Another thread about sexism in video games.

[TheMysteriousGX]

She comes from an all Lesbian dimension called utopia parallel, goes to a school that's all Latin American people and just so happens to befriend a genius lesbian and start a lesbian relationship with her. Also there is or was another mixed race lesbian character too who was also a friend of them. Oh and she can punch holes through time because reasons that it apparent doesn't feel the need to explain.

Lmao, almost 0% of that is accurate. Fuck's sake, one of your complaints is "the superhero has superpowers"? This is the shit I apparently need to accept as serious criticism?

This shit is why people call you homophobic/racist/etc: you're making shit up

Except this is part of the strawman BS I'm talking about.

Person A: I think this writing is pretty poor and it seems suspicious that every character is a mixed race lesbian
Person B: You just hate POC and Lesbians you're racist and homophobic.

For starters, Latin American people aren't all mixed race. The team's got at *least* one dude on it, which *probably* means that not everybody's a lesbian.

Like, when one of your complaints is "the lesbian has a love interest", y'all being homophobic because why wouldn't they?

 

[Dreiko]

Other way around actually. It were the critics of TLOU2 which latched on to Ghost of Tsushima as the true game for true gamers, as the big alternative to woke trash, while being hilariously unaware that Ghost had in fact far more woke themes than TLOU2 ever did.

Its the alt right which latched on to Ghost because they needed a game to counter TLOU2 which was the big culture war property at the time. The right has this weird habit. Whenever a product gets too woke for them they rally around another movie or game that comes out at around the same game and loudly shout ''THIS here is the TRUE nerd media for TRUE nerds and you blasted sjw's will not see your woke trash be better than it!''

What this product competing with the woke product actually is turns out to not be very important. After all its just a tool to them. Just an artificial battle in their culture war. Just something to rally behind for tactical considerations. I actually doubt most of these champions have as much affection for ''their'' products as they claim. . Those who claim that Gost is the ''TRUE game for TRUE gamers which UNLIKE TLOU2 leaves POLITICS at the DOOR to focus on FUN!!!!'' clearly never played the game or stopped playing really early. Because how else could they miss the themes that the game really isn't subtle about and which are themes any self respecting member of the alt right should have condemned.

I agree that Ghost was progressive but not woke. It was more graceful and it normalized a lot of things while not being as in your face about them. Like in one sub quest you help this one dude escape and he randomly discloses he's gay and you're like "ok dude, whatever, now lets get you away from those mongolians", and it kinda stops there, it doesn't make a huge show of it. He's just one more person to rescue in your eyes, not gross nor more special.


Basically the reason I like it better is that it is a game that is being made from the basis that the "culture wars" don't exist and stuff is just normal so it has moved on from fighting a battle and exists living in a world after the battle has been won, which is the real world as of like the early 2000s. So due to that it doesn't feel combative or "woke" to people.


Also I think a lot of things get excused when something is set in a different time period and culture, people can sometimes wave away things in that setting as just being from a different era whereas if they happen in a more contemporary setting they take em differently.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Who many seem to feel pushed Amy Henning out of the company to make his story version

Is this based on anything other than feelings? Because these feelings didn't start to emerge until Druckmann was apparently going woke. Once the hate for TLoU2 was in full swing is when people started talking about how he drove Henning away and he stole her writing.

That features a character who totally co-incidentally looks like the main game director.

Except for not looking like him at all apart from having a beard and a manbun. Also, one's hispanic.

Said character has sex with the muscular woman.

Except he doesn't, that's a different character. You're thinking of the other stupid rumor that claimed Druckmann personally mo-capped the sex scene with Laura Bailey due to some sick obsession he has with her, eventhough Bailey herself apparently didn't even mo-cap that scene.

There was a lot of BS getting cooked up during the release of TLoU2 just to keep that hate train going.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Lmao, almost 0% of that is accurate. Fuck's sake, one of your complaints is "the superhero has superpowers"? This is the shit I apparently need to accept as serious criticism?

