TLOU2 controversy wasn’t because the unlikable character was a woman, it was because the writing was garbage. If the unlikable character was a man the reception would have been exactly the same.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Can you blame them for not taking risks when these games get punished time and time again for doing so?
TLOU Part II had a mildly unlikeable character who gasp was a woman and it killed the entire franchise and sparked mass controversy so hard Naughty Dog now is making some bland and generic soulslike (but in space) GOTG ripoff slop with product placement in it.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 1 day ago
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Whether the writing was garbage or not isn’t relevant to be honest - because controversy was spun by people who only knew the game’s story through hearsay of the leaks before the game even came out, and majorly it was to do with accusations of “wokeness” and other brainrot - so yes clearly it was an issue, of course it was an issue.
It wasn’t really the substance of the game that the usual outrage grifters latched onto so it’s not relevant to the discussion of the controversy.
As for more women being protagonists - sure, idk how you can say that so confidently, I suppose you have a convenient framing for what counts as “big games” to support your point, but I think the quantity was never really an issue.
Honestly more men being protags in games is okay, what I take issue with is that whenever something interesting happens, like oh I dunno, a game makes a woman kinda buff and mean looking, people bitch about it like no tomorrow.
So of course it’s an issue. It always has been.
In 2013-ish, Anita Sarkessian made some exceedingly light feminist critiques of video games in and it was an issue. In 2014-ish, A woman made an indie game that’s honestly really good even to this day (Depression Quest) and it was an issue. In 2020, a game came out where a fictional character (Abby) had muscles and it was an issue.
Nowadays I guess the most famous example would be the “FUCKING GENDER AMBIGUITY” screaming guy who didn’t like Starfield’s pronoun selection screen or some such.
Then people went truly psychotic in a deranged hate campaign against some random inclusivity consultancy Sweet Baby Inc. over games they were reportedly never involved with because there was women, or something, somewhere.
Hopefully you get the idea.
It was precisely the issue that a woman was the main character in a video game but was not in fact “Metroid from Metroid 1986” but a buff, angry, unattractive, hateful and morally grey character who does shitty things, sorta like Joel - in other words - she was something a lot more like a real person in a mature story, not a single digit frame twist from 40 years ago that amounts to an Easter egg turned geek culture cringe factoid parroted by the kinds of people who wouldn’t understand RLM’s “Nerd Crew” show is satire.
You can see some of the worst examples here, cherry-picked as they are, juxtaposed with what actual critique is: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVQcZa4O01A
You can also visit the steam store page and look at the negative reviews, or peruse the cesspit subreddit /r/TheLastOfUs2 posts the time of the game’s leaks and release to see people bitching about everything from pride flags in Seattle(!) to Abby being made too likeable to accusations of this or that character being le ebil transgender or whatever else that sounds like it came out of a /pol/-themed magic 8 ball.
Hell, there are utterly deranged people in the steam reviews for this game now bitching about the show - about the actress that plays Ellie and one guy even implies she is “down syndrome representation”.
Like, what the actual fuck?
As for the game, the game is ok, I’m playing it right now, it’s less boring than the first so I like it a lot more, the AI actually lives up to the bullshit promised in the first game’s trailer, but it’s too long and yeah the writing is too on the nose sometimes, though I do like the characters and the atmosphere a lot. Idk if I “love” it, but I do find it way more fun as a game and far more interesting from a story perspective.
What it definitely is though is controversial as fuck and that’s just reality.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is spot on.
In 2013 I was much younger and believed ahit I read, so I was swept up in the “Sarkessian wants to destroy games” crap (as if she could and/or mattered enough to actually affect change in any way).
A few years ago I looked up her videos (cudos to her that she still kept them online) and I was honestly almost disappointed in how bland and obviously true her points were. Sure, her research wasn’t perfect and she could have presented them a bit better, but what these videos deserved would have been mostly bored acknowledgement. Similar to TLOU2. It wasn’t a super exciting game. The story wasn’t great but also not terrible. The characters were adequately interesting for the most part. The gameplay was again not great but ok, and certainly not worse than part 1.
Could it have been better? Sure, no question. But it also didn’t nearly deserve the hate it got.
Same with many other similar media, like e.g. the Ghostbusters remake or Twilight.
But what happened there was that people got seriously offended by these games/shows/movies and then made it their mission to destroy it. And that’s ridiculous and pathetic, but it happens all the time.
Brylant@discuss.online 1 day ago
False, Tlou part 2 was peak normie writing
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Care to elaborate? You play as the person who killed a beloved iconic video game character and last game’s protagonist for 13 straight hours - I don’t know if it’s good but I’d hardly call it anything resembling “normie writing”.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
To me - normie writing is something like those new switch Zelda games or Yakuza games or those Jedi Fallen Order/Survivor dark souls clone games or something like Watch_Dogs 1 or hell insert any ubisoft game apart from FC2, WD2 here
This. And none of these games with their totally predictable normie plots get any shit for that, let alone anything major.
And Watch dogs 1 was such a terrible game, it would deserve getting major shit.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It was certainly very pro-zionist.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Killed the franchise so much that the original game has been remastered twice, the second game once, and a TV series has been made out of it…?
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Killed so much that the video game franchise has been killed off and they had to make a remake of the original game using Part II’s assets and mechanics to recoup the financial damage to the brand and the saga will never see a conclusion outside of maybe the HBO show.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I imagine most game IPs wish they could be as killed off as TLOU.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Yeah, doesn’t change the fact though - it was Sony’s flagship from their oldest most well known first party studio and it effectively got cancelled and pawned off to HBO to be milked on a budget.
Most movie franchises wish they could be Star Wars but it doesn’t change the fact the sequel trilogy did immense and obvious damage to the brand due (primarily) to the controversy, though in that case those movies actually also sucked which I’m sure didn’t help things. TLOU Part 2 on the other hand was by no means as awful as any of the sequel trilogy SW flicks.