"Fighting Mother"
 

An archetype not used a lot. It brought up some interesting things. I'm liking The Escapist a lot:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...r-Space-Marine

I don't believe this coincides with the Gaming Writing thread, but it is a lot of developers that haven't shown how a kickass female can really change how we view females. Lara does it for the adventure. Samus does it because it's her job. Jade did it for a story. I wonder if we'll ever see it done quite like like Ripley did it?

You saying we need something like Jane Nukem?

I would play that... I wonder what stupid corny lives she'd have... "I hope you like high heels, cuz I'm about to plant mine in your ass!" or "You messed up my make-up! Here, let me help you with yours!" Then she shoots the monster in the face.

You know that is exactly what Jane Nukem would be like.

XD

Not necessarily. The articles is more or less showing how everything from Aliens was used except for Ripley herself, from movies to games such as Starcraft to Gears of War, it's amazing how people forget that Ripley was pretty bad ass and she was never a Marine herself.

...Is that supposed to sound bad? Because it actually sounds like a decent taunt.

Honestly, the whole "how will boys feel?" part is just...Agh. As long as the games don't get overly sexist, the sex of the character you play doesn't really matter so much ( Examples include Metroid, Beyond Good and Evil, the Elder Scroll series, I guess Kirby too, since he doesn't exactly seem to have a specific sex...Contrast with Duke Nukem, Super Princess Peach and such ). Hope this new protagonist is something like Prier from La Pucelle Tactics but older since Prier is like...16? I don't think anyone wants to play a game where the protagonist is young and just "suffered" teen pregnancy.

I wanted to try and come up with a Duke Nukem-esque taunt while trying to make it sound slightly sexist, because most of the taunts would be based around her gender because they are being "NEW AND COOL" with making that kind of game, but a girl.

If it sounds like a good taunt, perhaps I am accidently brilliant at Goddammit-o'clock in the morning.

Do want more of this, but what I get from the article isn't that we need a Jane Nukem, or even a female character at all, we just need games that make the player want to fight for something. Most sci-fi actions come across as "Yeah, you're a space marine, there are aliens, row row, fight da power, for humanitee!"

Basically you're fighting because you're a soldier, there are aliens, and you're expected to fight. I guess you could say that saving humanity is pretty driving, after all, someone has to do it from time to time... Yet, it's nothing personal. You're totally cool in combat, killing alien after alien, thinking "When will these guys end so I can get to the next checkpoint?" There really isn't any incentive to fight harder, except maybe score or ensuring all five nameless guys in Bravo team don't die so you get the achievement.

How then, do we get the player to care? Things need to be personal.

The article basically goes into maternal protection of a child, which is an incredibly powerful driving emotion, but it isn't necessarially the only way. You need to build up a character the player empathises with, considers a friend, ally, and then put them in very significant, very real danger and make the player save them. Or avenge them... One of those. You have to know each and every one of the guys in Bravo Team, who have their own personalities and backgrounds, and such to really care what happens to them.

Only game that has made me feel this way for awhile has been Fallout 3, because... I'd spoiler why, but it'd be huge and anyone who's played Fallout 3 knows precisely what I'm talking about. Anyone who's watched Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS doubly knows the Ripley feeling, too. I mean, stealing her adopted daughter only caused the titular character to singlehandedly take the bridge of the multiverses' most terrifying interdimensional battleship from the control of the antagonists whom had, up until this point, defeated them at every turn, by using a technique she'd swore off doing ever since it nearly killed her years back.

I guess the biggest problem with this is you don't have a ton of time in a videogame to really build up camradiere between characters for this to work. Unless you're like, Half Life 2.

What about Silent Hill? They always have a reason.

"I'm looking for my daughter. Can you help me find my daughter?"
"I'm looking for my wife. Can you help me fine my wife?"
"I'm looking for my truck. Can you help me find my truck?"

I think this is definitely a direction that gaming needs to take, not just this idea in particular but more personal involvement in the story period.

At the same time, there are limitations to what can be done reasonably. Even story driven rpgs tend to have a limited number of conversations between the player's character and other party members, when they really should have something new to say every time you talk to them.

How about an RPG where how well certain party members work together in the same group depend on conversations between battles. For example, if you do something dumb, you either can't, or won't want to, have Character A and Character B in the same party?

I'm assuming that'd be the next step in making RPGs more unique. There's been a lot of games with "Relationship Values" lately, but usually more limited to some special ending or something, like in FFX where the girl you keep in your party with Tidus for the most time is the one who throws the ball for him during Blitz Ace and how there's a bunch of games where it can be decided who'll end up with the protagonist in the end...