Horizon Zero Dawn and accusations of SJW pandering: What is true, and what isn't.

[Erttheking]

Oh God, the Gerurdo: the perfectly functioning tribe of all women where a dude is only born every century or so, and that dude is invariably a massive dick.

This begs a question. How do the Gerudo reproduce? Do they kidnap and rape men, then murder them? It's the only explanation. Damn, I didn't realize Zelda is so dark.

They are allowed to have boyfriends and lovers outside the Gerudo tribe.

Sauce: http://zelda.gamepedia.com/Gerudo

Think about how isolated they are. A few of them venturing out for lovers isn't gonna sustain their population.

I like my idea. Someone needs to make a smutty fanfiction about this.

That gerudos are a race I wouldn't mind returning. The zora and gorons have gotten way more appreciation.

They're in Breath of the Wild.

http://orcz.com/Breath_of_the_Wild:_Gerudo_Town

 

[white_wolf]

There's some agenda-pushing, but usually it didn't amount to much more than an eyeroll.

What disappointed me was how bland and boring Aloy was, and I think it was due to a misguided effort to make her a "strong female character". I wish she had a character flaw or something to show character growth, like a bad habit of trying to prove herself to others, or a disconnect between her role as a Seeker and how the village treated her previously. Either of these would be something a normal person would experience in her situation. Instead, Aloy was always good-hearted, responsible, and competent. It's not something that ruined the game, but it feels like a key missed opportunity.

She does have a quark she isn't very up on social interactions like when a character is basically hitting on her she wants it spelled out or in other conversations her being given thanks is off putting to her. She's awkward towards curtain responses.

More over w/o spoilers when she gets a new rank after seeker she is upset with the tribe and later in game a particular situation happens when the tribe is being threatened and she can basically go, fuck em they cast me out. The player has options to be cold or indifferent towards the tribe but in the end she still is a warrior for them after the proving regardless of what she feels about it.

More to OP I didn't find it a sjw game she lives in a matriarchy there are also patriarchies the developers do add women into the armies they also have blacks and Asians mixed in as well and such but only the Nora are ruled by women all others have men. My final gang had 2 men and 1 woman as my allies (I guess you can mix and match this more if you do the right missions). Most tribes are mixed races it adds character I was more off put by the fact no one knows how to dress in snow save the SUN tribe! Everyone is in short to sleevless attire in the mountains but that was more annoying to me then the fact you can have an asian, white, and black person all in the same tribe.

 

[RaikuFA]

Oh God, the Gerurdo: the perfectly functioning tribe of all women where a dude is only born every century or so, and that dude is invariably a massive dick.

This begs a question. How do the Gerudo reproduce? Do they kidnap and rape men, then murder them? It's the only explanation. Damn, I didn't realize Zelda is so dark.

If BotW is any indication, they're allowed to leave to get a mate. I've done a few quests where I play matchmaker for them.

 

[kilenem]

Part of me wants to dislike the Dev for drawing attention to how they're doing diveristy because I Look at how DC comics does diversity better then Marvel and one gives a shit. Black/Latino Batgirl in Lego Batman, Suicide Squad has a diverse cast, Wonder Woman is getting a Movie before Black widdow and Black Panther. They dont draw attention to how they're trying to be more inclusive so they piss off less people.

On the other hand, some people just suck balls, they're are people still bitching about Nick Furry being Black even though a Black Nick Furry was established 7 years before the first Ironman.

 

[McMarbles]

Now if the main chick was transgender, lesbian, gender fluid, healthy at any weight and was trying to stop the robodino-tyrant The Mansplainor with a bow called the 'Antia is Goddess' then maybe.

BRB, putting together a game pitch.

 

[Ishigami]

Why is it always "pandering" when the protag is anything but a straight white male?

Is it?
Granted I only notice stuff when it becomes somewhat big but I haven't noticed any noteworthy complains regarding female protagonists for games such as Tales of Beseria or Life is Strange.
When Uncharted Lost Legacy was announced the crowed seemed pretty excited, I know I am.

And why is it never "pandering" in the case of the 99% of AAA games with straight white male protags calculated to appeal to the majority straight white male audience?

Isn't that the point of a lot of criticism by progressives? That videogames of the hard core genres (shooter, action etc.) mostly care about their predominantly white and male target audience?
The white dude with brown short hair even became a meme:

I'm pretty sure that counts as calling out pandering.

Thing obviously is: As long as people pander to you it is no issue.

And why are the guys who scream "How DARE you interfere with the developers' sacred vision!" whenever anime boobies (which are never a case of pandering, no no nooooooo) get edited always mysteriously silent when those sacred visionary developers are criticized for "pandering" by daring to use a non-SWM protag?

