Speaking of breeding games…
Honest to God, that damn Imagine: Baybeez game gave me nightmares last night. Angrymob can confirm. But I figured “it’s in the past, there won’t be any creepy breeding games that I’ll have to deal with today.” And then I checked Kotaku. Gamers-Creed reports on a new game called Record of Agarest War which is exclusive to the PS3. It looks like a pretty standard RPG, but with a twist! Similar to Quest for Glory 5, you have the ability to court various female members of your party (you are, of course, a male. Because no-one makes RPGs where you can play a woman). Once courted, you have a quick wedding and then get to breeding… (post flip may be NSFW).
Uh, right there in the church?
We’re promised a “special” movie to mark the occasion. Whether it’s got booty funk or soft jazz in the background is anyone’s guess.
The point is that having successfully mated with one of your party members will result in a “new” hero, which will actually be made of up of a combo of different statistics from his parents (I’ll be surprised if there are options that could result in a girl). Which is an interesting concept for a game.
The massive creepiness of the game may be mitigated somewhat–that is, for a game that’s about choosing the breeding stock for your future seed from the ranks of your army of teenage girls. From what limited information there is on the game, this doesn’t look like a game where the point is to score with as many of your fellow adventurers as possible. There’s a wedding, implying monogamy*, and from the looks of it, you can only have one kid. I could be deeply wrong about this. Similarly, there does appear to be some sort of “relationship” pathing that you’ll have to complete with a character in order to marry her, it’s not as simple as pointing to the chick you find hot (and who has the best teeth) and selecting the “Wed” option.
I could be very, very wrong, and even if I’m not, there are still some troubling issues with the game that I’d like to know about:
- What happens to the existing party? So you get married, get busy, have a baby. Fine. Junior becomes a hero himself, fine. There’s at least 16 years in between those points. Are you all still adventuring then? Have you aged as well, and are your stats altered accordingly?
- What happens to your wife? I can’t say I’d be shocked if they had the wifey settle down to raise your child, or go the cliché route and kill her off in childbirth (or shortly thereafter). Frankly, if there isn’t a time period in between birthing Junior and his joining you in battle, I guess I can understand how she’d die in childbirth. In either case, it will indicate that women are not valuable in their own right in the game, will not be critical to the plot once they’ve emerged from the stirrups.
- Is every woman a possibility in the game, or are some women just going to reject you? This seems like a minor issue, and somehow I doubt that there are going to be women in the game that are “off limits” by virtue of the fact that they a) don’t want kids and b) don’t like you. But this is the point that really gets to the commodification of women in the game. This game is going to have tremendous replay value with the fans–if you can really only mate with one woman in the game (which again, I may be misinterpreting)–they’re going to want to replay to see all of the permutations of
hentaigenetics available. So they really are going to look at the different women characters in the game as little more than Pokéma’ams to be collected. Sorry for the bad pun. I couldn’t help myself. - Is it critical ot the game that you breed? Maybe it will be harder to beat without Junior, but if you decide not to mate with any of the women in the party, is it still possible to beat the game? I know this is a niggling point: I doubt anyone is going to buy the game so that they can not watch the honeymoon movie. But if you decide to hang back and maybe keep all the women in your party and not stick one of them in a maternity ward, is the game still beatable? I’m going to assume that homosexual pathing on the game is not even in the realm of possibility — which is a shame. (For all of the power and space that the PS3 boasts, you’d think they’d give you the option if you wanted it).
I’m not sure if this game will ever be released outside of Japan, it seems a little too hentai. And it’s not like you’d be compelled to buy it anyway, but what concerns me is that the idea of combining two heroes to create a new hero is, in fact, a pretty cool idea for a videogame. We might have to face a wave of nasty little pervs who want to point out how ‘groundbreaking’ this game is. And it very well could be groundbreaking (for an RPG). It’s just a shame that it has to be in such a creepy package.
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* Not taking aim at poly here, folks– just the consumption of women to score points.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Games that play around with the concept of genetic traits can be a ton of fun, but this definitely falls into the creepy box.
I still play Monster Rancher sometimes, just because it was such a cool idea that you could take your best monsters and “combine” (which I felt clearly meant “breed”) them to form a new monster comprised of the previous two monsters attributes.
Ah. Monster Rancher. Good times. Good times.
Except when my Naga would run away from home. That part wasn’t so much with the awesome.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:59 am
I remember breeding critters in “Sim Life” to create the best ecosystem overall (you got points based on how much of the planet was covered in your life form, how diverse it all was, etc).
