Tales of Berseria is the latest in an extraordinarily long line of Tales games. To be honest, I haven’t played most of them, but Tales of Berseria is a very interesting game full of lively characters and interesting dialogue. It is absolutely worthwhile and a great game to play if you are hankering for something with meaty plot and thought-provoking characters. But I’m not writing to give the game a review today.
The specific subject I wanted to talk about today was ToB’s interesting relationship between its female major characters (who are varying degrees of emotional) and the main villain Artorius, whose goal is basically to create a logical, reason-based society. As I watched the game for longer and longer I realized just how many parallels there were between Artorius’s dismissiveness of emotion/appeal to ‘reason’ and this same phenomena that happens frequently on the Internet. A woman makes an emotional argument, usually because of personal distress, and a man comes in and uses his mighty reason and logic! to debate or play devil’s advocate about something important in her life, with no personal stakes involved in said argument. This is pretty much the origin of the word ‘mansplaining’, no? It’s a common thing that exists to frustrate and silence women.
Anyway, Artorius gives these mildly patriarchal vibes from the very start of the game, with his mildly condescending attitude toward Velvet during a couple of early scenes. As the game progresses, it seems as if he is always pitted against these emotional women — Velvet herself, who lusts for revenge and Eleanor, who believes that justice is more important than logic and emotion and thus she is a failure in his eyes. When it was just those two women, I thought it might just be a coincidence — women with strong convictions and feelings versus an emotionless man isn’t really that uncommon — but I remember commenting at the time that the two women both seemed to be chided by him for being too emotional. Although, I will also point out that he is also quite dismissive of Seres’s motives when that comes up…
The interesting thing about Artorius is that his logic and reason is often at least just and moral. For example, in this one town, they talk about how it was ‘logical’ to rescue the larger town of people and leave the smaller town of people behind. I would say that saving the many and sacrificing the few (as is Artorius’s philosophy) is a logical view but it also sends chills up your spine when you realize what it implies. I think that is a great strength of Berseria — it examines and tries to make you decide whose side you take — the emotional or the logical — and doesn’t necessarily beat you over the head with which side is right. Artorius is both justified and deeply unsettling. As is Velvet!
Anyway, there is a scene where the main female villain, Teresa, walks in on Artorius doing some creepy experiments on her brother. She, predictably, gets quite upset, and she is regarded with an almost oppressive condescension by the three male high-ranking Abbey members. One of them even says something like “Simply put, you just don’t have what it takes to handle him, sweetheart.” Artorius then strips her of her rank/powers and dismisses her out of hand. I definitely thought that this scene pushed the Artorius-is-patriarchal-scum angle into “yeah, this HAS to be on purpose”, with the strong implication that the writers think that he’s basically being an ass on this particular subject. I think this scene was particularly horrifying to me right now thanks to this exact condescending attitude being directed at women in all levels of government, including discussions between Congresspeople where women's concerns and voices are silenced in favor of male supremacy.
So… what’s the game’s purpose in having its main villain reflect a disrespect for women often seen from traditional power structures in real life, from powerful people in both government and religion, to the over logical Twitter anti-SJW man? Why does Artorius personify a worldview (logic is everything) that seems to mostly be opposed by people who suffer from oppression, from women to people of color to LBGTQ+ people? And does the game purposefully have a female lead to crystallize said opposition to that worldview? And ultimately, we learn that Artorius is actually motivated not by 'reason' but by his own emotional attachments! He is a hypocrite who does not truly believe his own bullshit, but uses it to oppress others. In this way, he again reflects the the 'logical devil's advocate' that we encounter online, who often deploy tactics of logic until that logic falls through, then they move the goalposts.
There’s a lot of gender politics in the game that I haven’t explored, but this was one interesting point that I could not let go. The game explores themes around motherhood, sisterhood, and at times portrays men as oafs who fight over really silly things, but the game also has this very stereotypical idea that women are very duplicitous, but then has the very honest Eleanor to dispute that. I think it might be best to unpack that in another rant.
Comments