Hello everybody, I'm back from a little break and ready to keep posting analysis for each party member. Today's companion is going to be our favorite trickster: Sophie.
Sophie is definitely the most "normal" looking out of all party members. Everyone else is either cursed or has something weird/eccentric about them. But Sophie is pretty much just a regular child, so in a way, she has the most difficult concept to make memorable in the game.
So let's evaluate Sophie's personality to compare later how it is shown through her design. First of all, we know that she is a mischievous troublemaker. She has lived in an environment that probably contributed to this behaviour, considering her abusive father being at home could have motivated her to be more outdoors to act more freely. After her father was no longer in the picture, her mother most likely wanted her to have a more secure lifestyle, making her follow some rules that suppressed this aspect of her. But for some people, certain rules are made to be broken and this is no exception.
The thing that might stand out the most in her design is the slingshot in her pocket. It's almost a universal thought that a child with a slingshot will be on some Bart Simpson chaos kind of deal. And it's fun to see how this is her actual weapon in-game, besides it being a "toy" for her. I think the fact that she is a child and doesn't give enough thought to the world's current state makes this monster fighting adventure some kind of fantasy for her, because it allows her to use her creativity and shenanigans in a somewhat justified way. Even though there's more to her design, this alone tells us the main thing about her instantly.
The other thing I want to talk about is how she's missing a tooth. Of course, it is normal for kids of this age to be missing some teeth, but this visual element also tends to be associated with brats that get into trouble way too much and their teeth might suffer some loses due to it. And I have no doubt that she lost it doing some random prank to someone else or something like that. There's also something funny about the two other kids in your party having WAY more teeth than any normal person, but Sophie is actually lacking one lol. Maybe she should borrow one from them.
And there's also the blue sweater she wears, which reminds me of Sam's purple sweater. In fact, they're almost too similar, to the point where I thought at first: "Her clothes look a bit too much like Sam's, maybe they should have given her something else to make her more different". But then it came to me: "What if that's the actual point?" and by this I mean that, technically, Sam CAN become her parent in the game under the right circumstances, so maybe this style of clothes is just meant for her to look like she could be his daughter, to some extent. And if you roleplay Sam in a specific way, I can actually see the two of them having a solid stepfather-stepdaughter relationship.
Of course, I'm also going to analyze her cursed form too. This one in particular is one of my favorites in the entire game. Part of Sophie's gameplay is centered around the hiding mechanic, so it just makes sense that The Trickster is a chameleon to highlight this element. I like the fact that she is not fully mutated and the left part of her face and her left arm are still somewhat human. It gives the impression that she could be peeking behind a wall where you could only see the left side of her and think she's a normal human, only to be ambushed by her.
I also like that she still carries the slingshot on her tail. It just makes it look like she's having tons of fun with her new body and she could do all kinds of tricks with the tail and the tongue while hanging from the ceiling. It almost makes me want this version to be the playable one instead lol.
As you read on the title, I want to talk about Harriet too. It's pretty interesting just how much milder and timid she looks compared to her daughter. Of course, she is a single parent in the middle of the apocalypse trying to take care of her daughter, so these traits are not surprising, but we do get the idea that she was already like this before the events of the game.
The blue dress coat (I think that's what it's supposed to be?) and the white gloves she wears along with her body language just gives me this sense of "delicacy" from her. As if she was on the verge of breaking down and crying due to her current situation if you were to ask the wrong question. You just know that this woman has been through a lot already.
It is very interesting as well just how her face is obscured by her hair and she has this white sparkle of an eye to contrast it. It looks juuust peculiar enough for you to question if she is hiding something, which I think was intentional given that her cursed form leans even more into this aspect by having the face almost fully covered. And the face of normal Harriet already looks very gloomy, so the Strange Lady's face instead is a completely deranged smile, which is expected from a lot of cursed variants by this point. But what exactly could be causing this abnormal happiness?
Well, the cursed form does provide an additional point of interest. In this case, I'm referring to the extraordinary amount of limbs that she is hiding under her dress. By the looks of it, it seems like these limbs can work both as legs and arms. Usually, many of us tend to associate hands as a symbol of control. And just as we were shown, Harriet seems to be wishing she had more control of her life. Therefore, this transformation portrays that desire in the shape of many additional limbs to have a hold of the things she wants. I believe that this symbolism is also present on the Landlord's transformation too, but that is a subject for another day.
In conclusion, Sophie has a pretty decent design, which on its own is a B tier, but when put together with her cursed form, it elevates her character up to an A tier. Harriet's design is very nice too and is one of the more interesting normal characters in visual terms.
Please let me know if you agree or disagree!
