What I Hate About You: Heroes

Posted by John De Large on 12.28.2008

John De Large's brand new feature article where we pick apart everyone's favorite heroes and bed their women!

Long before the age of the fabled Ninja Turtle Mutagen Pies and even long before the time of our fathers and grandfathers, heroes were looked up to. Back then, heroes were defined as demigods, humans who'd been imbued with power because Mom had gotten knocked up by Zeus (ie: Hercules). These heroes would perform great feats of strength or miracles in the name of all that was good.

Sometime later the term was deemed fit for anyone that would uphold virtues, protect the weak and perform selfless acts of heroism. Even later in life barbarians, muscle men, cowboys, knights and spaceman were used to represent heroes as their occupations put them in a position to save lives and help others. Much later, those who were not heroes, but wanted to live out a heroic fantasy, could play video games to live out their fantasies, even if it was only in 8 bits.

Then, along the way all the heroic stories began to blend together, heroes began to look like one another, as if all relatives from the same inbred family. They all use swords and even scarier, as time went on they started to all conform to the idea that puberty or post-puberty is the best time to save the world.

These days, mainstream RPG's are dominated by children who can cut down hordes of grunts with swords eight times their size. Are these game companies trying to beat into our heads a subliminal message that anyone can save the world? Even kids? I dunno what the message is, but it definitely pisses me off.

Heroes of mainstream gaming, today I turn my sword (And it is ALWAYS fucking swords!) on you:

This Is What I Hate About You.

What I Hate About The Hero
Nowadays, it's almost a pre-requisite that the hero look like a girl, an effeminate pansy or a weakling prepubescent child before he can proceed to save the world.

EXHIBIT A: CLOUD STRIFE



Since Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, Cloud Strife has never looked so much like a cheap tart. I'm serious! In this version of FF7 he has soft feathery blonde hair, fair skin and pouty lips. If he had a pink dress, I'm positive there'd be a certain swarthy Italian plumber looking to save him from getting raped at the hands of a dinosaur.

What's that? You're telling me that Cloud doesn't look like a girl in the original FF7? You're going to tell me that you can't tell how feminine he looks based on the games AWFUL, HORRENDOUS, BLOCKY graphics?



Cloud Strife looks so much like a girl that he spends half an hour to an hour (time varies depending on skill level and how perverted the gamer is) in drag. What's more is that no one thinks "Gee, this guy in girls clothing must think we're stupid to not notice what he's doing." No! Quite the opposite! Everyone in sight hits on him and offers him sweeties and lap rides. If that's not the creators admitting that their hero is meant to look like a woman, then what the eff is it?

Going off on a tangent, I wonder what it says about all of the males in the FF7 universe? Sure Cloud looks enough like a ho, but to notice Cloud over the busty, magnificent, exquisite Tifa? I can understand a guy passing over Aeris, that broad looks like an orangutang. I don't care how passable Cloud is, what kind of male population would skip Tifa's sweater cows and go straight to Cloud? What kind of interests would someone like that even have?

Oh, right. That makes sense. Let's move on.

EXHIBIT B: SQUALL
Next on the list is FF8, the game that takes several night courses and a college degree to figure out. I never understood the GF system, that shit's so complicated you need MapQuest to navigate that fucking thing.



Sorry, back on track, let's take a look at Squall Leonheart.



Wait, Leonheart? Yes, that's the name that was picked for him. Why not just name him Hero McWarrior or Chester McSwordswing? Add some moody tendencies, schizophrenic outbursts in Disc 1, his crazy psychotropic dreams and fainting bullshit, emo kid act and.... holy shit! You've got another cookie cutter hero just like Cloud, brought to you by Squaresoft. Yeah, I know I proclaimed my love for Square here and everywhere else, but these days Square is like your best friend after he starts hanging out with his girlfriend all the time and letting the bitch call the shots. It's like you get together once a while to have fun, but it's you don't have as much fun as you used to. Whenever he tries to impress you it doesn't work. Whenever he has something to say, you can't listen. Square-Enix is like that guy.

Ah well, at least they gave Squall a cool looking sword.



EXHIBIT C: ZIDANE
My vote for worst hero ever goes to Zidane of Final Fantasy 9! I've never played FF9, although I picked it up at the local Play N Trade by me (Thumbs up! Cheap pop!) after listening to over 9000 recommendations. Zidane, if you've never seen him, looks like a androgynous cat.... thing. It's disgusting and if my friend Freddie hadn't told me he was a guy, I would've thought he was a 3rd gender altogether. Take a look for yourself.