Utopian Parallel

The Utopian Parallel is a supposed dimension out of time and of the Multiverse. It was created by the breath of and exists in the presence of the Demiurge. It was later revealed to be a figment of America Chavez's imagination and that the real Utopian Parallel is on a private island on Earth...

marvel.fandom.com

America Chavez - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sotomayor University

Sotomayor University is an unaccredited, prestigious, extra-dimensional institute of higher education, which is located within a protected space between dimensions of the Prime Marvel Universe. America Chavez and Prodigy both attended college at Sotomayor University. Ms. America (America Chavez)...

marvel.fandom.com

This shit is why people call you homophobic/racist/etc: you're making shit up

For starters, Latin American people aren't all mixed race. The team's got at *least* one dude on it, which *probably* means that not everybody's a lesbian.

Like, when one of your complaints is "the lesbian has a love interest", y'all being homophobic because why wouldn't they?

Or Ya'll just have no argument and just did the play of throwing out an accusations against some-one because it's easier than forming a cogent argument. So to be clear it just so happens the woman from a literal lesbian dimension with lesbian mothers is herself a lesbian and happens to meet up with a genius who is also a lesbian? And none of that seems some-what of a huge co-incidence for that to happen and not look like it was planned out for a specific reason....... I mean would e a whole lot less suspiciously convenient if not for the author of said series.....

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Is this based on anything other than feelings? Because these feelings didn't start to emerge until Druckmann was apparently going woke. Once the hate for TLoU2 was in full swing is when people started talking about how he drove Henning away and he stole her writing.

There was some talk about it beforehand when people found out she left.

Except for not looking like him at all apart from having a beard and a manbun. Also, one's hispanic.
Except he doesn't, that's a different character. You're thinking of the other stupid rumor that claimed Druckmann personally mo-capped the sex scene with Laura Bailey due to some sick obsession he has with her, eventhough Bailey herself apparently didn't even mo-cap that scene.

Ok Druckman stand in character then.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I agree that Ghost was progressive but not woke. It was more graceful and it normalized a lot of things while not being as in your face about them. Like in one sub quest you help this one dude escape and he randomly discloses he's gay and you're like "ok dude, whatever, now lets get you away from those mongolians", and it kinda stops there, it doesn't make a huge show of it. He's just one more person to rescue in your eyes, not gross nor more special.

For starters, having one or two mentions (in a 40+ hour game) of someone being gay isn't exactly progressive. Secondly, the way the game treats it is not normalizing it, quite the contrary. The first mention of someone being gay is the side quest about a seemingly suspicious man going out at night, and you find out the guy was visiting the grave of a man he loved and wanting to keep it a secret cuz gay. The second mention is Lady Masako having an affair with one of her hand maidens and not pursuing it because she needed to stay loyal to her husband.

Now, both of these cases feel somewhat appropriate for the culture this story takes place in, though I can't be sure as I think there was a bit more sexual freedom in Japan before WW2 hit. Either way, it's not what I would call progressive or normalizing it.

You can claim the game is "woke" for not only not sexualizing any of the female characters but also for having female characters that look like regular women and not super models, but as for the representation of different sexual identities, not so much. Also, strange that none of these reactionaries championing Ghost said anything about its female characters looking "ugly" as opposed to TLoU2 where it became a huge sticking point.

 

[Casual Shinji]

There was some talk about it beforehand when people found out she left.

That's because after TLoU1 Straley and especially Druckmann became the new golden boys. Uncharted 4 wasn't working the way the heads at Naughty Dog wanted it to, so Straley and Druckmann were put on the project instead. This then prompted Justin Richmond and Amy Henning to leave the company for having their project taken away from them. So yes, indirectly he has something to do with her leaving, but if it wasn't him it would've been someone else and Henning still would've left.

Ok Druckman stand in character then.

No?

A lot of this was people being so ridiculously angry at TLoU2 that they started to make shit up to get even more angry about.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I agree that Ghost was progressive but not woke. It was more graceful and it normalized a lot of things while not being as in your face about them. Like in one sub quest you help this one dude escape and he randomly discloses he's gay and you're like "ok dude, whatever, now lets get you away from those mongolians", and it kinda stops there, it doesn't make a huge show of it. He's just one more person to rescue in your eyes, not gross nor more special.

So they put it in as a "hey, we have a gay token"? I remember when Mass Effect Andromeda got dragged for having a trans character like that.

