You forgot Kirby Super Star on the SNES where Marx tells Kirby how to get the sun and moon to stop fighting only to step in at the last second after Kirby has effectively saved the day and backstabs the pink puffball just to get absolute power.
Gotta love how the streamer tried to imply that the reason the game gets hate is because of Frey's skin color, but then she accidentally slips up and says "well, if it was any other color, it would just be bad writing!", actively admitting the issue.
When Metroid Dread came out, David Jaffe went on a freaking crusade against it because he got stuck in one room that no one else got stuck in, and claimed it was a badly designed game. Drawing from the "subtext" I now conclude that it's because Samus is a female lead and Jaffe is a misogynist.
>black protag >absent father >plot begins because she committed B&E to steal Sasuga, Square. I'm surprised they didn't add a sidequest where she finds a way to open a Popeyes in isekailand.
I'll never stop hoping for an Isekai where Truck-kun gets hit by a train and is re-incarnated into a fantasy world as a magical wagon with unlimited horse-powers
There is an isekai where a side character becomes a magical chariot and eventually becomes strong enough to jump across space and time. It's a pretty fun one too.
@@MachineMan-mj4gj There's one potential hero who just can't be hit though. Dodges every time. The strongest. In a time of great need the Truck must aim at a little girl instead and hope the hero jumps in front. Goes wrong. Hilarity ensues.
SE going that path was unexpected tho. Only issue I had so far was with the subcontractor team that manages the English FF14 forums, unsuprisingly an SJW infested cesspool.
Seriously like people wanted to slit Mirror Edge's throat but couldn't since the game was actually good. To this day it's a beloved and cherished game This is the exact opposite situation lmao
@@nailinthefashion yeah people can do whatever it take to make a game look bad if the game is really good it won't work but people don't seem to understand it.
@@nailinthefashion Are you talking about the first or the second game? I played the first one and thought it was a solid game, albeit one with not a lot of replayablility. Can't remember seeing any dumb online discourse around either of them. Granted the first game was released in 2008 and most social media colossi where in their baby stage and i wasn't neck deep in the online discourse swamp when either of them were released so i might've missed something.
@@emiljosefsson9149 people had similar qualms. It was before woke was widely used as an insult, but people tried to say having an Asian female protagonist is trying to be too progressive for the sake of it etcetc but those games succeeded since the writing backed up the gameplay Replayability is subjective, as people still to this day try to find faster routes, and people will replay Forspoken despite it being so ho hum 🤷🏾♂️
Spot on. It’s like every character that is not a straight white male is solely written into the story for some idiotic political commentary. They also hilariously make them extreme stereotypes (hood black dude, flamboyant gay guy, etc). Just like real life if your entire identity revolves around your skin color, sexuality, diet, or some other super basic human trait then you’re boring and annoying as hell, the same applies to characters in fiction
I find myself having a knee jerk groan every time I see a black woman as the protagonist. Not because I don't think black women can make great protagonists and stories, they can, but because I instinctively know that this made it through the producer's meetings precisely because it's a black woman and that they're seeking to pander.
A lot of the controversy for these things originates from social media activists and "journalists" who kick things off with inflammatory articles, videos, and posts. Reverse-astroturfing by obsessed always-onlines that only damages the properties they're claiming to support, not that they really care.
I still can’t believe they thought that making her a career felon would make her relatable as a black woman 💀 Edit: and because she’s in NYC they refuse to prosecute her and let her go
I've noticed this a lot with progressive media. They want to put as many "diverse" characters into their media as possible, but they always have to "act black", etc. You can never just have a non-white character. They always have to be a weird stereotype.
Tbh they should have just gone for interesting, rather than relatable. It would have been interesting to see how a criminal handles suddenly having immense power.
By the way, the Isekai genre became a thing in japan SPECIFICALLY because of Alice in Wonderland, which was and still is one of the most popular english books in Japan.
I love how western and eastern media inspired each other back then. To add to that, Osamu Tezuka, who is considered the grandfather of anime, was influenced by old Disney movies and that's why anime is synonymous with big expressive eyes and other stylizations.
I'm glad millennial writing is finally getting called out. I noticed that so much recent media just seemed to be full of dumb quips, cuss words, commentary on current social issues and unnecessary word vomit. Characters are vitriolic, bitter, unlikeable self inserts and I often wonder if they're trying to make us hate the protagonists
@@redman9493 I’ve come to learn that the Hero’s Journey is often a good way to make a self-insert build character. Or just suffering to some degree, got a Cyberpunk styled story where my self-insert basically loses everything and is forced to start over with the help of some friends before eventually beginning on his quest for revenge granted he can’t do it alone, gotta be realistic about one’s self-insert fic after all
@@Ranatosk I had a self-insert character in a story a long time ago: A cursed loner werewolf who harvests a star to create a solar-cannon and then goes into self exile.
@@cloroxusthestainlessone4324 i have seen a manga where when a guy fall on the stair he tp 1 year back and redo his school year and there was multiple romentic interest it was pretty good but i stoped for no reason like a lot of thing.
There are many that already replaced or competed for his job. Car-kun, Stabber-kun, Train-kun, Void-kun, Electric-kun, Faint-kun, Sleep-kun... Anyway he appears a lot in many stories aka multiverse already so he's not too missed.
@@brupts7297 Yeah, but in a game that is clearly narrative driven...that's pretty bad. You can forgive Mario for being mediocre in the story department because it's primarily about the gameplay. Stuff like this or The Last of Us don't hold up without a strong story because like 90% of the point is the cinematic experience being enhanced by the gameplay.
I don’t dislike the Forspoken discourse because I’m racist. I dislike the Forspoken discourse because I have been told I must like it in order to not be.
@@dodgyyoutuber9560 you have captured the spirit and attitude of every idiot in the discourse for this game and many other topics quite perfectly! Congrats
Disney does the same shit with almost every movie and show they release and it's getting tiresome. The formula is to write a shitty story with awful dialogue, race-swap the main character, and DARE people to hate on it just so that they can "call out" people for being racist.
Stop being afraid of the accusation of racism.. start embracing it.. modern whites are the only group who hasn't quite figured this out. Everyone is 'racist'.. Only whites are manipulated in to being ashamed of it, while every other group is encouraged and praised for it.
Hi-Fi Rush is a godsend. Slotted right between the blandness of Forspoken and the blown up Hogwarts Legacy, it reminds me that gaming can still be fun and not just a bunch of drama and realistic graphics that look dated after a week.
And then you guys wonder why you’re called racists. You’re most obsessed with her race than anyone. She’s just a game reviewer and never mentioned race.
If anyone who says people don't like this game because of black protag just show them CJ from SA. Damn he's still widely loved and remembered fondly. Not to mention all the memes that to this day is used relatively regularly.
They always ignore one of the most best selling games of all time with half of the cast being black because it breaks their narrative. They really want to pretend San Andreas doesn't exist.
"It feels like an A.I. generated the script." Or as we know it well; A Californian. This really feels like a game Square didn't want to make and shoveled it off to a western studio, but like _The MARVELOUS KAMALA KAHN!!! and some geezers call the avengers._ It's just so hipster Millennial, I can believe people who wrote this are Marvel writers.
It's a shame that you've noticed the political decisions, because once you've noticed them you'll never be able to stop noticing them, and eventually you'll be able to predict them with frightening accuracy. When you started talking about Frey's mother yeeting her into the portal, my immediate reaction having never played the game or taken interest in the story was, "I bet Frey is the product of an interracial relationship," and sure enough, Ghostly White Mom pops into view, right on cue. Under normal circumstances, such a thing wouldn't matter, but when you know why the decision was made, it becomes infuriating to see so often. As sad as it is to say, the inclusion of "diverse" characters in games, movies, or tv shows is no longer just normal, nor something to be celebrated... it's a massive red flag.
this, so much of the game was designed by hyper focus to modern times cause californians and their idealogue and square not pushing back enough cause they didn't want to be on the "wrong side"
This is so true and it hurts. I don't personally need to see myself in a game to enjoy it. I just want a well made game with a solid plot and interesting characters. That's what I'm here for. And when I do get a game like Forspoken where I do see myself I know to stay far, far away from it. Because the only thing I share with that girl is my skin color. I'm so disappointed but this is the last time I'll ever hope for a good black protagonist in a game ever again.
@@oz_jones It's almost like progressives are secretly racists and are always condescending toward black people giving them scraps and always reinforcing bad stereotypes about them while hiding all of it under their false virtue signaling. As a black guy myself this kind of forced "diverse" woke media just makes me angry and cringe. I hate it.
Purpose matters. When diverse casting is used not because the world is full of different kinds of people and all of them are worthy of being in stories, but because the creator wants to show off that they are being inclusive, it feels disingenuous
Funny that you've said Cuff was annoying. I've read a lot of comments that were seemingly very supporting of him as a character, even going as far as saying that the villain twist was bullshit. I think that the main character was so unlikeable that people naturally sided with the talking hand armament instead lol
a big turn off for me was that "I just moved things with my mind" scene. Frey there look like an ungrateful arrogant narcissist. i see someone like that, i'm not going to spend any more minute with them.
@@gendoruwo6322 My problem with that sceen is that she isnt acknowledging what the cuff is saying and then the cuff continues to talk. They dont even seem like part of the same conversation. If the cuff just interjected with the word "we" whenever she says I, it could be a bit better. Just a light prodding
Gave major narcissist vibes..they were trying to portray cuff as the guy that says "we" in a group project when he didn't do anything but in this case it doesn't work cause they did it together.
@@CyberusSuper i can relate to any person, being black, white, asian or dumb Looks like nowadays you can't write about something you are not, that's stupid
@CyberusSuper yeah we need to call in those colored folks I bet they would make the game really jive and hip with their rip rap and funky dance moves!
@@CyberusSuper Because no one outside of their race can share similar experiences and perspectives, right? Nimrod. Go generate an AI response elsewhere.
I'd never thought I'd hear Skyrim and Fallout 4 called the "more complicated" RPGs. I thought those were the floor of baby's first RPG in this generation.
One thing you forgot to mention, Dev, is that there's an option in the game to decrease the amount of banter between Frey and Cuff. Like, they *knew* the dialogue was bad, and rather than make it better they give you the option to reduce it (or turn it off completely? Not sure). Like, that doesn't sound like the move of someone who thinks they did a good job at writing a story and dialogue.
Turning off the dialogues is not a solution to the bad writing. I really want to say this to those who defended this game's storyline. As long as I don't get cancelled for 'hating the main protagonist.'
I don't played this game, but it's just an accessibility option, some people don't like the constant banter between characters, others do, as it's not essential to the experience you can turn off or lower the frequency in this case, even if the writing was "good" some people would not like it, the option to turn off is always a good alternative.
I don't know how I could have forgotten about that and instead had Little Misfortune on my mind first. Probably since he would also count as a guide for being able to interact with the Protagonist while also being a narrator.
