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groovywellie · 4 months ago

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Clothes Make the Character - Part 2

You know how I said Arthur's Proper Suit was designed to remind you of the iconic dark brown black and white rowing jacket in The Prisoner? So the architecture on the island that Number Six is imprisoned on is styled predominantly to look like an Italian resort town. The reason why Number Six is given a rowing jacket is because the rest of the uniform (mockneck, straw boater hat, khaki pants, and deck shoes) is built around this idea of the people held captive here living out their days as if on perpetual holiday.

Aside from its appropriateness to vacationing in Italian villas, the rowing jacket was originally seen on prep school and university campuses. Rowing crew members wore such jackets in the colors of their school or rowing club, particularly with regard to the piping (or braiding). So it also has collegiate context.

We're using James to show off the outfit because Roger is doing something like this every time you see him.

Their outfit is a re-textured Wellie Suit with turtleneck (you can tell by the single pocket on the left side; the Proper Suit has two). The buttons and braiding on the sleeves have notably been recolored a metallic gold (for real, there's actual shine on them), although in first person view, Roger's braiding lacks this and is simply colored yellow. They both accessorize with a blue-brimmed white naval beret.

When you get to They Came From Below, that's when you get to see the real difference between Roger and James. James apparently comes from very humble beginnings affording him little in the way of aspiration. Roger, on the other hand, is educated, fluent in multiple languages (several of them dead), and went to "the best schools". This tells us that Roger came from money. Boat-owning money. The kind of money that turns the word "summer" into a verb. The kind of money that summers in Italy.

Had it not been for the war, I rather expect Roger would have completed his schooling and set out to the see the world. And the way to do that at this point in time was largely still by sea, not air. And he'd want to do it in proper appointments. Roger wants for adventure, but not danger. He's a Howard Carter, not a Rudyard Kipling. Here for a good time, not a hard time (unless...?)

The naval theme might also just be an easy gag. These guys are "in the Navy" if you know what I mean. The ol' Irish Navy. It'd be a bit of a lowbrow joke, but even Roger canonically isn't too good for that.

But if this outfit speaks more to Roger's character on the whole, then why does James also wear it? Are they one of those strangely codependent couples who have decided to inexplicably start dressing like twins?

Well, you might think that... if you forgot that this relationship is actually a weirdly codependent threesome.

I've given you the evolution of Dr. Faraday to illustrate something about her for you: from the alpha on, Dr. Faraday was meant to have a sense of style. She's wearing the white sunglasses in that first image, even though she was indoors. Very Anna Wintour. They probably nixed that idea because it makes her look like she's in the Rapture Family and because regular glasses are more suggestive of her scientific genius character.

She does look a bit dowdy in her main game appearance since she's just wearing the labcoat variation of the Wellette dress, but she is also being held prisoner out in the Garden District or working in the remains of her exploded lab here, depending on if you're Arthur or Sally.

I think the version of her we see in They Came From Below is the one that she'd consider her stock outfit. It's thematically similar to Sally's (high contrast with the white being quite bright and clean), although this might just be to make her visually consistent with the polished aesthetics of her facility. They re-textured the blocky glasses red for her which is a Statement. Love that for her, honestly. But most notably for our purposes, she's got a tidy row of shiny gold buttons down her labcoat.

Do you know why it takes her so damn long to saunter out from behind the portal machine when you tap on the glass? Narratively, it's because she's arguably the most valuable person in Wellington Wells and even if she's a prisoner in her own laboratory, you're still on her time and at her mercy. But practically, it's because she uses the same walk animation as the models in the design center.

Now I don't think she actually spends a lot of time thinking about the way she looks, but she does care about it. She wears her Happy Face mask even though no one's gonna see her but Roger, James, and Constable Hickinbotham. Roger and James still wear their masks, even though the only people who will see them will attack them on sight for it. She understands the importance of presentation and even weaponizes it (spitefully making the Jubilator look like a teapot because she felt designing it was beneath her).

