Also - Vagrant Story, hint, hint.

Anyway, Square just prove to me more and more that they are making themselves irrelevant as a game company, what a shame.

this give weight to my theory that every aspect of FF13 was decided this same way, and that FF13 is a reflexion of how square enix sees
Western gamer.

OT:

I like japanesse games no matter the protagonist but they do make every protagonist a whimp, like shinji iraki

most pathetic "hero" ever and here is a REAL LIFE ANIME HERO

this is a girls actually and she is not japanesse.

nier sucked, but i agree with them. and dont give all examples like ff7,vagrant story,etc. the xbox360 changed it all that. and most western gamming journalist are rednecks now (ign), that doesnt help either.

FF4's protagonist Cecil is a man and not a metrosexual but I wouldn't consider him manly. He was actually emo at the beginning of FF4 ("my heart is as dark as my armor!" or whatever he said). I guess you could say that Butz (FF5) and Zidane (FF9) were manly too. Though they were young I think. I haven't played FF5 and FF9 in almost a decade so can't remember too well.

But yeah since FF4, every other FF protagonist was emo and metrosexual (Terra and Lightning are female though. But they too are emo. Lightning does have masculine appearance but deep down she's emo).

Terra and Lightning aren't even protagonists, seeing as FFs VI and XIII don't actually have a single protagonist.

<---- real life FF!

No disrespect towards Japan or any Japanese culture but not everyone in the world finds Puss Bags as "cool" and i dont find a big bald guy screaming about his family to be "cool" either, what i find cool is a person i can relate to.

Alan Wake is a perfect example, Hes not a  puss bag and hes not screaming every 5 minutes about something, hes funny and i can relate.

How incredibly pathetic.

 That's my thinking too.  As long as the dude looks like a dude, I don't think most westerners are going to care all that much.

 Do not want.  Without Matsuno on board, the game would be completely different, probably for the worse.

Hm, let's think about this. Has anyone watched a single episode of Batman: the brave and the bold? every single man, including Robin, who is supposed to do acrobatics and needs a slim body, is huge. They all have unbelievable muscles and they all apear to be macho.

Now let's think of any sucessful video games with a female lead. Heavenly Sword: not very successful, Bayonetta: did not do well either, Eternal Sonata: not a single macho guy--> very bad sales despite receiving positive reviews (of course many could say the game was not good, despite the reviews). Even Tomb Raider is not doing well any more. Now look at God of War, Metal Gear solid, Prince of Persia, Red Dead Redemption (the guy on the cover screams bad-ass/macho), Gears of War and so many games. It's also interesting how many people pre-ordered RDR, without reading any reviews first. The pre-oders of Super Mrio Galaxy 2 come as no surprise, since it's a sequel and we can assume that it's probably gonna be as good/interesting as the first one. Of course I'm not saying that only macho guys sell in the west, but Mario, Sonic come from a totally different genre. Games like LBP need funny characters, but it's the opposite with action-adventure/ fps/ hack and slash.

Also look at the success of movies and tv-series with with a female lead (like Fringe, V, Elektra, Aeon Flux). In most cases they don't do so well. Of course many could argue that the reason they are not doing well is the quality, but I personally think that it's not just that.

Lame move IMO.