-Fares

Disclaimer: I only played Tomb Raider for the Prince of Persia-like gameplay, not anything else. I did not play any of the sequels. I am not making any of this up.

Personally, I'm a big fan of flamboyant and mystical character designs. They help convey the message that these characters and the land (region of space, alternate dimension, whatever) they come from is apart and alien to our hum-drum world. I think a lot of people will agree, it's amusing and entertaining to see people doing things, such as fighting, in clothes and outfits that would never, ever be practical for anything of the sort. Legend of Mana's Elazul is a good example of this. It's a wonder he can even walk with all that cape and headgear, yet he manages to be a deadly swordsman. This also helps support the feel of being far removed from reality. Most of the games wherein I particularly enjoyed the character designs (such as Chrono Trigger, and Xenogears) had fairly impractical and/or unlikely appearances. Finally, because a large amount of a character's personality and mindset is (often, not always) tied into the way the character looks/dresses, it helps us to feel that the characters are truly the heroes the game makes them, above and beyond "normal" people.

Super Saiya-jin.

I love all female character designs. I can't help it.

-Katie-

P.S. Oh yes, sorry for warping you for life. This thought is guaranteed to change the way you look at Tifa, Yuffie, Rosa, Rydia, Ayla (well, it won't really *change* the way you look at her, but oh well), Lenna (and Faris, in some of those outfits), most of the cast of Chrono Cross, all those people in Legend of Dragoon that I only played partway through the first disk, Rinoa, Selphie, Riesz, and Celes. Now I'm through rambling my insane thoughts. I hope.

1: Akira Toriyama. All of his drawings look the same. ALL of them. And the person he draws looks stupid. The only good thing I've seen him do was Chrono Trigger (which was fantastic), but a one-hit wonder doesn't deserve as much patronage as he gets.

2: Tetsuya Nomura. All of his drawings look the same, and even worse than Toriyama's. I'm sick of that Japanese boy band wash out we keep seeing from him, and Square's insistence on using him recently instead of Yoshitaka Amano is baffling. It's like choosing Pantera over Bach. Or KISS (which sounds like Christian rock, for fsck's sake) over Uematsu.

I am a bitter, bitter man.

- Zen

I had to respond to the following, as my credibility seems at stake:Because of this egregious inaccuracy, I also find Reitz' statistic that only 60% of the population are functionally illiterate. Try like 5%. I've never seen any statistic list american literacy below 90%. Be skeptical of everything you read (including this).

Mr. Pilky is correct, I was wrong, the actual CURRENT literacy rate is around 51% of the American population, not 60% as I reported. My information was some 15 years out of date, so I decided to verify it. Here is one of many links relating to this topic, in this case the text of the overview of the National Center for Education Statistics study on literacy for December 1993.

http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/Report2/REP15-01.HTM

15 years ago, indeed the number was actually above 60%, clearly there has been some improvement, though apparently, literacy is dropping once again.

Lastly, yes, my statement about 'Coffee Table Books' was indeed sarcasm representing crap, crap such as, in point of fact, books on diet, and anything recommended by ridiculous television celebrities. Sarcasm, I might point out, is a form of humor dependent on abstract, higher brain functioning. I submit that reading dieting books may not be the most efficient way to achieve this lofty goal.

Jennifer Diane Reitz
UnicornJelly.com

AHHHHH! I hate it when people say this. It makes it seem as if there was some mythical "literate" age when duck farmers went around quoting Socrates and read obscure Greek writers in their spare time. We probably are more literate now than ever before, the only difference is that the no one used to expect the unwashed masses to dirty the hallowed halls of learning with their presence. Our expectations have been increased, which is a good thing. However, many people think that historically people were more learned than they are now, forgetting that the history books only showcase at the top two percent of the population which had the leisure time and resources to devote to study. The success of books like "Thin Thighs in 30 Days " and all those other bestsellers are indicative of the fact that literacy has finally reached the masses instead of just the elite. We have more leisure time and literacy (in developed countries) now than in any other historical age. In other words, we're living in the literate age now. I'm not saying that there isn't room for improvement, but don't look to the past to provide the blueprint for success.

Washington Irving , realizing that this is completely off topic and sounds vaguely like Marxist propaganda.

P.S. That thing about Princess Jemmy really depressed me. I like to live under the illusion that everything is sweetness and light within the sacred gates of the GIA. Thanks for shattering a poor innocent's dreams.

Jennifer Diane Reitz's argument that RPG players tend to, on the whole, be more intelligent than other gamers is invalidated not so much by her overstating illiteracy rates (the rate of functional illiteracy in this country is much lower, at about 28%, or 60+ million people), or by her statement that people buy mostly coffee table fodder (I find most contemporary novels light reading, for example, but that may or may not mean I'm a typical reader, that's all).