Kinda goes to show that "woke" is based more on if you like the games or not.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

So they put it in as a "hey, we have a gay token"? I remember when Mass Effect Andromeda got dragged for having a trans character like that.

Kinda goes to show that "woke" is based more on if you like the games or not.

ME Andromeda also got dragged by trans people for that character enough that eventually Bioware chose to patch the characters dialogue to make it so she doesn't announce to you that she's trans in only a few minutes of meeting her. Doesn't make her inclusion make sense really as it's meant to be a colony that will be having kids with one another as such to establish a new human settlement / base for humanity in the universe. I mean it would have been a simple thing "I was sent because it means I won't be getting pregnant so I'll always be able to deal with stuff" or "Yeh I was one of the best who applied so they chose to send me on those grounds"

 

[Dreiko]

For starters, having one or two mentions (in a 40+ hour game) of someone being gay isn't exactly progressive. Secondly, the way the game treats it is not normalizing it, quite the contrary. The first mention of someone being gay is the side quest about a seemingly suspicious man going out at night, and you find out the guy was visiting the grave of a man he loved and wanting to keep it a secret cuz gay. The second mention is Lady Masako having an affair with one of her hand maidens and not pursuing it because she needed to stay loyal to her husband.

Now, both of these cases feel somewhat appropriate for the culture this story takes place in, though I can't be sure as I think there was a bit more sexual freedom in Japan before WW2 hit. Either way, it's not what I would call progressive or normalizing it.

You can claim the game is "woke" for not only not sexualizing any of the female characters but also for having female characters that look like regular women and not super models, but as for the representation of different sexual identities, not so much. Also, strange that none of these reactionaries championing Ghost said anything about its female characters looking "ugly" as opposed to TLoU2 where it became a huge sticking point.

Normalizing as in, the protagonist doesn't really make a big deal about it, he treats it as normal.


I don't think the chars looked ugly. they looked on par with Kurosawa film women. Most poor villagers and bandits that are in these stories never have the money to care about prettiness, and also there's different cultural traits that make someone look hot in those stories, things like a visible nape of the neck for example. Not stuff which modern culture perceives. In my fav Kurosawa film Yojimbo you have a brothel fighting it out with a gambling house and the prostitutes look like random women wearing kimono with their hair tied up, not modern style sexy at all.


Also the issue isn't women being ugly, the issue is women being ugly being treated as something special or a highlight like you're doing, which is something the game never did. There's a difference to a game going for a style of thing and following through with it, and another game arbitrarily going "HA, you can't fap to this! Take that!", which is what woke games do.

Making em ugly to just "get" people who are into hot women is not the same as just having a fantasy setting that is best served by ugly women. You don't have situations where the devs are discussing making people more androgynous on purpose to suit the player's real life sexual identities and so on in ghost of tsushima, they were just making a samurai game.

So they put it in as a "hey, we have a gay token"? I remember when Mass Effect Andromeda got dragged for having a trans character like that.

Kinda goes to show that "woke" is based more on if you like the games or not.

I only remember that game being criticized for bugs. Though I never was big on ME, more of a DA fan. ME does that star trek-inspired style of sci fi that's not my thing. I only played the first game and kinda never bothered to keep going.


I dunno if you played the scene but it wasn't a token, it was a sidequest which establishes how people treated gayness, the character itself was not that important specifically, the attitudes were.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I don't think the chars looked ugly. they looked on par with Kurosawa film women. Most poor villagers and bandits that are in these stories never have the money to care about prettiness, and also there's different cultural traits that make someone look hot in those stories, things like a visible nape of the neck for example. Not stuff which modern culture perceives. In my fav Kurosawa film Yojimbo you have a brothel fighting it out with a gambling house and the prostitutes look like random women wearing kimono with their hair tied up, not modern style sexy at all.

That's why I put the word 'ugly' in quotations, because they weren't ugly, yet any woman in a game that doesn't look traditionally attractive now is seen by a certain group of people as developers making the women ugly on purpose. I wonder what the reaction to Ghost would've been had you played as Yuna or Masako. I'd expect there'd be a lot more scrutiny somehow.

