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Polygon: Final Fantasy 15's female hero deserves the spotlight, says director
- Thread starter Ganon Dragmire
- Start date
theofficefan99
Junior Member
Lmao shut the fuck up Tabby
Imperfected
Member
From my experience with modding, I am confident that in the PC version the female characters will find themselves in the spotlight, for certain definitions of the term.
Death Penalty
Member
Pretty much this. Tabata's definition of "strong" is way off from mine, and Luna never lived up to anything, really. A damsel in the movie, and almost completely absent from the main game. Like, what about her was supposed to be strong? Powering up Noctis that one time? Fulfilling an all too typical priestess role? Being (major spoilers)
Noctis' trophy at the end of the game for his sacrifice?
One of my primary sticking points with Tabata is that he misrepresented Luna so much, presumably to reassure fans of Stella's portrayal in promotional material.
SolicitorPirate
Member
Because I am a fool who still believes in justice, I choose to believe we'll get nude mods for the boys first
Acquiescence
Member
She was rubbish though. Aranea, for all the five minutes of screen time she got, made a far stronger impression than Luna.
Hell, Aranea feels like the potential protagonist of a far better game that doesn't exist... yet.
Hell, Aranea feels like the potential protagonist of a far better game that doesn't exist... yet.
LiquidSolid
Member
Even calling Luna a character is being extremely generous. She's a prop.
You really aren't missing anything.
Serenade_King
Banned
Luna is a case of "oh yeah, Luna, duh!" While Iris is like "who.gif........................oh yeah, there was a character with that name!" when I read both names on the thread. It's not that I dislike Iris but she just appears in the middle of the game and does so little that I completely forgot her. It would be cool to get a Iris DLC where you see the moment she gets her nickname. But for now the two more known girls are Cindy and Aranea while Iris is just "Gladiolus little sister". :S
How could your forget about Iris!
AgentLampshade
Member
Luna totally deserved the spotlight, more than fucking Jared anyway. Pity both the movie and the game painted her as a non-character so much people thought Tabata was talking about Aranea at first. That's not a good sign.
Solid Sora
Member
It's really weird and it makes me think it had something to do with the rewrites, because I can't see anyone rationally claiming that the Luba we good is a strong character with a straight face.
Remember that we got none of her backstory that was teased in Dawn 2.0... So who knows what happened since then.
Death Penalty
Member
Yeah, I think you're right that it was clear a great deal of things weren't able to make it into the game. The vast majority of Dawn never comes up, for instance. It makes one wonder just how deep the rewrites went and when everything was finalized. Story isn't the only thing, obviously, as there were systems in Episode Duscae that somehow missed the main game as well... The game's development must have been something else.
I don't like Luna due to the lack of interaction within the game.
But Tabata didn't misrepresent Luna at all.
I feel a need to defend Luna as a character.
She was indeed a strong woman.
As a kid, she already foreshadowed her death, but she kept on living and committing to her duty as an Oracle.
She was living under an oppressive regime with no family member but just her brother, but she chose to live and kept on helping and curing the poors and disables with her power under the watchful eyes of the Empire. She rather helped others than simply giving up on her life.
After receiving the Ring of Lucii, she kept it safe even though the ring was slowly draining her power and life each moment. Her brother told her it wasn't worth it, but she resisted and fought against the spiritual power of the ring.
She went on her own journey without any help, and unsealing the Gods to help Noct. Without her, Noct would've not unlocked his full potential and power.
She didn't quit on herself even though she knew her destiny.
She kept on fighting.
Even knowing that her death was near after her last summoning, she still kept on challenging it head on until her last breath.
So yeah, Tabata is right about Luna.
Maybe we will get to play Luna with a new DLC, and from her POV, we can finally see how she carried herself until her last moment.
