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Khuutra on 27 November 2011
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bouzane said:
Khuutra said:

Not at all - any major fighting game series has a higher number of iconic characters than the vast majority of other game series. How many characters from Street Fighter are recognizable at a glance? 15? 20? In comparison, the only really recognizable character from God of War is Kratos himself. Throw in Darkstalkers, along with Capcom's other franchises, and it's really one-sided in that respect. Hell, Capcom's roster of recognizable characters is really very comparable to Nintendo's.

It's easy to dismiss Namco, but it would be a lot harder in fighting game or JRPG circles - they do own Tekken, Soul Calibur, Tales, and many other different series. One doesn't associate them with their characters as quickly as one does with Capcom, but their roster is enormous.

What about Ares, Zeus and Hades? I thought that they all stood out just as much as Kratos. Personally, I think you are selling Sony short.

This merits a very serious laying out of hat constitutes iconography.

Now, the thing about being "iconic" is that it's as much a matter of building up the image of a series as it is about the memorable characters from a game. The iconography of Metal Gear Solid, to look at Konami, is built around Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, Big Boss, the Boss, Volgin, and a few others. These are the characters used to estalbish the imagery of the series even for people who have never played it. You may not know who Solid Snake is, but if you've ever seen anything about Metal Gear Solid then you probably recognize him at a glance, even if you don't know his name.

On the same note, even if you don't know who Chun-Li is, chances are extremely good that if you've ever even heard of Street Fighter then you would recognize her when you see her. The same goes for Ryu and the Shotokan crew, Blanka, M. Bison, Dhalsim, on and on.

Kratos, on the other hand, is pretty much the sole image around which Sony has built the God of War franchise's knowledge base. Yes there are more and more interesting characters in the context of God of War, but for a person who doesn't know anything baout the games, Kratos himself is going to be the only guy they know. Do you expect people to recognize Cronos or Atlas by looking at them? I would think you probably don't.

Now, there's two corrolaries to this that need to be set in stone.

1. Being "iconic" and being suitable for a fighting game aren't the same thing. The Helghast is pretty much the only icon to come out of Killzone, but that doesn't mean that random bad guy #1 is necessarily the only Killzone character suitable for a Smash Bros. type of game. On the same note, Zeus would also be a good fit, in spite of the fact that he's not iconic in the same sense that Kratos is.

2. A game like this is good in that it can help bolster the iconography of a given character or series, elevating them in a way that their own series does not. Marth is much more of a Smash Bros. icon than he is a Fire Emblem icon at this point, and that's fine: he's still an iconic character, he was just built up to worldwide iconography in a different way. Was he really iconic before Smash Bros. Melee? No, not at all. Is he now? Yes.

Part of the problem of talking about iconography in Sony franchises is that their marketing for games tends to focus on the image of single characters - even Dr. Nefarious isn't iconic in comparison to Ratchet or Clank, and he has much more personality than the good guys.

So yeah, that's it. Saying "iconic" isn't saying "good", it's saying "characters around whose image a series is built". I think in that sense you will very much agree that Sony's band of iconic characters is more narrow than the likes of Nintendo, Capcom, Namco, or Konami - but that a game like this also has the potential to establish different characters as icons, bringing them to the forefront for more and more people.