Sunday, April 26, 2009

Eunice and your Dilemma in Rune Factory Frontier



In Harvest Moon and Rune Factory, you always will have some influence over the futures of other characters both in your role of 'saviour' of the land and as a spouse and parent. In Rune Factory Frontier, there are a number of events that give your character the power to determine a critical decision in some one else's life.

When an eligible girl reaches 4 Hearts, you can experience a special Event. In Eunice's case, you will have the choice of influencing her to embark upon a slimming programme if you tell her that you like slender girls. To do so felt rather 'wrong' to me personally as I never would make that sort of comment to any one, whatever my opinion might be... but it is obvious that Eunice WANTS your character to motivate her. It is obvious that she is not happy with her own appearance. Furthermore, when you look at her father, you can see that Eunice may run the risk of developing a dangerous measure of obesity if her habits do not change...

That having been argued, I still was uncomfortable dictating to her in that way. Nonetheless, I look forward to the future when Eunice can join the other girls in their bathing costumes at the Beach.

By the way, if Eunice does decide to lose weight, her former 'Most Favourite gift' of Mont Blanc no longer will be accepted happily. She will tell you: 'N-no! I can’t eat cake while I’m on a diet!'

Best to give her flowers instead!

What is very endearing is to see how she begins to train with Uzuki in martial arts, wielding a naginata herself (rather clumsily, but with great determination!)

Later: As I wrote in a comment here, I believe that Marvelous may have been influenced by the current world-wide campaign against 'adolescent obesity' in creating Eunice's character and her dilemma. I never had any problem with weight myself, but have close friends who do. Although I understand the real threats to health, such as an increased risk of diabetes and so on, I nonetheless believe that there is something intrinsically wrong with our culture, founded as it is upon a fashion sense that encourages anorexic super-models. Furthermore, adolescents have more than enough problems with self-esteeem and confidence and to add more pressure to their lives in the form of physical appearance issues relating to weight strikes me as counterproductive and cruel.

In the States, schools actually send letters to parents now chastising them for allowing their children to gain a little weight. Even when the child's weight is within current 'acceptable' limits, the parents are told that there is a 'risk' of obesity if the child actually could not be considered slim.

By the way, in my next game, I shall allow Eunice to stay as she is. Rune Factory Frontier only allows one save file per game. This appears to be the new trend for Wii games, and it is supremely annoying. I liked the games better when one could keep three save files for the same game at different points. One then could take alternate paths stemming from the same beginning. Now I shall be unable to add the alternate information to the guide until I start the game again and choose a different option. I do understand that it is necessary to play multiple games in Rune Factory Frontier in order to complete all the Memories, but when one is writing guides for a game, the amount of time needed to do all of this means that the guide will not be completed for a year or so.

5 comments:

D Figman said...

I completely agree that this heart event felt very awkward. I think it might have been better if she said something along the lines of, "I was thinking of going on a diet. What do you think?".

That way you could decide to support her decision, or letting her know you think she is pretty regardless. Since it really is a self-esteem issue with her.

The way they have it now seems wrong. You character is a nice guy, and it seems out of character for him to respond like that.

Very odd indeed.

Freyashawk said...

First of all, it's nice to know that people still come to this site and watch the videos. Thank you!

I have hundreds of screenshots that I would like to incorporate into various videos for the Rune Factory series. The two I created yesterday took three hours to make... such a lot of time for so trivial a result! If people are enjoying them, however, it makes it worth the effort.

On a more specific note, if you look at your character's responses, you see that he IS uncomfortable with his own choice and tells her that it is merely a personal preference and so on...

There is a world-wide political campaign on at present with respect to adolescent obesity. I can't help but think that Marvelous was induced to make its contribution to this 'education' process with Eunice's character and dilemma.

Although I do understand that obesity can create all sorts of serious health issues, including diabetes, I still do not like the idea that Eunice will not even go to the beach in a bathing costume, as pretty as she is, because she is a little more voluptuous than that other girls. I personally never had to deal with any weight problems, but I have close friends who have and there is a cruelty in our cultural emphasis on extremely slim 'super models' in fashion.

Other cultures and other eras did not share our obsession. All you have to do is look at art from the Renaissance to see that large, voluptuous women were considered beautiful...

Synth said...

The thing is that what is for the richer people, that is considered beautiful. Centuries ago, the rich had food and therefore were nicely fat and round and pale. While now you need money to kepp fit and have a tan all year round, so these are the new models for beauty.

While as for the anorexic models: it's the fashon creators who choose their models and they are mostly gay. So they choose females that look like young boys (thin & breastless). Isn't it ironic?

Freyashawk said...

Thanks for your insightful comment, Synth! It warms my heart to see that you still visit my site. You are absolutely right: meat on the bones in the past indicated high social status. The poor never had the luxury of obesity. Furthermore, tanning was a mark of hard physical labour. The rich protected their skin from the sun's rays.

Now, of course, Western culture has discovered that there was a sound medical reason for avoiding too much sun in the form of skin cancer. Furthermore, although obesity is unhealthy, being too thin is equally so. One wonders if humanity ever will find a happy medium in ANYTHING. We are creatures of excess in so many ways.

Synth said...

I keep on following your blog via rss notifications, Freya, though I try not to read too much to prevent spoilers :) But since I don't own a Wii (yet!), I currently don't have much to comment. Though I'll be sure to return to these posts once I have a Wii and RFF :)
Keep up with the good work!