Mister Megative
Banned
Agent Gibbs
Member
I felt the same, the entire female cast were NPC's with Aranea being slightly elevated into one that could come into battle, the game doesn't portray any of them well enough to consider them a hero
I'm not even sure what 15 is now, it feels more like a test bed for ideas, loosely held together by a plot and x promotions
Just looking around people seems to prefer Aranea to Luna, so Tabata should just forget about the latter and do more content for the former (it will also be easier because her attack animations are done).
I don't think they can do much with Luna anymore, whatever they try to do it will feel forced after how shit the character was handled in the main game.
I don't think they can do much with Luna anymore, whatever they try to do it will feel forced after how shit the character was handled in the main game.
I like how SE knows fully well they can get away with making her the damsel in distress since no one cares about her.
I guess design wise, because character wise she was nothing like Yuffie. Iris was almost as awful as Luna.
GhostTrick
Banned
killatopak
Gold Member
stella needed it more.
Aeriscloud
Banned
PREACH
Salty Rice
Member
I agree. I need more Aranea.
That's part of the concept though. We really only see and experience what Noctis sees and experiences. And for the first, open world, half of the game, most things actually happen in Noctis's absence. It's what makes FFXV interesting, what it does differently from previous installments. It's its story telling "gimmick" if you want.
Even the DLCs so far for the characters you traveled with, they show what happened when Noctis wasn't with them. So a Lunafreya DLC definitely would be a chance to tell the story from her perspective. Kingsglaive kind of already was but I certainly would like to see more.
Yet I don't think we can call Lunafreya an awful character just because she isn't portrayed a lot.
As for other people calling her a weak female character, she certainly is different from what Stella would have been. Yet I don't think a female character is weak just because she doesn't fight. It's also a bit misogynist to think that way.
There are amazons in real life, females who can fight just like or even better than a male soldier. But not all females can be soldiers or amazons. Lunafreya is a more typical female character. And they wanted to portray the strength of someone who isn't physically strong.
Calling Lunafreya weak is like calling JFK weak because he was assassinated. JFK was a very important person, that's why he was a target for assassination.
Of course Lunafreya's demise also carries symbolic meaning, and is referential to FFX's story. That Noctis and Luna can be reunited after the game has to do with him becoming the true king. As opposed to an immortal king (with infinite lives like Mario).
Melkezadek
Member
I've never agreed with a post so strongly.
Luna is a great and tragic character. We just need a DLC to flesh out what went on behind the scenes. (which is a ton of time to cover)
My anger surrounding Luna is focused on the fact she was so underused in the main story. It almost seems as if she was left so vague on purpose. She was the main character in a whole other game while Noctis and crew were doing their thing. It's worth exploring.
Same here.
ErasureAcer
Banned
Iris does deserve more development. I agree.
DarkLordMalik
Member
I agree. There are a lot of missing cogs when it comes to the backstory in FFXV. I feel like Ignis DLC might shed more light on it.
There is a difference between good backstory/good character, and presented story/presented character.
You can write a tragic, emotional, strong backstory and character, but if it isn't put into practice then you can't assert that the character as shown in the proper story is all the things that she is in her unseen backstory.
Suppose you write a ruler character that has significant education, broad experience among people, and past charity, but this ruler character appears briefly in actual plot as a rude, arrogant, stupid ruler. You cannot turn around and claim that this ruler character is actually a generous and wonderful leader.
What you are doing is filling in the character that is shown with the backstory details you know, and using your imagination to write a different female character from the one presented in FF15.
Pilgrimzero
Member
I am reminded again how shitty the story presentation was in his game.
For a moment I was genuinely confused. There is no female hero, as in heroic main character or protagonist, in the game. The main character would be Noctis and to a lesser extend Ignis, Gladio and Prompto maybe.
It's way too late now to make Luna a main character in this game. They'd have to completely rewrite the base game for that to happen.
It's way too late now to make Luna a main character in this game. They'd have to completely rewrite the base game for that to happen.
We know more about her brother than we do about her.
