Thing is: People used to just do this kind of stuff, thus normalizing it. These days, every fucking marketing department will drum up all the “hype” it can muster because LoOk At Us AnD hOw PrOgReSsIvE wE aRe! We DaRe To ShOw WhAt ShOuLd Be JuSt NoRmAl PeOpLe! We EvEn HaVe OnE oF tHeM hOmOsExUaLs AnD a WoMaN!
Yeah, congrats. I’m not complaining that we get female lead roles or homosexual romances or trans people or anything. I’m complaining that having those becomes the sole talking point about whatever medium they are in, and I’m complaining that while boasting how things have female leading roles, those female leading roles are written exactly like the dumbest male leading roles but with a woman portraying it. Think about it. The equivalent to Rey in Star Wars would be something along the lines of Silvester Stallone wielding 2 M-60-Machine guns while simultaneously mowing down nondescript Asian people in a nondescript and defintely not Vietnamese Jungle… Can I have lead female roles where the women are granted the right to be real fucking people for once?! You know… like women in real life who - and this has been scientifically proven - are real people?!
I mean, I remember the PS1 era. Drag and somewhat-fleshed-out female characters and anticapitalism weren’t exactly high on the list of common occurrences in games. It wasn’t ‘just done’, the Final Fantasy series from 6 onward were outliers (or trailblazers, if you prefer), and highly praised for presenting comparatively full and varied worlds.
I feel you about tokenism being shit, but the situation nowadays is… not a step back from how it used to be. It used to be much worse.
Shit… Did I romanticize the past? Fuck… I’m getting old. You are right about that… That’s how it begins, innit? Next, I’ll start sentences with “back in my day”… Oh dear… Why do I feel the need to buy a useless sports car?
Kids today! Get off my damn lawn!
How dare people fantasize in my space fantasy!!!
People absolutely did not used to do this sort of thing, the vast majority of video games were made by and for men and boys, starring men and boys. Just a completely delusional take on the history of video games.
They’re trying to market games to additional groups now, it isn’t just about you anymore, and that’s what annoys you so much. You essentially admitted it in this post. So sick of reading these tantrums constantly
Oh no, women get to have unrealistic power fantasies now too? How horrible. Just a hint, but there was never anything realistic about god damn Rambo. Get a grip and grow tf up already.
Not OP, but as a man, I’d also love some more realistic portrayal of men, not always super hero dudes who can’t show real emotion or “weakness” (aka vulnerability). While I love a good power fantasy, not every man in every movie has to be like that.
The problem is, that in movie, the women stronk archetype is toxic masculinity in a female package. I dislike the whole toxic masculinity because it is bland, boring and just overall not good for anyone. For example, Scully in The X Files is a strong female character without having to be demeaning, overpowered and just a plain twat. The problem is, and was, that certain things get crammed in your face and you are supposed to like it because otherwise you are INSERT_BAD_THING.
Anyone can be anything, but what if we treat people like people. Everyone is different. Labels are great for trying to understand each other but lately it has become very much a black and white kind of thing. For or against. If we can try to at least try to understand each others point of view, maybe the world can become less polarized.
Why do you have a higher standard for characters that aren’t straight white men? If you don’t, then why specifically call out the poor writing you see in characters that aren’t straight white men as though making them straight white men would be passable, even if poorly written?
They just write it off as the stuff for manlets and weaboos. Real men played Die Hard on the NES.
That’s weird cause what I remember is a lot of dress spheres.
I don’t like final fantasy games. Go ahead, downvote me. My body is ready.
Oh I agree. Also I hate its name. I have absolutely zero interest in playing any of those games, yet I love everything about fantasy as a genre. Guess what pops in any damn search containing the word fantasy? You’re goddamn right.
They’re not usually my favorites of Square games, except FFT and FFXIV, and I don’t really mean to defend them, but the name is actually significant for the company. See they were going out of business so named the last game they planned ro make as Final Fantasy. It earned enough to save the company, so they kept using the name for what they consider their flagship games.
there are dozens of us!
Some people have no media literacy, especially when it comes to media they consume for fun.
Once you plug your brain into the YouTube / AM Radio vomit cannon, it obliterates all the brain cells you once used for critical thinking.
