The Queer Potentiality of Suikoden
How a PlayStation Japanese RPG series allowed players to build a world where queerness can exist
Suikoden isn’t exactly the most popular RPG franchise. Indeed, the last core release was back on the PS2, and there seem to be no plans to return to the setting. Which sucks in part because, for me, Suikoden has always been a rich tapestry of a game series — one that allows a huge amount of depth in terms of gameplay and world building, without the same kinds of rigid confines when it comes to characters. Where so many other games slap players across the face with the heterosexuality of the characters, Suikoden steps back and, admittedly without including much explicit queerness, allows players to build a world where queerness can exist. Which might seem like it’s just laziness on the part of the game developers, but for me has often been a needed outlet for queer expression in a sea of games that resolved every possibility of queerness into a “safe” straight track.
A Canvas as Wide as the Night Sky
Part of what has always distinguished Suikoden as a series has been the large cast. An important part of the gameplay is going around recruiting all 108 Stars of Destiny — people from all walks of life who are pulled into (or openly embrace) the conflict that spreads throughout the game’s regions. Not all are fighters (though most are), and not all of them are fleshed out, but that’s part of what makes the game a sort of playground for people looking to find or create their own connections between characters. Most RPGs of the time featured casts of 6–10 characters, which might have made for fandoms that became very focused on one or two different pairings, but Suikoden’s sprawling cast means there’s much less consensus on OTPs (though there are still a few) and leaves a huge amount of space for fans to explore some of the characters that don’t get a lot of canonical attention within the games. Think that Ronnie Bell could have done a lot better than a third rate blacksmith? Pretty sure that Wakaba is an ace enby cinnamon roll? Really into what it might be like for a prince to be in a relationship with his own double? It’s not that the series encourages this, exactly, but its strength is in the connections the player decides to emphasize, the combinations of characters that most speak to each individual playing the game.
This isn’t about a small plucky band of rebels somehow overthrowing an evil empire. Rather, it’s about resistance and revolution, about building a movement that can engage in a large scale war.
In many ways, this is why I always come back to the series, because it promotes headcanon and rarepairs (basically every pairing in the series is a rarepair, after all) in order to make up for what is often shallow or incomplete backstories for the characters. Which might sound like a complaint. But most of the games do a wonderful job of giving each character enough to make them unique and memorable, to make their presence in the war make sense, without making the experience too much about the individuals. Bob from Suikoden II or Isabel from Suikoden V both come with backstories loaded with tragedy, angst, and potential. They have reasons for fighting. But the games have always focused less on those reasons and more on the scope and scale and devastating impact of war. This isn’t about a small plucky band of rebels somehow overthrowing an evil empire. Rather, it’s about resistance and revolution, about building a movement that can engage in a large scale war. While the main characters must interrogate their motivations again and again, the wider army becomes a canvas on which the player paints those motivations. Whether the reasons are revenge or necessity or, maybe, love, the player is left to reflect their own intentions in the larger cast. For some that might seem a big ask for a game, and it’s certainly different than most RPGs that focus on more traditional, personal conflicts. For me, though, the possibilities Suikoden opens up in its game allows for a level of queering that’s difficult to achieve with other series.
To underline my point, here are some of my Twitter threads where I rank all the Stars of Destiny in Suikoden II, Suikoden III (which I really need to get back and finish), and Suikoden V by queerness. If I can ever get myself to get through Suikoden IV, I’ll add that as well.
All the Pretty People
Plus, I mean, the aesthetic of the game isn’t exactly…not queer. After all, each game features the main character building an army of misfits — of dissidents and malcontents. So it’s probably no surprise that the queers are well represented. Side characters like Varkas and Sydonia in the first game and Camus and Miklotov in the second (to say nothing of gay dads Flik and Viktor or the slew of muscle lesbians in most of the games) establish very early that while the game might never come right out and say that the characters are queer, the game doesn’t try too hard to insist that every character have a heterosexual pairing by game’s end.
What Suikoden often does for people looking to queer the text is give a lot of room and some subtle and not-so-subtle hints.