It's not the same is it?
If they cover up some breasts in order to get a lower age rating, then they actually changed an existing and finished product afterwards. In this case an unaltered version might exist in Asia but is due language barriers etc. out of reach. And it goes against the wishes of the target audience.
This is not just about sexualisation. A decade ago a lot of games were changed for a German release to limit violence. Often you found yourself fighting robots instead of humans (C&C Red Alert, Half-Life, Soldier of Fortune etc.). People got pissed about that too because outsiders dictated what they may consume and whatnot.

Anyway HZD gets some mild critique for an emerging patter in their quest solutions after it was released unaltered.
Why mild? Because the game is rated 8.9 from professionals and 8.3 from users at metacritic. So apparently not many care much for it.

You may make that point about the ME3 ending that got so much shit EA altered it after release. But then again it still was universally accepted that is was indeed pretty shite.
That game by the way is rated 5.5 by its users, now that was indeed a shit storm.

Oh, they're not mysteriously silent.

They're generally the same ones screaming about how non-SWM protagonists are "pandering".

You may have noticed, there's a curious overlap between people who have anime-character avatars on various websites and people who really, really hate allowing anyone to look at the socio-political themes of video games in any sort of depth.

You must have internet surveillance tools that would make the NSA jealous.
Anyway the problem is not looking into video games, the problem is looking into video games with an enormous bias.

 

[gigastar]

Anyway the problem is not looking into video games, the problem is looking into video games with an enormous bias.

Like when someone looks into a game featuring a female protagonist expecting to find SJW cancer, theyre gonna find something that can be interpreted as SJW cancer.

 

[CaitSeith]

They're in Breath of the Wild.

http://orcz.com/Breath_of_the_Wild:_Gerudo_Town

Cool. I think this is actually the first time I've seen any of the game's NPCs.

Maybe because of this Zelda open-world nature, NPCs have less focus than in previous games. By the way, Beedle is back...

Well, I can't tell if it's better or worse for poor Beedle to walk all around Hyrule carrying his shop with him than to pedal his flying shop all day.

 

[shrekfan246]

You must have internet surveillance tools that would make the NSA jealous.

Or, possibly more likely, I can recognize avatars/usernames and have the capacity of remembering or reading through peoples' posting history.

Anyway the problem is not looking into video games, the problem is looking into video games with an enormous bias.

There's a lot I could potentially say in response to this, not least of all regarding the idea of "bias", but... I've had this conversation before. Many times. It never goes anywhere. So I'm just going to wish you a good day.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

I... uhhh... are you sure the game has it out for white-y as you're putting it? Because, just going down the list:

Main Villain - isn't the white guy. Also, is Helis even white to begin with? He's pale, sure, but he doesn't really look very European to me.
Evil Guard and Temporary Captain - isn't evil, just shows the same prejudice like... most of the women of the tribe show towards you as well. He never really lightens up on it because fuck, neither does Aloy.
Captain of the Main City Guard who Everyone Likes - woman, yes, but also suicidally over-confident in her abilities to do shit.
Her Brother - you mean the equally likable, just-as-competent-but-not-confident-in-his-abilities dude, who we largely interact with while he's in the middle of grieving? He also helped the Sun King do shit, it wasn't just his sister.
The ineffectual Sun King - isn't actually ineffectual at all? Hell he hired the Guard captain as mercenaries to help him overthrow his father and is pretty effective throughout all your interactions with him (to the point he's only ineffectual when he's pinned to the ground by a torture device during a quest), it's kinda weird to say he's completely ineffectual.
Sun Princes Mother who shields him from the main villain? - Oh, you mean the kids mother? Man, wonder why she'd want to shield her son from a dude who is not even trying to be subtle in his manipulations of him. Weird how the 'Black' took priority over the 'Mother' part of her character there for you.

Spoiler: actual game spoiler, fairly late game

Destroyer of the worlds entire reservoir of knowledge - is the same fucking guy as the Evil Corporation Man, come on, you can't list the same fucker twice. Plus like, a couple of the other guys working with him were white as well, and the Evil Corporation Guy wasn't even evil, just... well, fucking stupid, but not evil.
Plus, if you look closely/listen to the audio logs, there's a fair few white guys who were working on the Zero Dawn project and were 'good' guys, up until the Corporate guy decided to go all 'Sunshine' on everyone. Was kinda a mutli-national project and all that.

Also, does HADES even speak with a 'male' voice? It's talking with the usual 'Heavy Robotic Voice', similar to the Reapers from Mass Effect. And given it's never given physical form, hard to compare it against GAIA as a criticism of race/gender.

