Meryl ♂️

Fashion Dreamer is the latest title from syn Sophia, and sort of spiritual sequel to their previous series Style Savvy (Style Boutique in Europe and わがままファシオン / Wagamama Fashion in Japan). The premise of the game is to become a fashion influencer or muse in a virtual world called Eve. This is done by collecting/copying clothing items from other muses (both pre-set NPCs and player created muses encountered via online features) or by unlocking clothing patterns to craft your own items. These items can then be used to create outfits known as Lookits for yourself and other muses. Some muses request specific conditions such as certain colours, styles or items to complement a particular article of clothing. Completing these requests rewards the player with more currencies to unlock and craft more items. Creating lookits and using the rewards to unlock items to create more lookits forms the central loop of the gameplay. Progress, or perhaps more nebulously, your 'success' as an influencer is tracked by how many 'likes' your lookits receive and how many 'followers' you accrue. In reality these are only virtual scores and not related to the online/social features at all.

It's by no means a perfect game, and I want to share my thoughts on what its shortcomings are, but what really prompted me to write this is looking back on the reaction to the announcement trailer. When the game was first announced during a Nintendo Direct, commenters instantly brushed it off as trite and uninteresting, many demanding it be skipped to show off more Mario or just any other game with a more 'masculine' appeal. Similarly, many streamers and youtubers reacting to the Direct mocked or derided the game for seemingly no other reason than it being 'feminine' coded or "for girls" which is extremely disheartening to see. Before the trailer had even shown any gameplay, thousands of commenters had already declared the game worthless. I'm perfectly capable of just dealing with this anti-feminine attitude, but imagine how comments and reactions like these affect the many thousands if not millions of players who are interested in this kind of game? Players with 'feminine' tastes, interests and hobbies deserve to be catered to as much as any other player. It really sometimes feels like some people never mentally matured past 8 years old, recoiling in horror from 'girly' things as an immature assertion of their own masculinity.

I don't expect all players are going enjoy something like Fashion Dreamer. I just like to imagine the world is wide enough for games like it to exist and not be mocked or dismissed outright as though they're intrinsically less worthy than other types of game. Being marketed primarily at people with 'feminine' coded interests isn't inherently a bad thing and it's truly saddening to see how easily people fall into this immature way of thinking.

With that said, Fashion Dreamer isn't perfect!! Far from it. To put it bluntly, the game currently lacks features and activities outside of creating outfits and taking photos. Previous games in the series had narrative arcs for different characters, shopping and restocking, decorating your apartment / boutique as well as activities like going to music concerts. While Fashion Dreamer allows the player to walk around Eve at their leisure, it lacks detail that would make it feel more alive. The differently themed virtual worlds or Cocoons all have the same small set of activities (that is, a photo booth, a makeup stand and gacha machines) and a collection of more or less random NPCs, meaning they end up feeling like different desktop wallpapers rather than different places. The narrative of becoming a fashion influencer is potentially a very interesting topic for exploration, especially given how relevant social media has become in the fashion world. There is also the potential for an exploration of how social media facilitates communication, expression and friendship, whilst at the same time discussing the negative impacts social media can have on people. As it stands, the game feels empty and lacks the charm of its predecessors.

Gone are the unique clothing brands of Style Savvy, with their specialisation in particular styles or items. Every item in Fashion Dreamer either comes from a single generic default brand, or is created by players. Whilst the ability for players to create their own brand is interesting, this too ultimately feels quite shallow. With all items being drawn from the same pool and with limited options for colours (and basically none for customisation such as rolling up sleeves, opening/closing outerwear etc) there's not really much incentive to 'follow' or even collect items from another player's brand. Especially since you can usually unlock the item for yourself with a bit of effort anyway. Creating your own 'brand' in this way is far less rewarding or sasitfying than creating, customising and stocking your boutique store was in the previous games. Some remnants of that feature are present in vestigial form in Fashion Dreamer, namely a custom showroom where players can display furniture, decorations and fashion items, but there's never any reason to visit your own showroom, much less those of other players. You enter the room, spend 15 seconds admiring different colour variants of the same items you have, mutter 'nice' to yourself then leave. It's unfulfilling to say the least.

