Ellen Page: The Sony Female Character Model

During E3 Sony Press Conference, Sony dropped two exclusives; one was The Last of Us and the other was Beyond: Two Souls. Both had Ellen Page. Now don’t tell me that the chick in the Last of Us isn’t Ms. Page because I’ve watched Juno. Thrice. Found it witty. Yes, I’m a Ellen Page fan and who’s not? Hard Candy all day.
If you are not familiar with the two game titles, here is a quick summary. The Last of Us is a survival horror/action game where you play as a guy that forgot to shave because it’s the end of the world and zombies are real. Oh yeah, other humans are a threat because my life is more important than yours. It’s a good philosophy for the end of the world.

Here’s my question, how do you keep a well-groomed beard during the zombie apocalypse?

Continuing on.

He is accompanied by Ellen Page reprising the role of young girl that hangs out with older grizzled man, with moments of bravery. Naught Dog of Drake’s Fortune fame has brought you this fine tale. If you watched the E3 trailer and saying to yourself, this chick doesn’t look like Ellen Page. You have not been following this game at all. When the first trailer for this game came out, people could not stop referring to EP (Got tired of writing Ellen Page.) Then all of a sudden, people needed to change her face because money, suing, likeness and shit but she will always have spirit of EP.

Now we get to the game that you play as her, Beyond: Two Souls. Quantic Dream is behind this one; these guys are the wedding planners of the game industry. During their games, you will bound to get choked up, maybe even shed a tear. You play as EP who plays as a women that has a relationship with some invisible entity. Just got all of you nerds excited. This title is an action adventure that allows you to make EP run, jump and kick people in the face. Now you can finally get rid of that Ellen Page doll you made, weirdo. 

Now this isn’t a rant or a complaint, what this is a nod of approval. EP is the model of the everyday white girl.  You know, the girl who has been going to the coffee shop that you have been going to for years, you probably asked her for honey a couple of times but never strike up a conversation. Yeah, that girl. I grew up on the super heroine or super model female characters in video games. You know, racks on racks on racks. It’s cool to see two well established companies give their games the “Daria” treatment, hopefully this catches on. Both do story telling well and great gameplay. I know somebody is going to say not true but the girl next door models are the new thing.  Name a game where the everyday girl is a main character besides Beyond Good and Evil and Portal.

I’m glad that video games are heading into realism, not only in graphics but in content. I’m happy to see the video game industry final growing up. Plus, she is a great actress that adds a certain flavor to whatever she does. Hopeful Xbox users will get something like these games in the future. Exclusively. For right now, I have to plan out Ellen Page Day. Mostly likely it will fall on the midnight launch of Beyond: Two Soul. In fact, I think it should be sponsored by Sony; just an all day access to Ellen Page movies on PSN for the  launch.  Ellen Page all day.

Do We Really Need New Consoles Now?

The video game industry is on the verge of yet another console generation, with Nintendo scheduled to release the followup to the commercially successful yet critically maligned Wii and Microsoft rumored to be announcing the third console in their Xbox brand both this year. It’s also quite interesting that this could be happening while Sony and Microsoft’s consoles both still have legs, with not only their motion control options, but their consoles haven’t seemingly hit their limits as far as graphics horsepower, and what developers can still do with said horsepower.

I could go on at length about how this could leave a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of gamers who just purchased consoles, but it boils down to the fact that there may not be room for new consoles in the homes of the millions of gamers who have made extensive investments in the current generation of consoles. Let’s be honest, the worldwide economy is struggling, and while the gaming industry has proven to be less vulnerable to the painful hit taken by other forms of entertainment, it isn’t immune. The slow start by Nintendo’s latest handheld, the 3DS, and its subsequent price drop pretty much proves that point. The console’s original price point, coupled with a lackluster crop of launch titles pretty much cemented that families hit by the economic downtown would not pay such a large sum for a handheld.

I have been saying that the gaming industry is on precarious ground, and any step in the wrong direction can lead to a repeat of what happened in 1983. The best advice I could give to the console makers is that they probably need to clamp down on their software approval process. Put better games on the market, and gamers will buy them. Don’t rush to put out a new console every five years simply because the console has been out for 5 years. Sony was able to ride the Playstation 2 for about a decade, which hadn’t been done since the days of the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision. The immense amount of potential still left in the current generation of consoles is only held back by the potential of the developers working on the content being released for them. In short: we don’t need new consoles just yet, but seeing what they can pump out will be pretty fun.