I forgot about that! He was the narrator who was your ancestor that basically compelled your character to take over the old family business of mercenary bands and treasure hunting
With Hi Fi Rush, I find it pretty telling that the zoomer's reaction to a straight-faced, genuine comedy set in late 2000s artstyle is basically "The story is so cringe that it loops back to being not cringe! This game is self-aware about being cringe!". This generation is so used to postmodern flavored stories in media that when something plays comedy straight and lands for most then it has to be some kind of subversion.
They have no emotional attatchment to anything themselves, and completely lack empathy, so a story that has emotional connection is strange and foreign to them.
I think that's probably the single most damning indictment of Forspoken, that SKYRIM, of all things, is somehow more complex despite it being a hollowed out version of Oblivion, which is itself a watered-down Daggerfall.
I’m surprised Dev didn’t draw the connection but the David Jaffe wing of devs at Sony have the Doug Walker problem. They both found success doing something they’re good at, but they really wanted to branch off and follow their passion (serious political drama/scripted comedy). They are then frustrated when they don’t find the same level of success in their passion, so they keep trying to crowbar the 2 together.
So wait, a sentient inanimate object with a British accent that was your friend / guide / helper through the game suddenly becomes the villain? This isn't Forespoken... this is just Portal 2!
But with unlikeable characters... Portal 2 has fleshed out characters, ironically more "human" while they are robots. They desire power, a trait of living things.
You know you've crawled out of the dark, dank grottoes of weebdom into the glaring light of normie space when you watch a video where someone has to explain what isekai is to their viewers. That reminds me, I should probably take my biannual shower while I'm up here! xD
That's everyone imo. Even a somewhat ok remake of resident evil gets millions for a company who is part of the global standard esg bull rap and corporate sleezebag stuff over the years
I absolutely loved that end-of-episode fade to black & recap during Zanzo's level before Macaron's reveal. They know the game felt like a cartoon and leant into it flawlessly
@@MasterAlpha1000 Alt account made in 2011; maybe make a new account so you don't accidentally reveal your age while calling someone else "boomer". you ain't no "spring chicken" either.
Oh wow, that 'gotta get Homer' scene. That was definitely the game trying to characterize her as a good person, putting her cat ahead of her material possessions. Most people who have pets can identity with that-- when pressed you're going to rescue your cat, not your money. The problem is that instead of presenting this as a choice -- that maybe the bag was in another room and it's not possible to grab both and escape -- it plunks the bag in front of you and completely breaks your suspension of disbelief. It's impossible to even think that Frey is an idiot for not just zipping up the bag and throwing it over her shoulder, the whole sequence is so mechanically inhuman I can't even process how it would work in real life. The setup was obviously to put the bag where the player couldn't miss it so they are almost guaranteed to get this point of characterization, but the execution is laughably on the nose. So is the rest of this; the filmmaking technique this is appealing to is literally called "Save the Cat", where a rough-edged hero is shown performing a good deed early on so the audience knows they have a good heart. And to call the cat Homer, as a node to The Odyssey, wow. Much symbolism. (Apparently the cat is just left with the judge at the start of the game and never even comes back?) A real shame, too. From what I'm hearing here and elsewhere the combat is pretty fun and it sounds like the Frey/Cuff relationship was supposed to be a point of endearment (similar to how one of the strongest aspects of FF-XV was the relationship between Noctis and his bros) but was betrayed by poor pacing, uninspired design, and trying a little too hard for that modern-day snarky irreverence. I also love the 'racial discourse'. I knew nothing about Forespoken until I heard the audio of the infamous conversation. Literally had no idea she was black, but apparently that's the only reason I thought it was bad dialogue. Of course.
Forspoken is not the first game where the Tutorial companion betrays you. In Mystic Quest, the kindly wizard that sets you on the path to adventure reveals he was behind everything all along. The absolute 10/10 writing part comes when the main character asks why and the wizard simply responds with "I GUESS I WAS BORED" Absolutely underrated turbo chad
My favorite example of fantasy racism done right is the omen from elden ring. Literally nobody complained that it was too on the nose or cringey or anything because it felt realistic and true to the universe.
@@chee.rah.monurB the omen lore is more of a side thing that you learn over time so no spoilers really. Some people in the world are born with cursed blood that makes them grow horns all over and generally have a dark grey skin. They are outcasts and are executed by omen hunters if found. Royal families that have omen children basically hide them away from the world or try removing their horns, resulting in them bleeding to death. Omens are basically cosmic disgraces in the world.
Middle-Aged Afro Host there at 21:40 is just slurring through her tepid praise of the game like her mouth knows she’s lying to hell about enjoying herself and is trying to stop her.
Maybe, but she also speaks like Little Miss WhatsHerFace in the game so she either doesn't hear how bad it is by contrast or that whole "millennial" way of speaking is purely some online persona she puts on because I guess that's considered cool. Maybe maybe she feels like she has to defend it otherwise her viewers would turn on her for being a supposed traitor or whatever. Those cultists tend to do that, they'll happily eat one of their own without a thought if they dare step out of line, like a pack of wild mangy hounds.
These idiots screaming racism/sexism have never played videogames period. They've always been organically diverse just look at your average fighting game. They're talking out of their arse to excuse subpar product. Nice video, Dev.
Hi Fi Rush had me worried at the beginning with the characters and dialogue, but there is no malice in the childish humor of the game, which is refreshing. I was expecting some millenial "le my first language is sarcasm don't talk to me until ive had my coffee" stuff but the MC being a total goofball at the receiving end of sarcasm and completely brushing it off was actually pretty fun. Chai kinda feels like a mix of Denji and Power from chainsaw man if that makes sense. "This complete fucking moron is the linchpin of our operation oh god oh fuck" is one of my favorite tropes and we need more of it.
She LITERALLY said the story was so simple and dumbed down she, who she admits is bad at following STORIES, could follow the story. THANK YOU FOR LETTING US KNOW INTELLIGENT PEOPLE WON'T LIKE HOW SIMPLE THE STORY IS!
Yeah, the moment I heard her say 'And I don't follow stories that well...' I no longer trusted a damn word she said afterward lol. She's the 'baby' audience this video talked about during the Mystic Quest segment.
Knowing that this game started production so long ago explains why the character has the exact same facial and animation weirdness as Fallout 4's Piper.
An additional bit on Hi-Fi Rush (played through the first few levels/two bosses and am loving it). When the Main Character (Chai) acts like a dumbass, he usually gets punished for it by the game (stuff falling on his head or he trips over himself), or openly mocked by the other characters. Chai's the MC of the game, but he's basically the only one dumb/reckless enough to go on the missions and get his face plastered all over the wanted posters while characters waaaay smarter than him do the technical stuff.
@@royasturias1784 Definitely more Luffy. Chai enjoys the chaos he's causing and likes just winging it and seeing where the wild ride takes him. Often despite the valid complaints of his teammates that if he'd listen to them and be sneaky, things would usually go a lot smoother.
I love older style isekai where the protagonists learn to survive their new world. The current crop of isekais, however, are mostly boring because they're filled with protagonists who over powered characters with cheat/divine secret skills from the get go. I guess it's obvious that older isekais are mostly inspired by or based of traditional values from story books while modern isekais built upon video games with cheats or game+ mode on.
Can we just... get a good isekai where there is no harem and the MC works their butt off to become strong, without being some chosen one or having a cheat skill? All the while being ambitious and motivated? A little bit like So I'm A Spider, So What?, but without the RPG system. Kind of like Faraway Paladin, but without being raised by undead versions of legendary heroes. With the same level of struggle as Grimgar, but longer. With a brutal, visceral enemy like the goblins of Goblin Slayer, but it's a whole world of adventure. With the level of dedication of mastering secondary skills and building a support network that Shield Hero has. With the same tactical acumen when preparing for a fight that the MC in Impossibly Cautious Hero has. With a whole life story thing, like Mushoku Tensei. With an overarching goal like Ascendance of a Book Worm, with the effort of Doctor Stone and the level of world building of One Piece. I know, I'm asking for something exceptional. But then again, why shouldn't I?
@@mirceazaharia2094 Mushuko Tensei anime and Karate Survivor In Another World manga are my top favourite isekai that has little or no gaming elements. Both has a main character, especially Karate Survivor, that has retain modern world knowledge but they still have to work hard to apply them in their new fantasy world. I'm mostly put off by most isekais with harem elements in them. I'm not offended by the fan service but rather by the anti-human sentiment the protagonists present. They cherished their non-human companions more over the humans who they can never fully trust and whatever benefit humans receive from his actions are just byproducts from his love for his harem/chosen species. Reincarnated as a Slime was the show that gradually let me realized this aspect of isekai and Reincarnated With a Cheat Skill is the manga that made me hate this whole sub-genre(non-human harem isekai). The Cheat Skill protagonist is just awful character for laughing at his fellow classmates for not knowing they were being duped as heroes. His friends are naive but they are good people who even tried to befriend him in their previous life. I like Keyaru from Redo of Healer more than Cheat Skill guy.
@@mirceazaharia2094 Not what you want, but watch "Ima soko ni iru boku" or "Now and there, here and there" if you want a different type of isekai. It's very good, but I should've taken a few days off to watch it, because it's unbelievably fucking depressing, and all without a hint of "edge". None of the brutality is gratuitious.
Another thing is that a lot of modern Isekais have virtually no world building to speak of. They are literally just video game worlds, with the inhabitants outright using video game termonology, the magic looks like video game stuff, there is usually some sort of magic UI, and the protagonist even "levels up". This kind of thing only works for something like Sword Art Online (which I'm not a fan of, but this is one case where the Isekai being a game world makes sense), but in all other cases, it's just so jarring that it rips me right out of the story. Rise of the Shield Hero did this, and I honestly don't understand how that series became as popular as it did. It wasn't bad, but other than the novelty of the main villain being a legitimately evil false-accuser, the rest of the story was about as basic as it got, and the world building was non existent. Compare that to Escaflowne, still one of my favorites. Not only was the main hero just a school girl with no real powers (well, she did have a power, but it caused her problems more often than helped), but the world itself actually felt like a real world. There was an actual sense of lore and backstory and history. It wasn't super deep, but it was sufficient for the short 26 episodes. And there was no video game shit. The isekai world wasn't a video game, the people of the fantasy world didn't use stupid video game terminology, the main character didn't level up... hell, she never even fought anyone because, you know, she was a god damn school girl! Forspoken is basically the worst kind of isekai, one with absolutely no world building, where everything is just a video game, with an obnoxious overpowered protagonist who also happens to be a hilariously offensive stereotype, and there are no real surprises or twists. Hell, on top of all that, the main character constantly whines and complains about not wanting to be there... and if she doesn't want to be there, why the hell should I?
Miyazaki said it best when he pointed out that anime now is made by people with no lives outside of anime. The same is true everywhere in pop culture. Verisimilitude is dead.
Crystal Tools was also the engine they used for FF14 when it launched a little over 10 years ago. They ended up having to destroy the entire game and re-launch it two years or so later on a totally new engine. Square Enix as a developer has a fascinating number of development teams that have spun gold out of a shitty situation created by a moronic corporation. They are the greatest studio to ever produce so much crap. The Mystic Quest gave me flashbacks and spasms. I remember actually beating it when it came out.
