I hate the fact that Livejournal doesn't like me to add more spacing between paragraphs
[A long, long rant in defense of Piers Nivans (with lots of spoilers)]
A lot of people, specially long-date Resident Evil fans only seem to have complaints about Piers Nivans. They mostly say that he is a "dull, bothersome, generic character who does nothing other than defy Chris' orders" and there are so many contradictions in these reasons that it's not even funny. Indeed, Piers didn't have much character development but alas, as previously stated by several of his fans, he only had one game. Chris, Jill, Claire and Leon have been through several games of the series (and if you think about it, there's nothing quite special about them. Comparatively, they are also very generic - complain as much as you want, but in my opinion, Call of Duty: Black Ops' Alex Mason has been better developed than Chris Redfield, for an instance), of course they are a tad more complex than a newcomer who only showed once (if you don't count Marhawa Desire, but even that has been written later). Additionally, if Piers was being bothersome and insubordinate, I don't think he can be tagged as "generic" any longer. The way I see it, Piers an interesting character exactly because he actually speaks out loud when he doesn't agree with Chris' orders.
For me, it hasn't been made very clear whether Piers was committing acts of insubordination or not, given the fact that, according to the notes within the game itself, Piers took over Chris' place while his captain was missing. So yeah, maybe for that specific mission Piers was serving as some sort of co-captain (who am I to say anything about it, I don't know what is the order of the military hierarchy) and what he was doing was indeed subordination. But this is one of Piers' charms: if that really is the case, then he actually risked his own job in order to put his captain back in line. Maybe not so much for his strong sense of justice, but exactly because he had such a great admiration for Chris that, unlike most soldiers who just obeyed him blindly, he actually cared about correcting him when he was wrong or reckless. And I believe he did it not only because it was his job, but because they were friends.
Now regarding the fact that everybody was calling Piers a "cock-sucker", the fact that Chris has a male partner unlike everybody else in the game doesn't make either of them gay. And if they were, so what? What is so bad about a person's sexual orientation not being straight that it makes people complain about a character? Would anyone be complaining so much if Piers had been replaced by a female character like Jessica Sherawat? If Piers had been a sniper girl who wore a shemagh and acted exactly the same way he does, I would probably find her the cutest thing on the planet (specially if you consider I like pretty much all girls from the Resident Evil series) and would cry in Chris' campaign's ending all the same. I may have gotten interested on Resident Evil 6 because Piers is a handsome fellow, but I wouldn't stick to the game if I thought his personality sucked. And even worse: there are people stating that Piers is gay because he wears a scarf. Well, I'll be damned, apparently men cannot wear scarves anymore. You can tell that these people are not used to military shooters, otherwise they would know that most soldiers, specially sharpshooters, tend to wear the shemagh. Not because of aesthetics, but because IT IS ACTUALLY FUNCTIONAL, like wearing sunglasses. I don't understand how pieces of military attires are enough reason to deduce a person's sexual orientation.
Regarding his comeback on the next Resident Evil game... while I do like him immensely, I don't think I would like to see him in a possible Resident Evil 7 unless there was a very, very good reason for it. For now, the only possibility I see for him to make a comeback is with him as Chris' nemesis, which would probably give him a clichè ending (given his personality, he would either sacrifice himself - again - or go back to service). It would be nice to see him in a flashback or anything like that, but forcing his survival just because the fans were not happy with his ending in the last game would not be cool.
Wow, this post is actually shorter than I had originally planned. I ended up leaving a couple of things I wanted to discuss out of this post because... well, I forgot most of what I was about to say. *sigh*
I may be making yet another post regarding Piers and his relation with Chris, but not today (well, maybe not even this week). There are several things I still want to write about, but I have a lot in my mind for now...
A lot of people, specially long-date Resident Evil fans only seem to have complaints about Piers Nivans. They mostly say that he is a "dull, bothersome, generic character who does nothing other than defy Chris' orders" and there are so many contradictions in these reasons that it's not even funny. Indeed, Piers didn't have much character development but alas, as previously stated by several of his fans, he only had one game. Chris, Jill, Claire and Leon have been through several games of the series (and if you think about it, there's nothing quite special about them. Comparatively, they are also very generic - complain as much as you want, but in my opinion, Call of Duty: Black Ops' Alex Mason has been better developed than Chris Redfield, for an instance), of course they are a tad more complex than a newcomer who only showed once (if you don't count Marhawa Desire, but even that has been written later). Additionally, if Piers was being bothersome and insubordinate, I don't think he can be tagged as "generic" any longer. The way I see it, Piers an interesting character exactly because he actually speaks out loud when he doesn't agree with Chris' orders.
For me, it hasn't been made very clear whether Piers was committing acts of insubordination or not, given the fact that, according to the notes within the game itself, Piers took over Chris' place while his captain was missing. So yeah, maybe for that specific mission Piers was serving as some sort of co-captain (who am I to say anything about it, I don't know what is the order of the military hierarchy) and what he was doing was indeed subordination. But this is one of Piers' charms: if that really is the case, then he actually risked his own job in order to put his captain back in line. Maybe not so much for his strong sense of justice, but exactly because he had such a great admiration for Chris that, unlike most soldiers who just obeyed him blindly, he actually cared about correcting him when he was wrong or reckless. And I believe he did it not only because it was his job, but because they were friends.
Now regarding the fact that everybody was calling Piers a "cock-sucker", the fact that Chris has a male partner unlike everybody else in the game doesn't make either of them gay. And if they were, so what? What is so bad about a person's sexual orientation not being straight that it makes people complain about a character? Would anyone be complaining so much if Piers had been replaced by a female character like Jessica Sherawat? If Piers had been a sniper girl who wore a shemagh and acted exactly the same way he does, I would probably find her the cutest thing on the planet (specially if you consider I like pretty much all girls from the Resident Evil series) and would cry in Chris' campaign's ending all the same. I may have gotten interested on Resident Evil 6 because Piers is a handsome fellow, but I wouldn't stick to the game if I thought his personality sucked. And even worse: there are people stating that Piers is gay because he wears a scarf. Well, I'll be damned, apparently men cannot wear scarves anymore. You can tell that these people are not used to military shooters, otherwise they would know that most soldiers, specially sharpshooters, tend to wear the shemagh. Not because of aesthetics, but because IT IS ACTUALLY FUNCTIONAL, like wearing sunglasses. I don't understand how pieces of military attires are enough reason to deduce a person's sexual orientation.
Regarding his comeback on the next Resident Evil game... while I do like him immensely, I don't think I would like to see him in a possible Resident Evil 7 unless there was a very, very good reason for it. For now, the only possibility I see for him to make a comeback is with him as Chris' nemesis, which would probably give him a clichè ending (given his personality, he would either sacrifice himself - again - or go back to service). It would be nice to see him in a flashback or anything like that, but forcing his survival just because the fans were not happy with his ending in the last game would not be cool.
Wow, this post is actually shorter than I had originally planned. I ended up leaving a couple of things I wanted to discuss out of this post because... well, I forgot most of what I was about to say. *sigh*
I may be making yet another post regarding Piers and his relation with Chris, but not today (well, maybe not even this week). There are several things I still want to write about, but I have a lot in my mind for now...