Also the issue isn't women being ugly, the issue is women being ugly being treated as something special or a highlight like you're doing, which is something the game never did. There's a difference to a game going for a style of thing and following through with it, and another game arbitrarily going "HA, you can't fap to this! Take that!", which is what woke games do.

Which woke games do that exactly? I'm assuming this is about TLoU2. Because as you said in the first section, women that live in poor and dilapidated conditions, and who are focussed mainly on survival probably don't have time and luxury to make themselves look as pretty as they can. Or is this about Horizon: Forbidden West for having that one still image of Aloy having a scrunched up face?

The standard for women in games (and generally all media) is to look pretty, so when a big production comes along that breaks with that standard it is something worth addressing. Even the creator of the Yakuza series when he commented on how it's a shame Japan hadn't made Ghost mentioned how refreshing/bold it was that the main character, Jin, looked "ugly", as in; not the usual super pristine fine features characters in japanese games always have.

And the thing is, when Abby was first revealed in that second trailer nobody made much of any peep about how she looked, eventhough the scene very much showed off how buff she was. Yet when it was discovered she'd be killing Joel and you'd have to play as her a lot of hate suddenly came down on her looks.

Making em ugly to just "get" people who are into hot women is not the same as just having a fantasy setting that is best served by ugly women. You don't have situations where the devs are discussing making people more androgynous on purpose to suit the player's real life sexual identities and so on in ghost of tsushima, they were just making a samurai game.

And how would TLoU2 be served by making the women conventionally hot?

And not to blow your mind, but there's tons of people who actually find unconventional looking women, like Abby, attractive. And considering Druckmann appears to have a thing for buff chicks he wasn't doing it just to piss off certain people, that was probably just a bonus.

 

[Dreiko]

Which woke games do that exactly? I'm assuming this is about TLoU2. Because as you said in the first section, women that live in poor and dilapidated conditions, and who are focussed mainly on survival probably don't have time and luxury to make themselves look as pretty as they can. Or is this about Horizon: Forbidden West for having that one still image of Aloy having a scrunched up face?

The standard for women in games (and generally all media) is to look pretty, so when a big production comes along that breaks with that standard it is something worth addressing. Even the creator of the Yakuza series when he commented on how it's a shame Japan hadn't made Ghost mentioned how refreshing/bold it was that the main character, Jin, looked "ugly", as in; not the usual super pristine fine features characters in japanese games always have.

And the thing is, when Abby was first revealed in that second trailer nobody made much of any peep about how she looked, eventhough the scene very much showed off how buff she was. Yet when it was discovered she'd be killing Joel and you'd have to play as her a lot of hate suddenly came down on her looks.

And how would TLoU2 be served by making the women conventionally hot?

And not to blow your mind, but there's tons of people who actually find unconventional looking women, like Abby, attractive. And considering Druckmann appears to have a thing for buff chicks he wasn't doing it just to piss off certain people, that was probably just a bonus.

Aloy looks pretty to me, so I definitely don't get the reaction, sure she has a fat face but the features are still nice (mainly thinking back on the first game, not seen much of stuff from the second). I do have a thing for redheads though lol. But in the last of us the chars more or less look normally attractive, like a 7-8 scale universally. Either way though, if you're going for muscle fetish, how is that woke then? You're still sexualizing women, just with a more peculiar type of fetish in mind. This is the issue here, you aren't really doing anything different but you act high and mighty just because in your mind you're sticking it in the eye of your enemy group.


It isn't more open minded to be into something not as mainstream, to you you're still experiencing the thing the people who are into something mainstream experience when they see a regular hot chick. You're not in any way more progressive than them. The progressive thing is to acknowledge this and not act one way or another about it and just accept folks like all sorts of things and nothing is inherently bad.


Basically people are masking their dissatisfaction with their fetishes not being catered to enough as a civil rights issue and it's annoying.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Basically people are masking their dissatisfaction with their fetishes not being catered to enough as a civil rights issue and it's annoying.

You are 110% correct when you say this, Dreiko

 

[Hades]

Not to hand as I don't generally check what's being said at places like ***** media / (Female Dog) Media or Mic and I have little interest trawling those places looking for stuff. I mean I've already shown some places disparaging the game for that kind of idea.

