Stolen Pixels #66: The Hero Foretold

By Shamus Posted Friday Feb 20, 2009

Filed under: Column 25 comments

The final Fable 2 comic is up.

Once again the bloom lighting was a pain in the ass. These are the sorts of hardships I endure for you. I hope you’re grateful.

 


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25 thoughts on “Stolen Pixels #66: The Hero Foretold

  1. skizelo says:

    Reading your commentary, I thought it was a bit off when you called Final Fantasy “Gears of War in dresses and make-up”. Then I thought about it a bit more, and realized you were probably referring to that odd bit in FF7 where you have to infiltrate a brothel. It’s ambiguous, is all I’m saying.
    I’ve not played Fable, but whenever I play GTA, I’m torn between dressing in character or having a pink-afro. Then I remember that the story is dumb and I hate it, so I slap the Kaiser’s hat on top of that ill-advised ‘do.

  2. froogger says:

    ROFLOL! That look on your character just made the start of my weekend golden. I’m glad there were no coffee involved, or the spontanous fountain would’ve put a damper on my spirit. Thanks :D

    *goes back to have another looksie*

  3. Julian says:

    I loved this one. It was totally unexpected. His face looks like the face of some jolly guy out for some fun ^^

  4. Christian Groff says:

    BWA HA HA HA!! I remember Final Fantasy VII’s transvestite mini-game so clearly! Poor Cloud had to dress up like a girl so that he could sneak into the pervert Don’s manor and threaten to castarate him. BWA HA HA HA!! That joke still exists to this day.

    Yeah, any game that lets you customize your hero will probably allow you to become a drag queen. I know it’s prejudice against guys who like that sort of thing, but seriously, unless your face is pretty and you have some slack shoulders, you are just a hideous creature if you dress up in women’s clothes.

    Of course, early Team Rocket disguises had James dress up like a girl too, which sparked a lot of gay controversy on him…

  5. Zombie Pete says:

    I haven’t strayed very far from the typical highwayman look yet, but as I now have more money than Croesus, I might have to experiment. It would probably be more aesthetically pleasing with a female character, but I hear once you get your strength high enough, even the chicks start looking a bit manly (i.e. Hammer). Ah, well. No Age of Reason Lara Croft for me, then.

  6. Al Shiney says:

    I tip my hat and forcefully empty my stomach to you sir after viewing that “vision”. Please don’t ever do that again unless I have a bucket nearby.

  7. Shawn says:

    hahahahaha

    Oh man, that was great.

  8. Sam says:

    A fine end to a fine series of comics. Plus, Salad Dodger reminded me of a blonde Ron Jeremy. Good show, sir.

  9. Henebry says:

    Loved it! How much time did it take you to trick our your avatar to look like that?

  10. Alex says:

    “Salad Dodger”?! I’m confused, and yet I really, really don’t wanna know…

  11. houser2112 says:

    @Alex:
    My guess: one guy tosses, another guy must dodge… If you can’t get it from here, Google it. (when you get home)

    1. Shamus says:

      The game has a fixed list of names you can choose from. Sparrow, Blade, Conjurer, Nobhead, Executioner, Avenger, Chosen One etc. Some funny, some serious. The NPC’s call out your name when they see you. You can change it for a small fee. It’s kind of cool. One is “Salad Dodger”, which is available for free if your character is fat enough.

  12. illiterate says:

    I didn’t go the salad route. I figured the beefsteak avoided eating salads.

    That is truly awesome and terrifying, the potential to remake your character like that.

    [edit]Kudos on the site edit, shamus. the “edit” function now works from my work pc.

  13. Chargone says:

    totally unrelated to the comic, but I’ll note it here so it may be seen:

    the latest version of ‘DRM’ stupidity, at least by a lose definition there of, from New Zealand:
    section 92A of their latest copyright law amendment.

    ‘guilty upon accusation’

    wonderful stuff…

    more info here:
    http://creativefreedom.org.nz/

    right, off to read the comic.

