I’m Sure You’ve Got Plenty to Say
by Guest Contributor Calabar, originally published at Girl in the Machine
Natan: …
Remember the good ol’ days after the first world war when European vampires still embarked on sabbaticals to the American south-west, cat-people ran Hollywood from behind the scenes, and cheeky teenage detectives could break into high-security compounds like Alcatraz without consequences?
Oh wait—that’s not real life. It’s Shadow Hearts: From the New World (thank goodness).
There’s something about this irreverent video game series that I find incredibly appealing, but sometimes it leaves me scratching my head. The way the developers choose to represent characters can be a little disingenuous. In particular, minority characters have their differences from the mainstream magnified one hundredfold. Whether it’s the swishy Magimel tailors or the so-Mexican-it-hurts mariachi singer Ricardo, everything is so overblown that it’s difficult to take it seriously.
While discussing the game with BomberGirl and PlasmaRit, we became interested in the “strong and silent” Native American character Natan. We wondered how much he actually had to say throughout the course of the game, and I honestly couldn’t recall. It’s been a while since I’ve played it.
To investigate our suspicions, I combed through one hundred and ten pages of the Shadow Hearts: From the New World script. From beginning to end, the script is 30,324 words long.
Natan says 768 words. Let’s break that down further.
Of those 768 words, about 573 of them are related to the storyline. The other 195 words are spoken during dungeon exploration when Natan offers suggestions on how to complete the puzzles.
Throughout the entire game, Natan is represented through a mere 2.5% of the dialogue. This number isn’t fully accurate, though, because the script I used doesn’t include the short snippets of conversation shared with party members during side quests, including Natan’s UMA side quests.
That doesn’t make it any less problematic in my eyes. Natan first appears when Shania is explaining the Malice to Johnny within the first hour of the game. He watches their entire conversation, including their decision to travel to Arkham University together, before introducing himself with a simple, “I am Natan. It is my honor.” We move through another two or three hours of gaming before he says, “We’re wasting time. Let us go,” during Frank’s introduction scene.
This pattern continues all way through the entire game, with Natan’s voice entirely absent from a few chapters. On the one occasion that he speaks up and explains the source of Shania’s blind desire for revenge (eighty-eight words, or 11.4% of his total—the most he speaks at any one time in the game), she puts a cap on him with, “Well, aren’t we in a talkative mood today…”
The treatment his character receives perpetuates the strong, silent Native American stereotype. At the very least, he’s not quite Tanto from The Lone Ranger. He rarely speaks, but he uses good grammar throughout the game, with one strange exception. After the party has been captured in the Caribbean, Natan lifts the gate from its hinges and says, “Long time no use… so gate was warped.”
The only quality of the Shadow Hearts series that makes this passably acceptable to me is that no one is safe. The developers must have had a Big Book of Stereotypes when they were drafting the characters. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, it’s not a game to take seriously.
Still, while there’s certainly nothing wrong with being quiet, I feel like a character who has been present for the whole game would have more to say.
I wanted to get some more insight into other Native American characters in video games, but I’m currently without reliable internet access. I invite all of our readers to comment and share their thoughts. Who are some of the other Native American faces and voices out there? How do they compare to one another?
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Rob Schmidt wrote:
Among the recent video games featuring Natives are Prey, Gun, Brave, and Age of Empires III: The Warchiefs.
FYI, I’ve posted a roundup of Native Americans in video games (http://www.bluecorncomics.com/navidgam.htm). Check it out for more information.
Posted 28 May 2008 at 8:57 am ¶
Daomadan wrote:
Did you see the character designs for Shania? She’s described as a “A Native American woman of the Garvoy tribe that possesses the beauty of the spirits.” She also has dark skin, but blonde hair and blue eyes.
Along with your analysis of Natan’s stereotype, I’d like to see some discussion of Shania as a native woman of color and how she is being treated by the game designers.
