Dragon's Crown Art "Controversy" - Fantasy vs Reality
WARNING: This post contains images of proportionally-exaggerated women. If you aren't comfortable with the portrayal of characters in fantasy compared to those in reality, don't read this. Instead, please try to figure out why you aren't and try to bring yourself to a point where you are comfortable seeing it.I haven't blogged in a while, but this topic has me so concerned that I just HAD to say something.
Dragon's Crown. This game has ruined my life in a good way for the past week. It's a beautiful 2D beat-em-up game with an addicting loot system, fantastic local and netplay multiplayer action and extremely satisfying gameplay. It also has drop-dead gorgeous hand-drawn 2D artwork displayed gloriously throughout the entire game, as a narrator takes you through the story on your quest to aid the kingdom of Hydeland. It's not an innovative game by any means, but it doesn't have to be.
Just one look at this game says it all:
Immaculate.
This is a highly addicting game boasting over 100 hours of gameplay and potentially endless adventuring throughout gloriously detailed dungeons. Atlus and Vanillaware really outdid themselves for this game and it succeeds in bringing the beat-em-up genre into the spotlight.
Now take a second look at the screencap above, right in the middle. No, not that shiny green burst of light, the woman next to it with the witch hat and long flowing hair. That's Sorceress. She's 1 of 6 playable characters in this game. She also has ENORMOUS breasts.
And now we get to the core problem people have with this game: the portrayal of women. Kotaku's Jason Schreier has taken shots at Dragon's Crown's Sorceress (and it got even more heated), and Amazon has gotten her fair share of critique in particular for showing off copious amounts of her figure. The Elf is a reasonably-proportioned, well-dressed female, so she has drawn little to no fire. And of course, the playable males (Fighter, Dwarf, Wizard) haven't drawn any fire either. Just Sorceress and Amazon, for the most part.
Let's look at these characters more in-depth.
Sorceress
Here's our mystical Sorceress' official art, drawn by Vanillaware's own President George Kamitani. I believe it speaks for itself.
There's little that needs to be said to describe this art. She's all breasts, legs, breasts and butt. And breasts. Did I mention yet how big her breasts are? Oh and they bounce in the game, in every single animation. Even idle animations. She can't even breathe without them rising and falling with slight buoyancy maneuvers. I should know because I've already spent 20-25 minutes playing as her in the game. Sorceress has a figure release planned already, but it's been cancelled, presumably because she is SO exaggerated that even Japan has issues with her.
"Sorceress gives women a bad name in games, and in fantasy. Her sole purpose in this game is to make males play this game with drool dripping down the sides of their mouths, and their pants down. She's a sex object and a sickeningly terrible representation of women, so much so that female gamers won't want to play this game. She's something straight out of an erotic Japanese visual novel and is just begging to be ravished and loved, used only to bear children and provide fanservice."
The above paragraph is a collection of opinions I've collected from many online sources who baselessly attack this game because of her. She has ridiculous proportions and a very dainty "I need protecting" portrayal, just based on what she looks like and what poses she's in. All they see is her artwork, her breasts, her breasts some more and some screenshots maybe. Then they draw conclusions. Some have even called this game sexist because of her.
Okay. OKAY. Hold on a minute. Sexist? Really? REALLY? Let's analyze her a little, shall we?
The Woman Behind the Breasts
Sorceress character in games are most often depicted as mystically alluring but cunning female mages with a penchant for defeating enemies using crafty, unfair or confusing methods of combat. They usually aren't the strongest of characters, nor the most robust, but they are very strong and sexy in their own right. Sorceresses in Warcraft were not the strongest offensive units in the Human alliance, but they were able to significantly cripple enemies, even turning them into helpless sheep. League of Legends features Emilia LeBlanc the Deceiver, a scantily-clad magical powerhouse who specializes in trickery and darting around in combat. She is particularly powerful, tricking opponents with a clone of herself and blinking all around the battlefield.
