I know this might start war in the comments so please chill people, I don’t want to get 20 reports from this single post.
Having not played it, I’ll stick to using a review I read in the past few days.
To sum it up, the game felt too positive to the reviewer. To them it felt more like a Disney adventure than a grim fantasy world that’s invaded by malevolent, torture-happy evil gods. They felt no bite from their choices, from the story or from their companions. Everything felt like it needed to be happy in some way, like the idea of conflict was a far more terrible outcome than being skullfucked by an angry tentacle god lady.
To sum it up even further, the game felt too safe. And so became a bland meal that’s easily forgettable.
Quite early on you have a difficult choice
spoiler
You need to choose between saving 2 cities with each their respective companion, that will result in one of those cities being overrun by the blight and that companion becoming distant. Turning it into a hellscape with even more consequences than I type here.
So I don’t share your opinion.
I just want to voice my opinion that not every article about video games needs to be shared/promoted, particularly gamergate-lite shit like this. “Only” whinging about how non-cis white male characters are included in games is hardly any better than the chuds bombing the game on metacritic.
I’d also argue this violates your own sub’s rule (rule 9), not because it’s about “political” genders, but for explicitly calling peoples’ existence “political messaging”.
Idiot.
I’m pro trans rights and I still see Veilguard as more sabotage than success. Extremely unintelligent messaging.
I mean, it was not-terrible for most of it (not counting the quality of dialogue), just not this exact scene, which was absolutely fucking terrible, and barely even involved the character in question. I really can’t imagine how they thought “Other people should talk about their gender!” was a good idea.
I feel like I have a outside the norm third-take opinion on this topic, tbh.
I think including the hot social topic of the day often time is pandering.
But I also don’t think pandering is a problem. The muscles on the main character is also pandering. When McDonald’s does market research and then releases a new product, that is pandering.
Games are a sales industry; they are going to pander to potential buyers, period.
So yes, a potentially trans-centric storyline in a game is unnecessary. But so is including a longsword, or a tavern, or a comic relief character. Unnecessary doesn’t mean bad; all of those things are likely only adding to the depth and value of the game.
So all this to say that when crazy right-wingers talk about SJWs and pandering and all that nonsense don’t waste your time trying to fight them on the irrelevant bits - go ahead and acknowledge the pandering aspect and fight the real fight by telling them it’s not negative pandering and minorities deserve to be pandered to and represented just as much as anyone else. They just don’t recognize the market targeting the white male demographic as pandering because it is the sphere of normal under which they operate.
I guess I should add that I’m not speaking to this game specifically since I’ve never played it. I really enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins but frankly felt like I got everything I needed of the world from it and haven’t been interested in any of the sequels. So I won’t be playing DA: The Veilguard, but that reason has absolutely fuck all to do with the inclusion of any social politics.
If you read the article you’ll see that the author takes issue not with the inclusion itself, but the hamfisted way in which it is included. Pandering can be fine, but when it’s just checking boxes in a cringy, lazy way it’s not, and worse it becomes fodder for the gamergate type to rage about.
I understand that, but my point is that there is no shortage of shoehorned comic relief characters, or awkwardly placed fanservice, etc. Critique the actual fault at play, bad writing, rather than letting the gamergate right-wing nutsos have the benefit of having the conversation on their terms. Make the headline “DA:tV falls short in the writing department, here are some examples” and include the flimsy way the character is written as the valid critique. Games are going to pander to us, that is what I was saying; when we place special emphasis on this particular type of pandering all we’re doing is letting the right define the conversations we’re having.
Critique the actual fault at play, bad writing,
That seems to be what is being done here. Everything that I have seen on this has done what you asked, said what they where critiquing then giving a clip from the game as an example. If people can not be critical of media for any reason, we have an issue.
Complaining about “the way it’s included” has been a trick to try to gatekeep minorities that dates back from to the origin of time.
For those people always pretend it’s ok to include X except in “that particular context” or “in that particular way” and unsurprisingly enough it’s never the right context or the right way. Unless of course the context is out of their way.
I’ve seen the same boring argument repeated for every single minorities over the last 50 years.
Did you read the article? I found it pretty convincing, as an example “non-binary” is not a word I expect to be said in a fantasy setting. The author also mentions a fantasy book where it’s done much more naturally.
Did you write a guidebook of acceptable words and concepts in fantasy ? I ask because if you’re so bothered by the introduction of new words into fantasy literature I’m assuming you don’t read anything with any words invented after the release of the Epic of Gilgamesh sometime in 1155 BC.
It’s a violently stupid argument.
I’m not bothered at all lol, I would have already forgotten about it if you weren’t so bothered yourself :) But yeah, IMO it would have been better if they had used a less “modern” word. You did notice that fantasy characters usually don’t speak like they’re from the 21st century, right?
usually
So you admit that they sometime do ? Kinda kills your whole point. 🤷