So I posit that Roger's and James' outfits are actually a uniform she had commissioned for them. Perhaps Roger made some suggestions that gave it the nautical (dare I say Ralph Lauren) bent, but it still features Dr. Faraday's use of gold buttons and her appreciation for stripes (dare I even say Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male stripes). And as for James, he is not going to argue with his boss about uniforms or his boyfriend about aesthetics.

As an aside, now's probably a good time to compare her approach to fashion - as a scientist and as a woman - to Sally's. Like, Sally understands that presentation is important too, but she seems to take no pleasure in it for its own sake. It's a thing she does to keep men interested. Faraday, conversely, has no interest at all in men and yet maintains her appearance. I find that very relatable personally! She's doing it because that is the way she wants to to be seen, in a way similar to Constable Peters and his mustache.

Nick's a little funny in that he actually starts out in a variation of his stock outfit and the first quest in his DLC is ultimately to find a clean set of clothes. While functionally, the blue suit is not much different from the maroon, it is a little symbolic that he wakes up in an outfit we don't know him for (and indeed he doesn't know himself since it's covered in blood) and wants to get into his more familiar and recognizable color scheme.

This is also the one exception to the first-person-until-the-end rule. Here, we need to see that Nick is covered in blood and so his opening cutscene is shot in third-person.

This initial blue version of his outfit as well as his stock maroon outfit... are actually just the Proper Suit re-textured again. They attached frills to the cuffs on the jacket, colored over the trim on the wrists, and pinned a jabot on the neck to hide the tie underneath. Give it a bolder color and some striped pants and you've got a completely different outfit.

Such is the power of accessorizing! Let this be a lesson. If you're building a wardrobe on a budget, get modular base pieces you can mix and match and then use accessories to change their context.

While we're here, know that the maid outfit arms are also just black proper suit sleeves with frills attached backwards. Goddamn, were they crafty with their materials.

Anyway, Nick's actual stock outfit.

This interpretation of the Proper Suit, Nick's Fab Threads, is meant to remind us of Austin Powers' velvet suit. It's almost exactly that outfit, save for the striped pants which give Nick a bit of borrowed Rolling Stones flair (which they were not subtle about alluding to). The Stones tended towards a leaner, more Wellish silhouette than Austin Powers does (recall that Powers is actually from 1967 so his style is heading into the 70's). While Mick Jagger always gets the credit for his fashion sense, I think the striped pants are actually more Keith Richards. An apt design choice, all things considered. No shit, though, I literally, just yesterday, saw a video of Iron Butterfly performing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and there was a guy wearing Nick's exact outfit in it. That would be 1968 so Nick's ahead of his time. Or rather Davy Hackney is.

Hackney also wears a variation of this ensemble, swapping the striped pants for marigold ones, brightening the hue of the jacket up to fuchsia, and forgoing the white piping. Compared to Sally, who he dresses in his strangest confabulations, Davy apparently dresses Nick in a played up, showier version of his own style. It shows a bit of how he sees their different value in marketing. He gives both of them his haute couture designs, but Sally gets the designs he never intends to sell, while Nick gets designs that will eventually be edited and refined to become part of his ready-to-wear lines. Considering what a merchandising machine Nick is, this follows perfectly.

The jabot, though, I think takes the ensemble in a Biba/Vivienne Westwood direction. Westwood didn't really come into the scene properly until the late 70's with her Pirate collection and this fashion trend doesn't even pick up until 1981, but the reason I think this bears mention is there is one other person in Wellington Wells who wears this outfit.

Cap'n Strawbeard, the New Romantic.

Strawbeard's version of the outfit is very pared down, no piping, a drab brown to match his tricorn hat, the jabot necessary not only to tell you this guy is a pirate, but also (again) to hide that there's a tie on the model underneath it.

