Thought I'd let people know, in case they were curious.
I've only played a few minutes but...I'm very underwhelmed. For all the hate a lot of woke games get, you're often hearing only one side, and so they're often better than you might think. Not excusing wokeness, and I hate the state of modern gaming, but point is if you just hear the negative sides of a game, you might be impressed on playing it, even if there's plenty that annoys you.
This is not the case with D4. It feels like a fucking mobile game. I'm only a few minutes in, as mentioned, but it starts with a decent cinematic (not as mindblowing compared to past Blizzard games when compared to the technology of the time, but not terrible or anything), then hits with "connecting to servers" and stuff, with "accessibility" options turned on, including text-to-speech. It has an AI voice telling you it's connecting to servers, that's your next intro to the game. Already leaves you with a weird taste. Next thing is it pushes you right to the aforementioned accessibility options. Next is character creation. I suspect the characters are randomly generated, but I had four blacks, and one fatass female (Druid is always fat.)
As to the actual gameplay, as I said, it feels like a mobile game. Not far enough in to fully judge, but my initial impression was very underwhelming. And, again, was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, as I think a lot of woke games get an exaggeratedly bad image, since we're hearing only the one side. But, yeah, just feels kind of clunky so far, and zoomed in a bit too much. Music is good, though, from what I've heard. Classic Diablo-style music. Mutes on Alt-Tab by default though.
Anyway, I'll stop rambling. I don't want to color anyone's opinions and, if you are curious, I do actually suggest you try it while it's free. But I was surprised at just how much I didn't like my first dip into it, and thought I'd share. For all the woke nonsense, I expected to like it more than my initial impressions.
I don't get your take. Many beloved "nerd" franchises have been absolutely shat on in recent years. Star Wars. Star Trek. Wheel of Time. Blizzard games. Rings of Power. etc.
Wokeness may be (and, imho, is) a part of this, but that doesn't change the reality that these "new takes" on classics suck. That's not even a particularly niche opinion from rando shitlords on a stormcucked .win site.
I was a huge Star Trek fan, and today I'm completely disconnected from the franchise. It's not because the franchise is now woke, it's because it sucks and no longer feels connected to the Star Trek of the 70s through 00s. The nicest thing that even fans say is that it's a new take to modernize Star Trek for audiences these days, etc.
You can find plenty of recommendations of games, books, movies, etc., on this site.
Lower Decks is actually pretty funny, especially starting in the second season, and the writers do seem to know their Trek.
And I've come to realize that Mariner is a joke in and of herself, being the product of nepotism and Starfleet Academy probably having a "try not to fail ANYONE" policy ... and you get a lower decker who doesn't like "authority" (this was from the shitty first episode, which failed to recognize that farm implements can certainly double as weapons ...)
And yeah, the casual nepotism of Trek should be a red flag ...
OMG, fuck you, YouTube, I'm not turning off my ad blockers for you to send me malware through them.
I've promoted Lower Decks here on many occasions, and I don't recall ever getting downvoted. Side note, anyone who cares about up and downdoots should STOP caring.
SNW is debatable. It's better than Disco, I just find it deathly dull. THe Lower Decks/SNW crossover was one of the best things I've ever seen.
Strange New Worlds is just more girl bosses saving the day while the men sit around wishing they could be as smart and resourceful. It’s too consistent to be a coincidence, either.
This flies in the face of the philosophies and themes from the older shows. It is incongruous with what we already have.
People who parrot the “Strange New Worlds is great Trek” line are just repeating the opinion that they hear get said a lot. At best it’s an okay science fiction show.