Sorceresses dress very revealing and usually have appealing bodies. Dragon's Crown's Sorceress doesn't stray from that stereotype, but her body proportions (the "hourglass" figure) are even more exaggerated. She has extremely healthy breasts, a dangerously skinny waist, and very wide child-birthing hips. Why? George Kamitani has released a statement explaining why he's made the characters so exaggerated: they wouldn't stand out amidst all the other fantasy designs in various media. He's got a point: no other game is like Dragon's Crown, at least not yet, because of how exaggerated it is.
But the Dragon's Crown Sorceress has much more up her nonexistent sleeves than just her appearance. For starters, she can inflict every status condition in the game: petrifying and polymorphing enemies into helpless frogs; she can inflict freezing, burning and stunning with her various magically elemental offensive powers. She can restore allies' health by creating food out of thin air, and she can instantly bolster the entire party's defenses. With the ability to fire homing magic shots in the air, teleport instantly a short distance away multiple times and the power to fly temporarily over great distances, she is easily one of the most nimble characters in the game. Not bad for a woman who would have a hard time maintaining her balance standing up in reality.
But her abilities don't end there. She also has powers of necromancy. She acquires the ability to animate bones of dead adventurers found very often throughout the dungeons you explore in the game, turning them into fierce skeleton warriors that fight for her behalf. Sorceress has control of life and death, and this brings up a very key point in her origins. Previous Atlus/Vanillaware games such as Odin Sphere have featured similarly themed characters. For example, here's Queen Odette from Odin Sphere:
Notice any similarities? The healthy chest, the slim proportions, the flowing mystical attire? Odette is the queen of Netherworld Endelphia in the world of Odin Sphere. In other words, she's the queen of the underworld and holds jurisdiction over life and death. She's also a strong boss full of surprises who uses an undead army to tire out the characters that fight her. In fact, she's part undead herself as is apparent in her artwork...and MUCH creepier than she seems on the outside (she hides gigantic creature-infested spider legs under that dress, let the nightmares commence).
Wow, she's so similar to Sorceress! We can see that our buxom witch has actual significance in her design, which is not noticeable if she is merely looked at.
Now as I mentioned before, I've played Sorceress almost exclusively since I bought this game. Dragon's Crown does the player a favor by not only assigning statistical ratings to each character, but also recommending certain characters based on how difficult they are for the player to use. Fighter is the easiest, Dwarf and Amazon are moderate difficulty, and the last three (Elf, Wizard, Sorceress) are for expert players. Since I usually prefer finesse characters, I figured I'd give Sorceress a spin because she can do so much. Within minutes I had gotten focused onto the action, forgetting the ridiculousness of the bouncy babe I was controlling. I was locked in a dangerous battle, a 1v1 fight against the boss of the first stage, the Harpy. I barely managed to defeat it without dying. Sorceress wasn't just sexy, she was AWESOME.
Hours later, I beat Normal mode with her using AI partners, and came to the conclusion that she is very strong, evasive and versatile. She gives off a very strong "You can only look, not touch" vibe, because she is immensely fun to play as. When you solo entire dungeons with her, you feel a sense of accomplishment, like "hey, I outsmarted EVERY enemy in this entire stage" and you're proud of it. Every so often you come to terms with how exaggerated she looks, but by the time you're into the thick of the game (the first few hours of play) it's just grown on you as a part of the game. Sorceress just IS. She is who she is. Unlike in other games that often explicitly poke fun at a female character's body (via character interaction/side quest dialogue), the game doesn't emphasize hers in any way other than letting the art and animations speak for themselves. She represents powerful but delicate beauty, someone that feels so close yet is always just out of reach. Also she holds skeletons to her bosom. IT'S SYMBOLISM No but seriously, it actually is.
