Stumbled across this article from August 22nd of last year. It's a tranny eagerly promoting the possibility of a gay romance in KCD2.
https://www.thegamer.com/kingdom-come-deliverance-2-hans-henry-queer-romance/
Hasn't Warhorse delivered everything this tranny asked for?
Vavra decided to have his cake and eat it, too. That's it. That's the whole story. He's an opportunist and a liar. And half the anti-woke crowd are so desperate for relevance that they're willing to circle the wagons for a traitor who sold out to the woke mob for a few extra shekels.
Edit to add: consider the timeline. This tranny journo was playing a preview build of the game almost six months ago. If the gay romance had been explicit, don't you think he would have been singing its praises?
Vavra deliberately withheld the gay romance from the players because he knew it was a betrayal. He fully intended to blindside us. When it was leaked, he played stupid while his sycophants came to his defense.
Then IGN gives it a 9/10 and releases a "how to be gay" guide five minutes after their review goes up? Obviously some games media were in on the deception.
I mean, that's a gimme from IGN. They have so much experience, it doesn't exactly speak to complicity.
I'd be more surprised if IGN weren't experts in being gay.
That's why it is important to think for yourself instead of blindly following "leaders". Grummz, SmashJT, Endymion etc were all wrong. KCD2 is woke feminist trash and it was woke feminist trash the moment Daniel Vavra started attacking people questioning KCD2.
Ghost of Yotei is also another DEI trash.
I also strongly disagree with Nerdrotic, Critical Drinker et al on many of their recommendations. Mad Max Femioza, Arcane etc etc all are all woke feminist trash, despite what they say.
No one is perfect. This doesn't mean I will stop listening to Grummz, SmashJT, Nerdrotic etc. It just means I don't take what they say as gospel.
How many times have we seen sequels to good games turned woke? How many times has the male-to-female main character swap been the harbinger of leftist incursion? And the actress is a leftist feminist retard, too. We’ve even identified a GoY writer as having worked on veilguard. All of these red flags, and yet most people are still in the “wait and see” camp. It’s pathetic.
It doesn’t even need to be a sequel, apparently the DLC for Tsushima is also very cucked.
Sucker Punch has been woke since at least Infamous 2, where the bad guys consisted of not one but two sets of evil white supremacist groups (southern rednecks and, inexplicably, South Africans). All set in the backdrop of hurricane-destroyed New Orleans and a pointless political subplot about the republican President being at fault for it.
I have this theory they made Ghost of Tsushima ironically, like Starship Troopers, you're supposed to think the samurai are dumb and the woman is right, and they intended it as a subversion of Japanese culture or something. Or it's the Wakanda effect; it's only okay to show badass men and masculine martial cultures if they're non-white; they thought the chuds would hate it because we're "racist," so clearly we'd hate asians.
Realizing their mistake they wasted no time jettisoning the masculinity out of the nearest airlock.
I mean, they don't hide the fact that the samurai are super dumb the entire game. It literally starts with saying that from the opening cutscene, that they are completely blinded by honor and traditions to the point of suicide.
But that's because its meant to be in reference to old samurai movies, which have the same themes constantly too. Its likely why we even think samurai were "honorable" in direct inversion of history of their actions.
I think that's the most likely reason why the game is like it is. They set up to make a giant love letter to Kurosawa, and then it got way more popular than expected so they had to make DLC, and their "original" ideas afterwards were far more in line with Western Woke-ish.
The DLC happens to feature 2 fat hambeast women as leaders of the main military factions, which is among the more obvious absurdities of GoT. However besides that the DLC is much the same as the main game which is thoroughly rooted in feminist ideology, it's just a more subtle wokeness of a kind which is apparently going over the heads of the 'based' defenders of KCD2.
In fact the Tsushima DLC imo has the only interesting male characters in the whole game, but in true Tsushima fashion, they're all deconstructions of masculinity (full Iki Island spoilers):
............
it follows a course of traumatic flashbacks of the main char's brutal, warmongering samurai dad and his misguided fathering attempts during a bygone military campaign on Iki island; these memories culminate in a recurring flashback of you being too much of a weak frightened boy to help your father as he is killed in front of you, while pleading for you to help; you meet a trustworthy, friendly male companion among the peasant resistance who helps you keep your samurai nature secret from the other peasantry who hate samurai; this guy turns out to have been the one who killed your father in front of you as a child - you can't kill him in revenge for this, you're just forced to reconcile the fact that he did something which traumatised your life and made you feel like a weakling, but you're part of the family whose arrogant samurai ways got all his fellow islanders killed, so you're basically even; you part uneasily as bros.
