Topic: Hyrule Warriors (& Legends) - OT

Apparently people weren't too happy with the idea that her only starring role involves her abusing her emotions. Because you know, women can't do anything without getting emotional.

Also the central item, the vibe scepter.... Was a dubious idea at best. A scepter that generates vibes and makes people experience mood swings... The game makes it worse in the ending when they mention that if your mom suddenly goes happy for no reason, maybe the scepter is hidden around in your house.... Yeah...........

Meh, my complaint with it was that it's just too easy.

Lol, saying the Verge and Mary Sue reported on it anything that looks vaguely pro-woman is like saying Fox News reported on anything that looks vaguely pro-christianity. It's pretty much a tautology. These sites are all dogmatic trash.

I also don't buy this "portrayal of women in the media" thing. It's largely based on ignoring the actual data and cherry picking examples to fit with a predetermined conclusion (because when you've got thousands of examples to choose from, you can always come up with a list of 10 or 20 to make a point, it's a common flaw in human thinking called the "availability heuristic") So for example. Here's the list of all the top games of 2015: http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/year/a...
Go through the top 20 or 30. How many examples can you actually find of really bad portrayals of women in current games? I mean maybe you just have a much higher (or lower) standard than I do. But the only real example I could find in all of those games was Quiet from MGS 5, who was pretty ridiculous. Most of the rest of those games are pretty fine as far as I can tell.

@aaronishere, yeah, @morpheel pretty well covered it. Peach gets a starring role and her "powers" are her feelings. Because she's a woman. I don't think that would fly today.

But that's just it. I'm saying that the portrayal of women in media is a prevalent topic today, and Linkle hits on that. I'm not touting the virtues or pitfalls of either website, but sites like The Mary Sue exist and get attention because this is an issue that is important to people. It's part of the zeitgeist right now. To use your comparison, Fox News gets attention by tapping into the neo-conservative, Tea Bagging cretinism that is also part of the zeitgeist right now.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you "don't buy this 'portrayal of women in the media' thing."

Are you saying you don't notice that there's been a greater movement toward analysis and more positive representation these past few years? I feel as though I hardly need to justify that one — whether it's Feminist Frequency, Linkle or the gamut of reactions to something like Mad Max: Fury Road, it's out there pretty clearly.

If you're saying you don't think it's an issue at all I'm pretty surprised. You don't think video games have, historically, catered to the lens of the heterosexual male? I say as a heterosexual male that it has been, in the past, pretty staggeringly obvious. I can't really believe that you'd say that this perception is strictly due to the availability heuristic.

Now, I see that you're pointing toward this year's games, and I would absolutely agree that things have improved (I do think there's still room to grow — there are only seven different titles in that Metacritic top 10, and there's certainly been some debate on this issue regarding at least three of them). I actually think what you're saying about modern games lends credence to my whole point here: this has become a spotlight issue for people, and video game makers are, at least somewhat, adapting. All I'm saying, in a long-winded way, is that Linkle smartly (and, I think, positively) struck on that chord.

Granted, we are talking about Koei-Tecmo here, so Christ knows how this will all turn out.

I disagree with the solution to have strong female characters is to simpy change the gender of strong male characters in games like Linkle or hide the fact the main character in a movie is female like Mad Max and would much rather see a strong female character in her own right but then again I really don't care.

I agree with basically everything you said.

I do agree that you have to approach it on a case-by-case basis. In this case, though, they're not changing the gender of Link; Link is still Link, and Linkle is Linkle. They appear to be separate people. As I said above, I think it would work beautifully if Linkle was "the chosen hero" in one of the numerous Zelda timelines that Hyrule Warriors celebrates. But we really have no idea how she'll be handled at this point. All we know is that she lives with chickens.

From what I have seen, even though Linkle started as just that- link in a dress, she has evolved into a character of her own for her upcoming HW debut. Even her design has been changed from her original concept art to look a lot less like him and she will have an actual role in the story.

Still, I wish they had created a nicer name for her.

Linkle talks in the game, so that already is a huge difference. I wish they didn't keep the name Linkle.

Yeah, "Linkle" is not a good name. I'm waiting for Linkle & Tingle's Tag Team Ruby Adventure with that name.

@VelvetElvis: That would be fantastic, another Tingle game and NoA should release the DS ones that already exist on Wii U VC.

Linkle is cool. I like the design, iffy on the name. But I feel annoyed anyway, because it feels so forced. I suppose it was a bit too late to let this happen naturally though after recently where people have begged more for this than ever before. I also hope it works out though, I'd feel pretty bad if she fell flat and people were unhappy about this.

@Grumblevolcano: Beautiful notion, but that would require NoA to release Virtual Console games.