You wanna know the kicker? That new engine was a paired-down Luminous Engine. They stripped out a lot of the graphic tools that wouldn't make sense for an MMO and just built upon that. That same engine branch that that team has been building on now for a decade, now totally different from its original counterpart, is probably what's powering FF16.
That just feels so weird to hear but it isn't unexpected...if everything is ''x person has to make it so x person can like it'' nothing is really of value.
All she’s admitting is that she doesn’t have sympathy/empathy. Funny enough, Twitter complained some black character in My Hero Academia didn’t have a black voice actor… problem was, it did. She just didn’t have a stereotypical “black voice/accent” so they assumed she was white, lol.
@@mrshmuga9 That same VA you mentioned, is bitching that Suletta Mercury from Gundam WFM having a white VA, despite the character being tanned not black.
@@commisaryarreck3974 No, and its funny because she ended up getting a black VA. When people called it out, they were called racist, and maybe it wasn't race based casting, but can you blame them when those same people celebrated a "black character" having a black VA. Its pretty funny because she has legit tan lines and a snow "white" sister and brother. I've seen these retards bitch that the animators made her and her family more white because muh racism after this was shown in the show.
Its dlc should be "Al comes back with the milk." you play as Al whos had to fight off monsters for over 20 years after being sucked in a portal from the grocery store.
I'd love for them to go complete anti-stereotype and have him be like fucking Blade and be infinitely cooler than Frey. Like he kills some creature and she's going "Erm did you just freaking beat that creature? With magic powers?!" and he's like "Yes, shut up." and just moves on. Or play as Cuff in a LOTR:Conquest style villain campaign, where your missions are like "Destroy the town" and shit. That would be amazing.
I skipped past it. Why would I listen to people who are framed in the video to have one dimensional opinions? It would just annoy me and waste my time so I safely skipped them.
@@noblegalifreyan4551 definitely agree. With those you already know what the deal is before even clicking on the video. If you understand their lens you can predict everything they say.
Dev is probably my favorite channel for gaming-related commentary. Especially considering I'm pretty young and he takes a more historical and analytical view of gaming.
I really hate when people say that in order to be good, it has to be new. Some things are good for a reason. And a lot of bad examples are because people half a** it or didn’t understand what people liked about it when complying them.
My go-to example of this is Hollow Knight. Its gameplay is the same as any other metroidvania and its plot and setting are both basically lifted from Dark Souls, but it's still a fantastic game because of how well it executes the elements it's pulling from elsewhere. I think that critics and let's players and other people who make a career about consuming content are the ones who care the most about "originality," because they've seen the formulas so many times that they're unable to continue enjoying them. But for most of us, it doesn't matter if the story is similar to one we've heard before.
So true. Look at God of War: Ragnarok. One of the most beloved games in years and it really didn’t do anything to alter the formula that the 2018 game laid out. It was just more what people loved plus some slight tweaks that made the overall experience better. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Like bitch some of my favorite isekai aren't even original Even a stupid power fantasy like...fuck I forgot the name. Main character is the demon king reborn, Anus Voldigrod? You don't have to do something new. Hell you can be as generic as can be and still be great by simply having good execution
The politicization of race and sexuality by game studios in an effort to please chronically online Twitter folks is one of the most frustrating recent social developments in gaming. You have companies trying to be as diverse as possible either for the sake of ticking off checkboxes, or more cynically, using the character's race and/or sexuality to mask bad writing.
I hope I see that word used more nowadays to describe brainwashed normies LARPing as fans. “Tourists” is just perfect. First time I saw it was someone talking about “Anime tourists” on Twitter. Gotta use that one more
@@brley6726 Indeed, I'm more specifically thinking of the "tourists" description pinning someone as this main character from a movie; can't remember the name. He's a 90s American family man travelling to places like Britain and just making an absolute, un-cultured fool of himself wherever they go. That's what these "tourists" in the gaming space are. At least with posers and wannabes, they at least WANT to be what the medium is; these tourists just want to snuff their noses at anything they don't understand and try to tell you why the thing you like is wrong ALL the time.
I heard about Forspoken 2 years ago during BLM shenanigans, red flags popped up when all they talked about was inclusivity and the character’s race, the interview also had a similar line like the game spot article did on Spider man miles morales the infamous “swagger of a young black teen” don’t remember the exact line the devs said but it was along the lines of “we were trying very hard to capture the movement of a young black girl” which later they had to apologize for when some tweets said that sounds racist. Though to me there is a want for this game to fail because of some of the development stuff SE did, essentially this was meant to be a new direction for them where they’d be working with western writers/studios and having Easter developers also working together with the attitude of “reaching the modern audience”
On the topic of Isekai stories, It's interesting to note that Brutal Legend was by all intents a bog standard Isekai story, yet won the hearts of many gamers and is considered a classic. But Brutal Legend had a huge quantity of originality, amazing characters, plenty of heart... And Jack Black.
It did that because the standard isekai story was needed for the games style so even something simple and bog standard worked for giving the game its style. its like story in a mario platformer its not the focus of the expierence but its needed to support a major focus.
Also did the “protagonist has ulterior motives you didn’t know” which is so incredibly unique because I can only think of one game that did it and it was a prequel that we knew was going to happen (metal gear solid 5)
@@oliverpease6719 Well your protagonist in MGS V technically doesn't have any ulterior motives because as a brainwashed disabled person who is continually manipulated by others because of his damaged mental function he doesn't technically have motives. He is an automaton piloted by Ocelot.
In Darksiders, your companion for the whole game, who usually helps explain stuff, is revealed to be an agent of the real villains (the ones you were supposed to be working for). Also it really helps that he’s voiced by fucking Mark Hamill.
They were definitely trying to make a ‘Mimir’ type charismatic character with ‘Cuff’ but it really didn’t land. You can’t just take any old British guy and make a great character
It actually would have been piss on the floor hilarious if they gave Frey's personality to cuff and she was just like "sheesh who rubbed you the wrong way" while polishing him like ... UGH ITS RIGHT THERE OH MY GOD
If it's open world, you could've designed it so you chose which bosses to defeat first, so you choose which skill tree you unlock. That way you could play with a certain "build" in a single playthrough.
@@gendoruwo6322 that's assuming that the devs cared enough to make a game as intuitive as something like that. Most Triple A studios just don't care anymore
That was something Breath of the Wild did, sure It Incentivizes you to go to Mipha first, but you could literally go "Hey Is that a *bird"* and go for Bird Guy first Instead (I only remember Mipha by name), heck, at the start you could go "To the Final Boss!" sure the fight Is magnitudes more difficult as a result, but It's still possible
Also, in Hi-Fi Rush, when Chai makes the audience cringe, every other character in the scene cringes with you. He's an idiot with terrible dialogue and the game *knows it*.
Phelous says it that way too. It took me aback when I first heard it. It's odd. Interestingly... Both are Canadian. I'm guessing that is the reason why.
It's a shame too, because the Luminous Engine was a promising platform, essentially with how much potential Final Fantasy 15 had (the engine itself had scalability and could be modern-looking for over a decade). With good management and a tight vision, we could've gotten something truly special. My hope was that Forspoken would be that. And, obviously, it didn't. They wanted to appeal to the "Western market" without trying to make it worthwhile. Just like Capcom in the 2010's.
no it wasn't, the engine is garbage. if luminous engine was actually good KH3 wouldn't have restarted development to get rid of it and FF7R would use it. even square knows it's ass.
Having the kits early is a must have. In Hogwarts you get the broom really early. Allowing you to get everywhere early with only a few more access locks left to go. Giving you time to enjoy and explore with all your abilities.
metroidvanias are an excellent example in general. most of the early/mid game locks are movement/attacking abilities, while in the late game locks tend to literally just be opened by keys. metroid, castlevania, hollow knight all have their obstacles require an air dash or a double jump or some kind of attack, until the very end where it literally just becomes, hitting switches or getting keys to unlock doors. this allows you to feel like you're exploring, you're getting stronger, and you're still unlocking the map at your own pace all the while you practice with your abilities to hopefully become a master by end-game. at the end a good metroidvania stops introducing new mechanics and focuses on mastery of whatever was introduced before.
In "That time I got reincarnated as a slime" the titular slime character is not a "side character", he just starts out weak, but then becomes uber powerful by abusing his particular skillset to it's fullest degree, like a whole heck of a lot of Isekai. He's not a prophesized hero, but that doesn't mean he's a side character in some greater story. He's actually the primary driver of the main plot and the world's destiny, starting with him eating one of the great dragons creating a power vacuum in the region.
Slime was one of my most disliked kingdom building story but i see is appeal the others see. Frey in this game made me remember the girl from the hero team who didn't wanted to be there and just want to go home. Sadly she got killed by her teamate.
I've seen "the helper actually being evil" trope done a few times before. I won't name any for spoiler reasons, but it has been done, though it is rather uncommon.
That part where David Jaffe decided to make that godawful take was like watching half my childhood get thrown down the shitter. I'm gonna have to learn how to separate the art from the artist from now on the next time I play God of War or Twisted Metal.
Actually, doing your nails with fucking magical runes is a great idea. That is a good way to do something at least a little interesting with an isekai setting and it's a shame no one competent was involved with writing this story, because that little snippet convinced me that it has some potential.
I have a feeling you haven't watched "my next life as a villainess" She's never realy a villain, its pretty disappointing how fast they drop that element of the show.
@@cricketspike I would say 2, IIRC, but yeah. It's honestly great how she just never realized she stopped herself from becoming the villain by just not having a single bad bone in her body.
They also have engaging gameplay. Hi-Fi Rush's rhythm based combat and NSR's team based combat where each character shines in combat in their own way as well as both games having dynamic combat strung together with the music of the world. They are ALIVE with the rhythm of their music, every beat and crescendo moves both boss and swing of the player. And not one note is wasted, and damn near all of it is divine ear candy.
@@gurmyigoll3535 Weiss is very well spoken, a little touchy at times, prides himself on his supreme magican knowledge, and while he's full of sass and wit he is not unkind despite his origin. Just a lovely chap overall.
Since you mentioned how Thor is the inverse of the formentioned story trope, Howard the duck from 1986 is also considered a part of this story trope. I know, unrelated to the topic, but I just recently watched Howard the duck, and it’s absolutely amazing. I also feel like Doctor who could also be sorta considered as a part of this trope as well.
I'm gonna say that the David Jaffe interview on Fritanga's channel on his statement were hilarious. Jaffe was squirming so hard being called out for his idiotic statements.
Hi-Fi Rush is *dripping* with character. It has jokes that land well, characters that are well defined and bounce well off each other, and the entire tone of it is as a cartoon that doesn't take itself seriously. I can't believe people think the dialogue between the two games is comparable. If they are - then Hi-Fi Rush did it well, and Forspoken did it poorly.
Hi-Fi rush jokes don't always land well, but when it doesn't game acknowledges how weak it is, not in a "Meta" way. more like characters react a bad joke as a bad joke kind of way
Honestly hifi rush was one of the most annoying games I've tried to play in a while. I got through the first boss before I just couldn't take any more of the game's "humor"
This is like Final Fantasy 15 all over again. Budget and time blown on spectacle but they didn't even program driving the car we spend the first 1/3 of the game in.
tbf, driving that thing manually on the roads would've been a bit of a pain. But they did patch in a monster truck mode, that allows you to drive it like a normal car, and also take it off-road, ride through the wilderness, and ram the shit out of monsters, instead of being forced to get out and fight. It's an alternative to the flight-capable upgrade you get near the end.
