Controversial, Groundbreaking and Iconic – Claire Farron from Final Fantasy XIII

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Rezon

Red Wings Commander
Feb 21, 2015
114
100
27
#2
Lightning's character is very one dimensional and never really develops.
"My sister is a crystal. My parents died so I changed my name"

Great stuff.

Compared to say, Cyan from FF6, she doesn't change at all throughout the game and is just a monotone "badass".

In FF6 Cyan loses his wife and child due to them being poisoned and he's really hung up on it the entire game. Throughout the game there is a sidequest about sending letters between two lovers, a soldier and his girlfriend. After the world gets screwed up and the party splits up, they find out the soldier's dead but the girlfriend is still getting letters sent. The party follows the pigeon that brings the next letter and they find Cyan in a cave.

This gives us a great insight into Cyan's character, he doesn't want the girl to feel the same loss he felt when he lost his wife and child.
He then realizes that instead of living in denial, you have to move on.

The entire XIII series never has anything even remotely close to this and this is just 1 of 14 characters, Setzer also has a great flashback scene that gives the player a way different view to look at his character.


People like to compare her to Cloud, which is a insult to Cloud's character growth and changes throughout FF7.

Plus the article barely talks about her character at all and just focuses on the fact that she's a woman.

On a side note: I'm fairly certain that nobody wanted to fund Dontnod's next game due to their other failure: Remember Me.
That game suffered from bland gameplay, badly written story and boring characters, which was a shame because the game had great atmosphere and environment design.
 
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yeah_93

Warrior of Light
Sep 27, 2013
1,512
570
Venezuela
#3
Even after nearly ten years since her reveal, Lightning continues to be an iconic female character in games and has yet to meet her match. She is finally free and no longer needs to fight, but her brilliant flash of light hasn’t yet faded away. She continues setting a standard for other female and male characters – not to be like her, but who they are.
Uh what? Has this guy played anything apart from the XIII series?

If you haven’t yet given a chance to the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, it’s really worth trying. In the best case, it can become a journey of a lifetime and one of the most identity-defining experience you will ever have.
What in the what?

But yeah, the article doesn't really explain well why "Claire" (God, the cringe) is so great or influential, aside from the fact that the author clearly believes so. Lightning has little personality to speak of and while she's a badass, she doesn't really do much to me.
 

LeonBlade

Administrator
Administrator
Moderator
Site Staff
Oct 25, 2013
2,026
1,864
32
Blossvale, New York
#5
In an ideal world, things shouldn’t need a quota of women or men to be great, since if people truly are equal, one’s gender shouldn’t be the main factor at getting a job just because the company needs 50-50 of men and women – individual’s skills and talent should be the main factor for hiring.
I think that's less about being "great" and more about trying to please crazy people.

But how does that transfer into the world of games? Life Is Strange’s issue was that game publishers thought that female leads are too risky
I remember this, and it's completely bullshit. This entire section about LiS I've seen before from Dontnod and it has nothing to do with their female lead role, it has to do with their previous game being shit. Also, there have been plenty of female leads throughout gaming history. Laura Croft being one of the biggest examples of a character at her time would have been more risky to put in the game as a main character. As a result, her character was made to be a bit more appealing for gamers, however, over the years they have toned her down and refined her into a more realistic character which you could see either being good or bad really. However, she is one of many female leads in video games that has existed and I don't see why in 2014/2015 this is a problem you need to worry about... Virtually every game now has an option to chose a female character even in games like Fallout and Call of Duty where originally they didn't even think about it or bother.

On a side note: I'm fairly certain that nobody wanted to fund Dontnod's next game due to their other failure: Remember Me.
That game suffered from bland gameplay, badly written story and boring characters, which was a shame because the game had great atmosphere and environment design.
but Final Fantasy XV is about developers wanting to tell the story they want. In both cases we are facing an issue, where the fans or the publishers are wanting to limit the artistic direction these games are planned to take.
What? How is that an issue? Limiting artistic direction is an issue, but if it's the developer's choice then why is that problematic in any way?

It’s good to talk about issues like lack of females or sexual minorities because they exist and perhaps it will naturally encourage the developers to create games involving them. Forcing and pressuring creators to add quotas will be just the death of the art.
I agree with this sentiment overall, that shoehorning in everyone is going to create a piece of shit product. However I don't think it's inherently "good" to talk about things like this. There's a reason why developers create things they way they do, it's because that's what they are comfortable with. If you want a game surrounding black culture and struggle you should probably look to developers that can tell that story and not try to ham fist it into a game to please anyone.

I'm only really pointing out this section because it seems completely out of place. Lightning certainly isn't a standard for female video game leads by any stretch of the imagination... Toriyama compared her to a rose and basically declared her his waifu and we were told we mustn't forget about her. Maybe if they made a more interesting character and not give her entire personality to Fang maybe she would have been a GOOD character. Also, I won't spoil it, but if you've played Lightning Returns you should know how terrible the character Lumina is for who she is.

Lightning isn't a good character... Serah is a better character than Lightning, Fang and Vanille are better characters than Lightning. When XIII was announced I was looking forward to having a female lead character in a FF game, and ultimately I was disappointed with the outcome. Lightning is a character that at this point most people want to forget about and in many ways she has been a joke to reference being included in next installments of Final Fantasy or any other game with the infamous "she must not be forgotten" tagline. She's a pretty character, but that's all she really is to me...
 

Nora_Nightingale

Balamb Garden Freshman
Nov 7, 2015
34
19
33
#11
What the writer is trying to say is Lightning is Square Enix's symbol for feminism. And it pisses me off when feminist males always think they know exactly what it means to be a feminist.

Lightning is one of the worst characters out there. In XIII, she passed as a character. I can forgive everything about her because we didn't have alot in the story to cover all the important things.

"Since the release, Lightning has been a controversial subject amongst the fans, which makes her a good example of a character pushing the boundaries."

Lightning is definitely a controversial character, and she definitely pushes boundaries. But the entire article focuses on how she pushes the gender-boundary. Not exactly, she pushes how much bad writing and ideas can be implemented.

Lightning honestly doesn't even look that sexy to me. If you try to put Lightning in the real world. She actually resembles that of a bully. And not the bully that spreads rumors. the actual bully that messes with both boys and girls physically.

In Final Fantasy XIII, she was a loud, cold, person. Who was willing to fight everyone. She was unbarable to stand. No one called her out on it, ever. So how are we suppose to accept that as genuine trait of hers, when they ignore it enough to make it a flaw. But when she opens up her past, does she change? All she does is yell less, and a little supportive whenever the others conveniently have problems (i'm looking at you hope, how can you give a random emotional speech about overcoming and sticking with your friends, and suddenly just burst out in weakness just to gain your eidolon?) She never really "developed" except relying on others. And this is the worst part. How many times have we seen this trope? Just because she's female, we should excuse that its been overdone? We've had Cloud, we've had Squall, and now Lightning. Whats the difference? Lightning does it an unconvincing way.

Worst of all, is Lightning becomes more and more transparent throughout the series. In XIII-2 she is now a supportive role, but still with the added trope of being chosen guardian for a god, and I was actually hoping LIghtning would actually develop into a completely new character in Lightning Returns. But she doesn't. Not even when child Lightning (who looks nothing like her) is revealed. She still remains this empty character. Everything about her is forced. it never comes naturally.