/so sick of blond and blue eyed game characters
Posted 28 May 2008 at 9:25 am ¶
Tasha wrote:
This may be part of the reason why i don’t play video games. There is consideration and care taken for everyone and everything except ‘minority’ characters and in a realm that is supposed to be fun it takes the fun aspect out of it for me
Posted 28 May 2008 at 12:08 pm ¶
Logan wrote:
One thing that you might want to check out, if you have the time and desire, is World of Warcraft, or even Warcraft III. Even if you just picked up the free trial demo, you’d be able to experience the starting area where this is mostly prevalent. The Tauren race, while only being demi-Human, has a very strong Native American influence, from the way they speak, to beliefs in the Land and Shamanism (and I’m referring to Native American Shamanism of course, not European), and the architecture of their buildings. Surprisingly, I find it very well done, though I imagine Blizzard put a lot of research into making it “authentic” for the playerbase. I don’t know enough of individual tribes to know if it was one particular tribe they focused on or just a conglomeration, probably the second, but still well done.
That all gets undone with the Trolls being based off horrid Jamacian accents and stereotypes, so it does leave a little sour taste in my mouth.
The only other game which stands out for me with a Native American character is one I haven’t played in a long while, Wild Arms 3 where one of your four principle characters is from a seeming Native American village, and if I’m right, started out trying to escape his destiny before eventually settling into it. I can’t remember off hand how much is stereotyped or not though.
One other thing about Wild Arms 3 though, is that it is I think the second RPG, after Valkyrie Profile 1, where you had a female character in the lead, who wasn’t sexualized, and who was treated with respect by the men who followed her.
Posted 28 May 2008 at 12:32 pm ¶
Persia wrote:
Tasha, not all video games are problematic RPGs. One of the great things about the Wii ‘branded’ games– Wii Sports, Wii Fit and the like– is that you can make your own avatar to the side and shape you like and throw him or her into any situation.
Posted 28 May 2008 at 3:06 pm ¶
Persia wrote:
And by ’side’ I mean ’size.’
Posted 28 May 2008 at 3:09 pm ¶
TierList E wrote:
Hmm, there was Nightwolf from Mortal Kombat. . . who I can’t say much about except in the last movie I was almost certain he was kinda hot.
And there’s Julia from Tekken. Well, not really- she’s was a white woman who was adopted by her N.A. mother who was in a previous Tekken I never really played. She was very into spirits guiding and protecting her and all that jazz. Ah, I do remember that the sumo wrestler had a crush on her mother, which is a bit interesting.
Posted 28 May 2008 at 3:42 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
@TierListE -
Michelle is the NA you are thinking of. She was pretty bad ass, but in reflecting, she was also mad stereotypical. Lots of combos with “Tomahawk” in the title and her one feather in each costume change.
That being said, she was one of my faves to play with. It was her or Nina back in the day.
Posted 28 May 2008 at 3:44 pm ¶
TierList E wrote:
Ah-
I looked up Michelle on Wiki and she became a bit more interesting. Heh I really didn’t know anything about her, which would make sense considering I didn’t pick up Tekken until 5.
But since Michelle Chang is half Chinese it does make it more curious to give her only NA stereotypes to work with. Did the Chinese half ever show up outside of her name and fighting style?
I admit I didn’t like Julia or Nina. Neither because they were a pain to play against with my subpar usage with Xiaoyu (Asuka falls under that too), and Nina specifically since she was always mean to her sister Anna, who I have bit of a soft spot for (her crazy self).
Posted 28 May 2008 at 4:28 pm ¶
Kendra wrote:
Now that you mention it, I don’t approve of Shania having blond hair and blue eyes; I question whether those two attributes would be true physical traits of the tribe that she is meant to represent. It’s possible that due to migration, a people that possessed physical traits such as blond hair and blue eyes actually came to America, but I highly doubt it. Unless her appearance is the result of mixing from previous generations or her parents, then I’m not sure what to believe. They could have just used a European American woman instead, but I’m certain they were going for something exotic and unnatural. Given the time period, there was a lot that they could have done that would have been equally offensive. I can’t say much for Natan and the other characters since I haven’t played the third installment to the series, but this information alone makes me question the intentions of Natilus. Oh, should we bring up Lucia from the previous game, Covenant?
Posted 28 May 2008 at 8:00 pm ¶
no one important wrote:
“One other thing about Wild Arms 3 though, is that it is I think the second RPG, after Valkyrie Profile 1, where you had a female character in the lead, who wasn’t sexualized, and who was treated with respect by the men who followed her.”
THIRD RPG. The first was Phantasy Star.
Posted 29 May 2008 at 6:13 pm ¶
Daomadan wrote:
@Kendra: My thoughts exactly.
Posted 30 May 2008 at 8:43 am ¶