9:35 Bravely Default's guide, Airy, turns out to be a pretty nasty villain who has been killing your party over and over again lol EDIT: Just now realizing both Bravely Default and Forespoken are Square Enix games....coincidence lol
Damashi from the Konquest mode in Mortal Kombat Deception. At the beginning of the game, he presents himself as "an emmisary of the elder gods" prompting you to go on a quest to find six artifacts for them, aiding you on your search and granting you the power to absorb the abilities of other fighters you encounter. At the end of the campaign, it turns out that Damashi was actually a puppet of the Deseased dragon king Onaga who had been using you to gather these artifacts so that he could ressurect himself into a physical form and conquer Earthrealm.
yes okay i dropped the ball on the whole "helper turns out to be the villain thing" with sekiro/undertale/portal/bioshock/bravely default/vtmb sorry
Bravely Default is criminally underrated imo. A great homage to pre 7 final fantasy games.
We play so many vidyas, it's hard to recall all of their narratives for an example, so all is good.
Well, at least you said "That hasn't been the case...I think."
HAHAHA JUST KIDDING EPIC FAIL
It's ok Dev, we forgive you. It's still a rare plot anyway. :)
You forgot Kirby Super Star on the SNES where Marx tells Kirby how to get the sun and moon to stop fighting only to step in at the last second after Kirby has effectively saved the day and backstabs the pink puffball just to get absolute power.
Gotta love how the streamer tried to imply that the reason the game gets hate is because of Frey's skin color, but then she accidentally slips up and says "well, if it was any other color, it would just be bad writing!", actively admitting the issue.
That's exactly what she meant: Criticism is "racism" until it isn't.
and some "trust" these people
She sounded really dumb tbh
That kinda prove those people actually realize the virtue signaling element, but actively ignore it for (probably) political reaaoning.
I don't think she intended any of that. Because listening to her, I think intentions are beyond her.
When Metroid Dread came out, David Jaffe went on a freaking crusade against it because he got stuck in one room that no one else got stuck in, and claimed it was a badly designed game.
Drawing from the "subtext" I now conclude that it's because Samus is a female lead and Jaffe is a misogynist.
Obviously :)
And to think just a month or so ago, people were calling the new God of War game the best game ever for some reason.
His name should be Gaffe /original joke
Jaffe?
More like Jaffa, who's his false God?
@@redman9493 People simp for polished graphics.
"It feels AI generated" HAS to be the most savage way to diss a plot lmao
It does feel like the script was written by ChatGPT using certain key words
No, it's the most savage way to diss openAI and chatGPT.
Holy sh*t ! Now it makes sense !
even chatgpt writes better nowadays. if you ask it for a game plot it seriously gives you better ideas.
AI actually can make some pretty fun plots.
>black protag
>absent father
>plot begins because she committed B&E to steal
Sasuga, Square. I'm surprised they didn't add a sidequest where she finds a way to open a Popeyes in isekailand.
"Ey, my N'wah!
Deez Zombie Chickens be bussin' bussin'"
Let's play the game! Relatable or Stereotype?
Her favorite food is also Fried Chickens.
@@KAMFP Both? I mean, stereotypes don't just pop up out of nowhere...
@@Amartin-mu6oj Damn you saw through my ruse!
I'll never stop hoping for an Isekai where Truck-kun gets hit by a train and is re-incarnated into a fantasy world as a magical wagon with unlimited horse-powers
No cap: an isekai centered around an entity that takes the form of a truck to recruit heroes for worlds in peril would be pretty awesome.
There is an isekai where a side character becomes a magical chariot and eventually becomes strong enough to jump across space and time. It's a pretty fun one too.
@@MachineMan-mj4gj There's one potential hero who just can't be hit though. Dodges every time. The strongest. In a time of great need the Truck must aim at a little girl instead and hope the hero jumps in front. Goes wrong. Hilarity ensues.
@@MachineMan-mj4gj there was a little 4-koma web manga like that
@@wolfamongus96 what's the name of it?
19:57 That burned bag of money is a metaphor for everyone who purchased this game.
Lmao xD
And burned out GPUs due this horrible optimisation. If people with 4090's had issues. Then you know it's *BAD*.
Honestly, it tells you a lot about the developers if they don't let you get the bag of money just for a damn cat 😂
*Gotta find Homer first*
Not even in their wildest fantasies does the black father stay lmao
Omfg that's good
Well, they only care about representation, not ideals
Many of us have dads. Sad you’re proving the racist white stereotype right though.
@@witchplease9695 yes, I am.
LMFAOOO!
"Am I so out of touch? No. It is the gamers who are wrong."
- the games industry for the past decade
The “Corporate Wall” in a nutshell
Everything past 2016-2017 has just been downhill
games industry behaving like incels when they get rejected by wamen, oh it must be the wamen definitely not me. fucking twats need dealing with lmao
Companies can pander to investors and advertisers all they want, but if no one is buying their products, the investors will pull out.
SE going that path was unexpected tho. Only issue I had so far was with the subcontractor team that manages the English FF14 forums, unsuprisingly an SJW infested cesspool.
“If she looked like anyone else”
Sis if she looked like anyone else, no one would have come to defend it…
Seriously like people wanted to slit Mirror Edge's throat but couldn't since the game was actually good. To this day it's a beloved and cherished game
This is the exact opposite situation lmao
@@nailinthefashion yeah people can do whatever it take to make a game look bad if the game is really good it won't work but people don't seem to understand it.
@@nailinthefashion Are you talking about the first or the second game? I played the first one and thought it was a solid game, albeit one with not a lot of replayablility. Can't remember seeing any dumb online discourse around either of them. Granted the first game was released in 2008 and most social media colossi where in their baby stage and i wasn't neck deep in the online discourse swamp when either of them were released so i might've missed something.
@@emiljosefsson9149 people had similar qualms. It was before woke was widely used as an insult, but people tried to say having an Asian female protagonist is trying to be too progressive for the sake of it etcetc but those games succeeded since the writing backed up the gameplay
Replayability is subjective, as people still to this day try to find faster routes, and people will replay Forspoken despite it being so ho hum 🤷🏾♂️
@@nailinthefashion Like i said, didn't follow the discourse so i wouldn't know. Thanks for the info, though.
"The best part of the game is the magic"
And the most magical part of Forspoken is when you turn off the console and go outside
Or just play one of the infamous games
it's sad to see that this is a completely forgettable game :/
@@k96man And Prototype, not technically magic but the movement in forespoken reminded me of such.
Warframe if you want hordes of enemies die in sparkly explosions.
@@KorporalNoobs I watched a Warframe gameplay and I can summarize this game in 2 words: Dashing and butts
"As God is my witness, she is broken in half!"
- Editor Dave after he snaps the Forspoken disc
"By Gawd, look at the carnage!"
Bioshock is a game where the helper became the main villain
"HE KILLED HER! HE KILLED HER!"
Pics or it didn't happen!
@@iveseentoomuch He keeps resisting its destruction for some reason.
The problem with black characters in video games is that today there is always a political reason why the characters are non-white, lgbt or both.
Spot on. It’s like every character that is not a straight white male is solely written into the story for some idiotic political commentary. They also hilariously make them extreme stereotypes (hood black dude, flamboyant gay guy, etc). Just like real life if your entire identity revolves around your skin color, sexuality, diet, or some other super basic human trait then you’re boring and annoying as hell, the same applies to characters in fiction
Not true. There are many nonpolitical minority characters. Just because the political ones are the most prevalent doesn’t mean they don’t exist
@@ImortalZeus13Very true. It's the vocal crazies who spoil the endeavour.
I find myself having a knee jerk groan every time I see a black woman as the protagonist. Not because I don't think black women can make great protagonists and stories, they can, but because I instinctively know that this made it through the producer's meetings precisely because it's a black woman and that they're seeking to pander.
A lot of the controversy for these things originates from social media activists and "journalists" who kick things off with inflammatory articles, videos, and posts. Reverse-astroturfing by obsessed always-onlines that only damages the properties they're claiming to support, not that they really care.
I still can’t believe they thought that making her a career felon would make her relatable as a black woman 💀
Edit: and because she’s in NYC they refuse to prosecute her and let her go
I've noticed this a lot with progressive media. They want to put as many "diverse" characters into their media as possible, but they always have to "act black", etc. You can never just have a non-white character. They always have to be a weird stereotype.
whoever wrote this game's plot really needs help, in several ways
Tbh they should have just gone for interesting, rather than relatable. It would have been interesting to see how a criminal handles suddenly having immense power.
She's just practicing Blackness.
Well, it's more realistic that way.
So her mom is one of the fantasy world sorceresses, but her dad is some black guy from New York yet he's nowhere to be seen? Hmmmmm.
really progressive of them to make their black protagonist a homeless debtor who doesn't know her father
@@Zonedoutallthetime real based
@@Zonedoutallthetime And steals for a living.
It's always funny when progressivism circles back to the negative stereotypes of their favoured groups.
Smash and dash, brother. Smash and dash!
22:53 she literally is that meme of “It’s a game of all time, it has writing, and characters, and plot, and things”
lol. I played like 2 hours and I want my 2 hours back. The dialog was soooo bad.
It definitely was one of the games ever made.
I just checked and I agree. It is, *without question* , a game that exists, complete with a plot, characters and other things.
@@dontebennett6098 my god…what will they think of next????
@@mindedbirdjk4737 Just wait until they implemented... Gameplay.
By the way, the Isekai genre became a thing in japan SPECIFICALLY because of Alice in Wonderland, which was and still is one of the most popular english books in Japan.
Oh, that's cool.
I bet it's more the fact that Alice resembles Kamikazekakushi (spirited away), which is a common trope/theme in Japanese lore.
I love how western and eastern media inspired each other back then. To add to that, Osamu Tezuka, who is considered the grandfather of anime, was influenced by old Disney movies and that's why anime is synonymous with big expressive eyes and other stylizations.
@@corenlavolpe6143 There's a cute picture of Tezuka meeting Walt.
But Most isekai characters have more personality than this entire game
I'm glad millennial writing is finally getting called out. I noticed that so much recent media just seemed to be full of dumb quips, cuss words, commentary on current social issues and unnecessary word vomit. Characters are vitriolic, bitter, unlikeable self inserts and I often wonder if they're trying to make us hate the protagonists
Im no stranger to making self-inserts but the problem is you gotta make it actually you, warts and all
And above all never become a Gary Stu/Monty Sue
@@Ranatosk Everytime I've written a self-insert, I almost always make him a dumb loser or an angry asshole. I don't seem to think much of myself.
@@redman9493 I’ve come to learn that the Hero’s Journey is often a good way to make a self-insert build character.
