I've been playing suikoden 2 for a couple of days. I'm not sure what suikoden means, but this was a game I have always wanted to play. This game has about a hundred different playable characters, and what I love is that it's not just limited to humans. This game has a kitchen sink filled with all different sorts of Goodguys, including dog people, flying squirrels, octopi, a Pegasus, a werewolf, a robot and anything else I might have missed.


... compare that to Modern games like Project X zone, and it's kind of depressing. I can't help but feel a little offended by media that has a humans=good/everything else=bad setting. In Project X zone, none of the characters go beyond our human appearance. You may consider Megaman or Morrigan or Felicia to be non humans, but I do not. As a person who cares about animals and, honestly, admits to being misanthropic, when I get the feeling that the main characters fight only to protect humans and the world depicts only humans as good while all other life is disposable, then it honestly ruins the game for me. A game is not fun because I have to put up with that depressing and downright infuriating story the whole entire time. I see games as a way of escaping from the darkness of reality for a moment, and when games shove me back into the very things I try to play games to get away from, they aren't fun. I know I'm mostly talking about games, but it seems to be true in most forms of media.

This was always a thing, but back in the 64-bit day is when I was younger, it felt like a thing I could get away from and still receive quality content. These days, non human good guy characters feel like something that exist only on your phone and in poorly created content. I have heard arguments as to why this is, but none of it feels like they should be the sole reason. None of those things stopped us back then. Why do they stop us now?

I feel like we, as a species, are really be coming more and more selfish as a species, caring more about convenience and only humans than other life. Yet, this may be true here in America, but how is that kind of media even WORSE in Japan: a country that supposedly cares about other life. I don't get it, I just know that I can't connect with human characters the way I can connect with non-humans.

...I want to enjoy media again.

I was about to say "But Pokemon Mystery Dungeon..." And then I remembered it's about a human who turns into a pokemon. xD

But I get what you mean. Even games that do have animal protagonists tend to be cartoony or have human characteristics, which misses the point of having a nonhuman character.

Well, what I like to say to people who want something specific from the content they consume is that there's a person who might make that content, if they want it enough! ;)

Suikoden 2 sounds really interesting; I might check that out...

I think generally speaking it's easier for people to relate to humans than anything else and that's why you typically see that in media. If you're having to fight other humans there has to be reason enough to 'justify' that. It's a cheap move from the writer's part to not have to dehumaize a character with a narrative reason. This has always been the case though since the Oruk in tolkein.