Adam Sessler and his God of War Ascension Review: Bro's Before Ho's

FloodOne

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Actually, if the boss enemy was male, and the trophy was still named Bros Before Hos, it would be a clever play on words.

Like, first, Kratos will kill the Bros, THEN he's gonna kill the Hos.

As far as the topic at hand, this isn't the first GOW trophy that was ridiculously short sighted. Does no one remember the "I didn't do it, but I wish I had..." trophy from GOW3? That was a rape joke, and it hardly caused a stir on the nets. So, really, "Bros Before Hos" isn't even out of line for the GOW universe.
 

Nouw

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Yeah even taking into consideration the sexism of Athenian society it feels out of place. So yeah, a bit cringeworthy.
 

Gmans uncle

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Wow... that is a dumb move on the dev's part...
I've been a fan of the God of War games for years, and naming a trophy something that misogynisticly mean spirited seriously disappointing.
David Jaffe, I don't know if you were involved with Ascension or not, but if you were, then shame on you dude, you are better then this!
Oh I'm still picking up Ascension, I'm not letting one little trophy stop me from enjoying one of my favorite games series, but Watch yourselves Sony, Kratos has kinda become your go-to mascot-like thing, be smarter with things like this next time.

Also, holy crap Sessler's doing game reviews again? I haven't seen him since I stopped watching G4 (which was years ago) I'll have to keep an eye on this.
 

MorganL4

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I don't much care one way or the other as to what sex the NPC thats getting beat up is, as far as I am concerned if you are going to be cool with horrific gore and mutilation of men in a game you should be cool with it with women.

That said, the "Bros before Hos" schtick is in pretty poor taste. As Sessler said, it promotes a misogynistic frat boy tone, not outraging, just really disappointing.

That said, its good to see Sessler doing video game reviews where he doesn't have to get up there and say "Oh, yeah... It's a great game, you should buy it." Unless he actually means it.
 

Casual Shinji

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And the odd thing is, had the Trophy not been there, the "fuck yeah, I just stomped that *****" coating probably wouldn't have been there either.

I'm not even fussed about the "fratboy" sexism itself, but about Trophies again injecting out of place and out of context conratulatory nonsense, spoiling scenes and moments in games. Trophies do this constantly and it annoys the crap out of me.

Imagine if Shadow of the Colossus had an "Oh no, Wilbur..." Trophy... It'd completely fuck up the scene.
 

Smeatza

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It's probably just my interpretation but am I the only one who thinks the name of the trophy is supposed to be a joke at the expense of "frat boy gamers"
The trophy is named "bros before hos"
Which is a phrase commonly used by frat boys.
Frat boys are the stereotypical audience for God of War.
Frat boys are stereotypically thought of as being the most prevalently sexist subset of gamers.

Let me put it this way, if it was intended as the joke I've interpreted, the next logical step would be to have Kratos dress up as a frat boy for this section.

Y'know it's almost satirical so it might have required more self awareness than the god of war team have.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

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Sep 8, 2011
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I don't think it's that outrageous, but it is distasteful and it isn't doing us any favors. This is the kind of thing that makes people think that games will never be a true art form, or even something more than mindless fun for adolescents.
 

Kopikatsu

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The only reason I think it's stupid is because...the Furies aren't 'hoes'. They're the Fates. Plus, they're supposed to look like rotting corpses with only one eye to share between them (Mythologically. I don't know how God of War had them designed).

If the achievement was for killing a certain number of Harpies or something, then I'd be cool with it. But as it is...no. It's dumb.
 

Colt47

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Adam Sessler is giving his take on the achievement in the context of the situation. Honestly, I tend to agree with him that the achievement is just plain out of context in comparison to the situation, but it isn't the first time we've seen this (even at the time he originally made the review).

I wish there was an option to turn off achievements sometimes. They just ruin the single player of games when I try to play them and they are pretty meaningless.
 

Sniper Team 4

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I think it was done in bad taste. Someone else pointed out on his video comments that there's another trophy called, "I didn't tap that...but I should have," or something like that. Involved shoving the innocent girl in the gears to stop them. Don't know if that's a real trophy or not though. Anyway, I think this ties into MovieBob's article about calling a little girl a c*nt. Might have seemed funny, but wasn't thought out well and ended up backfiring.
Anyway, the God of War series never really appealed to me in the first place, mainly because of stuff like this.
 

Therumancer

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Meh, just some routine lib-trolling. A non-politically correct joke, to which someone, in this case a web personality, decides they can get 5 minutes of increased fame by complaining about, knowing a bunch of liberals will flock to him without bothering to think it through as to whether there is a real issue here. We see it every day now, and the fact that people keep giving it attention and discussing it is why it continues.

There is no question that it's an attempt at a non-PC joke, whether you think it's funny or appropriate depends on your sense of humor. That said, the bottom line is that now people are talking about Adam Sessler, and that was the intent OF Adam Sessler in bringing this up. It's not like there aren't a million cracks like this made every day, in both directions (women bash dudes too), or even this being a uniquely obscene achievement due to involving a dark play on words in connection to a gaemplay event. The only think here is Adam Sessler feels the timing of this one can be used for self promotion and attention getting, so he's exploiting it. It's not like he's jumped on every other achievement that wasn't politically correct through his career, what's differant now is that as someone points out he's changed venue and probably wants attention and to make sure his name stays "out there" however he needs to do it, and a bit of faux, self-created, contreversy, attached to a major title is a way to do it.