  14. Telas says:

    The comic was golden, but the FF comment was platinum.

    It’s even funnier because I didn’t even know about the cross-dressing scene, but was going off of the tranny trend that FF games seem to follow these days. (Wasn’t one of the male characters in a girdle recently?)

  15. Trianglehead says:

    … Ooooh, the Final Fantasy jab hurt me in my soul Shamus. Right in my soul. *Shakes his head*

  16. CobraCmdr says:

    I also had no idea that there was a cross dressing game in Final Fantasy VII, I just assumed it was a joke about how all the male protagonists in JRPGs either look like girls, or 12 year olds with huge phallic weapons. I remember my 50 something father once saw a cutscene from Final Fantasy X and was sincerely confused as to Tidus’ gender.

    The ability to customize characters is actually one of the main features I look for in a game. I usually hate playing as someone else’s character, even if the changes I can make are only to their appearance.

  17. vdgmprgrmr says:

    Does anyone else think that in the third frame, the guy looks like he’s flipping someone off?

    I read the writing and give a glance at the image and this, time, the glance returned something strange, so I figured I’d let you all know, you know.

    EDIT: Woe is me, my cool triangle wavatar is no more, and he has been replaced with a weird gear thingy.

  18. Coffee says:

    17 – Your father thought Tidus was a boy?

  19. Alex says:

    Imagine if Gears of War let you dress up the male heroes in makeup and women’s clothes.

    Actually, I guess Final Fantasy has already done that.

    “Girls were Girls, and Men were Men…”

    Those were the days… I don’t know what made JRPG developers decide that every character should dress like “women”, regardless of their gender. At what point did Japan confuse that with “appealing” or “sexy”? What weird demographic are these people targeting, anyway? And why are so many people in love with this trend?

    On the other hand, the freaky transvestite male(?) leads are still less irritating than Marcus Phoenix, and his endless parade of grizzly-voiced balding space marines with ‘tude. At least Vaan was creative, in a David Bowie-meets-your worst nightmares sort of way…

    Tee hee, Lucian looks like an evil(er?) Beethoven in the new comic… For some reason that amuses me more than “Salad Dodger” there.

  20. Amstrad says:

    I’ve always felt that the true measure of a character creation and customization system is in how ugly you can make a thing. Forget about looking cool or sexy or whatever. Give me the ability to recreate my own deformed troglodyte a la Sloth.

  21. JKjoker says:

    i could never get over Tidus’s surfer dude with a plastic sword game ad, it doesnt help that the voice overs are so completely stupid, that he just misses his daddy and even worse the game tries to pass him as “cool”, Auron and the tiger dude work because they barelly speak (compared to the rest) and Lulu just has bouncing bobbies, but the nba reject, and the other two retarded girls with more problems than Salad Dodger to dress properly just suck…

    i guess its a problem with the next gen graphics, watching superdeformed Cloud run around with a sword twice as big was kind of cute, even Goku look alike Crono from Crono Trigger was ok even tho he dressed very strangely and nobody commented on this (I would expect a lot of comments if you travel though time dressed like that), but the new jrpg characters just look WEIRD and GAY (maybe the ff13 main char is woman because they started making the character and figured out there was no way to pass her as man)

  22. Zaxares says:

    … Fable 2 would be SO awesome if it weren’t for the terrible storyline that gives me migraines just to think about it. :P

  23. lluviata says:

    Shamus, that comic was great!

    I don’t have any problem with odd character design, including androgynous men in shorts of different lengths (aka FFX) in a game set in a completely different world. I expect fashion to be different in different realities. Perhaps it bothers males more than females?

    PS: Love my new avatar! How did you know what I really look like…with a mustache?

  24. OEP says:

    Tee hee, Lucian looks like an evil(er?) Beethoven in the new comic… For some reason that amuses me more than “Salad Dodger” there.

    evil Beethoven? Isn’t that Cujo?

    /ducks

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