It's bad enough that the clothing and brands lack personality, but the characters themselves also seem completely dessicated and one-dimensional. Where previous games had characters with distinct personalities and corresponding tastes, the NPC muses in Fashion Dreamer have much less to say and no strong preferences. Their single sentence barks don't give them much flavour and really only serve to remind you of what their 'gimmick' or 'thing' is supposed to be ("I like surfing! Surf's up! Cowabunga! Can't wait to hit the waves man!!"). Their requests for Lookits don't seem unique to their personalities (the surfer dude has asked me twice for formal suits without even trying to lampshade this by explaining why), and so far I've yet to have any muse object to an outfit or item I selected for them. Again, a comparison to Style Savvy highlights what is absent here. In Style Savvy, goth characters would balk at bright colours, characters preoccupied with elegance and sophistication would turn their nose up at distressed denims or graphic printed t-shirts. It's not as though these personalities were particularly deep, but their preferences had to be taken into consideration when recommending or selling items. Requests from muses in Fashion Dreamer on the other hand seem to be essentially random. Building a rapport with customers by talking with them or meeting them out in the town in Style Savvy felt rewarding as it let you learn more about their personality, and so better tailor your fashion recommendations to suit them. The muses of Fashion Dreamer simply repeat the same barks at every level of friendship and have much less to say about themselves or their lives making them and the world they inhabit feel much more shallow.

While Fashion Dreamer does away with having to worry about money limiting your creativity, it instead replaces one currency with 4. Instead of using money from sales to restock your store, the player must now accrue 'likes', 'keys', 'gacha tickets' and 'coins' which are used to craft clothing, unlock new designs or purchase room decorations and single-use photo props (don't ask why the VR flower evaporates after a single VR photo, it just does). The conceit of being in virtual world evaporates quickly and seems to serve mainly to hand-wave away the various abstracted elements of the game world such as the ability to instantly copy outfits and change on the spot. Grinding for these 4 abstract resources feels far less rewarding than seeing the revenue of your Boutique store increase, allowing you to buy flashier styles and splurge on store decorations.

Again I feel the need to stress that this change in focus from running a high-street boutique to being a fashion blogger in the Matrix isn't necessarily bad, but it doesn't do anything interesting with this theme, serving mainly to provide a poor simulacrum of social media 'number go up' dopamine hits. Gaining 'followers' on Fashion Dreamer isn't a reward for effort, it's literally just a numbers game since almost every action in the game rewards you with followers (which is perhaps more realistic than I'm giving it credit for). The actual social features of the game are simplistic but cute, allowing players to 'follow' one another and create or request Lookits for each other based on their multiple-choice answers to 5 simple questions (or totally ignoring that and dressing them like a Splatoon character). However it all feels quite shallow since you never interact directly with other players and so don't get to enjoy show off your unique look.

Finally, while Fashion Dreamer allows you to now create a masculine avatar (an option sorely lacking in the previous games which simply assumed the player to be a girl), the range of fashion options for masculine body types seems a lot smaller than the feminine options. It also doesn't allow masculine muses to wear feminine clothing (shoes, hats and earrings are all considered unisex, but all other clothing items are locked to a single gender) and vice versa. It's a shame to fall down here because the game has clearly made steps to be more inclusive, with a wider variety of options for skin tone, hairstyle and a 2nd gender (Ghee whizz! How come your mom lets you have two genders?). Further, the range of body shapes is still extremely lacking, with a selection of ~10 slim bodies of different heights. Overall, the game shows a real lack of interest in exploring the world of fashion, and nowhere is that more obvious than its lazy emulation of typical body/beauty standards we see everywhere else.

I know I've probably come across really harsh and critical here, but it's only out of a frustration at seeing what a strong basis there is for a game here. The character models and animations are great, and there aren't enough games that provide players like myself with the ability to indulge in playing dress-up for its own sake. Ultimately, I do want to see this game or others like it succeed because I loved Style Savvy and want developers to continue making games that dare to be unapologetically feminine in what they're about and who they're appealing to. I'm just disappointed overall in the lack of polish this particular game has. It honestly feels unfinished which is why I want to hold back from being too harsh.