I think that's fine. I myself don't always feel for digging up articles. But that does mean that so far we only have your word on it that outlets were out go get Ghost.

It's funny because the "everything is political crowd" tend to come up with some stupid stuff too like the time they thought Five Nights At Freddies franchise was pro child murder or the time they thought the film Surrogates was a Christian fundamentalist anti technology rant.

Also shooting brown people, you mean terrorists. You know actual terrorist who are more than happy to harm innocent civilians. Sometimes with black and brown people on your team helping you do it.

Personally I find it funnier when people try to say that Metal Gear games or the fall of Falluja aren't political.

And if many games portray the ''war on terror'' as valid, as a legitimate struggle against terrorism and if they're all middle eastern terrorists rather than French ones then it sounds to me as if the games have certain things to say about American interventions in the Middle East.

Except this is part of the strawman BS I'm talking about.

Except its not. You literally gave us a definition of what you thought woke meant, and it was more than a little scewed.

Person A: I think this writing is pretty poor and it seems suspicious that every character is a mixed race lesbian
Person B: You just hate POC and Lesbians you're racist and homophobic.

As another poster already pointed out such cases are often genuinely accompanied by examples of racism, homophobia and all that. You can't argue that there were strong far right undertones in at least some critics of many pieces of media that get accused of being too woke.

I also found that many people are willing to completely hijack the movements against certain media and drag it into their own political sphere. You had people insisted that Mass Effect Andromada was bad because it went ''full SJW'' rather than it being bad because the game was broken and unfinished. With Star Wars too people seem very willing to ignore the actual reasons why the new trilogy doesn't work and instead focus solely on feminism. And of course people focus much more on Abby having big arms than about the core message of TLOU2 being cliche, mundane and really boring.

Yes and No. It's more that the creators so wanted you to know they had lesbians in the game. Does it matter that there's two girls kissing? No. Is where the issue comes in partly that it was deemed something to focus on? Yes. It's like the idea of dog whistles and signalling to specific groups. It screams "Look how progressive we are putting an LGBTQ relationship front and centre as a main piece of our game". Little challenge for you, name a game in the past 10 years of E3 where a core part of the trailer was a straight couple kissing, no really I'm not joking see if you can do it.

Nonsense. They were not the first characters kissing in a trailer. Had the trailer been exactly the same except focusing about Joel and a new girlfriend none of you would have given a peep. No one would claim the trailer is trying to celebrate heterosexuality

 

[Hades]

I agree that Ghost was progressive but not woke. It was more graceful and it normalized a lot of things while not being as in your face about them. Like in one sub quest you help this one dude escape and he randomly discloses he's gay and you're like "ok dude, whatever, now lets get you away from those mongolians", and it kinda stops there, it doesn't make a huge show of it. He's just one more person to rescue in your eyes, not gross nor more special.


Basically the reason I like it better is that it is a game that is being made from the basis that the "culture wars" don't exist and stuff is just normal so it has moved on from fighting a battle and exists living in a world after the battle has been won, which is the real world as of like the early 2000s. So due to that it doesn't feel combative or "woke" to people.


Also I think a lot of things get excused when something is set in a different time period and culture, people can sometimes wave away things in that setting as just being from a different era whereas if they happen in a more contemporary setting they take em differently.

I think that's mostly a distinction without a difference because those that fanatically hate everything woke don't have a more favorable opinion on progressives either.

Besides I'd argue that the game isn't at all graceful about its core message. We're beaten over the head with the fact that tradition has completely stifled and corrupted Japan which is a message any member of the right, let alone the alt right would fine enormously discomforting.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Aloy looks pretty to me, so I definitely don't get the reaction, sure she has a fat face but the features are still nice (mainly thinking back on the first game, not seen much of stuff from the second). I do have a thing for redheads though lol. But in the last of us the chars more or less look normally attractive, like a 7-8 scale universally. Either way though, if you're going for muscle fetish, how is that woke then? You're still sexualizing women, just with a more peculiar type of fetish in mind. This is the issue here, you aren't really doing anything different but you act high and mighty just because in your mind you're sticking it in the eye of your enemy group.

Well, one simple difference is that you add variety. There's nothing particularly wrong with sexualization so long as it doesn't become the driving feature of a character (unless narratively appropriate) and isn't tied to one gender, which in the vast majority of cases are women.

