Sucker Punch do actually understand what their audience likes in many respects, which is how they were able to be so insidious with the original Ghost of Tsushima. It is in many ways a more competent fantasy depiction of Japan than Rise of the Ronin which I'm playing right now, in the open world aspect alone. Sucker Punch know for example that gaming is full of unabashed weebs who want to be a cool samurai, run around a stylised version of japan with nice graphics, climb vertiginous temple complexes, stroke furry foxes, bow to the honoraburru dead, pretend they watch B&W samurai movies, etc. and so they gave them all that, to a high level of competency.
This unfortunately blinded gamers to all the blatant feminism: every woman ugly, henpecked protagonist doing everything an angry woman wants, a dozen girlbosses, lesbians and gays, two fat BBWs starring in the mongol invasion on opposite sides, the complete absence of female grunt enemies despite their lopsided presence as named badasses, absence of female accountability, all the men exclusively being weak/cruel/naive, the worthlessness of tradition except for temples being colourful climbing frames, the lack of any question of heterosexual romance in the main narrative despite the fact that Jin is meant to continue his uncle's legacy... And so Yotei being what it is comes as a betrayal only to some (and fwiw that social media photo of all the women in the dev team, captioned 'Ghost of Yotei', is from 2018).
So I think we're at a stage that the propaganda just becomes more insidious the more competent a dev is and the better they understand gamers. I'm fine with them misunderstanding us, so that they go bankrupt quicker. I actually don't think it balances out if a company gives me a fun experience which understands my desires well in one respect - raking in the normie bucks - if they're simultaneously trying to shoehorn their ideological agenda in behind my enjoyment. When it comes to a game like that I think one should pirate it at most (which is what I did for Tsushima). I actually paid for Disco Elysium, in contrast, although I wouldn't do so nowadays - at least those guys admitted they're hardcore commies and my money went towards nothing but the comedic collapse of their studio.
The “hot vs ugly female character” is really a proxy argument. The existence of a hot female isn’t a necessary condition for a good story, but ugly characters are a leading indicator for bad stories. The underlying issue, as you’ve said here, is woke stories/characters. It’s about wall-to-wall girl bosses. It’s about every capable, brave, and good side character being a woman while every weak, cowardly, or evil side character is a man. It’s about insufferable feminist archetypes and behaviors dictating character personalities and story beats. You could theoretically have a very based story full of based characters who are all very ugly, but this is not a realistic possibility in our Darwinian reality. Leftists abuse aesthetics simultaneous to their abuse of story and character.
You could theoretically have a very based story full of based characters who are all very ugly
Ironically in the very game we are discussing the ugly character, Yuna, is one of the better written ones whose "badassery" is realistic to what women could do against grown soldiers. Thievery, sneaking, and cheap shots while running from basically everything, and she is butt ugly from living a life of that as a street urchin.
She gets underplayed a lot, because the other big storyline women (archer girl and samurai widow lesbian) are pure Woke nonsense. But its a show that the devs behind this are aware of all these problems, and are actively choosing to write in the direction they are.
Better written ones but i still remember her pissing me off with her feminist writing. I think quality of writing for her was accidental and she's not really likeable though for good reasons.
She was a means to an end. Only an absolute shitbag would be trying to rob the battlefield soon enough to find Jin and be able to save him. And then she pushed him towards finding the actual best character of the story, her brother, whose tools and arc are what turned Jin into the Ghost itself.
Sucker Punch do actually understand what their audience likes in many respects, which is how they were able to be so insidious with the original Ghost of Tsushima. It is in many ways a more competent fantasy depiction of Japan than Rise of the Ronin which I'm playing right now, in the open world aspect alone. Sucker Punch know for example that gaming is full of unabashed weebs who want to be a cool samurai, run around a stylised version of japan with nice graphics, climb vertiginous temple complexes, stroke furry foxes, bow to the honoraburru dead, pretend they watch B&W samurai movies, etc. and so they gave them all that, to a high level of competency.
This unfortunately blinded gamers to all the blatant feminism: every woman ugly, henpecked protagonist doing everything an angry woman wants, a dozen girlbosses, lesbians and gays, two fat BBWs starring in the mongol invasion on opposite sides, the complete absence of female grunt enemies despite their lopsided presence as named badasses, absence of female accountability, all the men exclusively being weak/cruel/naive, the worthlessness of tradition except for temples being colourful climbing frames, the lack of any question of heterosexual romance in the main narrative despite the fact that Jin is meant to continue his uncle's legacy... And so Yotei being what it is comes as a betrayal only to some (and fwiw that social media photo of all the women in the dev team, captioned 'Ghost of Yotei', is from 2018).
So I think we're at a stage that the propaganda just becomes more insidious the more competent a dev is and the better they understand gamers. I'm fine with them misunderstanding us, so that they go bankrupt quicker. I actually don't think it balances out if a company gives me a fun experience which understands my desires well in one respect - raking in the normie bucks - if they're simultaneously trying to shoehorn their ideological agenda in behind my enjoyment. When it comes to a game like that I think one should pirate it at most (which is what I did for Tsushima). I actually paid for Disco Elysium, in contrast, although I wouldn't do so nowadays - at least those guys admitted they're hardcore commies and my money went towards nothing but the comedic collapse of their studio.
Good post.
The “hot vs ugly female character” is really a proxy argument. The existence of a hot female isn’t a necessary condition for a good story, but ugly characters are a leading indicator for bad stories. The underlying issue, as you’ve said here, is woke stories/characters. It’s about wall-to-wall girl bosses. It’s about every capable, brave, and good side character being a woman while every weak, cowardly, or evil side character is a man. It’s about insufferable feminist archetypes and behaviors dictating character personalities and story beats. You could theoretically have a very based story full of based characters who are all very ugly, but this is not a realistic possibility in our Darwinian reality. Leftists abuse aesthetics simultaneous to their abuse of story and character.
Ironically in the very game we are discussing the ugly character, Yuna, is one of the better written ones whose "badassery" is realistic to what women could do against grown soldiers. Thievery, sneaking, and cheap shots while running from basically everything, and she is butt ugly from living a life of that as a street urchin.
She gets underplayed a lot, because the other big storyline women (archer girl and samurai widow lesbian) are pure Woke nonsense. But its a show that the devs behind this are aware of all these problems, and are actively choosing to write in the direction they are.
Better written ones but i still remember her pissing me off with her feminist writing. I think quality of writing for her was accidental and she's not really likeable though for good reasons.
She was a means to an end. Only an absolute shitbag would be trying to rob the battlefield soon enough to find Jin and be able to save him. And then she pushed him towards finding the actual best character of the story, her brother, whose tools and arc are what turned Jin into the Ghost itself.
Yeah this is a great comment. I tried GoT twice and disliked the strong whamen and the many SweetBabyism’s in the game.
Only reason people ever thought it was based is because at the time it was being compared to TLOU2