The original NIER (NieR Gestalt) was one of those games on the PlayStation 3 that instantly captivated me. Its world, characters and lore embedded themselves in my brain for months. The game features dozens of side-quests providing story-arcs for minor characters, set across various odd, almost dreamlike environments. Captivating music, haunting sounds, ominous references to events and lore from other games (namely Drakengard / Drag-on Dragoon) and multiple endings that require replaying the game several times to see new content that recontextualises events… the whole experience was something that felt dense, deep and worthwhile exploring and contemplating.

My thoughts on the remake NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 are thus inevitably influenced by my nostalgia. However, it's not only my nostalgia for the game, but the time in my life when I first experienced it. The original and its remake provide two distinct points in my life that I can vividly compare and contrast. Though my life and my understanding of myself has changed a lot since then, I can still clearly recall the thoughts and feelings swirling around in my head back then in 2010. Revisiting the world of NieR is a special experience for me because of how much it feel like seeing old friends, and with them, my old self.

In case it's not obvious, there will be some mild spoilers for NieR below in the form of character discussion. I'm not going to describe the plot too much, but if you want to meet these characters for yourself, I recommend you stop here and go play the game. The original if possible, but Replicant is a worthy remake imo.

The main cast of NieR is a collection of 3 misfit friends. Three flawed, hurt and broken people trying to make things work in a world that seems indifferent at best and hostile at worst. The protagonist and player character is NieR. Either father (NieR Gestalt) or brother (NieR Replicant / Ver 1.22...) to the sickly Yonah, depending on what version of the game you play. He acts as the centre of the group, and its his determination to save Yonah that drives much of the main plot, at least on the ending A route.

Playing the original, Papa Nier seemed too gruff and grown up for me; I couldn’t put myself in his shoes, and I lacked the necessary reference points in my own life to understand or really care that deeply about his parental relationship to Yonah, which left his character feeling a little lacking in depth to me. Brother NieR from the original Japanese release of NieR Replicant and the remake seem to me like a much better fit for the story in game. The fact he doesn’t speak about his past makes more sense for a younger boy who doesn’t remember his parents and only has harsh memories of a struggle to survive. His relationships with Kainé, Weiss, Devola and Popola all make more sense to me for a young man who’s happy to have found friends, family and community in them, rather than the older Papa Nier who lacks the worldliness I’d expect of somebody his age. The change of personality across the time-skip also fits better for the younger Brother Nier, and is better reflected in how much his appearance changes. The time skip takes Papa Nier from 39 to 44, meaning it’s his clothes more than his appearance that change, but even then the most noticeable wardrobe modification is the addition of an eyepatch. Brother Nier goes from 16 to 21, growing from a short and cherub faced teenager into a tall young man with longer hair, a gaunt and frowning face from 5 years of battle, and a much darker, edgier outfit; abandoning his shorts and flowing mantle in favour of dark leathers and fabrics, accentuated by embroidered details, chains and black fur-lined thigh boots (a serve). Both characters become more sombre after the time skip, but the transition from plucky young boy to brooding young adult feels more stark than Papa Nier’s pivot from affable dad to grumpy pop.

I get the impression that Brother Nier was intended to be canon, and Papa Nier was essentially swapped in for the original release of Gestalt (the only version we saw in Europe), when he probably deserved unique dialogue and cutscenes to differentiate him from the young man of Replicant. Papa Nier is an interesting character, but Brother Nier’s naivety and saccharine lines about friendship and family seem hackneyed coming out of Papa Nier's mouth.

Emil on the other hand is a character I instantly identified with even in the original release. Emil is a shy, lonely and effeminate boy, mired in feelings of shame and guilt over who and what he is. Emil's eyes petrify anybody he looks at, choosing to live blindfolded and isolated for the safety of others. After he’s transformed into a living weapon, his body it altered, and his head turned into a moon-like orb with a sinister and unmoving rictus grin — as if painfully forcing himself to hide his feelings. This concept of hiding/concealing theme also reflected in his clothing, covering his body in a shawl that obscures his new skeletal form. His shame and disgust at his body were things that resonated with me in a simultaneously uncomfortable yet familiar way. At the time I first played Nier, I was really quite unhappy with a lot of things about myself. I was carrying a lot of internalised shame over my sexuality, as well as struggling to know how to cope with my feelings about gender. Emil’s feelings towards his own body was one of the first times in my life I’d ever felt truly seen by a game, and even a tiny bit understood. It was as if the game had put its hand on my shoulder and whispered “I know. I can’t help, but I know.” and that was an extremely powerful experience for me, one that I would struggle to communicate to others when talking glowingly about a game that most others thought was an extremely ropey hack and slash JRPG.