The progressive thing is to acknowledge this and not act one way or another about it and just accept folks like all sorts of things and nothing is inherently bad.

Exactly. We should strive for a more level playing field when it comes to sexual preferences in media. And currently it's still very much geared toward straight men.

It's more that the creators so wanted you to know they had lesbians in the game. Does it matter that there's two girls kissing? No. Is where the issue comes in partly that it was deemed something to focus on? Yes. It's like the idea of dog whistles and signalling to specific groups. It screams "Look how progressive we are putting an LGBTQ relationship front and centre as a main piece of our game". Little challenge for you, name a game in the past 10 years of E3 where a core part of the trailer was a straight couple kissing, no really I'm not joking see if you can do it.

The reality is that's not what most games have chosen to out out as part of their impression. The relationship stuff is there but that's not the focus but with TLOU2 they wanted people to know that was part of the focus and so pull n a crowd who care for that being part of the focus which what TLOU1 was dad apocalypse survival to an extent it's rather a tonal whiplash in audiences being targeted in a franchise in only the 2nd entry.

Except there IS a gay relationship at the forefront of the game, so how was that trailer going out of its way to show how gay it was other than the simple act of two girls kissing? Were they supposed to not show them being gay in any of the trailers to not have there be "tonal whiplash"? It revealed not only a new relationship, but one of the most important relationships that was going to feature in the game. And two trailers were already released prior with zero gayness, so when were they allowed to show that kiss, the fourth trailer, or the sixth, or just not at all?

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Normalizing as in, the protagonist doesn't really make a big deal about it, he treats it as normal.


I don't think the chars looked ugly. they looked on par with Kurosawa film women. Most poor villagers and bandits that are in these stories never have the money to care about prettiness, and also there's different cultural traits that make someone look hot in those stories, things like a visible nape of the neck for example. Not stuff which modern culture perceives. In my fav Kurosawa film Yojimbo you have a brothel fighting it out with a gambling house and the prostitutes look like random women wearing kimono with their hair tied up, not modern style sexy at all.


Also the issue isn't women being ugly, the issue is women being ugly being treated as something special or a highlight like you're doing, which is something the game never did. There's a difference to a game going for a style of thing and following through with it, and another game arbitrarily going "HA, you can't fap to this! Take that!", which is what woke games do.

Making em ugly to just "get" people who are into hot women is not the same as just having a fantasy setting that is best served by ugly women. You don't have situations where the devs are discussing making people more androgynous on purpose to suit the player's real life sexual identities and so on in ghost of tsushima, they were just making a samurai game.

It's somewhat worse than that actually, the make em ugly thing was done because they believed women were too intimidated and lets say jealous / envious of sexy women characters so would avoid games with such characters in them because they felt they had to compete with such characters somehow. This was the rumour from unconfirmed leaks and claims around ME Andromeda.

That's why I put the word 'ugly' in quotations, because they weren't ugly, yet any woman in a game that doesn't look traditionally attractive now is seen by a certain group of people as developers making the women ugly on purpose. I wonder what the reaction to Ghost would've been had you played as Yuna or Masako. I'd expect there'd be a lot more scrutiny somehow.

Not actually true
*points to Sea of Solitude*
I get some people like their women hairy but I'm pretty sure the lead in that game might be a bit beyond regular hairy and definitely doesn't fall into the camp of traditionally attractive.

Pretty sure almost no-one was upset of Hellblade either.

Funny thing I think it was the MK11 art director who claimed to be changing the women in the name of realism and inclusion or something like that.
Moviebob did a video on it pointing out the silliness of the game where you can break a persons spine and they get up and carry on fighting like nothing happened probably doesn't need to obey the laws of reality.

Which woke games do that exactly? I'm assuming this is about TLoU2. Because as you said in the first section, women that live in poor and dilapidated conditions, and who are focussed mainly on survival probably don't have time and luxury to make themselves look as pretty as they can. Or is this about Horizon: Forbidden West for having that one still image of Aloy having a scrunched up face?