............
(end spoilz.)
It's interesting, but it's all stuff about how toxic masculinity poisons friendships and old fashioned honour is le bad, exactly the same as the rest of Tsushima.
The 2 fat bitches in charge are just the writers being unable to restrain themselves to their usual soft-subversion that all the supposed 'anti-woke' slop enjoyers miss, and instead going full absurd.
Wikipedia:
Her sister is also a Democrat politician.
Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic are utter midwits. Its depressing how much influence they have, and how much they highlight how the anti-woke crowd has no coherent message or idelogy.
Yeah, but both of them are about half way to red pilled. Both of them give promotion to Mauler, who is pretty based.
If you have other suggestions, I'd like to hear them, but so far both Drinker and Nerdrotic both have brought a lot of normie attention to the destruction of major franchises. Nerdrotic has been savage about what is happening to Dr Who and Rings of Power. I am sure Bad Robot has lost a lot of influence due to their efforts.
SyntheticMan is the only one who does not compromise and will call a spade a spade. He will admit that some woke games can be good, but also acknowledges that you cannot escape their subversion and you will have to weigh for yourself if the subversion is worth playing the game for its gameplay.
I stopped listening to Critical Drinker after he didn't rip Prey a new one, and a bunch of people in the comment section were unironically praising how good the movie was and how Naru "wasn't a Mary Sue" even though she single-handedly defeated three grown men with her bare hands, and then physically dismantled the Predator with just her hatchets. Absolute travesty.
I'd dipped out before then. Drinker did an interview with a couple directors of a big budget flick that bombed. It was pretty clear he was pulling his punches and lobbing them softballs so he could get the scoop on the behind the scenes stories.
At that point I decided he was access media. He is better than most, but yeah... his strength is that he brings some luke-warm red pill takes to the Normies.
Gary from Nerdrotic has been very clear that he doesn't do interviews. He has referred to people who compromise their values for access as "star fuckers", and I can't disagree.
Mauler is my favorite, but his frame-by-frame analysis is often hard to take. I know why he does it, but gosh it takes a long time. He spots inconsistencies and will put wokness under the microscope. For example, he was ruthless with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but still said it was an enjoyable movie, which it is.
Both Mauler and The Little Platoon elevate every panel that they are on.
I'll go check out SintheticMan. Thank you for the recommendation.
The alt-critics falling over themselves to praise Prey was a big wake up call. That movie is embarrassing girl power trash. Turns out Critical Drinker is just a cog in the Hegelian machine. He functions as an anchor on woke, which is useful, but he’s not gonna retake any lost ground.
Synthetic man is hampered by being a complete and utter retard though
You have to understand that even the good creators(like Drinker) ultimately have to watch modern media and pretend or actually be interested to continue receiving a paycheck, whereas the most hard line of us will continue dropping that which we have no love for, and finding comfort in the books and art of the past or the actual art of the present.
Can Critical Drinker maintain a podcast, or a weekly video schedule if he just drops the hammer, “This is subversive media created by homosexuals, feminists, and communists who hate me and i’m done”? Can he do that the week after?
He absolutely can. But if he does that he will not make any industry connections, his network will be constantly small and locked in purity spirals, and he will have to stand entirely on his own beliefs instead of being able to shift to follow trends/algorithm.
So the question is, as always, is his integrity as a "reviewer" and his principles the most important thing, or his career? I can't blame him, or many of them, for choosing the career but they also need to be honest enough to own up to that too.
TBF, Endymion recanted heavily, especially in recent vids.
Grummz also recanted though not as heavily as Endymion
Grummz has lost so much credibility with this sorry affair.
That was likely part of the NDA everyone who got their hands on previews had to sign. Within 5 minutes of the launch and thus the NDAs being void, IGN put out a guide on how to fuck Hans. That's what they prioritised.
The copium is absurd in this circle or whatever you want to call it. There are still people who say BG3 isn't woke.
I still remember being downvoted to hell all over this sub for calling it out during the weeks after release.