Freddie has also dropped some more knowledge on me, apparently there's a scene where Zidane and the iconic faceless Black Mage play swords.

Yeah, you know, dueling with your pee streams?!

Ew. Ewwwww. Eeeeewwwwwww. That's so gross it's worse than the girls who write yaoi fanfiction and insist on having -kun or -chan latched onto their name. I wish I had some DO NOT WANT stamps for everything I just described.


Yeah, that'll do.

I don't know who finds Zidane relatable, but I hope it's not anyone I know. He looks disgusting, his name sounds dumb and while I've yet to play FF9, I'm willing to bet Zidane has nothing relevant to say.

EXHIBIT D: TIDUS
Time to bring up FF10. FF10 has seventeen year old Tidus and several other children who are babysat by much better developed characters (like a tiger-man and the living dead) with much better voice actors (ie: John DiMaggio). Tidus, the game's hero, is an insufferable little shit to say the least. He whines, he cries, he has dumb hair and has issues with his daddy. If it wasn't for the bright clothes, he'd be a token emo kid.

Also, he has an inappropriate sense of humor.



Yeah, I really want this psycho in charge of saving the planet. Can I see the meeting where everyone in FF10 drew straws to see who was in charge? How come we didn't get to see that cut scene where everyone draws names out of a hat see who gets what chore? Because that's the only way I can envision the group making Tidus the leader while Auron and his awesome sword got stuck doing dishes.

And if I may go off on a tangent, why is Tidus hung up on Yuna anyhow? Give me Lulu any day.



EXHIBIT E: LINK
Don't think that Final Fantasy is the only franchise to have heroes with an offensive appearance. Heroes have been made a little too unbelievable since the dawn of the RPG, starting with everyone's favorite action RPG hero (well, not mine) Link.


Ew. Just what is that with the thing covering his....? Ugh.

With his long blond hair, boyish looks and his diminutive physique (depending on if he goes into any temples or not) Link is a pedophiles dream come true. Luckily for Link, seedy looking vans and pedophiles don't exist in the land of Hyrule. Well, Ganondorf looks fairly shady with his male pattern baldness, but that's about as close to a rapist as you'll get in Hyrule. If they did exist, Link would be FUCKED. I wonder how many hearts rape takes off your life bar?



I don't know how Link has earned the cult following that he has. He's mute, so it's not like he says anything witty, he's a little kid half the time, so it's not like he's this bad-ass world beater and whenever he is doing massive damage, it's because he has the Master Sword (ALWAYS swords!) or one of it's stronger cousins. As far as Link games go, they can all go piss off.... except for Link To The Past, that's some good gaming right there. Even Mom approves and has beaten Link To The Past a dozen times.

EXHIBIT F: KAIM
Long flowing hair, pouty lips, bedroom eyes, yup, it's another hero from an RPG.



This guy hails from Lost Odyssey, a game from Microsoft but influenced by Hironobu Sakaguchi (the man behind Final Fantasy). Guess what Kaim's problem is?

Go on, guess!

He's a moody amnesiac: a moody ETERNAL amnesiac who happens to be 1000 years old. He has these dramatic pauses where his life's memories come rushing back to him, usually while you're en route to do something cool or ogle one of the female leads. It's strange how Lost Odyssey holds you in place to distract you from it's gorgeous visuals or awesome boss battles with it's TEXT. This game will keep you reading with it's mountains and moutains of TEXT if you aren't quick to hit that B button. As if there weren't enough brooding in the cut scenes, they had to jam some more emo bullshit into these long drawn out essays with ambience and new-age screensavers in the back.

Y'know what? It's not just Kaim, the whole game seems to have feminine men. Kaim looks like a girl and all of the male characters I've met have some womanly quality to them. Jansen, quite possibly the funniest character in a long time, wears lipstick and makeup. There isn't a lot of lipstick and make up, but coupled with his dress and hair, he looks like Kefka after waking up in the morning. The general is another fruit-loop, wearing a tiara-thing and eye-liner. I dunno, I guess Sakaguchi was listening to a lot of Culture Club or something prior to the development of this game.

Damn it, I like Lost Odyssey, I really do, but it tries my patience sometimes.

AND ONE MORE THING...
What's with the swords? It's always swords with these guys!






Apparently someone decided that swords and swordplay is what makes you a righteous hero or qualifies you to be the nemesis to a righteous hero. Cracked.com made the statement that you could find the hero in a fantasy video game or an RPG by looking for the guy with the sword, then you could find his arch nemesis by looking for the other guy with a sword. I couldn't have stated it better myself.