Sorceress is bewitching, enchanting, untouchable, powerful and everything else a sorceress (and just about any other powerful female archetype in fantasy) should be, just with bigger proportions. When I play as Sorceress I feel extremely invaluable and effective, aiding allies and trashing enemies with a variety of spells and attacks. I can't imagine a female gamer having problems playing as her. Yes she has great flopping baggage but it clearly isn't something that should be compared to realistic proportions BECAUSE IT'S FANTASY. And apparently having even bigger-then-normal breasts is grounds for calling Dragon's Crown sexist, among other things. Because logic, right? Let's just completely ignore the entire theme of the game, okay.
Now I can see why she may seem grossly over-exaggerated as a fantasy woman overall, built to "cater to males only", and drive away female gamers. But there are two logical errors with this argument. One, IT'S FANTASY. Don't even try to compare this to real life. This game is so over-the-top that no one (except people who want an excuse to run their mouths without using their brain) can reasonably say that this game should do a better job of representing women. That's not the point of fantasy! Fantasy doesn't have to cover up the problems present in reality (women are hourglassy beautiful delicate creatures, men are savage muscular prideful powerful ones). That's not fantasy's job. That's a problem with censorship and lack of acceptance of various body sizes and shapes in reality. If you have a problem with the way the women in Dragon's Crown are represented, YOU are insecure. Fix yourself, don't blame the game's representation for your own ineptitude. There is a difference between fantasy and reality. The two are not to be compared to each other. There's even one video out there that suggests that Dragon's Crown does a terrible job of representing civil rights. Like...what? REALLY? What does that even mean? Is that really what people these days are suggesting, that video games should do a good job of representing--you know what, it's so stupidly misinformed and irrelevant that I won't even go into more detail on it.
Two, what the actual hell? Why would women be afraid of this kind of representation of females? Sorceress is powerful, she is good-looking, she can be supportive or offensive and do anything in-between. The Amazon is even MORE powerful and powerful-looking, as will be shown and discussed very soon. Why draw a baseless conclusion without even having played the game? This is a GAME too, you know. It has content, it's not just an animated artbook featuring nothing but Sorceress walking and bouncing her breasts all over the screen. I'm not a woman so maybe I don't quite fully understand, but I don't see how this logic isn't firm. And you know what's funny (but not really)? There is so much violence that is apparently acceptable in movies and video games...but the moment an overly large pair of breasts appears, people get out their pitchforks and torches (the latter of which is an actual expendable weapon found in dungeons in this game). Censorship (at least in the United States) is so nonsensical that it hurts my brain. Heaven forbid a character like Sorceress is incredibly powerful but has a huge rack, as opposed to the so-often-used stereotypical portrayal of women (dainty, put in the back of the party, soft-spoken, does almost nothing but buff and heal) in various media that we're all honestly sick and tired of. I guess we can't really enjoy something new, now can we? Gotta ATTACK IT.
And as far as this game being made mostly for males, guess what the gender percentage of gamers mostly is? And guess how games targeting females in particular have fared? Sure, Dragon's Crown depicts saving mostly if not completely helpless females and shows almost TOO much of their bodies sometimes, but it's reminiscent of the more knightly, romantic time periods in history. It's thematic. Besides, the three playable females are certainly powerful in their own right, and more than enough to make up for the lack of power shown by female NPCs in this game. Everyone should be appreciating how extremely loyal (and extreme, period) this game adheres to its theme.
Why then do people jump so quickly to attack this game? Before answering that (even though I kind of already have), let's look at the other half of the glaring problem: Amazon. And I don't mean the company.
Amazon
Amazon is also one of the six playable character classes in Dragon's Crown, and she is the only melee/physical character of the three females. She also outputs the most damage of all six, although she's a bit more fragile than the other two melee classes.