I bet most of those guys are still here and are currently pretending they totally knew it was woke this whole time and hated it too.
The people who supported it I think are just overtly silent about its wokeness now. It's the silence of shame.
Same as the people who championed Arcane, which -- to no one's surprise -- turned out to be a vehicle for Netflix to heavily push for faggotry and feminism.
I remember the hype for Arcane. I remember thinking “wait, how is this not the same feminist girl boss tripe as everything else?” And it is.
Arcane was supported entirely on "I want to fuck this crazy chick" or "I want to see these crazy lesbians fuck."
That's a demographic that has huge overlap between both the woke and regular heterosexual men, and its why girlboss tripe isn't quite as simple to be rid of as other Woke ideas.
That gives them too much credit. They are absolutely being loud about it right now hoping no one remembers.
And to their credit, I am not autistic enough to remember names so they are right about it.
I foolishly backed BG3 at the very beginning because I really enjoyed DOS2. Wish I could take it back. I realized right away during early access that every martial companion is an insufferable masculine woman and every non-martial companion is a sassy effeminate man. Haven’t played it since, but plenty of vids confirming big gay throughout the cast and story.
Wasn't it less pozzed during EA than it eventually ended up being at release on top of that?
Oh absolutely. Certainly no gay bear sex during my initial act 1 play. And BG3 gets something of a pass simply because there is so much content. By percentage, it might be less pozzed than KCD2. Still gay as hell.
What annoys me about this is I keep seeing people saying, "Stop pointing this out/boosting that it's woke, you're giving the left "ammo"" etc. etc.
Stop blaming us for noticing what the homos are doing. The left is well aware they got Warhorse to cave on essentially every complaint they leveled against KCD1. It's a total victory for journalists asserting control over media in defiance of the market (KCD did just fine without any of this crap).
Soon enough they'll complain the game still isn't woke enough, "good start but it's a long ways to go" etc.
Tranny Henry is coming in KCD3.
Hot Take: Games like Dustborn, Concord and Dragon Age The Veilguard will be the worst things to happen to gaming in regards to stopping woke aspects. While they explicitly failed, their extreme nature resulted in a push of the Overton Window so that dumbasses will inevitably defend woke/socjus/politically correct/etc elements under the absolutely retarded idea that "it could be worse". Which is a lot of what we've been seeing with KCD2. Everyone is still fresh from Veilguard in their mind and they're thinking that the sudden muslim, the surge of jews and the gay-washing in the game are not actually that bad because it could be worse like Veilguard. KCD2 isn't "actually" woke, that's only for games like Concord and Dustborn.
I swear, be prepared for this and point it out as such. Call people on holding relative faux-"principles" rather than objective standards that don't need to worry about lesser or greater evils, only that it is in fact evil.
You are 100% correct. We already saw this with Baldur's Gate 3. I can't remember what woke abomination came out around the same time (was it Forspoken?) but it had the exact same effect. Lots of people defending BG3 as a "good game" because whatever other woke slop was out was far worse.
Death by a thousand cuts and two boiling pots.
You have the one pot simmering with wokeness, ready for the frog to hop into when the boiling pot of wokeness gets too hot. Veilguard was too hot, so you have a bunch of easily swayed people hopping into the simmering pot of KCD2.
Bingo! And it's kinda funny, because in my mind, BG3 is the case that has MORE woke elements, it's just done in a better way. And I'll admit that. BG3 is a more competent game in both gameplay and writing. Credit where credit is due. But it's still woke.
Contrary to popular coping, wokeness is not inherently an issue of quality. True, most woke games are of lower quality, but that's not the inherent connection nor issue. The issue is the political messaging. The stance of pushing agendas. It doesn't matter if it's poorly done or well executed, it's still pushing a political agenda. And if I'm honest, I wouldn't want a politically motivated game that pushes an agenda I agree with either. Explore ideas, sure. I don't actually have a problem with a game including these choices, but you NEED to have the balance to properly explore them. Limited by the technology of the day and time constraints that lead to a rushed ending, I think that Fallout New Vegas does a reasonable job of this by offering 4 different paths to explore the ideas of governance. It has paths I disagree with, but it still explored them, and it doesn't shove it down your throat as to which is right or wrong beyond a very rudimentary karma system.