I'm extremely happy that the remake has chosen to include Emi's original dialogue lines at the wedding scene in the 2nd act. When Emil mistakes a remark about marriage as a proposal from Nier, he's quickly told to stop being weird before being left alone to puzzle his way though his unreciprocated feelings alone. This small change makes his sexuality a little more explicit in a way that was cut from the US and European releases. Part of what prompted me to write up my thoughts has been discovering this interview with Yoko Taro for Japanese news site Gadget Tsuushin, where he discusses Emil. Yoko Taro bizarrely suggests that Emil may be transgender.

(translation mine, so open to corrections. I’ve used ‘he’ for Emil because, whilst Japanese doesn’t use pronouns as often as English does, Emil himself uses ‘boku’, a masculine personal pronoun, to refer to himself in game.)

Question Is No 7. (Emil) really gay and in love with Nier? Yoko Whether gay or not, [Emil] loves Nier. Looking at his words and actions, I think he’s transgender or something like that.

I’m not convinced Yoko Taro has really thought through what he’s saying here, but it does put Emil’s despair at what happens to his body into a more visceral context. This interview somewhat shocked me on first reading, especially given my own gender journey and having considered the possibility of being transgender myself. While I think Emil's envy of Fyra (the bride) at the wedding does fit into that context, personally I think I would hesitate to label Emil as transgender. Feelings of incongruence or dissatisfaction with your body aren’t exclusive to transgender people, and it feels especially strange to make this comment when asked about Emil’s feelings for Nier, as though being attracted to another man makes Emil less of a man. Emil's line about being jealously happy for Fyra is left ambiguous as to whether this is because Fyra is a girl, or because she's getting married to a man. Emil could want either, or both.

The final character in this troupe of misfits is Kainé. Kainé is crass, violent, and an absolute queen. When the player first meets her, she's living in exile (involuntarily, unlike Emil) outside her hometown of the Aerie. At first this is seems like it's because she's possessed by a shade, a ghostly entity that are the main enemies and antagonists for much of the game, however it's actually because Kainé is intersex. The game’s story handles this topic fairly sensitively, making it part of her character and backstory but never foregrounding it in a way that feels overwrought or too pointed. Both her intersex trait, and being possessed by a shade are factors that have led people to fear and distrust her. She lives as an outsider, and it's hard not to see her aggression and coarse language as a coping mechanism to make her abandonment by others seem less painful, as though it were a choice.

I was also born with an intersex condition. No the details aren't important here because mind your own business, but suffice it to say, I believe it's responsible for a great deal of self esteem issues relating to my body that I dealt with growing up. That said, my condition hasn’t really been a major part of how I consciously understand myself or relate to the world for most of my life (even though my mother suspects it might be the reason I’ve got gender feelings, lol), but learning more about my own condition has made me feel closer to Kainé as I've gotten older.

The main theme of Kainé’s story is not what her body is like, but rather the way she was treated because of it: regarded with fear and suspicion by other villagers. The source of that fear and mistrust are her conditions, but they’re not what define her; what defines Kainé is how she survives the world, how she mirrors its hostility back and stubbornly refuses to let it break her. Sadly, Kainé’s identity is only ever a source of pathos, as is the case for many intersex characters.

As I said, NieR handles this theme quite maturely overall. Intersex isn’t just something Kainé is or is allowed to be; she lives in a world where she's othered and discriminated against because of it. It’s a sad but unflinching parallel to the way interphobic discrimination operates in the real world. The real problems with Kainé’s portrayal come from factors surrounding how the developers conceived of her and sadly, how much disrespect she's shown in the remake.

(again translation mine, CW: intersex slurs)

Reporter Why is Kaine a futanari (hermaphrodite) character? Yoko A female employee on the development team said, “Include a male heroine!”… this is where I ended up after playing around [with the idea].

It’s such a shame that queer and intersex characters end up being just a playground for cis-het creators to ‘play around’ with their own ideas about sex and gender, rather than crafting characters inspired by the thoughts and feelings of actual queer and intersex people.

