Well, to be fair that is present. The game is set in Tibet, and Tibet has been pretty much under China's thumb for a long time now, which has been a major source of contention even before China's more recent belligerence. The Chinese are also highly racist and see themselves as better than everyone else, both whites (Westerners) and other lesser races of Asians. They have in a lot of respects become similar to what Japan was when it exploited them. The game is apparently set in Tibet (or heavily involves it) from what I read, so having some racist Chinese guy oppressing the Tibetan people isn't unrealistic or out of hand, it's pretty much what's going on over there. What's more one of the reasons why I make fun of liberals is that this is one of the cases where those with heavy left wing sentiments have been screaming that China needs to be kicked out of Tibet, and ranting about the plight of the Tibetan people. It's ironic that when someone tackles this issue it's immediately attacked by the same people that it should be appealing to. A traditionally western Far Cry protagonist going into Tibet to violently liberate it from China is pretty much left wing power fantasy at it's finest (and one which probably appeals to both major American political viewpoints to an extent). What we're seeing here is liberal political attack culture taken to an extreme, no thought, someone points a finger, they all mindlessly rally like a zombie horde while trying to seem intelligent and well informed by it. This is an example of where it went wrong. Not a popular point on these forums I'd imagine, but it's pretty much what happened here as I explained earlier.CardinalPiggles said:Are you kidding me? Racist? People don't seem to even know the fucking meaning anymore.
If the picture was of many white men dominating many ethnically different men I could totally understand, but one "white" man dominating one ethnically different man could be entirely circumstantial and therefore not racist. Racism is the belief that you are inherently better than someone else due to yours or his race. I don't see that at all in this picture.
As I also pointed out in my last, long, post, the whole "racism" angle here that carries over from "Far Cry 3" was kind of a joke to begin with. It's another example where you had a lot of left wingers pretty much rally to claim a game was racist, when really all it did was present people in an isolated third world environment, as being from an isolated third world environment. Anything for a platform and a fight. It's kind of ridiculous when you complain about a third world pirate being a bad person, or the way the people are portrayed, when people with the same political/moral affiliations as those complaining go on at length about the plight of the third world and how wreched things are down there, in need of both more peacekeeping forces to deal with the pirates and warlords, food and medicine to deal with malnutrition and medical conditions that have long, term, degenerative effects, and of course educational facilities. It would be racist to say these people are inherently like that on some fundamental genetic, level, but I haven't seen much making that kind of statement in a long time. Honestly, you go to the third world and objectively you probably are better than the overwhelming number of people you run into, not because of inherent genetics, but because of opportunities. Your probably smarter due to not having grapped with malnutrition and vitamin shortages that can apparently effect such things as you develop, your likely in far better health with the benefits of having been in good health for your entire life (even if fat and out of shape otherwise), and of course you likely have at least some education. Of course one of those same people given the same opportunities would be the same as you, which is why a lot of left wingers are so insistant about bringing those opportunities to these areas of the world, but that doesn't change what the conditions are and what it would be like to go there, nor that it's a very violent and barbaric place due to the harsh environment and thus someplace where lawless violence, perfect for action fantasy, can potentially happen.
The criticism springboards off of "Far Cry 3" and it's controversy which was also pretty much wrong. What's more when I finally got a chance to play the game, I will say that the first thing it does is subvert the whole "white action dude" trope, since the dude with all the military experience that kind of goes "meh, I'll handle this" doesn't last past the intro sequence, you instead start out as a goober who is truly out of his depth. Pretty much the opposite of what everyone was saying.
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As far as Jim's other points though, yeah I think video game marketing could be better, and they shoot themselves in the foot by keeping everything close to their chest. This is to say nothing of all the exploitive DLC practices and other things I agree with him 100% on. That said, this is a bad place to draw the line because your dealing with a whole lot of politically fueled human stupidity, the picture isn't what people are saying it is, with what information was released about setting, and actual examination of it as opposed to simply jumping on the bandwagon, should be enough to deal with the problem. The thing is that Ubisoft's need for positive press kind of prevents them from being rather insulting towards those making the criticisms.
Jim has a few good points in here, and honestly I'm not a big fan of Ubisoft, but you shouldn't be picking on a company, even one that messed up, when it's not doing anything wrong. That kind of thing (constant attacks for any reason) backfires by making it harder to be taken seriously when there is a REAL issue.