I'm planning on writing an entry for my weekly video game blog about Quiet and I would like othe r people's opnions if anyone would like to share. Anything would be helpful. Thanks in advance!
I'm planning on writing an entry for my weekly video game blog about Quiet and I would like othe r people's opnions if anyone would like to share. Anything would be helpful. Thanks in advance!
64.33.250.214 wrote:
64.33.250.214 wrote:
Strangelove was killed because Kojima wanted to make Huey an evil character. He simply wanted to make the relationship between Big Boss / Venom and Huey different from Solid & Otacon who end up being good friends simply because it's more interesting that way.
And Paz was simply killed because Kojima loves doing twists. Hell I love Paz' death, it's one of my favourite scenes in the series, and that means a lot.
Again, these ideas aren't inherently bad, rather it's their frequency in pop culture that has made it into a horrible stereotype and a form of bad writing. The fact that those two female characters from PW suffered this fate unlike the male characters which got off better makes it really jarring in retrospect.
You may be right, but what was the point then of her not talking if it wouldn't kill her? That whole parasite business is confusing. Whether or not she dies, she doesn't leave much of an impact beyond the events of Phantom Pain. Unless she went to Kurdistan to give birth to Sniper Wolf, so Sniper Wolf could be born with parasites to explain her sniping abilities, because parasites are the new nanomachines.
Apparently, she didn't want to cause an outbreak as a result. I don't know?
DementedP wrote:
Except that using their deaths to further the angst and drive behind the male characters' motivations is a very tired trope that works at the expense of the female characters. There's a difference in writing well-meaning deaths and one that subjects them to horrible fates while specifically using their deaths to give more development to the male characters.
Again, these ideas aren't inherently bad, rather it's their frequency in pop culture that has made it into a horrible stereotype and a form of bad writing. The fact that those two female characters from PW suffered this fate unlike the male characters which got off better makes it really jarring in retrospect.
Thank you, and that's exactly my point. I'm honestly glad I'm not the only one seeing this. It's not like I'm even hating on Kojima here, rather I feel like it's fair game to draw criticisms (whether it be positive or negative) on works that we like as it serves to further our understanding and ability to engage in critical thinking.
Again, it's that level of frequency of Kojima's misguided treatment towards his female characters that I find really disappointing since he didn't do such a bad job at it before in the past.
Technically, we don't even know if she's dead. Her staff listing listed her as MIA, and besides which, the only way the parasites can kill the host is not an option for her since she doesn't even have functional lungs to begin with.
From what I've read, she became a carrier, which is why she decided to exile herself and live in isolation.
Let me ask a question. Do you believe that there are other video-game developers who treat their female characters better / more respectful than Kojima does ?
No. I don't even think any other game even tries to characterize females as truly and in depth as Kojima does
Yes.
A lot.
Like seriously, a lot.
Bethesda-in both fallout and elder scrolls, female armour is actually armour, and there are just as many female characters that make significant impacts in the world as male ones
Bioware-In mass effect, practically all the female characters are treated with respect (excluding miranda who does get a bit of the leering camera problem, but still not as bad as quiet). There is the arguement that romances are treated like trophies, which they are, but it's a flaw with the romance system, as both male and female characters get hit with it.
Valve-In both the half life, and left 4 dead series, the female characters are just as capable (in Alyx's case, more capable than anyone but the player character), and aren't treated like victims or show any T&A
Telltale-Clementine. Don't need to say much more.
I can keep going, but I don't want this to rapidly become an essay. I just picked a few games from my most recent played list on steam. But yes, many developers treat their female characters with more respect than Kojima. We say he's pretty awful with this for a reason.
To answer the initial question: yes and yes.
Quiet is a badass, I think any battle scene she is in will show it, no need to discuss that.
The true problem is all about her sexualisation, and how - if? - it can be justified. I think it simply can't. All this "I breathe with my skin like a plant so everything is okay" stuff is an insult to the player's brain, no matter you are a man, a woman or any living thing on Earth. As it has been said earlier, Kojima just couldn't live with his own perversity and hid it behind this masquerade. There is no way I could think otherwise.
But the fact is I love Quiet. She is not a top-tier female character in term of personal background or charisma, but I have much more sympathy for her than for Naomi or Olga or even the Boss. Why? Because most of MGS characters - may they be female or not - have no existence outside of cutscenes and codec, they are part of Big Boss's/Snake's story, not mine.
I love "narration through gameplay", I think a game is better when you can develop your own relationship with a character just by being at his/her side. Quiet is the single human friend you have at your side when PLAYING, she is more of a partner than Revolver "let's torture everybody" Ocelot or Kaz "always angry" Miller. She being silent is something I like as it reflects Snake's mutism during operations, it creates a connection. Both are white sheets of paper for the player even if they have their own established personality and traits.