I would've never guessed linkle's moveset was based on link's crossbow training... Though now it seems obvious...

OH MY dancing JESUS HE IS ERROR.

I am error confirmed?

Has it been said what content from the Wii U version and the DLC will be included in the 3DS version?

From what I understand, all the DLC from the Wii U version will be included in this version.

You seem to be saying because some people care about something, that automatically makes them right or makes it a genuine issue. Well people in Salem cared about witches. People aren't smart! Most people do absolutely zero fact-checking when they hear something that confirms their biases (looking at you, Rolling Stone)

Historically, yes. I'm talking about today though.

Yes, I agree there's been a lot of noise made it about in recent years. I think what I'm saying is that I'm skeptical how much of that noise is based on actual data and how much is based on blind ideology people learnt in gender studies classes. (my main suspicion coming from the fact that they people who make the noise seem to be allergic to statistics)

So there are plenty of examples that I think could illustrate what I mean. So after E3 2014, lots of the progressive media sites, like the ones you mentioned, wrote articles saying E3 lacked female characters. Then after E3 2015, a lot of them wrote the exact opposite and claimed that finally E3 was finally looking to help promote female representation. (I can collect the many sources for that if you're skeptical, there were about 10 sites that wrote this though). They didn't provide evidence for the claims either time.
Well, luckily there are a lot of very analytical and sober people on the internet who've looked into this. If you actually crunch the data on the games presented at E3 2014 and E3 2015, the number of games with female characters was almost identical each time. In other words, the people who wrote those articles were hunting witches in Salem.

As a separate question of "do I think there are any problems with the portrayal of women in the media"? Yes, there are some. One for example that I think IS probably supported by the data is that female characters are generally given a shorter lifespan than male characters in most visual mediums. In other words, you're more likely to find an old man as a main character than an old woman. I haven't actually done a proper analysis to demonstrate that, but I would put money on it being true.

Sorry about the "dancing," @morpheel. The possibility of seeing Error again brought the sailor's mouth out. Will keep it clean in the future.

I said nothing of the sort. I identified the topic of the portrayal of women in media as a prevalent part of the current zeitgeist. I certainly did not say that being part of the zeitgeist makes something innately positive (as evidenced by my Fox News comparison). More than that, I specifically stated "I'm not touting the virtues or pitfalls of either site," in regards to The Mary Sue and The Verge.

Now, I do personally think that the issue's move into the spotlight is by and large positive, which is something I also stated. Women make up nearly half of the gaming population, for one thing — I absolutely think it's positive and important to make sure they're represented thoughtfully and fairly, especially for young women.

I do feel that, as is the case with virtually any popular movement, you get some less-than-great side effects (in this case, hypersensitivity, faux outrage, and unnecessary pandering are a few of them, and I can do without those). But on the whole, yeah, I do feel that it's a conservation that needs to be as popular as it is, and that it ultimately yields good things.

The Salem witch hunt comparison is vast in its irony.

Well, we agree that the issue has been problematic historically, and that there are still some problems today (as you mentioned with the portrayal of older women — I'd say that's true). So is it bad that there is, as you say, noise being made today? I'm not saying all of the noise is spot-on, but you've got to make noise to address issues.

(As a side note, I don't think gender studies classes are the problem, seeing as less than one percent of college students take them...)

Now, I have to take issue here. You talk about not providing evidence and being allergic to statistics, without providing either. To be fair, I do recall some of the coverage you mention, but I find it hard to believe that roughly 10 sites provided no evidence to support claims on either side for two years running. I also don't think the simple number of women in games compared to the number of men in games is at the heart of the issue.

Of course, you absolutely have the right to be skeptical; skepticism is often wise. I suppose what gets to me, or what inspires me to write the essays I've written on the these forums today (believe it or not, this is the first time I've poured out on this issue at all), is that I don't understand what would motivate your skepticism in this case.

To explain, we agree that there have been issues and that things are getting better, but you seem to want to downplay this as an issue, or at least paint it as an issue that's been blown out of proportion. And that's alright, but my question is: why? If there are problematic gender issues, what good does it do to be dismissive here? I mean, where do we say, "alright, we fixed it — moving on, now"?

Granted, I'm channeling some of my experiences today, so I apologize if my points seem aggressive or my posts excessive; I'm new to the forum — and have been excited to participate — but between this and the Xenoblade X thread, I've already seen a surprising amount of users get indignant over social progressiveness today, and it has been quite the disappointment.

If just seems odd to me that there's still so much flak from gamers directed at the issue of gender and social progressiveness in games. I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said thousands of times, but it sure seems that the reaction itself lends some credence to the narrative.

So, uh, how bout that Linkle?