Square Enix Tells SJWs To Shut Up With Final Fantasy XV The merits of an all-male cast

Square Enix recently asked gamers for feedback regarding the Final Fantasy XV demo. While there were the usual complaints about the controls, camera, angle and general gameplay, it would seem that players in Europe thought that a supporting character named Cindy was a bit too sexy for their taste.

Hajime Tabata, FFXV’s director, is defending the character design, stating that Cindy was designed by male developers. Tabata also stated that Cindy was never supposed to be a sexualized character, but an outgoing character. While Cindy is certainly showing some skin, she’s nowhere near the most scantily-clad woman in the Final Fantasy franchise.

Why bother complaining? What I find weird is that this all happened following the Protein World incident. What might come to some surprise is that this complaint is coming from Europe and not the Americas. At least North America is concerned with voice acting.

Bro-Quest

Cindy’s attire wasn’t the only major complaint about the game so far. Hajime Tabata has taken some flak for comments regarding FFXV’s all-male cast in an interview with GameSpot.

Speaking honestly, an all-male party feels almost more approachable for players. Even the presence of one female in the group will change their behaviour, so that they’ll act differently. So to give the most natural feeling, to make them feel sincere and honest, having them all the same gender made sense in that way,

It’s that first line that has some SJW types (and by that I mean The Mary Sue) all riled up. What Tabata is trying to say is that men do in fact act differently in the presence of women. By keeping the party homogeneous, the characters feel more comfortable with expressing aspects of their personalities that they would otherwise not want women to see. Tabata further clarified this statement when speaking to GameSpot:

The world might be ready to see the curtain lifted on what boys do when girls aren’t around, when they come out of the tent all prim and proper. That’s kind of the idea behind it… we think, male or female player, that everyone will feel a certain connection and bond with the four characters.

While I’ll admit that as a man that’s not something I’ve thought of, for obvious reasons of course, it’s still an interesting decision from a storytelling standpoint. Storytelling is, of course, always Square Enix’s first priority when making games. If Tabata feels that this is best for the story, then the all-male cast is nothing to worry about.

However, this is the first time that Final Fantasy has had an all-male cast. For the most part, each Final Fantasy game has always had a pretty mixed cast with a couple of exceptions, such as the all-female cast of Final Fantasy X-2. Complaining about gender representation is bit moot in regards to Final Fantasy.

For critics calling this game a sausage fest: first, refer to what I said about Cindy earlier. Second, there are a couple of articles on Return of Kings I will refer you to. Both Reaxxion founder Roosh V and Return of Kings wrtiter Tony Moze have discussed the merits of sausage fests. As for the lack of eye candy, I’m sure there still some other female characters besides Luna or Cindy that Noctis and company will run into, just don’t expect to see a lot of them.

Final Fantasy XV has been in development for nearly a decade and is expected to hit PS4 and Xbox One fairly soon. Currently, a demo for FFXV has been released with Final Fantasy Type-0.

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