The standard for women in games (and generally all media) is to look pretty, so when a big production comes along that breaks with that standard it is something worth addressing. Even the creator of the Yakuza series when he commented on how it's a shame Japan hadn't made Ghost mentioned how refreshing/bold it was that the main character, Jin, looked "ugly", as in; not the usual super pristine fine features characters in japanese games always have.

Funny almost like he's saying there very much is such a standard for men too....... Meanhwile mle characters can still happily fight bare chested in video games or see no changes to their character in games.

E.G. ME: Andromeda with the male Ryder default male model vs the female Ryder default female model

And the thing is, when Abby was first revealed in that second trailer nobody made much of any peep about how she looked, eventhough the scene very much showed off how buff she was. Yet when it was discovered she'd be killing Joel and you'd have to play as her a lot of hate suddenly came down on her looks.

Because it puts forward the unfortunate idea that women can't be both feminine and strong.......

 

[Casual Shinji]

Funny almost like he's saying there very much is such a standard for men too.......

Yes, in japanese media. The standard for male characters in western games is that they look rugged, the standard for male characters in japanese games is that they look like they're in a boyband. Hence the guy refering to Jin (a japanese character in a western game) as not-traditionally handsome.

Because it puts forward the unfortunate idea that women can't be both feminine and strong.......

And the reveal trailer didn't? The one that showed her strangling a woman with her legs, and pulling a hammer out of her skull and getting it ready to bash some zombies with? Nobody was making a fuss over that. Nobody. Also Naughty Dog's previous game was Uncharted: The Lost Legacy where the main character was feminine and strong, so.. *shrug*

And there've been plenty of feminine i.e. sexy women in games that were strong, so what's your point? That this one instance of a strong woman not looking feminine completely disrupts the balance?

People didn't become toxic about Abby's looks till she became Joel's killer. Because a lot of men can't be critical of women without resorting to criticizing their looks.

E.G. ME: Andromeda with the male Ryder default male model vs the female Ryder default female model

Spoiler

Oh hey look, male Ryder looking like a goober cuz videogame faces. Miranda was supposed to be a smoking hot babe yet her face ended up looking funky too. Was she made ugly on purpose, or was it simply the case of the difficulty of making a realistc 3D animated face, especially when the team in question wasn't as up to task? Hmmm.

 

[Dreiko]

I think that's mostly a distinction without a difference because those that fanatically hate everything woke don't have a more favorable opinion on progressives either.
, it
Besides I'd argue that the game isn't at all graceful about its core message. We're beaten over the head with the fact that tradition has completely stifled and corrupted Japan which is a message any member of the right, let alone the alt right would fine enormously discomforting.

No like, it's fiction. You can enjoy a story about something even if you think reality doesn't work that way, cause it's a story. It's not supposed to work like how reality does, that'd make it mundane and predictable. If you believe tradition is the best thing ever, a story where it fails and needs to be undermined will be like a breath of fresh air, a totally new world order to experience. Like for example, for me the shin megami tensei games are super unique, cause while I am agnostic right now I grew up in a super religious country so for a good 12ish years of my life I believed in the whole god mythology stuff in a literal sense so it's kinda magical and different to not only just not believe in those things but to outright kill god and satan with your hands yourself.


And just because the form of traditional Japanese culture existing back in the 13th century is corrupt that is not an indictment of all traditions everywhere anyways. It could just be the particularities of that one specific culture that had issues.


Kurosawa was a huge critic of Japan's involvement in ww2 and he had a lot of movies with that message so this in my eyes is just more of the game staying true to being that sort of samurai game. I doubt any other fans of his work would take issue.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

I think that's fine. I myself don't always feel for digging up articles. But that does mean that so far we only have your word on it that outlets were out go get Ghost.

And the articles I already posted from other outlets

Personally I find it funnier when people try to say that Metal Gear games or the fall of Falluja aren't political.

And if many games portray the ''war on terror'' as valid, as a legitimate struggle against terrorism and if they're all middle eastern terrorists rather than French ones then it sounds to me as if the games have certain things to say about American interventions in the Middle East.

Still kind of a strawman the Metal Gear Solid thing there. (oddly one that has already been brought up and I posted some-one basically replying to it on twitter)

Except its not. You literally gave us a definition of what you thought woke meant, and it was more than a little scewed.

