wowee, I have been gone a long time. I just could not think of anything interesting to write about.
But today that has changed. I want to talk about my least favorite female character in, ironically, my favorite video game of all time: Skies of Arcadia: Legends. This character is one you meet pretty late in the game, and her name is Princess Moegi.
Now, up until you run into this useless chick, all the women in the game are amazing. Aika, the sidekick to our hero Vyse, is brilliant. She is smart, funny, and a capable fighter. Her hair is ridiculous, and she wears tiny shorts, but she isn’t sexualized. She’s just your female friend who hits things with her giant boomerang. Fina is rescued from the bad guys by the two of you during the tutorial dungeon. She’s unconscious when you find her but when she woke up for me the first time I was in love. She’s a sweet, innocent girl who set out to save the world with no one but her polymorphous pet blob, Cupil. She doesn’t know much about the real world but she isn’t annoying with her inquiries. Initially she is surprised that you would risk so much to help her, but quickly becomes willing to do the same. Plus, she has very powerful magic. Even the villainous Belliza is cooler than Moegi, even though she tricked me and is incredibly difficult to fight.
Now, Moegi is not even a fighter character, she is a crew member. And that means if you put her in the active roster on your ship, she can create a magic barrier for one turn, using ten SP (Spirit Points). It isn’t very useful though. That isn’t the reason I despise her, though. You and your crew show up to Yafutoma, and she and Enrique instantly fall in love, and then later she helps you escape from a fight you could easily win. Yipee, super useful. I hate her because she is literally only around to advance the plot and give Enrique an artificial love affair. That’s it, she doesn’t help you fight like her brother and until you came along she was just sitting around doing whatever her father said while her brother had been exiled and was fighting a revolution. She is a pointless character. She doesn’t even have an interesting personality. She is bland, boring, and useless. Moegi literally adds nothing to the story as a whole. If she didn’t exist the story would not perceptively change, except for the end scene. I really don’t appreciate characters like her.
And up until recently I think the Zelda series suffered from this. For instance, Ilia in Twilight Princess. She is easily the most annoying character in a Zelda game. She steals your horse, verbally abuses Link and her own father, berates you before knowing the whole story on why the WORK HORSE has a teeny, tiny scratch on her leg. Hint: you jump over a fence with her while saving the village children from monsters. And then, she goes and gets kidnapped and you end up having to save the entire world because Link is dumb and in love with her. Now, it is not entirely her fault, but I dislike her enough to put the blame on her. And of course after she loses her memory she becomes a much more likable person.
Basically what I’m getting at is that games need to stop using female characters as love interest characters that only serve to advance the plot of the game. It isn’t interesting, and they end up either having terrible personalities or being cardboard.
Have a lovely evening,
Caitlin
What's in a Game? 