Where she does go wrong is in her underlying assumption that literacy, or knowing how to read, implies intellectual capability. Intellectual prowess may be correct, but intellectual capability certainly isn't. Many use the words 'intelligence' and 'knowledge' as if they were interchangeable, though they are not. It is possible to be an intelligent person and be functionally illiterate. Just because one has the potential for intellectual prowess, it does not mean that said person would be compelled to, or have the means to actualize said potential. If you would, literacy rates go pretty much hand in hand with relative poverty rates. Most people living in relative poverty (i.e., persons who barely earn enough to satisfy basic needs) are concentrated in urban areas; functional illiteracy also follows that pattern. I'm not going to argue that either caused the other (it's likely they're two results that obtain from the same cause).

What's more, I tend to agree with Drew that the preference towards reading text is just that, a preference, not a measure of intelligence per se. I've known plenty of people throughout college whose time was wholly absorbed in the fine arts. They were comparably as smart, if not smarter, than a literature-oriented crowd. Likewise, I know people who object to playing RPGs as a waste of time, preferring to read actual books instead, but have no qualms playing games in other genres.

Princess Jemmy

P.S.: I'm going to pretend you didn't call me a harridan, but only this once. >_<

The issue of character models is a bit of a double-edged sword, really. On the one hand, the level of detail we get nowadays is (surprise!) amazingly better than that of generations past, which means this: heroes get to look nifty! A picture's worth a thousand words, right? With modern character models, the designers' image of the character is presented immediately, and with a visual flair completely unavailable to 8-bit and 16-bit RPGs, and in many cases, even to modern PC games like Baldur's Gate and Diablo. I know a lot of detail was put into the creation of those characters, but they're so small on the screen, I feel much of it is lost. Not so with Tidus and Yuna: we may not know much more about them than what Square tells us, but we certainly know they're colorful and complex in design. While this might not be a pro in and of itself, detailed character design can add that third dimension to more archetypal characters, delineating them from the stereotypes they were born in. Of course, that runs the risk of making a new stereotype of its own, the Colorful Variation on a Traditional Theme. But maybe I'm just rambling.

The problems with character design, at least that I see, are twofold. First, as Tomb Raider shows us, a game can be developed around and make money solely off of a single character design, and I doubt that's a good thing. If games of this sort keep getting produced, I would guess it will be much harder to find games of greater substance, if only because of the larger pool to slog through. Second, there's the culture problem. Among many gamers I know, their seems to be a tendency prefer the distinctly "American" character design - muscled, square-jawed, the sort of guy you expect to see in action movies; more "Japanese" designs, whatever that may mean, are uniformly shunned. I won't even go into the issue of female character models, since I think they are mostly covered with my first point.

I think I've said all I'm going to say on that subject. Sorry for the sporadic letter; I can't have had more than five hours of sleep in the last three days.

Abundantly Obsequious,

Jason Love

I'm glad you bought this topic up, gives me another chance to dirt American art. Anyhow, just so you know, I'm an avid anime fan, an otaku--which I typo a while back and was sarcastically poke fun of by you for some reason--if you will, and thus, I tend to look down on American art as being vastly inferior. Now, I don't know if you may agree with me here when I say American art flatout sucks, but I've noticed that you, as an American person and a journalist, tend to be a bit bias toward Anime recently. Well such biases are perfectly understandable, but, frankly, uncall for. Let's be honest here, you know as well as I do that Americans can't draw damnit, and I'll even go so far as willing to bet an arm and a leg that if and when it comes down to what you'd prefer overall, I'll say it's a good chance you'd sway over the doujin manga pendulem rather than the crappyass, "The Uncanny X-men", or whatever the hell the current incarnation of that horrible series is now, am I right? Anyway, with this cynic art bashing and personal taste analyzing aside, my favorite character designer in a videogame/anime has to be, Kunihiko Tanaka--past work includes all time favorite Xenogears and some very obscure anime I'm sure no one has heard of outside of Japan. I tend to prefer his style due mainly to the fact that he can capture the emotion into his characters in a somewhat subtle fantasy but also realistic way. Well that about concludes this letter. Good day sir.

yours cruelly,
-Weltall, whose isn't sure if copying puns is considered infrinement

When I look at a chara design, the first thing that comes to my mind is the art itself. The art has to look remotely pleasing. When I looked at Nomura's art for FF7 and FF8 the first time it was nice, and it piqued my curiosity about the game. As seen by my reactions below:

First look at Cloud: Cute. Play game.
First Look at Squall: Even Cuter. Play game.
First look at Tidus: Run for life.

How in the world can I get excited about FF10 if Tidus freaks me out (never mind that I'm a girl; I have my prettyboy standards)?

Ever read Saga Frontier 2's Perfect Works? At the back of the book they had these big stylistic sketches that match the game's sprites: Big simple details with funky limbs. There's really no big determining factor for liking the chara designs; either it catches you the first time, or it grows onto you.

And Akihiko Yoshida's art style is the best, no question. One look at Sydney made me wait for the game.

And yes, we need stupid clothes like Ashley Riot's and Sydney's and the whole FFT cast. Last thing I want is my stupid-looking hero wearing overalls with bermuda shorts with hair that easily looks dyed.DMJ.