We need a game where we take the role of an anti antifa counter terrorist or something. /S
Answer: The difference between then and now, is that then, we kept this bullshit in games, now folks are dressing like cake topping in the middle of the city trying to be taken seriously.
“Ah yes, placate the masses while we destroy the environment by confining activist messaging to the media they consume. How dare they actually touch grass and do something!”
Going back to 1998 and shouting this at a passing Pride float running through the center of San Fransisco.
Going back to 1969 and putting this on a big poster board outside the Stonewall Inn in Lower Manhattan.
Going back to 1929 and filing a formal complaint with the city of Rio de Janeiro over the outrageous debachery
Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
Fallout: The solution for the energy crisis is being held back by higher ups for pRoFiTs. WW3 goes hot. Everything gets nuked.
Horizon Zero Dawn: Dumbass techbro is responsible for killing everything on the planet down to the last microbe. Continues with a cultural genocide by deleting all of recorded history in the bunkers. Because he can and he is a dumbass.
Bioshock: A super capitalists wet dream goes plopp. Killing a shit ton of innocent people. (Possibly starting a nuclear war)
Oddworld: Unhinged capitalism destroying nature and enslaving the worlds inhabitants.
Cookie Clicker: Monopoly on cookies turn the whole universe (and possibly every other universe) into cookie matter. Everybody plays along because cookies taste nice.
Please tell me more about how politics in video games ruin video games.
Edit Bonusround:
Factorio: Uncaring, industrial alien crash lands on planet. Starts terraforming it, plunders its resources, poisons its earth, water and sky. Slaughters every kind of resistance from the planets natives.
Morrowind: Several factions competing for power try and use the player as a way to get on top without getting their own hands dirty. Half the main quest line is running around doing mundane stuff that has less to do with proving you’re a chosen one and more to do with proving you’re a good little bootlicker who won’t disrupt the status quo when they hand you the glove of god slapping.
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Or… You do a shit-ton of skooma and mushroom juice, suplex Vivec’s harlequin ass and fight Dagoth-Ur buck naked, screaming like a banshee and then break all his toys with that hammer that burns when you hold it.
Thank you for convincing me to replay Morrowind!
Fallout goes way further than that.
At every single opportunity, Bourgeoisie are depicted as monstrously evil. Even their most competent, Mr. House, is an unfeeling sociopath who begins the game as a failure for you to clean up after. Every pre-war corporation is disgustingly evil, and nearly every post-war Capitalist is also a monster.
The games also favorably depict Socialist constructs, like the Syndicalist Gun Runners, the Anarcho-Communist Followers of the Apocalypse, and more.
It’s not even close to subtle about its messaging, yet chuds still think it’s a right-wing game because it satirist the Red Scare, but they take it as straight messaging.
Halo: religious aliens ruin humanity’s fun as they kill each other.
Religious Aliens are actually incredibly based, because they have launched a glorious crusade against the fascist chuds of the USMC who get caught with their pants down doing an ethnic cleansing of frontier planets in rebellion.
The USMC would get curbstomped by the UNSC marines though.
Especially if you gave the UNSC two sticks and a rock.
And Johnson. Can’t forget Johnson.
Now I wonder how many modern American tanks would be needed to scratch the paint of a scorpion xd
Oddworld: Unhinged capitalism destroying nature and enslaving the worlds inhabitants.
“What do you mean the unhinged capitalist caricatures are making fun of capitalism’s drive for profit leading to self-cannibalizing processes??”
For some people, even ‘unsubtle’ isn’t enough.
Universal Paperclips: dumb AI wipes out humanity with mindcontrol marketing so it can turn the universe into paperclips.
Final Fantasy 6 also has the same type of plotline except instead of an evil corporation it’s an evil empire and sociopathic clown (Kefka). This game was released on the SNES btw with Chrono Trigger. Do I dare mention Final Fantasy 9? Btw before people ask FF6 was my childhood and I loved that game that’s how I know it from the inside out
Woke was never a new concept, it’s just a new word that people use so they don’t have to admit those aspects of themselves they can’t really defend and don’t want to admit. It’s basically a misdirection tactic to shift the discussion back onto their critics without admitting the problem they really have with something.
when will people learn using insults instantly ruin their point to those who disagree even if it right.