Although we're never really given a reason to compare these guys in game, I do think it's kind of interesting that Nick is courting the beginnings of what would become New Romantic fashion. Vivienne Westwood's 1981 Pirate collection is when the subculture starts approaching the mainstream, so having an inexplicable pirate character in the game who happens to wear the same outfit as the rock star is sort of like a nod to how music and fashion move in tandem. The color schemes of both Strawbeard and Nick's outfits are already starting to rebel from the pop art brights and minimalism of the 60's and shifting into the ornamentation and richer jewel/earth tones that Biba began popularizing in the mid 60's.

One other thing about this that I think is worth noting is that Cap'n Strawbeard seems to have the only outfit in Wellington Wells with universal conformity. He was apparently able to wear it in the Garden District with no problems and he can wear it in the Village as well. He was supposed to have a quest for Arthur in which, if given enough scotch, he would admit to stealing from Wellies and giving his spoils to Wastrels so part of this may be that he has enough social capital out there to get a pass. But it's also fun to consider that Cap'n Strawbeard might be the only person who's struck the balance between polished enough for the Village and scrubby enough for the Garden District.

Last but certainly not least, Victoria.

I mentioned once before that I think if she had the ability to shop them, she'd be a big fan of Hermès. Their long heritage and foundations as a saddlery are a perfect match to the equestrian aspects of her design.

I also think she'd like Burberry too. Her color scheme is very similar to their signature checker print (just in different proportions) and her concept art even had a subtle checked pattern on her coat. Though not as old as Hermés, Burberry also has the benefit of being English and having practical origins in making water resistant outdoor attire, which speaks to her desire to appear of the people.

And just because I like the detail, her boots have Louboutin's trademark red soles, despite his only having been born that year (and despite that you will certainly never see the bottom of her shoes).

I also talked about Victoria's aesthetic in relation to her interior decorating, but a lot of the same principles apply to her fashion sense.

To reiterate, Victoria's design speaks to both her admiration of her father and her extreme desire to maximize her English heritage and minimize her Indian one. Because she wants to appear a proper English lady, she has sublimated her father's militarism for more feminine equestrian affectations (there are no horses in Wellington Wells), to the end of commanding her offices and subordinates with the same authority that he does the Victory Memorial Camp.

Her outfit is unique to her, with few direct comparisons to other characters. Obviously there's some commonality with General Byng; at its most basic, both outfits consist of a jacket, waistcoat, a shirt with a tie, and pants. Since Victoria's playing to a different audience than he is and utilizing more soft power, she's re-contextualized the ensemble for her uses.

Byng's outfit is very front heavy. Waistcoat with a row of gold buttons, piped lapels, the scarf about his shoulders, even a single Albert pocket watch chain. All this layering on the front of what is otherwise a dark, closed off column telegraphs his being guarded there. It follows from his background as a military man; his life is about confrontation and he expects to be approached from the front so all his armor is there.

The front of Victoria's outfit is also front heavy, but it's also much more open. Her waistcoat is abbreviated, leaving the soft white spots of her stomach and her jacket is practically bursting open. Part of this is that she's one of the few women in town eating well enough to have any kind of rack worth speaking of, but it's also to convey that she is open and approachable in the way that a diplomat, not a general, should be. But her (gabardine perhaps?) jacket is long in the back, to protect herself from whatever might be sneaking up her. She certainly has no intention of turning around to see.

The pants are a bit of a bold choice for a Wellette. Aside from Sally, Victoria is the only woman in the town who wears pants. In the context of a world that still views pants as improper for women, Victoria choosing them is a signal, that though she loves and enjoys the rigid rules of society, her position is situated above it and she may disregard those rules if she so chooses.

One other thing that I think is interesting about Victoria's outfit re: Sally is that they could have given Victoria the jockey helmet instead. The choice of the bowler hat though, I think, is a lot like giving Dr. Faraday nerd glasses. The bowler hat is the hint that Victoria is, ultimately, a bureaucrat. Her primary occupation is overseeing office work, not diplomacy. So despite how thematically consistent the helmet would have been, Victoria doesn't actually have need of head protection the way Sally does since she's not venturing out from polite society.

There are two pieces missing between Victoria's stock outfit and her DLC one: the Happy Face mask and her gloves.