But having the inverse. Having the option to actually do evil things for rational reasons is important if you're creating an examination of these ideas. THAT is the difference between a political narrative and a political agenda in a piece of media. And far too few understand that.
I’ve been a broken record on this lately, but I think we’re seeing a perfect example of the downfalls of arguing by proxy. Disaffected lefties use “quality” as a proxy to attack woke media because they don’t actually object to the political and cultural content. No, the problem for people like Critical Drinker is that unskilled creators make leftism look stupid. The leftist values themselves are not seen as directly connected to and responsible for the shit storytelling.
This proxy strategy is effective at first because 90% of all media sucks regardless. So you can always rail against incompetence in general and then reliably catch woke media in that crossfire. But then you’re giving a pass to leftist propaganda so long as it is deemed to be “of quality”. It’s like fighting replacement immigration by only objecting to illegal immigration. Eventually your enemies will just legalize the invasion, and then you’ve got no argument to stand on.
All of this is to underline the critical importance of arguing for explicit and specific ideas. I oppose all immigration that threatens to harm my nation. I oppose all media that pushes degenerate and evil leftist politics and culture. I’m fine with politics in video games as long as they are my politics. I’m not interested in exploring gay stories no matter how “well” they are told.
Yeap you are correct, nowadays i'm even hearing "its not woke just cause it has gay characters" from the supposed anti-woke crowd.
Soft disagree, I think you're describing one hand clapping. I think that overton shift you mention happens mainly because of much more sophisticated subversion in the form of KCD1&2 (2 doesn't work without the bait of 1), BG3, Ghost of Tsushima, and most likely Witcher 4. On their own, Dustborn, Veilguard, etc. actually are incredibly damaging to woke ideology, because they give even normies an idea of what to look out for to help realise when they're being shamelessly propagandised to, and they suck.
The problem is when the masses are simultaneously being brainwashed by other more subtle shit that their herd is still forming a protective circle around.
If I thought our enemies were playing 5D chess I'd agree with you harder, and I do agree with the kernel of your point, but I do think the devs are true believers in the message and messaging potential of the games which have disastrously flopped. I'd like to encourage them to make more in order to keep destroying themselves. But it's true that they are at the same time a big distraction.
It doesn't need to be 5D chess. I think that these games were made in earnest, it's just going to, in the long run, work out better for them because dumbasses that don't understand the issues (or never really cared) will use those games as benchmarks for what's unacceptable while allowing pretty much everything else through because "it could be worse".
I don't think the woke/socjus/cultural marxist/politically correct/[insert different name same thing here] are some hivemind of co-ordination. I think a lot of those people think Dustborn, Veilguard, Concord, Forspoken, etc were all major missteps and that even they don't see the usefulness of such titles to actually use them as scapegoats for the most part. A handful probably do, but that would be it.
You're right about the trend of successful start with tainted sequel, but that's merely the basis of slowburn gradual change. Fabian Socialism is a brilliant example of this, where the explicit goal is to go slowly to get more people to accept the changes over time. This explicitly requires things like entryism, manipulation, subversion, etc to achieve these goals. THAT is a co-ordinated effort. But these flops? They might be damaging to the woke brand, but as a social contagion, they're a massive boon for them, since it facilitates that slow growth they're all about. Just about everything less than those titles is now allowed because "it could be worse". It allows them to be introduced and not inherently rejected because "it could be worse". Arguments from relativity are these freaks bread and butter. They can never argue on objective grounds.
At best, this is a speed hump. A way to slow down that actually HELPS their cause by proverbially boiling the frog. Unless a failure causes actual reversal, it's not really a loss for them, but a loss for us as there is now something to point to and say "I don't know what you're complaining about, it's things like Dustborn that you hate, and this is nothing like Dustborn, this is still good".
I think we agree more than we disagree but the unresolved issue is what's causing the slide towards more acceptance of wokeshit (which I agree is happening). The overtly woke disaster-flops are setting a low bar for victory by creating an impression of 'anything which isn't this woke is fine' - we basically agree on this too.