Many of these story lines in movies and games still work as propaganda that functions “pro corporation”:
A lot of the problems and evil is caused by rules of the system that create emergent behavior. E.g. the rules of capitalism create greedy corporations and lobbying to subvert democracy and funding to create and spread ideology to justify all this.
But a good story needs a villain not some abstract concept with complex problems and solutions. So even “politically critical” stories focus on some corrupt politician or senator or rogue government agency. Once they are defeated or unmasked the good newspapers and governments fix the problem. But that is really a fantasy.
This is more prevalent for movies since games mostly have post-apocalypse settings. But it’s still a focus on individual evil instead of the soft unfathomable evil of systems and rules creating evil or ineffective institutions.
It’s absolutely wild how many movie and game stories in our lifetime have had a villain who’s trying to save the world through imposed means, and the heroes are like, “you kind of have a point, but individual choice is more important”. Which is not dissimilar to what the oil companies’ spin says on how consumer choice is what matters - The wheels of communism must keep turning.
Meanwhile, in The Day The Earth Stood Still, the aliens’ message is “stop this shit, or we’ll stop you”.
Abes Oddysey is straight up anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist eco-anarchy.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
What do you mean? Clearly it’s a completely apolitical tale about corporate greed both literally and metaphorically cannibalizing the world in pursuit of fleeting and ultimately diminishing profits, leaving nothing behind but bones and waste?
… now if only you left off Final Fantasy and Shinra…
This could be so many JRPGs. Including other Final Fantasies… 6 is damn close too. And the superior of all the Final Fantasies…
6, 9, 13-2. Fight me.
FF4 and FF5 can be added to the list, FF8 barely. Persona 2, 3 and 5 as well
9, 6, 10.
Everything after X-2 is an abomination and I refuse to acknowledge it is even the same franchise.
I will fite you
I dare you to complete 13-2. It’s everything a final fantasy should be and barely needs 13 or 13-3.
If it isn’t turn-based, I’m not playing it. No idea who the fuck thought it was pivot literally the MOST ICONIC turn based IP into action combat but I want to scoop their eyes out with grapefruit spoon.
To honor your engagement, I’ll watch a walkthrough, but I’m serious about how unbelievably, incandescently fuckdamn bitter I am that FF dropped turn-based combat in favor of MMO inspired action.
And that goes double for the FF7 remake that I have literally waited decades for.
At this point, Fuck Square. Seriously. Fuck them hard. There are already TONS of action adventures out there, why did they have to do this to my favorite turn based?
Why not just play Indie then? Same pixel base, same classic combat style. Pixel Remasters are a thing too if you’re looking for nostalgia instead.
It’s not like Squenix IP was special between FF iterations. Maybe a chocobo, moogle, and cactuar, but otherwise fairly different contexts in most titles.
Hell one of the few things Pokemon gets shit on still for is being turn based.
Why not just play Indie then?
What makes you think I don’t? I am specifically referring to the asstastic turn that the Final Fantasy series made after X-2, and dropping turn based combat is only part of it.
Hell one of the few things Pokemon gets shit on still for is being turn based.
Yes, because people in general are fucking idiots who have no idea and just like to hear their voices.
Turn based will always be the superior option in RPGs and most tactical games. Whoever started the ‘shitting on turn based’ trend needs to be fed to a woodchipper.
Tell me more about how you feel.
bite me
… That’s not how Final Fantasy IX happened at all…
Definitely the best FF PS game.
You are a gentleman/woman and a scholar and a fine judge of classing video games.
Excuse me, Final Fantasy Tactics exists (and shouldn’t be counted really).
That is a great point. That game is so good!
My favorite FF is a hallucination after you get stabbed with magic because you tried to overthrow the government. But it has a children’s card game!
![Games are too WOKE these days! [PS1 startup sound]](https://media.kbin.social/media/a7/06/a706a5871636814e4fe01aa23736281511f7f8cfd7b67a3d495b56f8d18bdf02.jpg){kind=link}