So Ollie actually removed her mask when he tied her up at her house. It would be a bit of a logistical question to be taping and untaping her mask. Also taking your mask off is a metaphor for dropping pretense, which is what Ollie was trying to accomplish there. So they just use her unmasked model in this scene, though this model still retains her gloves.

We know then that she left the house without her mask, but by the time you get to We All Fall Down, you may have forgotten that. Especially since Victoria's menu image shows her wearing it. the mask is part of how she sees herself and we're never given any reason to wonder about whether she gets a new one or not.

But her hands are presented to the player uncovered almost immediately.

They even put a ring on it to draw your attention. Hello, dear player, I know you were expecting bright red gloves, but instead I've given you a ring to look at. How special! What a treat!

Note how we can't see her nails at this point? Dohoho. We get to see those when she throws up for the first time. I don't have a picture of that on hand (oi oi oi) so here's one with her realizing shit's fucked instead.

The practical reason for the lack of gloves is that they are actually using a re-textured version of Sally's Garden District hands: cleaned up, given a deeper skin tone, and a slick of red polish. And you know, it's fun because red is her signature color, but like Sally, she paints her nails even if she's going to be wearing gloves. It's that presentation matters. Also kinda like that sign in the design center that says no one will know if you have makeup on under your mask, but you'll know. Also also Sailor Moon shit.

But aside from just another clever and economical use of existing assets, this is also a signal to the player that Victoria's finding out about herself.

Victoria was a particular proponent for the Happy Face mask because it enforced smiling, sure, but it also served a purpose for her personally. Recall from Prudence's diary:

I suppose she mustn't. She's not really English, is she? I wonder if she's really the daughter of a maharajah. She mustn't let anyone remember her skin is dark and her hair is dark and her eyes...

Victoria probably thought the Happy Face mask was a capital idea because while it enforced smiling and visual conformity, it meant she personally could literally replace her othered brown face with a white one to match every one else's. The gloves serve this same purpose, to hide that her skin was brown from the people she is trying to lead.

Forgoing both of these accessories is the first step towards finally turning around and approaching the parts of herself that she'd turned her back on and disavowed all these years, the parts that are associated with her mother and India.

And when we get to the very end, her third person model has also shed her gloves. She's come to terms. And haven't we all by then?

#we happy few #whf #wehappyfew

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groovywellie · 4 months ago

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Do you think the clothing the main characters wear says a lot about who they are?

Of course. I think that's true of most games. But I do think it's sort of interesting the way that clothing is used as a mechanic in We Happy Few. I will talk about the outfits in a second, but first I wanna talk about how designed the characters are compared to how much of them you actually see... which is almost none.

We Happy Few's conformity mechanic uses clothing in a way not unlike Hitman, where you must be dressed appropriately for the occasion and location or people become suspicious of and angry with you. However, in Hitman, the act of changing disguises is a large part of the game's feedback and reward loop. As such, in most installments of the game, you're able to switch between first and third person, so as to admire your new fry cook outfit, for example.

Now Agent 47 does have a default outfit. Or rather, in later installments, a wardrobe of similar outfits that all fit the general idea of him. That he can easily take the suit that he came into a level with off to put on another outfit and become a waiter or a doctor or golf instructor or or or is integral to his character.

This is not really the case in We Happy Few.

There's a lot of reasons for this. First, the game only ever allows you to play in first person. The reason for that is probably practical first and design second. If you only ever have to model a character's arms to allow him to change outfits, then that cuts down a lot of work you have to do. It also allows a lot of clever reuse of assets. Consider that Arthur, Roger, and Victoria all share the same Proper Suit suit arms, just in different textures and with different hands attached. Victoria's hands are also Sally's Garden District hands cleaned up and given red nail polish and a darker skin tone. There's a lot of clever recycling in the game that benefits from only having first-person gameplay.

In terms of design, locking you to first person view means you never get to see your player character until the end of their act (or at all in the case of Roger and with the exception of Nick who's intro is in third person). What this ends up creating is a situation in which you are swapping outfits almost constantly, but your sense of a character's identity is attached to the outfit you never actually get to see in full til you're done playing them. Funny!