Or just suffering to some degree, got a Cyberpunk styled story where my self-insert basically loses everything and is forced to start over with the help of some friends before eventually beginning on his quest for revenge
granted he can’t do it alone, gotta be realistic about one’s self-insert fic after all
They are because they hate themselves and are projecting.
@@Ranatosk I had a self-insert character in a story a long time ago:
A cursed loner werewolf who harvests a star to create a solar-cannon and then goes into self exile.
Our boy Truck-kun doesn't get the credit he deserves for the whole Isekai genre
Truck-kun and his second cousin Stairs-chan
@@cloroxusthestainlessone4324 i have seen a manga where when a guy fall on the stair he tp 1 year back and redo his school year and there was multiple romentic interest it was pretty good but i stoped for no reason like a lot of thing.
Truck: It's not Truck-kun. It's Truck-san.
There are many that already replaced or competed for his job. Car-kun, Stabber-kun, Train-kun, Void-kun, Electric-kun, Faint-kun, Sleep-kun... Anyway he appears a lot in many stories aka multiverse already so he's not too missed.
Poor Table-kun though...
I like how even the lady trying to "praise" the game could only say "It's not THAT bad", basically.
I mean, mechanic/gameplay "It's NOT THAT bad" but everything else...It's "😑"
@@brupts7297 Yeah, but in a game that is clearly narrative driven...that's pretty bad. You can forgive Mario for being mediocre in the story department because it's primarily about the gameplay.
Stuff like this or The Last of Us don't hold up without a strong story because like 90% of the point is the cinematic experience being enhanced by the gameplay.
I would be shocked if she could beat dark souls.
The amount of copium is unreal
“Lady” 😂
I don’t dislike the Forspoken discourse because I’m racist.
I dislike the Forspoken discourse because I have been told I must like it in order to not be.
DigitalZ: “. . . I’m racist.”
@@dodgyyoutuber9560 you have captured the spirit and attitude of every idiot in the discourse for this game and many other topics quite perfectly! Congrats
Disney does the same shit with almost every movie and show they release and it's getting tiresome. The formula is to write a shitty story with awful dialogue, race-swap the main character, and DARE people to hate on it just so that they can "call out" people for being racist.
Stop being afraid of the accusation of racism.. start embracing it.. modern whites are the only group who hasn't quite figured this out. Everyone is 'racist'.. Only whites are manipulated in to being ashamed of it, while every other group is encouraged and praised for it.
Oh so you hate black people???? Wow..
Hi-Fi Rush is a godsend. Slotted right between the blandness of Forspoken and the blown up Hogwarts Legacy, it reminds me that gaming can still be fun and not just a bunch of drama and realistic graphics that look dated after a week.
Even those with more style like final fantasy 7 re I find abit....bleh, same to me with sf6.
21:42 This chick is the personification of "As a Black content creator..."
FD signifier vibes 🤣
No wonder YT keeps pushing those same old talking point creators. She looks and sounds boring
And then you guys wonder why you’re called racists. You’re most obsessed with her race than anyone. She’s just a game reviewer and never mentioned race.
Also, unironically believes having a Black writer would've improved anything just because they would be Black
@@witchplease9695 cope and mald bitch
Dad's just gone to a whole different dimesion to buy cigarettes.
not milk?
of course, because milk is... wh.te...
@@gendoruwo6322 Different kind of lactose intolerance.
The city became statistically safer once she vanished. 🤣
@@jordanrock3494 oh my god lmao
BARS
If anyone who says people don't like this game because of black protag just show them CJ from SA. Damn he's still widely loved and remembered fondly. Not to mention all the memes that to this day is used relatively regularly.
CJ is definetly the most beloved protagonist from the 3D universe (maybe in general). We need more CJs in modern video games.
They always ignore one of the most best selling games of all time with half of the cast being black because it breaks their narrative. They really want to pretend San Andreas doesn't exist.
Then, we are in the obligation to show the world of much of an asshats they're for ignoring it on purpose
They clearly never played any videogames made before 2015.
Thr a-train from gears.
Dev somehow managed to talk about Isekai for 10 minutes without ever mentioning Truck-kun. Bridger of worlds. Harvester of Souls.
He's a real g
Man the truck gets all the memes and attention. "Unspecified illness" and "Overworking yourself to death" don't get enough credit.
@@rwberger6 because those 2 are just too depressingly real, not as fun as truck-kun
Think I'll stick with Bone Daddy Ainz Ooal Gown.
@@rwberger6 cuz it relatable for sum
"It feels like an A.I. generated the script." Or as we know it well; A Californian.
This really feels like a game Square didn't want to make and shoveled it off to a western studio, but like _The MARVELOUS KAMALA KAHN!!! and some geezers call the avengers._ It's just so hipster Millennial, I can believe people who wrote this are Marvel writers.
Californians are NPCs.
People are worried about AI acting like human beings even though people acting like AI is on the rise
People like that make me want to become a nomad wandering the desert
@@conserva-chan2735 they would probably send a drone with a speaker to follow you
@@k96man Oblivion (the movie not the game) moment
I love this little translation thing between english and spanish
Forspoken = Predicho
Foreskin = Prepucio
It's too perfect
How is foreskin not = predicko?
The devs were excited to bring in an American writing team… oh boy was that ever a mistake, lol.
“We very proud to hire of America. They wear tiny hat but have beeg-a BEEG-A tarent!”
They were tiny hats?
@@АндрейНеугодников-м6е Yep, all of the writters, what a cohencidence.
@@SammEater Funnier than Forskin the game.
@@virtueofabsolution7641 and they eat soy and drink soy and saya snowflake
why tho?
I can’t believe Japanese writers worked on this. They must’ve imported some “LA talent”.
A quick google search shows you to be correct in that assumption. Predominately American writers and one English guy who wrote some serious crap.
They did! I'm not even surprise if the game was done the Square Enix's U.S. division.
Americans wrote the story lmao. It’s already obvious from the blatant black worship, which is American culture.
This is pretty much a game made by californians.
Writer of Uncharted and Legacy of kain worked on this,
It's a shame that you've noticed the political decisions, because once you've noticed them you'll never be able to stop noticing them, and eventually you'll be able to predict them with frightening accuracy. When you started talking about Frey's mother yeeting her into the portal, my immediate reaction having never played the game or taken interest in the story was, "I bet Frey is the product of an interracial relationship," and sure enough, Ghostly White Mom pops into view, right on cue. Under normal circumstances, such a thing wouldn't matter, but when you know why the decision was made, it becomes infuriating to see so often. As sad as it is to say, the inclusion of "diverse" characters in games, movies, or tv shows is no longer just normal, nor something to be celebrated... it's a massive red flag.
this, so much of the game was designed by hyper focus to modern times cause californians and their idealogue and square not pushing back enough cause they didn't want to be on the "wrong side"
This is so true and it hurts. I don't personally need to see myself in a game to enjoy it. I just want a well made game with a solid plot and interesting characters. That's what I'm here for.
And when I do get a game like Forspoken where I do see myself I know to stay far, far away from it. Because the only thing I share with that girl is my skin color. I'm so disappointed but this is the last time I'll ever hope for a good black protagonist in a game ever again.
@@oz_jones It's almost like progressives are secretly racists and are always condescending toward black people giving them scraps and always reinforcing bad stereotypes about them while hiding all of it under their false virtue signaling. As a black guy myself this kind of forced "diverse" woke media just makes me angry and cringe. I hate it.
It's also one of the many moments Frey didn't become her own character, but a construct of an author.
Purpose matters. When diverse casting is used not because the world is full of different kinds of people and all of them are worthy of being in stories, but because the creator wants to show off that they are being inclusive, it feels disingenuous
Funny that you've said Cuff was annoying. I've read a lot of comments that were seemingly very supporting of him as a character, even going as far as saying that the villain twist was bullshit. I think that the main character was so unlikeable that people naturally sided with the talking hand armament instead lol
a big turn off for me was that "I just moved things with my mind" scene.
Frey there look like an ungrateful arrogant narcissist.
i see someone like that, i'm not going to spend any more minute with them.
@@gendoruwo6322 My problem with that sceen is that she isnt acknowledging what the cuff is saying and then the cuff continues to talk. They dont even seem like part of the same conversation. If the cuff just interjected with the word "we" whenever she says I, it could be a bit better. Just a light prodding
Gave major narcissist vibes..they were trying to portray cuff as the guy that says "we" in a group project when he didn't do anything but in this case it doesn't work cause they did it together.
Atomic Heart did the villian twist a month later as well.
Not saying they copied Forespoken, they couldn't have.
@@nightstar6179 even the cuff said "i only hear I, I, I,"
"Her father is a random black dude from New York... Where is Frey's dad?"
It writes itself 😄
22:42 "they could have got BLACK writers"
My god, yeah, because being black equals being super good at writing a fucking story.
The point is a black writer can relate best to a black protagonist, racist.
@@CyberusSuper i can relate to any person, being black, white, asian or dumb
Looks like nowadays you can't write about something you are not, that's stupid
Maybe you are racist for only relate to your kind. 😂
@CyberusSuper yeah we need to call in those colored folks I bet they would make the game really jive and hip with their rip rap and funky dance moves!
@@CyberusSuper Because no one outside of their race can share similar experiences and perspectives, right?
Nimrod. Go generate an AI response elsewhere.
My biggest deal breaker for Forspoken was the abysmal dialogue
Literally a Megan Markle stimulator.
Between that and 70 dollars yeah no way I'm going to pay that much.
Considering the writing, that's an actual blessing though xD
@@Shockguey sounds based, she made the royal pedos seethe.
This game is exhibit A in the appeal of a silent protagonist
I'd never thought I'd hear Skyrim and Fallout 4 called the "more complicated" RPGs. I thought those were the floor of baby's first RPG in this generation.
They're pretty basic as RPG's go, albeit decent.
We need some actual number-heavy RPGs nowadays.
Those were always casual rpg's to me. That's why I like them, I'm not really attracted to enormous mumbo jumbo of something like FF
@@DonVigaDeFierro pathfinder wrath of the righteous spent a whole just trying to understand how to play it on easy
same
One thing you forgot to mention, Dev, is that there's an option in the game to decrease the amount of banter between Frey and Cuff. Like, they *knew* the dialogue was bad, and rather than make it better they give you the option to reduce it (or turn it off completely? Not sure).
Like, that doesn't sound like the move of someone who thinks they did a good job at writing a story and dialogue.
It doesn't turn cuff dialogue off and he still talks allot, just not AS much l.
Turning off the dialogues is not a solution to the bad writing.
I really want to say this to those who defended this game's storyline. As long as I don't get cancelled for 'hating the main protagonist.'
Just like in High on Life, and in that game that option is by default toggle to low.
I don't played this game, but it's just an accessibility option, some people don't like the constant banter between characters, others do, as it's not essential to the experience you can turn off or lower the frequency in this case, even if the writing was "good" some people would not like it, the option to turn off is always a good alternative.
@@MuriloRiFO How is that an "accessibility" option? What sort of disability would prevent someone from playing Forspoken due to its terrible dialogue?
In the game Darkest Dungeon, the Narrator is the villian, and does a waaaaay better job than anything in this game.
Oh man, that game is also so brutal, yet I love it. I think I have a problem.