As it has been said before, Quiet often appears as a victim. She is a victim of violence from other male protagonists just as she is a victim of Kojima's awful fetishisms. So when playing a mission, you are Quiet's only friend, and in return you trust her while everybody say she will shoot you for sure. "For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother". In the end, the only things I feel for Quiet are pity and sympathy, because everything in the game is a pretext to belittle her as a woman while she is the only character actually participating in the way you live the story as an actor.
So yes, in a "normal" MGS Quiet would just be the stupidly oversexualised girl stereotypicaly falling in love with his former enemy, but The Phantom Pain is not a "normal MGS" isn't it? Let's be clear, this is no excuse and I'll never forgive Kojima for what he did with Quiet, but since I found this divine XOF suit, my main concern about her was gone. She is a spoiled, badly designed and badly used character, but I don't think she deserves so much contempt.
Blame Kojima, feel sorry for Quiet.
I can keep going, but I don't want this to rapidly become an essay. I just picked a few games from my most recent played list on steam. But yes, many developers treat their female characters with more respect than Kojima. We say he's pretty awful with this for a reason.
Really good examples there, and I especially like Clementine.
People say it's because Kojima is Japanese and it's just "part of the culture", which is absolute BS when you consider how other Japanese authors are capable of breaking away from such a mentality.
You have characters like Alessa/Heather Mason in the Silent Hill series who not only served as the starting point of the franchise but also became a very competent protagonist in the 3rd game of the series. The character was even re-invented to create more depth in her psychology within the spin-off game "Silent Hill: Shattered Memories" where the twist relies on the fact that you weren't even playing as Harry Mason (her father) but rather as Cheryl-Heather Mason and how she perceived her own father.
Again, Bayonetta was brought up before, and for all the fetishistic elements implemented to her character, the fact remains that she maintains agency in the way she acts even with all her sexy flaunting.
This isn't limited to gaming, anime have also been capable of churning out female characters with great depth and personality without resorting to the kind of mistreatment that Kojima inflicts on his female characters.
Exactly this. Quiet by herself isn't inherently bad, heck she practically gets the most complete character arc in TPP. More than anything it's Kojima's fault for the plot contrivance that surrounds her needing to have less clothes, and in this regard it's more of an issue with the writer than necessarily the character itself. If Kojima were to truly believe in his contrived reasoning for her to dress that way, we shouldn't even have outfits like the Sniper Wolf costume or the XOF uniform if he was really being serious about her characterization.
People say that the criticism of a simple outfit is blowing things out of proportion, but this just trivializes everything that thee work is trying to convey be it through its writing or visual/artistic design. Even then, it's not just the outfit, rather it's a combination of various elements paired with the outfit that makes it a form of bad writing. As mentioned before, the camera angles, contradicting framing of making her tragically sympathetic while sexualizing her, and the forced plot contrivance that obviously puts her in that very specific situation. Pair that with the frequency of Kojima's misguided attempts of characterizing his other female characters and it becomes more jarring. Being a badass action girl doesn't excuse the kind of shoddy writing that Kojima implemented on her; in fact it only serves to hamper it.
Again, I love MGS and I think it's only fair to have a civil discussion about things that we think that worked or didn't. Honestly I think that Quiet's potential as a character was hampered by Kojima's handling than anything else. In this regard, I personally can't wait to unlock her XOF uniform for her to use.
There's a theory, and I'm not sure how much of it is true, that the writing for MGS became worse because Tomokazu Fukushima left. Fukushima left after MGS3, and that's when the depiction of female characters started to really suffer. Before then, the sexualization had been fairly tame (compared to MGS4-V). Fukushima also wrote Ghost Babel by himself. As far as I know, that game was one of the least sexualized out of the franchise.
Fukushima's input in writing was never made clear.
He wrote some of the codec scripts, the MGS1 mission-log and "In the Darkness of Shadow Moses", but he did it all under Kojima's supervision.
edit: in the writing-credits of MGSV GZ & TPP, there's a line between Kojima and Murata / Inamura which probably indicates that they only contributed things under Kojima's eyes and didn't have any creative input.
He wrote some of the codec scripts, the MGS1 mission-log and "In the Darkness of Shadow Moses", but he did it all under Kojima's supervision.
edit: in the writing-credits of MGSV GZ & TPP, there's a line between Kojima and Murata / Inamura which probably indicates that they only contributed things under Kojima's eyes and didn't have any creative input.
I've heard that explanation, but it seems like odd timing how the story quality began a sharp decline after Fukushima left. He did write Ghost Babel, which was more reflective of the games he worked on with Kojima. Which makes me wonder if they both didn't give each other ideas, and perhaps that's simply off the record information.