Contributing to this too is that even when your character is dressed in a disguise, the arms are only ever present on the screen for more than a second when you are in combat, which is an unnatural state that you're probably trying to get out of. Outside of that condition, your hands are only ever present in cutscenes when gesticulating and for brief moments in the gameplay. Practically, this is because your hands obstruct your view (another reason to get out of combat post haste) so hands appear, do their task, and disappear. Moreover, though the game doesn't want you getting too used to the idea of your character being malleable in an Agent 47 way. You are not a council worker, a maid, a bellboy, or a even a wastrel, even if you're dressed like and behave as one. You yam what you yam.

And the thing that keeps you grounded in this knowledge - the only time you get to see your character as they are to themselves - is here, in the inventory menu.

Because you're in here a lot, right? And while that graphic element of your character does nothing and never changes, that's the anchor to their sense of self. And you get a passive reminder of that every time you open your inventory to heal up in the middle of a fight or to put things in the pneumatic stash.

So. Arthur's outfit.

Arthur wears the prototypical Proper Suit. It looks quite stylish and bold on a glance with its white piping, but it is meant to evoke the rowing blazer issued to Number Six as part of his uniform on The Prisoner, a show about a former spy trapped on a surreal island where everything seems very nice but oppressive forces operate in the background. Mercifully, being black, the suit does not require a pocket protector for the pens Arthur keeps in his breast pocket like a fuckin' dork. To take some additional slickness of the ensemble off when he wears it, Arthur is also accessorizing with blocky black glasses (although these are also common among Wellies so not unfashionable in and of themselves).

Arthur's physical character model and the specific styling of his suit (double-breasted with abbreviated lapels) are unique, but the outfit itself is not. As evidenced by the fact that many other men in the Parade wear the same outfit, it is also mass manufactured for mass approval and so involves no real sartorial risk-taking, true to Arthur's character at the beginning of his Act. In fact, when you arrive at Deirdre's birthday party, Clive Birtwhistle and another unnamed male coworker are both there also wearing the same outfit.

While the Proper Suit is worn by the randomly spawned Wellies in the Parade, other notable wearers of the Proper Suit include Dr. Verloc, Robin Goode,Ugo Sassoon, Clive Birtwhistle and... Danny Defoe.

They've done something quite interesting here.

While you'll not get back to the Parade until the end of the game, that first scene at the birthday party shows you that literally every man in your office is dressed exactly like you. Later, you'll meet Dr. Verloc and he's also wearing the same outfit, despite having a prominent position in the town, a unique face and nearly unique hair and glasses models. Then you get to the design center and the models are wearing the same suit too. Point is, this suit is accessible, trendy, and common.

Danny Defoe, however, is the only Wastrel with a torn Proper Suit... except for Arthur, but we never actually see that, do we?

Danny's suit is actually a re-textured version of the male Wastrel outfit. Even the rope in place of a belt has been colored a darker gray, perhaps to obscure that this is not actually a Proper Suit come to ruin, but a unique recolor of the torn Village Wellie outfit all male wastrels share.

At the point in the game at which you meet Danny, you have either already torn up your Proper Suit or will have to soon. In either event, the big gate that comes down to separate the two halves of the Head Boy arena allows the player the space to reflect on Danny, in his unique outfit representing his old life he can't go back to, as the ghost of Arthurs Future. Now maybe you don't become a poor Danny Defoe, forced to kill others every night for his own life and dinner. That's what the otherwise meaningless choice of whether to pick a lethal weapon or not is about. This is the point at which you decide whether that wretched visage on the other side of the gate is a mirrored reflection or a cautionary tale.