Here are the two official portrait art pictures of Amazon:
Here's a still of Amazon's in-game idle animation:
Two words: dat booty. Look how chiseled it is! Good thing it's so solid, because she uses it to beat the crap out of her opponents with a bone-shattering hip drop. When she jumps, her butt transforms into the most perfectly spherical, flawless, "I wanna reach out and grab it" backside you've ever seen in 2D. And it's fully exposed. She may as well not even wear armor--a key point in tracing her roots as will be discussed later--because you can't even see it half the time. She actually has rather large bouncy breasts too, but THAT MUSCLE attracts all the attention (also dat booty does too). Her legs are even more dangerous than Chun Li's and can easily snap enemies in half (she doesn't do this in the game though, unfortunately) and she uses them to deliver a series of fierce, swift kicks to knock opponents out cold. Lightning fast on land and incredibly potent and controlling in the air, Amazon can potentially deliver the highest amount of damage in the entire game out of all the characters. She also wields a gigantic poleaxe, scythe, and other large cleaving weapons. That's pretty important to note too, I suppose.
If anything can outdo the ridiculousness of the Sorceress, it's Amazon. Sorceress has an entire body behind worthy of being worshiped, but it's completely covered up so its actual anatomic shape is left to the player's imagination (contributing more to the alluring-yet-enigmatic theme Sorceress has, see how logical this is all becoming?). Amazon bears it all out in the open, even using hers as a powerful weapon (Sorceress instead has a weaker hip bump dash attack). What's more, Amazon wears the least clothing out of all the characters (apparently she doesn't need it, yet she takes less damage from attacks than Sorceress. Go figure). When she gets stunned, she lays on the ground with her backside directly facing the camera, and during her stunned animation it even wobbles a bit. It goes without saying that Amazon has nothing to hide. There is even unlockable in-game artwork depicting three amazon warriors--wearing next-to-nothing, of course--after an orc hunt. So it's not just her, it's the entire Amazon population.
But surely there must be good reasons for this character design, right? Right. Let's journey back in time a little...
Ancient Amazonians
The Amazon of Dragon's Crown is clearly named after and physically represents strong, powerful women that are also more primitive-looking and fundamental. I speak of course of the amazons (duh). if you're feeling lazy I'll sum up the important parts of that link in the next paragraph.
In Greek mythology, the Amazons were an all-female warrior nation that specialized in more hunter-gatherer kinds of activities, as well as warfare. They were so hardcore that they would often resort to using extreme methods to get rid of their right breast so they could throw javelins much easier. Naturally an all-female nation would have trouble keeping its population up, so they would procreate with men of other nations every so often. Depending on which version of the Amazonian myth you look at, they would sometimes keep men as slaves for procreation purposes or kill off all male babies born as the result of said procreation engagement. Yikes!
During battle they would often paint their bodies with 'war paint' to appear more imposing. This, of course, comes at the cost of wearing less clothing...and they didn't seem to mind! Dragon's Crown's own Amazon utilizes the War Paint ability as a skill--it creates clones of herself to perform extreme damage at the cost of some of her health. Some of the more Amazonian-like women in history, such as Xena the Warrior Princess, are far more armored but also emit this type of wild 'battle frenzy' behavior in battle, shouting battle cries to the tune of slaying foes. Amazon also does this as she takes a large step back, showing off her entirely muscular body in the process--and then SLAMMING her weapon down in front of her, absolutely obliterating anything unfortunate enough to be in front of her. She is wild, reckless and POWERFUL. But at the same time, she is also more vulnerable due to her lack of wearing...well, just about anything really.
Amazon also has some similar moves to the other Dragon's Crown melee characters, and shares a spinning aerial attack with Cornelius from Odin Sphere, but these are besides the point. Amazon is strong and shows off her entire body, and with great care she can become the true powerhouse in the player's hands. I played Amazon for a few hours and she is very satisfying to use, possibly the most satisfying of all the characters but at the cost of being less effective or reliable overall. She is no dainty Sorceress, and can easily brawl with the big boys. Also I believe she has the fastest dash on the ground, and gives you complete control over aerial attacks (later you can even upgrade her spinning aerial attack so its horizontal velocity can be completely controlled like Cornelius' can). Amazon is quite the woman of action, with powerful feminine beauty to boot(y).