In an interview published in Grimoire Nier, Yoko Taro stated that Kaine’s intersex condition was purposefully not dwelt upon. Reading from the fan translation of Grimoire Nier:

Did you intentionally not emphasise the hermaphrodite issue in the game? What were the reasons behind that? Yoko To me, Kaine being a hermaphrodite wasn’t really a point of importance. Since people like that do exist in reality, we just don’t know about them.

As much as I admire Yoko Taro’s intention here, I just don’t think this approach works. Yoko avoids explicit commentary in his games, and while I appreciate that attitude to some extent, I just can’t say that it fully absolves any of the team from criticism. Especially given how the game treats Kainé.

Let’s just say it plainly — Kainé’s clothing is hypersexualised.

The justification given for such a gratuitously sexualised design is that, in response to being bullied for possessing masculine features as a child, adult Kainé wanted to emphasise her femininity, owning and being proud of what she feels she is rather than being told by others. Her clothing is her confrontationally flaunting her feminine features, as if daring the world to find a 'monster' like her sexually attractive. It’s better than Kojima’s ‘justification’ for Quiet’s attire (or lack thereof) in MGSV, but let’s be real, it’s excessive, and will hardly make anybody feel "ashamed of their words and deeds".

In addition, Kainé’s character model in-game has a bulge in her crotch. Coupled with her skimpy costume, it feels gross — largely because of the context that this character is being written and created by cishet and endosex people for a mostly cishet male audience. Kainé’s pride in her body and her identity just so happens to be expressed through what the audience are coincidentally most likely to find erotic or titillating. Kainé isn’t a real person, she’s a product of a design team, and every aspect of her has on some level been crafted by or for the male gaze, which means her hypersexual presentation feels like audience pandering rather than authentic self expression of a strong character. That’s why when I first played the original game, part of me felt guilty for admiring her as much as I did — it seemed like it wasn’t possible to see the woman underneath, only an objectified and exotic novelty.

I want to love her design because I feel the energy of wanting to take pride in your body, even flaunt it, despite the world telling you it’s something wrong, disgusting or broken, but the context stops any of this from feeling triumphant or liberating, and ends up just feeling leering and exploitative.

And on top of that, the remaster of NieR Replicant introduces a new trophy for looking up Kainé’s skirt 10 times.

*sigh*

They already did this in NieR Automata with 2B. It was juvenile and objectifying then, and it’s no different here.

These problematic aspects of Kainé’s design and the process that produced her as a character wouldn’t be so much of a problem if not for the the fact that she’s carrying a lot of weight: Kainé is a full 25% of intersex representation in games according to LGBTQ game archive. The other 3 are all from Elder Scrolls and are all demons. (Yeah, come at me Elder Strolls nerds, I called the daedra demons). Kainé herself can also be seen as ‘demonic’ owing to her shade possession.

Stories that use queerness or intersex traits as sources of pathos for characters, or assign intersex characteristics to demons/monsters don’t have to bad or harmful in and of themselves (many queer people find identifying with monsters to be cathartic, taking pride in the ways we are othered), but it’s a shame when those are the only stories that get told. The answer to this problem isn’t necessarily better representation, it’s more representation.

If there are more characters representing diverse or minoritised communities, then it doesn’t matter if individual portrayals end up awkward or problematic, because they won’t be shouldering the burden of representing an entire community. When there are only a few characters representing a whole demographic in media, then there’s a greater risk that those portrayals end up forming the entirety of an audience member’s presumptions and expectations of those types of people/characters.

Yoko Taro has put a lot of problematic stuff in his games… hell, there’s a lot more to cover in NieR alone… but I’ve been thinking a lot about Kaine as I play the remaster and feeling very conflicted about her. I want to love her. I admire the way she refused to be shamed into a corner, but instead meets the world punch for punch, mirroring its hostility back towards it. She’s a model of anger, strength and determination to survive that feels powerful and raw, and I think the fundamentals of her visual design are pretty good aside from being overly gratuitous.

I do have love for Yoko Taro’s storytelling and characters, and appreciate his attitude to inclusion, but the way both the game and its creators treat Kainé feels exploitative and grotesque (on that note, I strongly recommend avoiding any of the NieR short stories featuring Kainé).