I don't know how I could have forgotten about that and instead had Little Misfortune on my mind first. Probably since he would also count as a guide for being able to interact with the Protagonist while also being a narrator.
Portal too has narrating/helping characters become main villain.
I forgot about that! He was the narrator who was your ancestor that basically compelled your character to take over the old family business of mercenary bands and treasure hunting
Imagine making Wayne June read lines this poorly written
"I've never seen the tutorial character become the villain"
BOTH PORTAL GAMES
halo too
I was thinking of Darksiders (the Watcher is the players guide)
glados is established as evil very early and wheatleys betrayal makes sense once you understand what he was designed for
I dont even like undertale but played long enough to know this is the case there too.
Sonic Frontiers
With Hi Fi Rush, I find it pretty telling that the zoomer's reaction to a straight-faced, genuine comedy set in late 2000s artstyle is basically "The story is so cringe that it loops back to being not cringe! This game is self-aware about being cringe!". This generation is so used to postmodern flavored stories in media that when something plays comedy straight and lands for most then it has to be some kind of subversion.
They have no emotional attatchment to anything themselves, and completely lack empathy, so a story that has emotional connection is strange and foreign to them.
Yeah that sucks
Not me I just see it as a fun stiry
Story…. Gotta play
@Axis S on one hand… yeah fuck them. I mean sure it’s just a game but fyck them games are art
actual boomer delusion, same with what axiss wrote. nobody thinks like this.
"Something more complicated, like *skyrim*"
That quote caused me more pain than everything you said ever before combined.
I think that's probably the single most damning indictment of Forspoken, that SKYRIM, of all things, is somehow more complex despite it being a hollowed out version of Oblivion, which is itself a watered-down Daggerfall.
@@MrNickPresley I think you mean Oblivion is a watered down Morrowind
@@cerdic6305 .... Shit, you right. I skipped right over Morrowind.
@@MrNickPresley So did a lot of Skyrim players.
@@MrNickPresley To be fair, for a Daggerfall fan they're probably all equally dumbed down
I’m surprised Dev didn’t draw the connection but the David Jaffe wing of devs at Sony have the Doug Walker problem. They both found success doing something they’re good at, but they really wanted to branch off and follow their passion (serious political drama/scripted comedy). They are then frustrated when they don’t find the same level of success in their passion, so they keep trying to crowbar the 2 together.
So wait, a sentient inanimate object with a British accent that was your friend / guide / helper through the game suddenly becomes the villain? This isn't Forespoken... this is just Portal 2!
But with unlikeable characters... Portal 2 has fleshed out characters, ironically more "human" while they are robots. They desire power, a trait of living things.
Glados and the other AI (I forgot his name) actually had personalities that meshed well with Chel, despite her being mute.
@@tkraid2575 Wheatley iirc.
The Virgin Cuff vs the Chad Wheatley
@@theblackbaron4119 hold up,ain't the thing holding the hosts head is the one that corrupted Glados and Wheatley's morality
I can't believe you didn't mention Narnia as the quintessential Isekai.
For real
Alice in Wonderland
You know you've crawled out of the dark, dank grottoes of weebdom into the glaring light of normie space when you watch a video where someone has to explain what isekai is to their viewers. That reminds me, I should probably take my biannual shower while I'm up here! xD
i am a mega weeb but i have a very normie audience
@@ShortFatOtaku also your audience sometimes gets butt hurt and cries like leftoids getting triggered. It's quite funny.
@@ShortFatOtaku the my next life as a villainess reference smacked me in the reface and made me remember the otaku part of your name.
Patiently waiting for SFO to have to explain what "NTR" is in a video.
@@ShortFatOtaku Pffft, you're way too hygenic and sexually active to be a weeb Dev, ya normie cuck! xD Kidding kidding, love your videos man
That game streamer is the personification of why standards for AAA games have dropped off a cliff. A literal consoomer.
That's everyone imo.
Even a somewhat ok remake of resident evil gets millions for a company who is part of the global standard esg bull rap and corporate sleezebag stuff over the years
Hi-Fi Rush feels like a 2000s Cartoon Network show, and I love it. Sh!ts my childhood.
Tell me about it. Everything I've seen just makes me love it more.
I absolutely loved that end-of-episode fade to black & recap during Zanzo's level before Macaron's reveal. They know the game felt like a cartoon and leant into it flawlessly
Ok boomer
@@MasterAlpha1000 Alt account made in 2011; maybe make a new account so you don't accidentally reveal your age while calling someone else "boomer". you ain't no "spring chicken" either.
I was playing the robot movie videogame.
Oh wow, that 'gotta get Homer' scene.
That was definitely the game trying to characterize her as a good person, putting her cat ahead of her material possessions. Most people who have pets can identity with that-- when pressed you're going to rescue your cat, not your money. The problem is that instead of presenting this as a choice -- that maybe the bag was in another room and it's not possible to grab both and escape -- it plunks the bag in front of you and completely breaks your suspension of disbelief. It's impossible to even think that Frey is an idiot for not just zipping up the bag and throwing it over her shoulder, the whole sequence is so mechanically inhuman I can't even process how it would work in real life.
The setup was obviously to put the bag where the player couldn't miss it so they are almost guaranteed to get this point of characterization, but the execution is laughably on the nose. So is the rest of this; the filmmaking technique this is appealing to is literally called "Save the Cat", where a rough-edged hero is shown performing a good deed early on so the audience knows they have a good heart. And to call the cat Homer, as a node to The Odyssey, wow. Much symbolism. (Apparently the cat is just left with the judge at the start of the game and never even comes back?)
A real shame, too. From what I'm hearing here and elsewhere the combat is pretty fun and it sounds like the Frey/Cuff relationship was supposed to be a point of endearment (similar to how one of the strongest aspects of FF-XV was the relationship between Noctis and his bros) but was betrayed by poor pacing, uninspired design, and trying a little too hard for that modern-day snarky irreverence.
I also love the 'racial discourse'. I knew nothing about Forespoken until I heard the audio of the infamous conversation. Literally had no idea she was black, but apparently that's the only reason I thought it was bad dialogue. Of course.
That dialogue sounds worse than the voice acting in old Resident Evil games, but, at least that ridiculousness had charm
Forspoken is not the first game where the Tutorial companion betrays you. In Mystic Quest, the kindly wizard that sets you on the path to adventure reveals he was behind everything all along.
The absolute 10/10 writing part comes when the main character asks why and the wizard simply responds with
"I GUESS I WAS BORED"
Absolutely underrated turbo chad
Jade empire also has a similar betrayal, but written well enough that you do not see it coming so clearly
@@danfish300 I really need to play that game, heard it is massively underrated.
@@Kanezeran it is a very good game, though a little bit dated.
Mortal Kombat Deception's story mode had the same plot twist, too.
Big Boss
My favorite example of fantasy racism done right is the omen from elden ring. Literally nobody complained that it was too on the nose or cringey or anything because it felt realistic and true to the universe.
Haven't gotten into Elden Ring yet because I avoid bandwagons,could you describe it without any spoilers if possible?Thanks!
@@chee.rah.monurB the omen lore is more of a side thing that you learn over time so no spoilers really. Some people in the world are born with cursed blood that makes them grow horns all over and generally have a dark grey skin. They are outcasts and are executed by omen hunters if found. Royal families that have omen children basically hide them away from the world or try removing their horns, resulting in them bleeding to death. Omens are basically cosmic disgraces in the world.
@@chee.rah.monurB Playing a good game when it releases is bandwagonning??
Curb your contrarianism.
To be fair, nobody complained because nobody really knew wtf was going on
@@chee.rah.monurB Are you retard?
Middle-Aged Afro Host there at 21:40 is just slurring through her tepid praise of the game like her mouth knows she’s lying to hell about enjoying herself and is trying to stop her.
Love how you racists expose herself. Wonder what excuses you’d make if she was a white gamer.
She keeps admitting that she doesn't think it's good. Just passable, at best.
I like the slip up “If the character looked like anything else other than this it would just be called bad writing.”
Maybe, but she also speaks like Little Miss WhatsHerFace in the game so she either doesn't hear how bad it is by contrast or that whole "millennial" way of speaking is purely some online persona she puts on because I guess that's considered cool. Maybe maybe she feels like she has to defend it otherwise her viewers would turn on her for being a supposed traitor or whatever. Those cultists tend to do that, they'll happily eat one of their own without a thought if they dare step out of line, like a pack of wild mangy hounds.
These idiots screaming racism/sexism have never played videogames period. They've always been organically diverse just look at your average fighting game. They're talking out of their arse to excuse subpar product. Nice video, Dev.
Hi Fi Rush had me worried at the beginning with the characters and dialogue, but there is no malice in the childish humor of the game, which is refreshing.
I was expecting some millenial "le my first language is sarcasm don't talk to me until ive had my coffee" stuff but the MC being a total goofball at the receiving end of sarcasm and completely brushing it off was actually pretty fun.
Chai kinda feels like a mix of Denji and Power from chainsaw man if that makes sense.
"This complete fucking moron is the linchpin of our operation oh god oh fuck" is one of my favorite tropes and we need more of it.
That millennial you are talking about, who is all about sarcasm and coffee, is actually the main villain and only him.
@@pantheman2842 yeah, kale is basically lazy vergil. So lazy that most of his fighting style is just using tech.
@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 Still about as skilled as Vergil.
Chai is a better protagonist than Frey
I like how the poc or a robot race character is awesome too
How in God's name did David Jaffe, the man who brought us God or War, devolve into that?!
Sony is a corrupt woke cesspool. Dabbling in it infects you.
Maybe the other people who worked on the gow were carrying his half baked ideas into something good
progressiveness rots the mind, everyone who embraces it devolves into that sooner or later, just like communism.
"And I don't follow stories that well" ... that is all we needed to know to disregard whatever she says about the story of this trashfire
the story isn't bad if you ignore it.
@@JustBuyTheWaywardsRealms If millenial dialogue is played in the middle of the forest where no one can hear it, is it still cringe?
@@DonVigaDeFierro if nobody notice the cringe there is no cringe
She LITERALLY said the story was so simple and dumbed down she, who she admits is bad at following STORIES, could follow the story.
THANK YOU FOR LETTING US KNOW INTELLIGENT PEOPLE WON'T LIKE HOW SIMPLE THE STORY IS!
Yeah, the moment I heard her say 'And I don't follow stories that well...' I no longer trusted a damn word she said afterward lol. She's the 'baby' audience this video talked about during the Mystic Quest segment.
Knowing that this game started production so long ago explains why the character has the exact same facial and animation weirdness as Fallout 4's Piper.
What a weird era in gaming. Where we were starting to understand what bad games and felt like.
Newer updates fixed the Fallout 4 facial rigs. It's still dated but not that bad.
An additional bit on Hi-Fi Rush (played through the first few levels/two bosses and am loving it). When the Main Character (Chai) acts like a dumbass, he usually gets punished for it by the game (stuff falling on his head or he trips over himself), or openly mocked by the other characters. Chai's the MC of the game, but he's basically the only one dumb/reckless enough to go on the missions and get his face plastered all over the wanted posters while characters waaaay smarter than him do the technical stuff.