Now, some people believe her muscular body is gross. Just like the Sorceress' body was explained above, it's just fantasy. Amazon's body build and attire represent something. A few hours into the game with her and you won't be concerned at all about her appearance, you'll be busy comboing and carving enemies in half with lightning speed, reveling in the satisfaction of her destructive moveset. Dwarf is just as if not even more muscular, which leads me to my next point...
The Male Characters
Just like how Elf is the exception to the 'exaggeration' theme for the female playable characters, the Wizard is the exception for the males. Now let's look at the two other male characters: Fighter and Dwarf.
Here is Fighter.
Here is Dwarf.
Look at how topheavy Fighter is! How does he even stay standing with those barrel-boomin' arms, scrawny legs and all that armor?! And Dwarf sports so much muscle that it's a wonder how he can swing his weapons at all. I can just imagine Dwarf being unable to even stand up, so the other party members have to take turns rolling him everywhere they need to go. It's hilarious but it's also RIDICULOUS. The male characters don't escape from this 'exaggeration' theme either. But it's okay that they look like this, because that's the accepted appearance of males in video games. Do you see where I'm going with this?
It makes absolutely no sense that the Dragon's Crown females are drawing so much negative attention, but the males don't. Both are exaggerated to the point of being unbelievable...but this is all fantasy, so why SHOULD it be believable? Why should people feel threatened by the character representation in this game, regardless of gender? What's more, the majority of gamers are male. Why would they care so much about the female "misrepresentation" in this game and not the male misrepresentation, when every single game out there has the same depiction only a bit less emphasized? In fact, why would they even care about the male misrepresentation to begin with? It's not like most of the gaming population is female anyway, so their potential mistaken perception of how males look in fantasy vs reality isn't going to become widespread to begin with. To top it off, this game doesn't toy with the idea of poking fun at a character's body like many other games have done in the past--it crosses the line and implements that idea completely, and as a result generates a nice refreshing experience.
The game is sexist? The game misrepresents females? None of these arguments make sense. So why do people run their mouths and say that stuff to begin with? Why do they start flame wars and bring up things like sexism, instead of trying to figure out why the game is made as it was like I have attempted to do in this post?
Conclusion: It's Just Fantasy. Accept It As Different.
The answer is simple. People value validity, a sense of purpose, over the truth. This could be the result of laziness, or simple immaturity. They believe what they want to believe without a need for the truth and that is sufficient for them, but it only pollutes arguments with pointless baseless accusations. The moment people laid eyes on Amazon's and Sorceress' official art and deemed it grossly over-exaggerated and therefore concluded that the entire game was ugly, or that it was not worth playing, they had to do something to compensate for an actual rationale behind their statements. So they hide behind shallow statements like "this game is sexist" or try to bring up the fact that this game does a terrible job of representing our civil rights. I say that's a bunch of hooey. They just want to feel justified in their disdain for this game (not even the game itself, just the way one or two characters are depicted) without delving into the issues behind censorship and character exaggeration. What's more, people are okay with
There is no logical reason to make these kinds of comparisons between fantasy and reality. Saying things like "Sorceress was designed by a 14-year old boy" is completely ignoring the themes that this game embodies, and instead drawing a conclusion off of an assumption. Because we all love being right SO much that we will throw something amazing like this to the side and trash it completely, right? We love to talk and share our opinions and show how we're right (read: how we believe we are in the right) because we seek validation. Unfortunately, using immature means to do so with no facts or evidence to back it up gets us nowhere.
If you think Dragon's Crown is gross in any way via its character depiction, then I don't know how else to put this: grow up, accept that there are not only different body types but a non-comparable difference between fantasy and reality, and move on. Accept that Sorceress has giant flopping breasts, and Amazon's got a butt hangin' out, and the rest of the ridiculously fantastical things Dragon's Crown has to offer. It's fantasy, extreme exaggeration at its finest. It's a thing of beauty. Nothing else is like this. People should be treasuring a game like this, one that took risks to intensify a player's experience.
Also the game is amazing, so give it a try if you haven't yet. It's too breathtaking to pass up.
