Siegfried, You're So Sparkly
As a massive beat-'em-up fan, Soul Calibur has been the definitive 3D game for me. Sure, I can get geeky and count frames in Virtua Fighter, or get down with those moody Kazama's in that Iron Fist thingy, but there is something about smashing steel that really raises my pulse. Soul Blade on PlayStation was a revelation, after I felt so personally let down by the conversion of Battle Arena Toshinden.
Way back when PlayStation was a rich kid's indulgence and the arcades still groomed our brightest stars, Siegfried was just a troubled teen, whose whimsy thin arms could carry impossibly large swords with the greatest of ease, in a gravity defying ballet of smash and slash. He was the button masher character of choice, powering through any defence with a predictable but irrepressible three-hit smash. If that boy became a postman, many doors in the land would be reduced to spit and splinters, such is the power of his punch. The question has always preoccupied me -- how could such a skinny little wimp get such pneumatic lift out of his puny twig arms? Surely they would snap like bread sticks as he attempted to elevate the mighty claymore acquired from the corpse of his dead daddy?
Read on after the jump...
As time went on and various underworld criminal types came to upset the status quo, Siegfried flexed his sword arm, got older and filled out in all the right places. To date he still ain't no muscle-mary like Astaroth, but his successive costume changes hold the key to my question; how Siegfried gets four tonnes of sharpened steel moving through the air faster than Britney through a red light.
With the release of concept artwork for Soul Calibur IV, which reveals costumes in vivid detail, it suddenly hit me. Gone is the gritty realism of mud-flecked armour and greasy hair; now our princely psycho sports the glitter and sparkle of a rock god shimmering in glorious High Definition. Like two hearts suddenly beating as one, I am sure Siegfried and I share the same passion for glam rock, and on days of pure frivolity, I fantasise that we might take a tour of our hair rock catalogues. Just check out his new sword; with the sheen of an award for life contribution to music, he parades it like a precious flying V guitar.
The pose betrays his expertise in wailing solos, and that solemn pout can only belong to the most dedicated of the spandex and glitter elite. As an only child, guilty of patricide, Siegfried is the ultimate one-man band. The same finger work that marks him as a fretboard fanatic provides the answer to his gravity-defying sword madness. Breaking through a sweaty haze of repetitive strain and Whitesnake B-sides Siegfried has achieved Sword and Sound nirvana. You don't need big muscles when your fingers are adamantium, your nails are diamond, and your wrists are ancient oak.
Siegfried's latest costume outs him as a sparkly pompous poser with an ear for a big riff. It provides an answer to the super-powered tank-chopping swing of his sword arm. Play enough guitar tab, wear enough eye-liner, and you too could square up to those rugged samurai!
SuperSpecialDavey
Posted to Hot Stuff on 18 November 2007
Other stuff like this: Costumes, Siegfried, Soul Calibur IV