So, Monkey D. Luffy or Usagi Tsukino
@@royasturias1784
Although Sailor Moon is a little smarter, and Luffy (generally) knows he's a dumbass.
@@royasturias1784 Definitely more Luffy. Chai enjoys the chaos he's causing and likes just winging it and seeing where the wild ride takes him. Often despite the valid complaints of his teammates that if he'd listen to them and be sneaky, things would usually go a lot smoother.
@@AgentMajin008 Good teammates point out cons to make them pros
He just embraces his own stupidity though, which is why it works... :)
I love older style isekai where the protagonists learn to survive their new world. The current crop of isekais, however, are mostly boring because they're filled with protagonists who over powered characters with cheat/divine secret skills from the get go.
I guess it's obvious that older isekais are mostly inspired by or based of traditional values from story books while modern isekais built upon video games with cheats or game+ mode on.
Can we just... get a good isekai where there is no harem and the MC works their butt off to become strong, without being some chosen one or having a cheat skill? All the while being ambitious and motivated?
A little bit like So I'm A Spider, So What?, but without the RPG system.
Kind of like Faraway Paladin, but without being raised by undead versions of legendary heroes.
With the same level of struggle as Grimgar, but longer.
With a brutal, visceral enemy like the goblins of Goblin Slayer, but it's a whole world of adventure.
With the level of dedication of mastering secondary skills and building a support network that Shield Hero has.
With the same tactical acumen when preparing for a fight that the MC in Impossibly Cautious Hero has.
With a whole life story thing, like Mushoku Tensei.
With an overarching goal like Ascendance of a Book Worm, with the effort of Doctor Stone and the level of world building of One Piece.
I know, I'm asking for something exceptional. But then again, why shouldn't I?
@@mirceazaharia2094 Mushuko Tensei anime and Karate Survivor In Another World manga are my top favourite isekai that has little or no gaming elements. Both has a main character, especially Karate Survivor, that has retain modern world knowledge but they still have to work hard to apply them in their new fantasy world.
I'm mostly put off by most isekais with harem elements in them. I'm not offended by the fan service but rather by the anti-human sentiment the protagonists present. They cherished their non-human companions more over the humans who they can never fully trust and whatever benefit humans receive from his actions are just byproducts from his love for his harem/chosen species. Reincarnated as a Slime was the show that gradually let me realized this aspect of isekai and Reincarnated With a Cheat Skill is the manga that made me hate this whole sub-genre(non-human harem isekai). The Cheat Skill protagonist is just awful character for laughing at his fellow classmates for not knowing they were being duped as heroes. His friends are naive but they are good people who even tried to befriend him in their previous life. I like Keyaru from Redo of Healer more than Cheat Skill guy.
@@mirceazaharia2094 Not what you want, but watch "Ima soko ni iru boku" or "Now and there, here and there" if you want a different type of isekai.
It's very good, but I should've taken a few days off to watch it, because it's unbelievably fucking depressing, and all without a hint of "edge". None of the brutality is gratuitious.
Another thing is that a lot of modern Isekais have virtually no world building to speak of. They are literally just video game worlds, with the inhabitants outright using video game termonology, the magic looks like video game stuff, there is usually some sort of magic UI, and the protagonist even "levels up". This kind of thing only works for something like Sword Art Online (which I'm not a fan of, but this is one case where the Isekai being a game world makes sense), but in all other cases, it's just so jarring that it rips me right out of the story.
Rise of the Shield Hero did this, and I honestly don't understand how that series became as popular as it did. It wasn't bad, but other than the novelty of the main villain being a legitimately evil false-accuser, the rest of the story was about as basic as it got, and the world building was non existent.
Compare that to Escaflowne, still one of my favorites. Not only was the main hero just a school girl with no real powers (well, she did have a power, but it caused her problems more often than helped), but the world itself actually felt like a real world. There was an actual sense of lore and backstory and history. It wasn't super deep, but it was sufficient for the short 26 episodes. And there was no video game shit. The isekai world wasn't a video game, the people of the fantasy world didn't use stupid video game terminology, the main character didn't level up... hell, she never even fought anyone because, you know, she was a god damn school girl!
Forspoken is basically the worst kind of isekai, one with absolutely no world building, where everything is just a video game, with an obnoxious overpowered protagonist who also happens to be a hilariously offensive stereotype, and there are no real surprises or twists. Hell, on top of all that, the main character constantly whines and complains about not wanting to be there... and if she doesn't want to be there, why the hell should I?
Miyazaki said it best when he pointed out that anime now is made by people with no lives outside of anime.
The same is true everywhere in pop culture. Verisimilitude is dead.
Crystal Tools was also the engine they used for FF14 when it launched a little over 10 years ago. They ended up having to destroy the entire game and re-launch it two years or so later on a totally new engine. Square Enix as a developer has a fascinating number of development teams that have spun gold out of a shitty situation created by a moronic corporation. They are the greatest studio to ever produce so much crap.
The Mystic Quest gave me flashbacks and spasms. I remember actually beating it when it came out.
You wanna know the kicker? That new engine was a paired-down Luminous Engine. They stripped out a lot of the graphic tools that wouldn't make sense for an MMO and just built upon that.
That same engine branch that that team has been building on now for a decade, now totally different from its original counterpart, is probably what's powering FF16.
All that and the spaghetti code is still going strong
"You could improve the writing, like hire black writers"
That just feels so weird to hear but it isn't unexpected...if everything is ''x person has to make it so x person can like it'' nothing is really of value.
All she’s admitting is that she doesn’t have sympathy/empathy. Funny enough, Twitter complained some black character in My Hero Academia didn’t have a black voice actor… problem was, it did. She just didn’t have a stereotypical “black voice/accent” so they assumed she was white, lol.
@@mrshmuga9 That same VA you mentioned, is bitching that Suletta Mercury from Gundam WFM having a white VA, despite the character being tanned not black.
@@FxCalibur
The tards tried to claim nagatoro was black. Do you even expect the slightest form of intellect to leave their wretched minds?
@@commisaryarreck3974 No, and its funny because she ended up getting a black VA. When people called it out, they were called racist, and maybe it wasn't race based casting, but can you blame them when those same people celebrated a "black character" having a black VA. Its pretty funny because she has legit tan lines and a snow "white" sister and brother.
I've seen these retards bitch that the animators made her and her family more white because muh racism after this was shown in the show.
Its dlc should be "Al comes back with the milk." you play as Al whos had to fight off monsters for over 20 years after being sucked in a portal from the grocery store.
I'd love for them to go complete anti-stereotype and have him be like fucking Blade and be infinitely cooler than Frey. Like he kills some creature and she's going "Erm did you just freaking beat that creature? With magic powers?!" and he's like "Yes, shut up." and just moves on. Or play as Cuff in a LOTR:Conquest style villain campaign, where your missions are like "Destroy the town" and shit. That would be amazing.
Dev, what did we do to deserve the progressive cameos? That was pain
I skipped past it. Why would I listen to people who are framed in the video to have one dimensional opinions? It would just annoy me and waste my time so I safely skipped them.
Pain and suffering; truly it was my friend
Because yall are bigots lmao
Deal with it
After about 20 seconds of that girl screeching I starting mashing the "Skip 5 seconds" arrow key. I could FEEL the brain cells dying.
@@MasterAlpha1000 If that means being a "bigot" sure thing loser
It's a nice refresher to get a media review video every so often between the political news or think piece videos. Have a good day man 👍
I honestly think it's much more interesting than whatever some dumb lefty or righty said this week.
@@noblegalifreyan4551 definitely agree. With those you already know what the deal is before even clicking on the video. If you understand their lens you can predict everything they say.
Dev is probably my favorite channel for gaming-related commentary. Especially considering I'm pretty young and he takes a more historical and analytical view of gaming.
I love that thumbnail so much Hi-Fi rush literally shadow elbow dropped Forrspoken into oblivion lol
Worth cheering for Chai as he got an S rank right away for elbow dropping Frey
I really hate when people say that in order to be good, it has to be new. Some things are good for a reason. And a lot of bad examples are because people half a** it or didn’t understand what people liked about it when complying them.
My go-to example of this is Hollow Knight. Its gameplay is the same as any other metroidvania and its plot and setting are both basically lifted from Dark Souls, but it's still a fantastic game because of how well it executes the elements it's pulling from elsewhere.
I think that critics and let's players and other people who make a career about consuming content are the ones who care the most about "originality," because they've seen the formulas so many times that they're unable to continue enjoying them. But for most of us, it doesn't matter if the story is similar to one we've heard before.
So true. Look at God of War: Ragnarok. One of the most beloved games in years and it really didn’t do anything to alter the formula that the 2018 game laid out. It was just more what people loved plus some slight tweaks that made the overall experience better. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Like bitch some of my favorite isekai aren't even original
Even a stupid power fantasy like...fuck I forgot the name. Main character is the demon king reborn, Anus Voldigrod?
You don't have to do something new. Hell you can be as generic as can be and still be great by simply having good execution
The politicization of race and sexuality by game studios in an effort to please chronically online Twitter folks is one of the most frustrating recent social developments in gaming.
You have companies trying to be as diverse as possible either for the sake of ticking off checkboxes, or more cynically, using the character's race and/or sexuality to mask bad writing.
Let's call it for what it is:
An attempt to monetize the tourists.
I hope I see that word used more nowadays to describe brainwashed normies LARPing as fans. “Tourists” is just perfect. First time I saw it was someone talking about “Anime tourists” on Twitter.
Gotta use that one more
Not sure I understand fully
@Ranatosk people pretend to be fans to fit in. Check out the article called "geeks mops and sociopaths in sub culture evolution".
@@brley6726 Indeed, I'm more specifically thinking of the "tourists" description pinning someone as this main character from a movie; can't remember the name. He's a 90s American family man travelling to places like Britain and just making an absolute, un-cultured fool of himself wherever they go. That's what these "tourists" in the gaming space are. At least with posers and wannabes, they at least WANT to be what the medium is; these tourists just want to snuff their noses at anything they don't understand and try to tell you why the thing you like is wrong ALL the time.
@@ownedmaxer607 "European Vacation"?
I heard about Forspoken 2 years ago during BLM shenanigans, red flags popped up when all they talked about was inclusivity and the character’s race, the interview also had a similar line like the game spot article did on Spider man miles morales the infamous “swagger of a young black teen” don’t remember the exact line the devs said but it was along the lines of “we were trying very hard to capture the movement of a young black girl” which later they had to apologize for when some tweets said that sounds racist.
Though to me there is a want for this game to fail because of some of the development stuff SE did, essentially this was meant to be a new direction for them where they’d be working with western writers/studios and having Easter developers also working together with the attitude of “reaching the modern audience”
On the topic of Isekai stories, It's interesting to note that Brutal Legend was by all intents a bog standard Isekai story, yet won the hearts of many gamers and is considered a classic. But Brutal Legend had a huge quantity of originality, amazing characters, plenty of heart... And Jack Black.
It did that because the standard isekai story was needed for the games style so even something simple and bog standard worked for giving the game its style. its like story in a mario platformer its not the focus of the expierence but its needed to support a major focus.
