This guy has tons of great insights into the rainbow mafia. He is a true heretic to LGBTQP+.

I watched this finally. It summarizes perfectly my feelings on the betrayal of this franchise by it's own owner, and I never guessed that he was such a vain casual thief as to claim he had a plan with Bridget when he didn't even want there to be a story mode in XX and punted the whole project to another team.

My favorite character in the series is and has always been Baiken. I have tons of things to say about her transformation after shocking absence from Xrd, but I'll save that for another rant. I saw they weren't putting her in the roster of Strive and said as a self-promise: "No Purchase until Baiken."

When she is added as an early extra character, I put my money where my mouth was. Happy Chaos looked great, Baiken was acceptable, I was happy to support.

Then we get Testament. Motherfucker, I knew where this was going. I regretted supporting the game right there, and stopped playing. Then Bridget drops.

Bridget is my second favorite character in the series. His troll-y smugness and cavalier dismissal of everyone else's failure to recognize him for what he is; his decision to prove his own culture wrong (and validate his own existence) by being successful despite being evil by virtue of his birth. These things are interesting, deep, and invites the investment of the audience to see how and where it goes.

Given the glacial pace that the side characters get development in this series, he hasn't really moved too far from what we already got way back in his first game, and that's unfortunate, but fine. He is a recognizable and reliable 'type' and that's what you need for an interesting fighting game character.

Then we got this. Nun's habit gone, colors muted, smugness erased, and instead now we have a suddenly meek and obeisant follower type. Who again, gets no story development, with the exception, of crumbling from being 'misgendered' too much and just humbly acquiescing and giving up his entire life's mission in a moment. He's now a 'girl' and even updates his pronouns IN DIALOG.

I tried to refund the game, but Steam said no, I'd owned it for too long.

So I was baited. They gave me Baiken, then they fucked over Testament in the very next breath (I don't care, I hate that bastard anyway, but I hate cynical political pandering more), then they fucked Bridget literally as a marketing strategy. Fucking the character, fucking any existing fans, fucking the entire Japanese audience who were the only population that liked that character with any consistency. All for twitter cred, and johnny-come-lately's who just want scalps. They want to devour culture and they'll take ANY win.

They know they've been pandered to, and they're in a feeding frenzy over it. Are they buying your game, Arcsys?

I'm not. Never again. Daisuke has lost me entirely. The company has lost me.

Toshimichi Mori leaving Arc after 20 years mirrors my own feelings, and gives me hope we'll get a new game similar to BlazBlue from him soon, a game franchise that really cared about and focused on its story and characters carefully and lovingly, unlike Guilty Gear.