Of course I always had some pet project on the side designing the perfect killing machine…which more often than not got out of whatever rock and wall enclosure I’d designed and went on a rampage across the planet (freakin’ wings).
Then there’s always The Sims. But you do have a lot of options in that game to play it as you want. Have the male be the primary child rearer; two adults with careers, etc. However you created them to appear, and however you “trained” your Sims to act; the offspring was always a fascinating combination of the two and I thought it quite interesting to see how certain traits were passed down family lines. I recall one for example that had a real flair for dancing from the grandparents down many generations and thought it seemed to skip some of the children by the 4th generation; the inclination was still there (though you could then debate how much of it was a genetic predisposition towards physical activity and how much was growing up in a household that loved to dance to the radio).
But, I digress.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:32 am
I loved playing Sim Life - unfortunately, it was linked somehow to the hardware speed. When I tried it on the new computer (the one we got after the 386), it was unplayably fast, even at the slowest speed. Which was devastating. It was so awesome…
August 9th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
This game sounds creepy, even if it’s a monogamy, one child only deal. Like, creepier than people inbreeding chocobos.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:15 am
stogoe - I was very sad to discover the same problem; a lot of the early “Sim” games were fatally linked to processor speed (for a good time; load onto a modern 3 ghz CPU and watch the colors fly by)
There are some ways to fool it with third party software, but it’s kind of a pain in the neck to set up. Even an old windows 98 box I keep around for older software is too “fast” for it at 400 mhz.
Allegedly there’s a “Sims collection” rerelease of some of these games for modern computers; but I don’t know if “Sim Life” is included in that.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Doesn’t DOSBox have a good moslo emulator?
August 10th, 2007 at 9:38 am
I’ve always wondered why most of the heroes of Japanese games are downhill of 20 years old. Perhaps it is to appeal to the teenage audience? There’s a bit of wish fulfillment there; the adults don’t usually treat the kids as having much agency or responsibility, until the kids wind up saving the world (I’m thinking of Wild Arms 4, here).
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria is about the only game I’ve played with a female lead. Oh, then there’s FFX-2.
I’d sure love to see a modern Zelda game in which the Princess takes the lead. Why can’t she have the TriForce of Courage for a change? What is it about the TF of Wisdom that prevents her from acting on her own?
I think I’ll give this game a pass. *shudders*
August 10th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Can’t believe I forgot Metroid.
Revoke my nerd license now! Go on! I AM NOT WORTHY!!
August 10th, 2007 at 10:20 am
You may keep your nerd license if you complete 5 Hail Samus’s and 3 Our Jade’s.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I seem to recall a thread on how Zelda is a representation of the sexist society in which we live…and how the fanbois soiled themselves expressing their outrage…
August 10th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Honestly, this game could have had something going for it if it understated the “breeding” part of it, or if it tied the relationship, marriage, pregnancy, and child-rearing to the story so that it affected the gameplay or storyline. Variations on how the game continued, how the story developed, and how the junior hero/heroine would react upon taking up the mantle of savior would depend on who you chose to woo. But as it is being advertised now? A game for the morbidly curious and hentai fans.
On the wooing, does anyone else get a Harvest Moon vibe here? I remember in the N64 version you played as the little blue guy in overalls and could pick between 5 girls to court… But if you wanted the best possible score at the end of the year you’d have to woo all 5 to the “pink heart” level, choose and marry one, have a baby, and treat your wife right to the very end.
Chan - I think that it’s a psychological thing that many “heroes” or protagonists of popular fiction and media are slightly older than their audiences. It makes us feel like we could be in their shoes in a few years or something, or we draw something extra out of people that are still within our age group…
August 10th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I admit, I was a little curious to play Harvest Moon for the DS when it was discovered that you could go out and court the witch who lives in the woods.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Also, Cesar — did you get my email?
August 10th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I did now: saw that the dumb AOL spam guard caught it and saved it from the clutches of the trash bin memory hole.
Heh, courting a witch in the woods? Is Japan going through a witch phase right now with that witch touching game, a game planned by Atlus (and parodied by Penny Arcade recently) about releasing spirits from yourself, and a possible aftershock of the last Harry Potter being sold?
August 10th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
OK, I’ve taken out the Civ IV troubleshooting comments…
Japan does love itself some Harry Potter… I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it had something to do with the rash of witch games on the market.
August 12th, 2007 at 12:00 am
FYI, Phantasy Star 3 for the Sega Genesis did use that idea. The game followed three generations, and your character (and storyline) did change depending on who you chose to marry and have kids with.