Nier did the "Your companion of power is secretly important to the plot" thing
Also did the “protagonist has ulterior motives you didn’t know” which is so incredibly unique because I can only think of one game that did it and it was a prequel that we knew was going to happen (metal gear solid 5)
@@oliverpease6719 Baten Kaitos did the ulterior-motives protag about a decade before MGS5, and well before Nier.
Bravely Default Flying Fairy did it as well
@@oliverpease6719 Well your protagonist in MGS V technically doesn't have any ulterior motives because as a brainwashed disabled person who is continually manipulated by others because of his damaged mental function he doesn't technically have motives. He is an automaton piloted by Ocelot.
@@jimmydesouza4375 I do not think I will ever understand the story to this game
Holy hell that dialogue is agony
It would have been okay if it had only lasted for about a quarter as long as it did.
It makes high on life's dialogue look like Fallout New Vegas
@@conserva-chan2735kek
In Darksiders, your companion for the whole game, who usually helps explain stuff, is revealed to be an agent of the real villains (the ones you were supposed to be working for).
Also it really helps that he’s voiced by fucking Mark Hamill.
YOOOOOOOO
They were definitely trying to make a ‘Mimir’ type charismatic character with ‘Cuff’ but it really didn’t land. You can’t just take any old British guy and make a great character
It actually would have been piss on the floor hilarious if they gave Frey's personality to cuff and she was just like "sheesh who rubbed you the wrong way" while polishing him like ... UGH ITS RIGHT THERE OH MY GOD
The difference between Cuff and Mimir is that Mimir has a good backstory and the ones who wrote his dialogues have actual wit.
@@tkraid2575 my thoughts exactly, Mimir is absolutely fantastic in every way and cuff is lame as shit
If it's open world, you could've designed it so you chose which bosses to defeat first, so you choose which skill tree you unlock. That way you could play with a certain "build" in a single playthrough.
i'm imagining the game devs happen to read this and has a slap-to-the-face moment... "why didn't we...? why?"
@@gendoruwo6322 that's assuming that the devs cared enough to make a game as intuitive as something like that. Most Triple A studios just don't care anymore
That was something Breath of the Wild did, sure It Incentivizes you to go to Mipha first, but you could literally go "Hey Is that a *bird"* and go for Bird Guy first Instead (I only remember Mipha by name), heck, at the start you could go "To the Final Boss!" sure the fight Is magnitudes more difficult as a result, but It's still possible
Also, in Hi-Fi Rush, when Chai makes the audience cringe, every other character in the scene cringes with you. He's an idiot with terrible dialogue and the game *knows it*.
Dev trying to say 'necklaces' in this video was far more interesting and entertaining than Forspoken ever was.
Neck Laces.
Me picturing throats with shoe eyelets
Never heard any human pronounce it that way he did here lol. Hope he never changes that
Phelous says it that way too. It took me aback when I first heard it. It's odd.
Interestingly... Both are Canadian. I'm guessing that is the reason why.
It's a shame too, because the Luminous Engine was a promising platform, essentially with how much potential Final Fantasy 15 had (the engine itself had scalability and could be modern-looking for over a decade). With good management and a tight vision, we could've gotten something truly special.
My hope was that Forspoken would be that. And, obviously, it didn't. They wanted to appeal to the "Western market" without trying to make it worthwhile. Just like Capcom in the 2010's.
It's a shame, FF16 using Unreal is exactly why all the rendering looks like plastic-sheend shit in all the gameplay we have seen.
The potential is there. The problem is the developers can't use it. They can't write a decent story or optimize the game. They just pile up nonsense.
You thought the diversity game would be worth anything? Do you have brain damage?
@@grimnir8872 Unreal is versatile. That's why it's licensed out so much.
no it wasn't, the engine is garbage.
if luminous engine was actually good KH3 wouldn't have restarted development to get rid of it and FF7R would use it.
even square knows it's ass.
Having the kits early is a must have. In Hogwarts you get the broom really early. Allowing you to get everywhere early with only a few more access locks left to go. Giving you time to enjoy and explore with all your abilities.
metroidvanias are an excellent example in general. most of the early/mid game locks are movement/attacking abilities, while in the late game locks tend to literally just be opened by keys. metroid, castlevania, hollow knight all have their obstacles require an air dash or a double jump or some kind of attack, until the very end where it literally just becomes, hitting switches or getting keys to unlock doors. this allows you to feel like you're exploring, you're getting stronger, and you're still unlocking the map at your own pace all the while you practice with your abilities to hopefully become a master by end-game. at the end a good metroidvania stops introducing new mechanics and focuses on mastery of whatever was introduced before.
In "That time I got reincarnated as a slime" the titular slime character is not a "side character", he just starts out weak, but then becomes uber powerful by abusing his particular skillset to it's fullest degree, like a whole heck of a lot of Isekai. He's not a prophesized hero, but that doesn't mean he's a side character in some greater story. He's actually the primary driver of the main plot and the world's destiny, starting with him eating one of the great dragons creating a power vacuum in the region.
Slime was one of my most disliked kingdom building story but i see is appeal the others see.
Frey in this game made me remember the girl from the hero team who didn't wanted to be there and just want to go home. Sadly she got killed by her teamate.
I've seen "the helper actually being evil" trope done a few times before. I won't name any for spoiler reasons, but it has been done, though it is rather uncommon.
I'll name one: Dragon Age: Inquisition.
I was done masterfully in Bravely Default.
Would you kindly name the games involved.
She seemed off to me soon as Peragus II got loaded in. Didn't predict just how bad she was, though.
Kirby's Return to Dreamland is a fun and simple one
the whole streamer clip just proves why needing to gatekeepe exist
Lord that Dialogue nearly made me shrivel into one large cringe, every cell in my body rejected it
When a game dev speaks identity politics than it's probably bad
"If only they'd got black writers"
If you give a black person a pen they'll write Robyn Hood yo!
You get to do your nails, and that's fun. - Dev
Ha! Gayyyy!
The moment I saw that one of the writers (Gary Whitta) also co-wrote After Earth EVERYTHING clicked to me
oh... nooooaw
More surprising that it isn't even worse then
@@crakhaed I mean, it's not really an improvement with how shit the game's dialogue and plot are
That part where David Jaffe decided to make that godawful take was like watching half my childhood get thrown down the shitter. I'm gonna have to learn how to separate the art from the artist from now on the next time I play God of War or Twisted Metal.
If your childhood games were God of War and Twisted Metal you're already well acquainted with toilets
Actually, doing your nails with fucking magical runes is a great idea. That is a good way to do something at least a little interesting with an isekai setting and it's a shame no one competent was involved with writing this story, because that little snippet convinced me that it has some potential.
Castlevania did somethig similar with tattoos once
_"It's very rare that the tutorial helper becomes the main villain..."_ *Bioshock has entered the chat.*
In my opinion, the ppl saying "she's black so I'm not going to play it" are trolling you. If you really believe that, they got one over on you.
I have a feeling you haven't watched "my next life as a villainess" She's never realy a villain, its pretty disappointing how fast they drop that element of the show.
Yeah, the MC is too dumb to be a villain. That's kind of the joke of the story and why I like it.
@@jakman2179 tbf its not like she wants to be one. Shes just too dumb to realize shes already diverted that timeline like 3 episodes in
@@cricketspike I would say 2, IIRC, but yeah. It's honestly great how she just never realized she stopped herself from becoming the villain by just not having a single bad bone in her body.
Wanna know what Hi Fi Rush and No Straight Roads have in common that this thing doesn't? Besides kickass beats, they have _Soul_
They also have engaging gameplay. Hi-Fi Rush's rhythm based combat and NSR's team based combat where each character shines in combat in their own way as well as both games having dynamic combat strung together with the music of the world. They are ALIVE with the rhythm of their music, every beat and crescendo moves both boss and swing of the player. And not one note is wasted, and damn near all of it is divine ear candy.
As for forespoken combat, I think everyone suffered enough.
It feels like they tried to make this Cuff thing into a Grimoire Weiss type of character... and failed miserably.
What is the general personality of Weiss like? Obviously his character must have been written by a competent writer?
@@gurmyigoll3535 A competent writer by the name of Yoko Taro, yes.
@@CloakofAuron Ah, a man of culture. Personally I found Drakengard's story to be so compelling that I forced myself to get past the crap gameplay.
@@gurmyigoll3535 Weiss is very well spoken, a little touchy at times, prides himself on his supreme magican knowledge, and while he's full of sass and wit he is not unkind despite his origin. Just a lovely chap overall.
Since you mentioned how Thor is the inverse of the formentioned story trope, Howard the duck from 1986 is also considered a part of this story trope. I know, unrelated to the topic, but I just recently watched Howard the duck, and it’s absolutely amazing.
I also feel like Doctor who could also be sorta considered as a part of this trope as well.
"It's very rare that the tutorial helper becomes the main villain."
Literally Sonic Frontiers last year.
Dude spoiler alert..haven't played it yet
@Stylish Music Sorry
@Stylish Music it's been out since November which is long enough. That's on you lol if you haven't played it
I'm gonna say that the David Jaffe interview on Fritanga's channel on his statement were hilarious. Jaffe was squirming so hard being called out for his idiotic statements.
Hi-Fi Rush is *dripping* with character. It has jokes that land well, characters that are well defined and bounce well off each other, and the entire tone of it is as a cartoon that doesn't take itself seriously. I can't believe people think the dialogue between the two games is comparable. If they are - then Hi-Fi Rush did it well, and Forspoken did it poorly.
Hi-Fi rush jokes don't always land well, but when it doesn't game acknowledges how weak it is, not in a "Meta" way. more like characters react a bad joke as a bad joke kind of way
Honestly hifi rush was one of the most annoying games I've tried to play in a while. I got through the first boss before I just couldn't take any more of the game's "humor"
This is like Final Fantasy 15 all over again. Budget and time blown on spectacle but they didn't even program driving the car we spend the first 1/3 of the game in.
tbf, driving that thing manually on the roads would've been a bit of a pain.
But they did patch in a monster truck mode, that allows you to drive it like a normal car, and also take it off-road, ride through the wilderness, and ram the shit out of monsters, instead of being forced to get out and fight.
It's an alternative to the flight-capable upgrade you get near the end.
9:35 Bravely Default's guide, Airy, turns out to be a pretty nasty villain who has been killing your party over and over again lol
EDIT: Just now realizing both Bravely Default and Forespoken are Square Enix games....coincidence lol
I was about to comment Bravely Default as well.
Damashi from the Konquest mode in Mortal Kombat Deception. At the beginning of the game, he presents himself as "an emmisary of the elder gods" prompting you to go on a quest to find six artifacts for them, aiding you on your search and granting you the power to absorb the abilities of other fighters you encounter. At the end of the campaign, it turns out that Damashi was actually a puppet of the Deseased dragon king Onaga who had been using you to gather these artifacts so that he could ressurect himself into a physical form and conquer Earthrealm.
This game isn't just written like a Joss Whedon movie, it's written like those memes parodying Joss Whedon movies.