Thursday, June 28, 2007

Tig Old


In the
new screens released for Soul Calibur IV, Ivy can be seen with two pendulous globes dangling from her chest. They look like tumors.

If I were in charge of her character arc, here's how I'd plot it:

Ivy has entered the competition in order to fund her dangerous love of surgical modification. Her obsession with breast size has seen her go under the knife six times now, the increases leaving horrible stretch marks on her skin and layers of scar tissue beneath each breast. She plans to go bigger next time, despite warnings from her doctor. If she can win the tournament, she'll have enough cash to fly to Eastern Europe where a doc exists who will do the surgery regardless of the risk.

If you win as Ivy, the final cutscene shows a series of snapshots of her in a skimpy bikini, breasts swollen to even more gigantic proportions, smile plastered on her face. It fades into a dimly-lit room, Ivy on a surgical table, a doctor smeared with blood, his forehead covered in sweat. The heart monitor flatlines, the doctor works furiously for a minute, the nurse handing him gauze and sutures, but to no avail.

Close-up of Ivy's blank eyes as the announcer says, "Ivy has been defeated, but the soul still burns."

5 comments:

Chill said...

meh, Ivy was always for guys who like ridiculous looking ladies and girls who like to see girls with whips beat on guys.

Now if they screw around with Xianghua's small perky boobs, I'll be pissed.

Anonymous said...

I would suggest that having any kind of preference for fictional women is the sign of a disturbed mind.

But I have a thing for Harley Quinn.

So I'll just leave it at that.

Anonymous said...

While Ivy's bosom did get a surprising increase in size, It's difficult to take Tig's opinion seriously when his (or her) "plot idea" makes it painfully clear that he has never played the Soul Calibur series.

Anonymous said...

I suppose owning the first one on Dreamcast and the second on Xbox doesn't really count as playing the series. Only two out of the three (well, soon-to-be four). I'm at a loss.

I'm not sure if that comment is meant to be a defense of the game's "plot" or referring instead to the idea that writing a ridiculous character backstory for a game filled with insipid, ridiculous backstories is novel or clever in any way.

Either way, thanks for the comment.

Still, it would've been nice to at least address the substance of the post, i.e., Her boobs are big and gross and look like giant swollen ticks fastened to her chest.

Anonymous said...

Very true. I should have restricted my comments to the subject of the post.

That said, I'm undecided on my feelings about the increase in bust size of the new SC4 characters.

On one hand, I'm not the type of person that automatically equates large breasts=bad. And while many of the female characters have been augmented, not all of the colossal size that Ivy and Taki are. Also, many of the original pieces of concept artwork for the characters depicted them much more buxom than what they finally appeared in the game.

On the other hand, I think they've gone a little *too* far. Not so much with the size (I have known some people IRL that are that well-endowed), but the way they depict it. Ivy is in an extremely skimpy outfit, and Taki is in a curve-hugging body suit. Most characters are actually very poorly armored for a melee battle (Sigfreid and Hilda being only a couple exceptions), but even *I* suspect Ivy must be using some sort of invisible, magical means to support her bosom.

Overall, the 'updated' look doesn't bother me overly much. If all the women in SC4 are going to be huge-busted, then I'd be a bit disappointed (like DoA, for instance). From what I've seen, this will not be the case - not all of the women are going to be of the same proportions (the new Hilda character is in plate-armor that totally covers her body, for instance).

In closing, the one thing I wonder about is this - Ivy has the biggest increase of any character by far. I wonder if they'll actually write in an explanation for that. Actually, thinking back to SC3 and how they nerfed her quite a bit from SC2, I wonder if her new size might be rationalized as a new 'nerf' for her? One of her alchemical experiments went awry and now with her larger assets she looses a bit of speed and control over her weapon?