There is no real need to justify God Of War, or Kratos' character, that should be painfully obvious, and someone who has been around gaming as long as Adam doubtlessly knows that, just as he knows he can really rev up the left leaning elements of the gaming community by pretending there is some kind of an issue.

Such are my thoughts and observations, basically your making the problem worse by discussing it to begin with.
 

Carnagath

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Nouw said:
Yeah even taking into consideration the sexism of Athenian society it feels out of place. So yeah, a bit cringeworthy.
What does ancient Athenian society have to do with anything? This is a game that's (very loosely) based on Greek mythology, not history. Also, the "sexism" of Athenian society was extremely light compared to the sexism that exists in some of today's societies. Women were often referred to as a burden in a joking manner during wine-fueled conversations between men, but were actually well respected and thought to possess a higher affinity than men for the arts. There was also no polygamy allowed, or public fucking stonings by angry mobs in ancient Greece, like we see today. It's funny how sometimes all 2 and a half millenia will do is take humanity several steps backwards, isn't it...
 

DrunkOnEstus

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May 11, 2012
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Is this really a shock to anyone? I'll just share some trophy names from God of War's past:

"Totally Baked", "Get me a beer kid", "stoner", Blowin' your wad", "breaking wind".

Need I go on? The trophies for these games ever since the HD collection came out have been an attempt to make frat boys go "heh heh, dude look what it just said, heh".
 

Brainwreck

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Context is absolutely crucial in this case.
And keep in mind, it's not Kratos brutally murdering another creature unlucky enough to be within 5 miles that's upsetting Sessler. It's not even the fact that it's not just some creature but a human. Or the fact that they happen to be female. Kratos could literally not do anything at this point that could possibly make him worse as a character, and the issues in question is not something that happens within the game's "story" context. Not for the important part anyway. Sessler is outraged that after this rather gruesome scene, the developers throw in a fucking achievement that literally says "bros before hoes".
It's like if Quentin Tarantino decided to throw in a random cutaway gag of "n*gga stole my bike" right after you witness the brutal mistreatment of black slaves in Django. Or just edit in scenes involving the n-word from Pulp Fiction. That would be... borderline sociopathic. The joke being "HAHA FUCK YOU". I'd say Sessler's right, and I've had it up to Shit Creek with the flailing oversensitivity that's beeng going around gaming press the past... well, couple months I guess.
 

Jiveturkey124

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I 100% agree with Sessler here. Why its so hard for people to understand why context is important in this scenario is beyond me, but let me try and explain.

Sessler even said it himself, the act of stomping the face of an enemy that looks like a woman but is still within the Greek mythos is fine, albeit dark as he stated, but still within context. Its within context because its still taking the act of killing a woman by beating her to death seriously.

The phrase "Bro's before Ho's" is not within any context of Greek myth and lowers the weight of seriousness surrounding the act, as to make beating a woman to death within the same context of telling your girlfriend you cant hang out with her because you have a football game with the guys.

Again "Bro's before ho's" just is not appropriate and shows a severe lack of maturity from the game and the developer, one that hits a new level as Adam stated for the franchise.
 

Kopikatsu

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Jiveturkey124 said:
I 100% agree with Sessler here. Why its so hard for people to understand why context is important in this scenario is beyond me, but let me try and explain.

Sessler even said it himself, the act of stomping the face of an enemy that looks like a woman but is still within the Greek mythos is fine, albeit dark as he stated, but still within context. Its within context because its still taking the act of killing a woman by beating her to death seriously.

The phrase "Bro's before Ho's" is not within any context of Greek myth and lowers the weight of seriousness surrounding the act, as to make beating a woman to death within the same context of telling your girlfriend you cant hang out with her because you have a football game with the guys.

Again "Bro's before ho's" just is not appropriate and shows a severe lack of maturity from the game and the developer, one that hits a new level as Adam stated for the franchise.
Let me direct you to previous achievement names for the series.

'Don't leave her hanging!' 'Totally baked' 'Blue Balls' 'Breaking Wind' 'Whip it good' 'Spread 'em', etc.

AKA, it's nothing new. Sessler should get over himself.
 

Samasson

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I think Sessler makes a pretty good point. But we do need to take the wording of the trophy in the context of the normal naming of trophies and achievements. Most tend to be some kind of funny one-liner meant to make the player laugh and usually it is harmless. However in the context of the hyper violence (which is not inherently negative) of the GOW series I think their choice of wording is pretty problematic if it does indeed come after something as brutal as Sessler seems to suggest it is. Not entirely sure what we should do with this information or how we should proceed conceptually towards the franchise and this particular choice. But it does speak to our need to be aware of such seemingly miniscule issues.
 

jcfrommars9

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Jiveturkey124 said:
Why its so hard for people to understand why context is important in this scenario is beyond me, but let me try and explain.
I've read more than enough comments like this to understand that the context was so badly missed, I truly have to wonder what Sessler was thinking. Let me try and explain without spoiling the game for others. I just got done last night playing this game. The "Bros before Hos" trophy has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with Kratos beating that Fury's face in or driving her body through the spike. It has everything to do with what comes after that particular fight. And believe me, once you see it yourself, you will understand.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Isn't it about time to kill Kratos anyway? I mean they really should be making a god of war game about you being the god of war from some other pantheon like the Egyptians or something and putting him down, he kinda is a rabid dog.