Just... yeah, it's... not really how you seem to be presenting it as? I mean, boil away the complexities of the characters to focus on their race and you can make anything sound bad, really, but looking at everyone in their entirety and all Horizon Zero Dawn's agenda seems to be is 'write good characters'. To claim they had a mindset of portraying all the white characters negatively is... well, imaginary.

 

[Erttheking]

They're in Breath of the Wild.

http://orcz.com/Breath_of_the_Wild:_Gerudo_Town

Cool. I think this is actually the first time I've seen any of the game's NPCs.

Maybe because of this Zelda open-world nature, NPCs have less focus than in previous games. By the way, Beedle is back...

Well, I can't tell if it's better or worse for poor Beedle to walk all around Hyrule carrying his shop with him than to pedal his flying shop all day.

Well he's not the first Zelda character to lug around a bag that size.

Spoiler

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/zelda/images/3/37/Happy_Mask_Salesman_Artwork_(Majora%27s_Mask).png/revision/latest?cb=20111101130747

Man it'd be cool if he came back somehow.

Anyway, I never played Skyward Sword, so it's good to hear that Beedle is still kicking around. I liked him. (Even if he charged me a king's ransom for a fucking bottle, like he knew he was in a Legend of Zelda game)

 

[Ishigami]

Like when someone looks into a game featuring a female protagonist expecting to find SJW cancer, theyre gonna find something that can be interpreted as SJW cancer.

For example. It's called confirmation bias after all. If you look long, hard and abstract enough then you will find what you are looking for.
Some here dismiss the criticism of the pattern in quest solutions outright for this very same reason: That is just over interpretation in order to bash some feminist agenda where there actually is none. Apparently you agree it is legit course of action. I'm just saying it applies to everyone.

Or, possibly more likely, I can recognize avatars/usernames and have the capacity of remembering or reading through peoples' posting history.

So you then are just talking about one platform. May I say your sample size and criteria may not be good enough to draw a good conclusion?

There's a lot I could potentially say in response to this, not least of all regarding the idea of "bias", but... I've had this conversation before. Many times. It never goes anywhere. So I'm just going to wish you a good day.

Suit yourself.




Finished the game yesterday with 98,7% completion. Missing whole lot of world entries and some quest related ones. May have to check if I missed a quest or something.
Anyway I liked it. If I had to put a number on it, it would be 4/5 (I don't give in between numbers)
What I liked was the machine designs and how to fight them with different weapons/ammunition. The visuals are stunning and I never encountered noticeable frame drops either (PS4P, favour resolution). The game never bogs you down by throwing too many tasks at you. You usually only have 1 main, 2 side quest and one errand at hand. So you never get lost in tasks. This approach is also noticeable with the collectibles. Compared to Assassins Creed for example the numbers of collectibles are pretty low.
Story is pretty average (think of Terminator but instead of going back in time you go into the future) but it does a good job keeping you engaged.

What I did not like so much was the broken stealth mechanic. Tall grass is just too damn good at concealing you and the AI has no pattern to actually locate you or force you out of it. Not to mention you can stealth kill enemies from tall grass while other enemies are in plain sight and still they can't spot you. I know HZD is no stealth game but a little more finesse wouldn't have hurt it makes smaller machines and humans too much of a push over.
The game also lacks a proper climbing system. Aloy can only grab to yellow or white marked spots similar to Uncharted or the new Tomb Raider. But it leads to some funny and/or frustrating situations when there is a visible ledge that everyone could reach but since it is not marked and Aloys jump is not high enough you can't actually climb there so you have to go around.
Some animations in the dialog sequences are bit of a miss.
While all in all I liked having different weapons and ammunition I got to say that it would not have hurt if they stream lined it a bit. Do I really need 3 different bows or two different slings? I felt like some weapons where not as useful as others and they could have cut them by combining their functionality into other so that all weapons and ammunitions would have fitted in one wheel. Less time in the menu to change gear basically.
Since every big machine is in of itself a small boss the actual boss fights fall flat and do not stand out in any way or form.