No it's pretty much always the one that's been used

As another poster already pointed out such cases are often genuinely accompanied by examples of racism, homophobia and all that. You can't argue that there were strong far right undertones in at least some critics of many pieces of media that get accused of being too woke.

I also found that many people are willing to completely hijack the movements against certain media and drag it into their own political sphere. You had people insisted that Mass Effect Andromada was bad because it went ''full SJW'' rather than it being bad because the game was broken and unfinished. With Star Wars too people seem very willing to ignore the actual reasons why the new trilogy doesn't work and instead focus solely on feminism. And of course people focus much more on Abby having big arms than about the core message of TLOU2 being cliche, mundane and really boring.

Based on often nebulous standards. Hell Eli Roth's Green Inferno saw some people accusing it of racism not for the whole cannibal tribe stuff but for daring to suggest FGM is bad and painful for women and a white man saying such a thing in film was imperialist towards cultures that practice something which I'm going to say is harmful, outdated, fairly barbaric and hilarious as it turns out not even actually some ancient cultural practice in most culture it is relatively new to many of them (say 1600s at earliest).

Also while yes it should have been called bad for the bugs (and was from most I saw). Part of the issue with the argument of it going SJW is that can't be fixed so easily without more work. E.G. The little side bit in the game that actually somewhat deconstructs the Asari species and culture from being basically a mono-gender species so much so that their life stages are gender named to a species that now has 5 genders despite them basically having no concept of gender until they met other species and the new aliens having 7 different sets of possible gender pronouns.

With Star Wars, part of the issue of the new "Strong female lead" is the weird writing that really isn't willing to let them suffer and come out and triumph over that adversity. People will then point to Luke and go "Well he never had a journey and suffer" which is untrue. Luke had his arm cut off and hell he almost froze to death and basically had to be put into a special treatment tank for a while to save his life. How does Rey suffer and overcome adversity? She gets told her parents were no-ones and she has a bit of an issue with visions or something in the 3rd film. In the original trilogy Luke has to be trained by Yoda as his powers are there but needed to be refined and he needed to be taught to tap into them, meanwhile Rey needs no training she just totally needs to believe in herself because her skills and abilities are all there totally formed with no real training needed to be able to use them.

To bring up once again the Alita vs Captain Marvel things

From my understanding of Captain Marvel: The super powers were in here all the time just suppressed and she was just being lied to / deceived by the actual enemy and she was totally powerful all along.

Alita: Starts the film basically broken as hell barely alive, gets rebuilt and has to learn about the world again. Goes to confront one of the villains and gets beaten so badly she basically ends up as a head a torso and a hand as all that's left. Gets her sort of power / combat body suit and comes back to fight again.

With a "Woke" narrative: The usually female lead is already amazingly powerful and the only thing holding her back is society and her own self doubt in her powers, they need no training, they don't have to suffer a setback and get back up again they just have to realise how special and powerful they are. Part of this is due to the idea among 4th wave feminists that depictions of VAW (Violence Against Women) in media is wrong and is part of what causes violence against women in real life thus a piece of media doesn't meet their requirement to be endorsed seemingly if a female character faces violence that gets to the stage of being a serious threat and they suffer "too much" harm. It's why Batwoman gets pushed quite hard but Stargirl doesn't because Stargirl is willing to basically let a villain kick the ass of Stargirl to build up how much of a threat they are so much so in Season 1 Stargirl spends most of an episode in hospital then at home recovering.

It's why despite Atomic Blonde being a great female equivalent to James Bond films you didn't see the media outlets fawning over it but almost at the same time there were some pushing for a female James Bond.

Nonsense. They were not the first characters kissing in a trailer. Had the trailer been exactly the same except focusing about Joel and a new girlfriend none of you would have given a peep. No one would claim the trailer is trying to celebrate heterosexuality

Not the first but as I said, can you name another trailer? Not least one that made it a more focal point and wasn't a quick kiss happening in a short few second scene?

Also you're right in wouldn't have been celebrated. Thing is it very much was celebrated when it was Ellie, there's an element of Tumblr fanfiction shippers in this and well lets just say there's probably a reason the kiss happened at totally now post apocalypse prom