One last thing to note about Arthur's outfit is that he quite likes it and it holds sentimental value to him. He tells Beryl Markham that his uncle bought it for him (Uncle Norbert almost certainly, not Uncle Henry). If the Proper Suit is Wellington Wells's answer to America's gray flannel suit, Arthur's happy to have been given a uniform that takes all the guesswork out of not only getting dressed, but his place in the world. Being given this suit is basically being given one's marching orders; it's a metaphor for how Arthur, like most Wellies, prefers not to have to think or make choices and just be told what they need to do. Having to destroy it and indeed start changing outfits as a habit is a metaphor for being forced into accountability and having to make choices for himself.

Sally's outfit is at once a garment and a piece of concept art. It's meant to evoke the minimalist modern designs that began cropping up in the 60's, specifically Courrèges' 1964 Space-Age collection and its use of vinyl and plastic (and jockey helmets). It's also designed to bring to mind Emma Peel and her catsuits from The Avengers. That Sally's shoes appear to be connected to her pants is strange and impractical, the design of someone who does not actually live her life.

I regret to inform you that these boots/pants exist in reality.

Unlike Arthur, Sally has always been quite bold and without worry for stepping out of line and her outfit reflects this. Arthur's suit might be flashy in a vacuum, but it does blend in both for its ubiquity and for its black color. You can go unnoticed in Arthur's Proper Suit. Sally's Proper Suit, on the other hand, is shiny and high contrast with a bright clean white block of color to draw the eye (most other whites in the game are grubby or lean yellow). It says "Look at me!" It being unique also dovetails nicely with the Not Like Other Girls aspects of her character, particularly in contrast to how every other girl in Wellington Wells wears one of only two kinds of outfit.

But a thing to bear in mind is that Sally... doesn't really dress herself. Her stock outfit (and the one below) are haute couture pieces that Davy Hackney designed. Even her utility outfits are designs Mrs. Pankhurst has come up with and reflect her apparent love of harlequin print and practical allusion to sequins. While Sally's outfits do impart her character, part of her character is being a mannequin that she allows others to project onto.

I do think, though, the the jockey helmet and goggles are her own addition. That both of outfits we get to see in full feature these accessories suggest they are something she likes. The artbook also says that the goggles serve as eye protection when she's doing chemistry experiments. Since we don't get to see her other ensembles in full, we can't know if her helmet and goggles are part of those outfits too, but I would like to assume they are. Even having just the pink and the white sets would go with most of her outfits we know of. The helmet offers no additional in-game protection, but narratively, it would be a good idea.

We do get unique icons for some of her outfit versions though as well as unique arm and hand models for most of them. Most of the items themselves are shared by Arthur and they coulda been cheap and reused his icons. Kinda baffling that they did put that effort in, honestly. I can't say I wouldn't have done that too, but at the same time, it's strange given how economical they are with assets otherwise. Maybe there were grander plans for it.

Which would be quite fun since Sally actually seems to resent fashion.

This is a thing that I think shows up broadly in her character, that she has these ideas and presumptions about how things are (life, men, her place in the world as a woman), but they all blithely ignore the realities in front of her. I say she allows others to project onto her, but she permits this because that's how she relates to the world herself. She projects the idea that has the most value to her, whether it's the reality of the thing or not. Men are obsessed with her... except Verloc rejected the chance to take her back and Byng's certainly got a life outside of her. Society has hobbled her for being a woman... if you don't look at all the other women making the most of the opportunity they've been given. She's been forced to care about parties and dresses... but if she didn't care about what she wears, then why argue about the gingham?

She complains about fashion and being obligated to know about it because she's a woman. She sees it as a meaningless distraction from her chemicals. But is it actually? Like, if she didn't like being dressed to be admired and to appear special, than why not just grab the same dress every other girl is wearing and call it a day? In Wellington Wells, it is extremely easy to be fashionable without a thought. They've got it down to a uniform. For Wellie women, it's literally a Jackie/Marilyn dichotomy: are you a fun and flirty Village girl or a prim and proper Parade woman?

But it's more valuable to be the girl everyone wants and wants to be. And there's value in being the girl who can get away with Hackney's avant-garde outfits, being the one he chooses to bestow them on. There's value in having the avant-garde outfit because it necessarily marks her as different from and more special than all the other girls. But all of this has even more value to Sally if she can regard it as an imposition.

