Dragon Age: The Veilguard has received numerous criticisms since its full unveiling a few months ago. These criticisms have taken aim at the game’s new art style, its writing, its character design, it abandoning player world states, and generally how unfamiliar it feels in comparison to its legacy. It has also been engulfed by the […]
    • Etterra@lemmy.world
      455·
      2 months ago

      “woke” is now just a dog whistle that tells you the person saying it is a bigoted shithead.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
        121·
        2 months ago

        Aye, it has become another dogwhistle of the weirdo alt right crowd. It’s kinda helpful because whenever you see someone use it unironically, you can just safely block/ban them at no loss of conversation.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      372·
      2 months ago

      Not sure I’d consider things like the ability to make your character trans a symptom of anything other than the game being made in the 21st century.

        • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
          151·
          2 months ago

          because the creators using it to hide their bad games

          How does this work in particular? The hiding bit? Doesn’t it actually draw attention, considering how many people then spam “OMG SO WOKE!11!!angry-1!!” and so on threads everywhere?

            • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
              102·
              2 months ago

              When they have no good material, they start to promote unrelated things to gameplay. This is just one of those things.

              Didn’t YOU just say that people focus on the visuals of characters? As in, something unrelated to gameplay?

                • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
                  4·
                  2 months ago

                  Visuals are part of the experience, it’s not unrelated.

                  Why? Or rather, why this, but apparently not your character or their back story?

                  There are a lot of good games that can be considered as “woke” and no one talk about them like this.

                  [citation needed]

    • Visstix@lemmy.world
      27·
      2 months ago

      Woke is not a symptom. What people usually complain about with “woke” is more choices for the player to personalize their experience. Body type 1 or 2 instead of male female? Woke. Different skincolors? Woke. Woman in charge? Woke.

      • PsychedSy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        912·
        2 months ago

        (I’m so sorry for writing so much. Skip to the last paragraph if you have to. There’s a tension in me because I fall on both sides a bit.)

        It’s an indicator of developer focus and intent. Sometimes.

        If people’s introduction to trans characters wasn’t “hi, I’m trans” then maybe they wouldn’t have these stereotypes, but we are where we are. Pretending that it’s just extra options is ignoring that the people that push this sort of thing also seem to think we also want to read their shitty writing and shitty characters.

        Their dumblelore/voldemort slash fiction bullshit was trash 15 years ago and they haven’t improved because their focus is social issues, not good writing. That’s the real issue - paper thin characters that are just vehicles for social commentary. Subversion isn’t annoying your audience from the start, it’s developing deep characters with all the flaws of humanity that also happen to have atypical identities.

        My favorite book series are The Culture novels and Discworld. They both have trans characters that aren’t there just to push narrative. They were well written characters that fit the world and also trans. In the culture it’s not even remarkable - they’ve solved everything biological so it’s just kind of there. Discworld is more by-the-horns, but he still manages to be sneaky with the subversion and it works every fucking time.

        On the flip side, Hugo award winner A Deepness in the Sky has a character that uses gender neutral pronouns which is whatever. Not a big deal, but it was the first time I saw it in a book. What was the book? Torture/rape fantasy set in space. It’s one of two books I couldn’t finish. The other is Atlas Shrugged. Coming from someone that’s read a lot of more classic science fiction and considered a Hugo a seal of approval, that was a very harsh realization.

        I don’t think there’s anything wrong with extra options or making ugly characters (though I don’t get that - there’s a sweet spot between fan service and trash can) but I don’t consider them a useful feature if the game is shit. If they focus on the game and add ‘woke’ shit to a good game with well written characters it’ll go down like honey. If the devs see the game as a vehicle to disseminate their social ideas, they’re in love with themselves and not the game and people will see that. It can, and has, been done well.

        • Visstix@lemmy.world
          9·
          2 months ago

          It isn’t. More options doesn’t affect anyone but somehow it is an issue to snowflakes.