As for the accusations of pandering towards SJW. I don't think it amounts to much.
Aloy herself is basically just a female Geralt. If your fine with Geralt you should be fine with Aloy.
Once you read this or any other topic and article related then yes you might notice that a lot of the time women are the solution to problems caused by men, if you boil it down to gender only. I played about 60% of the game unaware of these topics and article and while playing it didn't occur to me nor bothered me much.
The game does indeed present a divers cast. There is a lore reason why it might be the case despite the current population of the USA being predominately white. I felt like most NPCs were of mixed heritage and again there is a lore reason to it which will be revealed near the end.
The game is so far in the future (despite giving no date afaik) and the background is so ludicrous that I didn't feel like the game actually tried to lecture me in setting up its stage.
There are also some examples that break the supposedly feminist narrative e.g. the Nora as a Matriarchy is downright dysfunctional in my eyes or some male characters that are indeed portrait in a positive light e.g. Sun King or the former captain of the Shadow Carja which name is just forgot.

 

[gigastar]

There's a lot I could potentially say in response to this, not least of all regarding the idea of "bias", but... I've had this conversation before. Many times. It never goes anywhere. So I'm just going to wish you a good day.

Suit yourself.

I suit myself just fine, but that wasnt posted by me.

 

[Veldel]

Oh for fucks sake the game isnt sjw pandering and if your crying over a female protag then grow the fuck up. played and beat the game its a fun game with robot dinosaurs and tons of diffrent fake cultures fucking enjoy it and stop trying to make everything into a pointless argument of WAAAAAH.

 

[sXeth]

Why is it always "pandering" when the protag is anything but a straight white male?

Is it?
Granted I only notice stuff when it becomes somewhat big but I haven't noticed any noteworthy complains regarding female protagonists for games such as Tales of Beseria or Life is Strange.
When Uncharted Lost Legacy was announced the crowed seemed pretty excited, I know I am.

I'd say pandering comes up when its used as an advertising point, sometimes literally the only point. Ghostbusters initial release was "Hey, Girl Ghostbusters" without so much as addressing whether it was a sequel or reboot or anything else. Force Awakens was "Hey its a Star Wars sequel. And while Finn and Rey were there in the trailer, it didn't feel the need to put out press releases of "This Star Wars will feature a Girl Jedi!".

Kind of like Mortal Kombat X has a gay character, and the Boon confirmed it when someone asked, but it was never a major marketing point of the game (its not a huge plot point in the story either). Or the Tracer in Overwatch thing, where it was just covered more or less naturally in random character development rather then being thrown out there to create buzz.

I don't know that Horizon did any such thing with marketing, it was interesting enough looking that I mostly kept away from marketing to avoid hype burnout or spoilers.

 

[maninahat]

This game, whilst acknowledged by the "SJW" types as being progressive by having a female protagonist, has also been criticised by the same sort for cultural appropriation [https://medium.com/@dialacina/what-we-talk-about-when-we-dont-talk-about-natives-60f4af9ef675#.du1ly1xyo]. It's almost as if what these people are asking for is a tad more complicated than token minorities and "strong female characters".

 

[lionsprey]

Oh God, the Gerurdo: the perfectly functioning tribe of all women where a dude is only born every century or so, and that dude is invariably a massive dick.

This begs a question. How do the Gerudo reproduce? Do they kidnap and rape men, then murder them? It's the only explanation. Damn, I didn't realize Zelda is so dark.

in ocarina of time this is basically how they do it. not sure about the murder part but they do at least kidnap and rape them.

 

[Ishigami]

I suit myself just fine, but that wasnt posted by me.

I'm sorry I apparently deleted the wrong quote line. I corrected the mistake.

This game, whilst acknowledged by the "SJW" types as being progressive by having a female protagonist, has also been criticised by the same sort for cultural appropriation [https://medium.com/@dialacina/what-we-talk-about-when-we-dont-talk-about-natives-60f4af9ef675#.du1ly1xyo]. It's almost as if what these people are asking for is a tad more complicated than token minorities and "strong female characters".

That's rather ridiculous. For me this "cultural appropriation" does not exist.
Even looking past that the authors premise seems highly questionable. I highly doubt any of the professional review authors wanted to make any commentary on actual indigenous people at all simply because this has nothing to do with the game.
The game borrows the aesthetics and some cultural elements from a lot of different old cultures not just one, it's not even from only one continent as far as I can tell. Not to mention there were no "unified native American people". North America was full of different independent tribes: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianer_Nordamerikas#/media/File:Langs_N.Amer_Deutsch.png
While the Nora and Banuk certainly seem mostly inspired by the tribes of North America the Carja or Oseram do not appear to me to be based on that. There I think we have more Aztec, Egyptian and Ottoman influences.
Kind of ironic that she talks about cultural approbation and then lumps all these different tribes and cultures together.
Then there is the lore of the game itself. Which I won't spoil.

I also like that responses that tell her she tries rather hard to be offended when there is no issue are liked more than the ones she highlighted in support of her position.

As for more complex: I don't think so. This article sounds like the progressive stack at work.