonball, other noteworthy entrants are Alakazam the Great and Spaceketeers. All of which follow the source material quite closely – In fact the only JotW-based anime that deviates the most from the source is Goku Midnight Eye – a futuristic anime featuring a private eye protagonist who shares Sun Goku’s name and shape-shifting staff. Indeed, such is the deviation that it owes little to the source material but the makers didn’t claim it was such an adaptation anyway.



Unlike Enslaved: Odyssey to the West: What annoys me is that the claims made by the developers haven’t really delivered on their promise. Firstly: the player characters are numbered two: Pigsy isn’t a player character and both Sandy and the Water-Dragon/horse are conspicuously absent. Secondly, there’s not much of a connection to the original text. So why even bother? The afore-mentioned Goku Midnight Eye proved you can take inspiration from another source but to claim a full-blown adaptation of said source is another matter entirely.

Why didn’t they just take elements from the source and come up with something new? Were the makers too scared to? Or is it really that difficult to get something new made in a profit driven industry?
Indeed, Portal proved that something new can work but why did it succeed when many others have failed? Was it because it was included in a box with four other familiar games? Was it because it was made by the distinguished company Valve? Was it because it had black humour and a catchphrase destined to be repeated a million times afterward?
Of course, there is the possibility that was actually a really good game but who’d believe that?