A thing they've done with Sally too that I think is very funny but also a bit of a tease is tell us that she's extremely fashionable - "outrageously" so - but not make wearing different outfits a large part of her Act. In fact, if you're not playing diligently and miss the cue for "Alterations", you may never even realize Sally has more outfits. To date, I don't think I've ever used any of Mrs. Pankhurst's outfits for her, even the rubber catsuit she gives you for free. You just don't really need different clothes as Sally; it doesn't come up that often. In fact, maybe that she is a local celebrity precludes her from the disguise element of the game in the way that being a local menace precludes Ollie from it.

As an aside, I think this is a good place to touch on one other related topic. I said that we never get to see our player character in third person until the end of their act, but that's not strictly true.

We do get to see them as other characters see them. And in Sally's Act, this serves a secondary narrative purpose.

When we meet Sally as Arthur, all of their encounters happen in the Village and so that she only ever looks impeccable and put together makes sense. It is not incongruent with the situation.

When, as Sally, we see Arthur in the alleyway conversation, this is also in the Village so him being tidy coheres with the scene. When we meet Arthur again in the Garden District though, he's still wearing his Proper Suit.

The thing about this is, while there are masked and unmasked models for our protagonists, they don't have Torn Suit models so they don't have a Garden District Arthur to use for this scene. But I do think it's also supposed to be that Sally is seeing Arthur as the idealized version of him that she's imagined since she left. She's not seeing his Torn Suit or the dirt under his fingernails; she's projecting the version of him that she left fifteen years ago and has kept in stasis in her memory. That's why the reality of him - that he exists outside of her and her priorities, her complications - hits her that much harder than having to choose to leave her behind hits Arthur.

And this projection is only really the case in Sally's Act, I think. In Arthur's act, he recognizes her as having grown up into a completely different person from the girl in the green gingham dress who left in the dead of night. Ollie also takes a moment before he recognizes Arthur, since he's also grown and changed since the last time they'd seen each other. It's only Sally who's projecting her vision of Arthur on to the real thing.

I suppose that Ollie's still wearing his No. 2 service dress fifteen years after the war ended is a bit telling. Where everyone else in town has elected to forget that time, Ollie can't move on from it and dresses accordingly. Which is to say, he has divested himself from the Army, but cannot necessarily divest the Army from himself. There's no place for him in the Memorial Camp (the past), but there's also no place for him in the Village (the present) either, thus he stays in a service uniform purgatory out in the Garden District.

Funnily enough, that he has this unique uniform of a specific rank (that apparently is no longer observed to judge by Corp. Cheeseman not having the title) marks Ollie as being himself, persona non grata, and does not conform in the military camp.

Olive(r) drab is also a good option for survivalist garb, so I can't fault him for practicality even if it's a bit of a badge of dishonor at this point and makes socializing difficult. Not like he has much need for it. Tons of pockets attached to jacket too (you can't really see them in his inventory image, but each of the main characters' menu images also show us where they're keeping all their stuff).

The pants are actually plaid, reading as a neutral brown at a distance, which is a subtle call to his being Scottish. Interestingly, at a very early stage in the game's development, pants were a separate inventory slot so you could mix and match them (there's a remnant of this in Arthur's Act, where you need both halves of the Officer's Uniform before you can wear it). Ollie's pants then are probably not the ones that came with his uniform.

Lastly, his pink ribbon tied around his wrist. Or rather, Margaret's pink ribbon. Ollie's gameplay is very combat oriented and you're meant to rely on his strength and brawn rather than Arthur's stealth and Sally's social graces to navigate the world. As such, Ollie's hands are actually on the screen quite a lot more in his Act, keeping Margaret's ribbon in view for much of the time. This helps keep her presence in the player's mind, as she would be in Ollie's, even if your individual gameplay hasn't given her much to say for a while.

Annnnd because tumblr won't let me use more than thirty images in one post, you can have the other three in a Part 2.

#we happy few #whf #wehappyfew

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