And it's always some magical sword that only a hero of ultimate worth or holy bloodline can wield (I'm looking at you Zelda franchise, Lufia 1 and 2 and both Fables!). Master swords, swords from crazy foreign materials, swords of legendary power, swords that have been around forever, always with the crazy swords!

One of the many reasons I love Final Fantasy 6 is because FF6 had Illumina, the mightiest, most awesome, sword ever. With an attack rating of 255 and the random chance of casting a Holy spell known as Pearl, Illumina exploded faces all over the place. Did you ever hear about it in game? No! There was not even a hint as to it's existence. You had to get another sword, bet it in the game's coliseum, win a fight that you have no control over, then you'd get it and hope it's awesome power wasn't too much to handle.

Y'know what else? Another of my favorite games, Final Fantasy Tactics never made a big fuss about an End-All sword either. To get the best weapon in FFT, you had to find a special dungeon either on accident or through word of mouth. Once there, you had to dig around on your hands in knees in complete darkness and if you got lucky, then you might get the strongest weapon, The Chaos Blade. Chaos Blade or any other weapon for that matter, was never fussed over (except for a pistol, which was alien technology to Ivaliceans). Y'know what? I'd impressed by a gun too, if everyone was packing swords. I'd buy 8 guns and shoot the swordsmen and mages in the face with each gun once for good measure.

These game allow you to decide for yourself what the most powerful weapon is. While it is inevitably a sword, it doesn't have to be.

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
You know which game gets a pass on having a little kid for a hero?



Earthbound is so completely quirky and absurd that it can't be hated on. Just look at it! Haven't played it? Get an emulator and get to steppin'!

You know what? I feel generous. I'm willing to hand out another pass, this time to Illusion of Gaia.



These little kids scurrying across the planet are Will and Kara. These two kids and at least 3 other children travel all around a messed up version of Earth in what appears to be the sixteenth century. One kid gets eaten by a whale and then later fused with said whale, another kid finds out his parents have been offed by demons and the main hero gets scurvy while stranded at sea. At the halfway point of the game, everyone survives on mushrooms and plants found in the ground while walking from one end of the world to the other. I don't think anyone got high from the mushrooms, but during this part of the game the kids communicate with the whale boy through morse code.

Yes, the whale used morse code. This game was pretty trippy. It's worth a play through though, if you've never played it.

WHAT I WOULDN'T HATE
Some heroes that actually look like they can take care of themselves. If the planet's needs saving (and it always does), then I want a hero that I think will do the job. No whiny priss bags, no emo kids, no children, no amnesiacs and no baggage allowed! The men need to look and act like men and not be pre-occupied with some backstory bullshit, give the hero a conflict that happens in the now, not some tacked on cliched bullshit from when he was in diapers.

Also, the next time the Final Fantasy developmental team is putting together a game, how about they slap a beard onto the male protagonist? Make him 6'8" and give him a shiv or a gun, maybe a rocket launcher. Hell, give him a wrench. The wed thud of a wrench against another player in Team Fortress 2 is always pretty sickening so I can't see why it wouldn't rock just as hard in other games.

For a change of pace, make him fight every battle bare handed. There's nothing manlier than icing someone/something with your own barehands. Make the hero a bit of an oaf, or an everyman. Give him some aesthetic deficiencies, gamers will relate to that. Give the hero lots of flaws, nothing fatal, but something that would come with the territory of being a hero, give him a God complex or make him a womanizer. Heroes tend to see a lot of bloodshed despite being women, emos and children, why not make a hero who's always drunk so he tries to forget what he's seen and done, but he can't? That would be different.

If all else fails, make a game about this guy:


Now that's manly!

SPECIAL BONUS FUN TIME GAME!
My editor suggested I add something special at the end of my column, like a Top 5 list or something.

Since there's already a Top 10 list (ok, several of them) floating around on 411, I present something completely different: The Game of F*ck, Marry, Kill.

For anyone that wants to play, the rules are simple! I will name three women and you simply pick which one you'd sleep with, which one you'd marry and which one you'd kill. Since this is a games column and I brought up Tifa, I'm going to make the those three women...


Tifa


Aeris


And Yuffie!

WAYS TO PLAY!
You can use as few words as possible:
F*ck this one
Marry that one
Kill her

You can be give reasons:
F*ck her 'cuz (yadayadayada)
Marry her 'cuz (raddaraddaradda)
Kill her 'cuz (blahblahblah)

Or you can give a detailed account:
(Please don't)

So now that we've covered the rules, I'm signing out. I'm John De Large and that's What I Hate About You.

Screenshots
All 1 Final Fantasy VII Screenshots

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