Which is all outside of, you know, the main characters. From the first game, the main characters are all young men thrust into a war they never wanted, but one they’re not willing to turn away from (unless you take that one of a handful of “bad” endings scattered throughout the series). And what keeps them going throughout are relationships that, well…don’t often seem that straight. The first game pairs the main character with Gremio, the family servant who is very devoted to his young master. The second game only expands the giant queer mess, casting the main character and his boyfriend — er, best friend on opposite sides of a conflict that threatens to destroy everything around them…but that can’t quite destroy the love they have for each other. The characters are angsty, uncertain, and probably for a lot of queer people playing the games, very familiar. Especially because the games (sometimes to almost ridiculous lengths) take steps to make the main characters vehicles for the player rather than their own rigid personalities and drives. The player brings their own baggage to the role of hero, and for queer players, that baggage comes right along, and is rarely complicated by a heterosexual love interest to get in the way.
Decisions, Decisions
So what Suikoden often does for people looking to queer the text is give a lot of room and some subtle and not-so-subtle hints. It might lack the intimate focus on core characters that a lot of others series feature, but for me it also requires a lot less in the way of mental gymnastics to fit into the established setting and cast. Which might be why it doesn’t attract the kind of attention from shippers as others series (though that might be because of the lack of popularity for the series, as well). Because of the large cast, it can almost be a bit overwhelming when it comes to what relationships to focus on, what characters to pick out of the 108 Stars of Destiny in each game. Personally, I love how the game itself offers some guidance, through a variety of elements within the games that add extra depth and flavor to the characters. These include:
- Plain old talking to people around the castle: As the castle grows, characters found throughout change their dialogue. Special events within the stories also can reveal additional dialogue, and even special scenes for certain characters.
- The baths! Starting in the second game, taking certain combinations of characters to the baths results in bonus conversations, and can contain some of the most hilarious interactions in the series.
- The suggestion box: Where members of the army write to you about…just about everything. Sometimes there are some very big things revealed in these letters, especially in later games.
- Detective investigations: These dive deeper into each character (though unlocking them all takes sooooooo much time), and can reveal bits of backstory to give fuller pictures of the various characters.
- Combination attacks: Like the baths, certain combinations of characters can perform cooperative attacks that give a nice variety to what can otherwise be somewhat repetitive combat. Who gets combo attacks together is interesting, and their relationship can often be pieced together through the above elements.
- The ending tiles: These scroll at the close of the game and give hints to the ultimate fates of the various characters — and can change based on decisions made inside the game.
Certain games have more, too, like the confessions in Suikoden IV, but these largely optional elements allow players to balance their own desired level of canon with their personal headcanons. What the series excels at, in my opinion at least, is giving just enough to open more possibilities with the characters, rather than making everything set in stone (which is pretty funny, actually, given that the characters are literally set in stone on the Star Tablet). Plus there’s a lot in these expansions that only make it more likely that some of the characters are definitely supposed to be read as queer (Lucretia!), rather than some sort of accident of cultural differences or translation.
Have It Your Way
Which is perhaps all to say that part of why I love queering Suikoden as a text (or texts, really) is that it largely gets out of my way about the entire thing. And while the community isn’t as robust as it was when the games were still coming out, there is still plenty of interest in the series, and a lot of people who seem to have the same impulses to go back and revisit the series. And it’s a fandom that doesn’t have really any divisions regarding pairings (it does have divisions regarding which game in the series is The Best, though, so be warned). A few might remain more popular than others, but again, the strength of the series has always been in scope and scale. Checking out AO3 will reveal tiny ficlets of conversations between characters, to sweeping retellings that completely reimagine the games and characters. There’s cute romps, smutty asides, and hardcore erotica. And that’s wonderful.
Sadly, one of the larger barriers for entry is that the games themselves are hard to find (the first four games are available on the PlayStation Store for the PSP, Vita, and PlayStation 3, but there have been no recent rereleases for modern consoles), and they aren’t exactly short for those wanting to explore all the different things they offer. But from the first time I picked up Suikoden III (and then went back to the original Suikoden and Suikoden II), the series has been a source of joy, and as I’ve moved through fandom and writing and coming to terms with myself and my sexuality, it’s been the canvas on which I could paint the queer media of which I’ve been largely deprived.
And that means a lot.