I guess my point of contention is who's to blame for the continuing slide, what the points of focus should be and what can we say about it. For this, my focus is entirely on the less obvious wokeshit. This to me is the threat and vulnerability all in one, because they're smarter ideological vectors, but they take more work and talent to set up. Any hack can write a Veilguard, a Dustborn, a Depression Quest, and on their own they backfire more often than not, but it does take some talent, setup and vision to make a propaganda vehicle like KCD2, or BG3, or even Disco Elysium. Elysium is another interesting candidate because it was an explicitly political game, and the devs themselves fellated commies in award speeches, yet since it was innovative in certain ways and enjoyable enough (for its niche) it inspired its normie fans to argue that it wasn't a commie game - which it quite obviously was, to anyone who isn't politically illiterate. Imagine how much harder it would have been to call a spade a spade if they hadn't sucked off Engels and Marx on stage.
Like you and current_horror discussed, wokeness is not an issue of game quality or enjoyment. Some, however, can't ever bring themselves to see things that way. Allies who get duped into enjoying propaganda are a huge issue. soctatic_method made a post about people being in too deep in a terf/tranny thread and he called it sunken cost, but it's more complex and extends to a much wider range of issues, I feel. It's a question of identifying with a particular message or piece of media and feeling personally attacked when any part of it is criticised.
It happens in fuckin steam sales ffs; I've seen it happen (countless times actually) where someone who criticises a sale price for a product will get attacked by those who already paid for it at the same or worse value. To them, they're implicitly being called idiots for not being equally critical of the deal. In the exact same way, those who enjoy more subtle wokeshit immediately become defensive of the entire product when anyone else points out that it might be ideologically manipulative on a level less obvious than fat female chars or cringe speeches about non-binary shit. 'How could it be manipulative?', they seethe, 'I didn't detect myself being manipulated.' Well even if you think you weren't, the media is reshaping the acceptable landscape of debate.
Anyway what I think is required is just calling a spade a spade. I don't want to ban KCD2, Tsushima, Elysium, Witcher 4, BG3, whatever, but there should be zero tolerance for any discussion where their explicitly ideological inserts are not mentioned. Anyone who tries to defend them should be forced to reexamine their credentials in the culture war. You like da sloppa? Fine. You admit it's an enemy action? No? Take a leave of absence, private. Just play videogames, you earned it, but now shut up.
In contrast I don't care what anyone says about Veilguard, AssCreed Shadows or the latest wokeflop of the month, I think they destroy themselves on their own. On balance, I think they're a positive. It's the other shit that makes them a part of an insidious coupling, imo, but I'm open to other ideas on it all.
I'd say it's largely irrelevant. Does it ultimately change how we should approach this issue? Not really. The best thing to do is to be firm and explain that just because something else is worse doesn't make this not bad either, that lesser/middling/greater evil is all still evil.
And we're not going to really bother tackling people who are actively pushing the shift since at the end of the day they're not going to change their opinion on this and the only way is to simply stop them in the first place.
And I have to disagree on this point because it goes back to an earlier bit you said: "the media is reshaping the acceptable landscape of debate". Even though it's a flop, it still reshapes at a form of comparison. It becomes the new perimeter of the landscape of debate, and that's incredibly important because the edges define what is and isn't acceptable. THAT is the issue. These flops don't result in their ideas being acceptable, it results in everything leading up to them being acceptable. And THAT is the threat. We can mock the idea of 'pulling a barve' or some polyamorous bullshit, but everything leading up to that? Sodomy in a Christian game within a world that explicitly outlaws it is now acceptable and fine.
The issue isn't that these games/pieces of media help push the agenda, it's that they provide the idea of "this is too far", where everything before that point being considered to be not too far.
And yes, it works in tandem. I agree that this wouldn't be as big an issue without the subversive series that turn against their original audiences. But it's still an issue. It could even be argued to be a chicken and egg situation. It's because you have both that this is a cycle that works off each other so well.
IGN giving the game a 9/10 out of ten is a red flag so massive that I won't be touching it with a ten foot pole.
He went for the Netflix strategy.
First season (or movie or game) is good.
Second season is horrible.
Third season is a course correct hoping to gain the audience back.
Show / movie / game gets cancelled due to low interest / sales.
It’s been very useful to see who’s a retard shill and who actually gives a fuck about commie faggotry in gaming.
Someone asked Adam Corolla why his former Man Show partner, Jimmy Kimmel, went so woke and feminine after their work together. His answer was something like "[Kimmel] decided he wanted famous friends."
This is probably a similar situation.
That's funny because Howard Stern did the same thing for the same reason and them two are now the best of friends.
The people playing the game are also pathetic.