Time for the princes to take the spotlight.
Flynn Rider (Good Idea) – by Becky Hollada
So we’ve heard about the Disney Princesses, but what about their princes? Princes are some the most unloved characters in the Disney, but many of the more recent princes have developed just as far as their female counterparts, coming a long way from The Prince and Prince Charming. They get names now, like Flynn Rider! So it’s high time Disney showed them a little more love and brought at least one of them into the game forum.
Tangled being one of the highest-grossing films Disney’s had in years, it’s natural that it already made a debut in Disney Infinity with a Rapunzel figurine and a couple of power discs. But considering how popular the film was, another character might be in order.
Flynn is a thief turned good guy with good agility, resourcefulness and cunning. Since Tangled doesn’t have a full Playset of its own, Flynn would be limited to Toy Box use like Rapunzel, but honestly, this is where he would excel. He can hold his own pretty well against any enemy as long as he’s got a frying pan handy, and he’s never limited by the impossible when trekking the landscape. Several times in the movie, he proves to be capable of anything and doesn’t give up without trying everything he can think of. Rogues always make some of the best adventurers.
He’s also got a fun personality that could make for fun gameplay. Little clever one-liners here and there, and wit that made Flynn’s character so great. I don’t know how they could incorporate "The Smolder," but they should.
That's a face for video games.
And finally, from a strictly business standpoint, adding a Flynn Rider figurine would draw in a wider spectrum of the Tangled audience that Rapunzel just can’t garner alone. Disney itself sought to draw in boys from the get-go, changing the movie’s name to “Tangled” in order to prevent it from seeming like another Disney Princess movie. It is about time Disney followed that up in Disney Infinity by giving male Tangled fans something else.
Stronger heroines in Disney also make for Princes with more active roles like Flynn. What better place for them to stretch their adventurous legs than in an adventure title like this one? One could even argue that more of the Princes are suited for Disney Infinity than their Princesses, as long as you stick to the ones with a real personality.
Prince Naveen (Bad Idea) – by Kimberly Keller
Prince Naveen is the fun-lovin’ playboy prince of Maldonia from The Princess and the Frog. This is a guy who screwed up so bad, his parents, the king and queen, cut him off. The king and queen! We’re left to assume that he definitely isn’t inheriting the throne anymore as he sets his sights on marrying into wealth, instead of going back to his country. This is a guy who is so lazy, he can’t be bothered to make himself food when starvation is at hand, so why would you want to force him to run around the Toy Box?
Eventually Disney is going to release a prince for Disney Infinity; it’s inevitable. And I can see how Prince Naveen can be a tempting choice, he fights a little, learns a valuable/personality changing lesson, he gets more screen time than most princes do, and he’s from a fairly recent movie (2009). They can probably even throw in a couple of snarky one-liners too.
New brand of charming.
However, this is a prince who only shows any real value once he’s a frog. Sure, he learns some cool froggy-fighting moves and survival techniques, but who cares? He’s a frog! A little ol’ green frog who insists on walking on two legs and playing a twig ukulele. As an actual prince he…does quite a bit of dancing. He just dances in from the moment we see him to the hard-working end when he’s helping Tiana run her restaurant. It’s the mid-1920’s, so there really isn’t much for a prince to do in terms of adventuring unless he wants to find King Kong. It’s safe to assume that our little frog-boy has been trained in princely customs like the art of sword fighting and horseback riding, but he certainly has never seen combat before. Sure, that’s not really a requirement with characters like Lightning McQueen popping up, but even Mickey Mouse has seen his fair share of battles, so it’s a little embarrassing for Naveen.
It’d definitely be nice to have a transforming character, creating an interesting duality that can give a player access to more choices depending on the challenge. More opportunities could be made for puzzle-driven areas where you’d have to think about which form could be the most beneficial, but let’s leave that to other princes like Adam (the Beast) or Kuzco.
