Unappealing Characters Signal Deeper Issues (usually)
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- The Witcher 4 and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet trailers were shown at The Game Awards and they aren't being received well. Do they deserve the hate? Is the customer actually wrong here? Or are they recognizing a pattern?
Neil speaking at the IGDA conference:
• IGDA Toronto 2013 Keyn...
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“I want to write a fantasy with a fictional religion.”
-how original
“And the church is corrupt”
-daring today are we
I mean, it's kind of hard to come up with a new spin on religion in fantasy, because it has been lampshaded, parodied, deconstructed, reconstructed, and everything in-between already for centuries.
The closest thing to an amusing new take I've seen in a while was this novel where the gods of a fantasy setting were pretty much running their churches as one huge conglomerate corporation, with the priests acting like tech support, and the whole setting got messed up for centuries because they accidentally broke its metaphysics by a badly planned miracle, and they've been so busy suing each other over it that nobody fixed it yet.
However, stuff like that requires a modicum of creativity, while "corrupt vaguely Catholic church of light" is easy and a "good enough" plot device for the average hack writer.
Well yeah, what did you expect from a proud Hebrew like Neil
Gee, I sure do wonder if this fictional religion will have an Inquisition of sorts.
@@Horvath_GaborIt’s not hard at all.
Make a religion that is true to the setting and not corrupt.
About as original as making Satan a “misunderstood rebel” and god an “oppressive tyrant”
Precisely stated. "Gamers are _literally_ trained to spot patterns."
and to play games we like regardless of reviews, and to choose to not be mad about things. a bald chick in my space fight videogame is way way down on my list of get-angry-about things.
@@coffeebux who's angry?
@@subtledemisefox I for one found the trailer boring af. Worst. ASMR. Ever.
@@coffeebuxThis is just leftist talking point strategy 101. Call the subject trivial and say anyone who has an opinion is being emotional. Rinse and repeat. Leftists have one old trick.
@@coffeebux
Okay. Make sure you buy and play it. It would be a bad look if the sale don't even go 5 digits.
Nothing wrong with a non-sexualized character. However, having an aesthetically unappealing character with a disagreeable personality is a recipe for failure. OG Kratos was disagreeable, BUT he was aesthetically pleasing. Even the Ninja Turtles are aesthetically pleasing, but they aren't sexualized. To normal people.
Define "aesthetically appealing". If we're not talking about sexual attractiveness, then what's so unappealing about the designs of Ciri or Jordan from Intergalactic? They have cool outfits, distinctive features. Their designs fit with the world they belong to.
@@Highlander77 Proportionality, smoothness, clear complexion, cleanliness, a striking design, flowing hair, body language. These are all things Jordan lacks. She looks like a background character. Her clothing is pretty plain except for the jacket. Her proportions are pretty masculine, her face is is not smooth or angular, but is a bit bumpy, to be honest, around the jaw line. And a buzz is generally unappealing in women. It's as if her design was done to masculinize her; broad shoulders, muted colors, minimal hair on the head, and a general Die Hard 3 John McClain level of hygiene.
Ciri looks fine. A bit older, which is fine. I don't know the character, but I think she looks pretty cool right now. Don't like the apparent lore breaking though.
I actually preferred the Metroid Prime 1 30s-ish face of Samus Aran over the later appearances when the Zero Suit became her normal armor-free design and, well, she was just turned into eye-candy after that. Actually, look at Isabelle from Dragon Age 2 and the new one. She's wearing A LOT less in the new one and they tried to play up the s3x1n3ss of her, but she's a lot less aesthetically appealing than she was in Dragon Age 2.
@@Highlander77The characters design matches the kind of story, theme, or overall world design. A Death Guard Chaos Space Marine of Warhammer 40K is a walking corpse with many open wounds, bursting pustules, and clear indications of rot due to his allegiance to a God of pestilence, disease, and decay. He aesthetically fits both the world and the theme, making him aesthetically appealing but not visually attractive.
@@Highlander77 >what's so unappealing about the designs of Ciri
Ciri still looks ok. She shifted from having a wild, energetic look to her to looking like a plane Jane with witcher eyes for some reason, though.
>Jordan from Intergalactic
She(or at least I assume that's she) looks generally unappealing. I cannot tell anything about her from her design. She looks like a background NPC.
The only thing that stands out is the bald head.
>Define "aesthetically appealing"
If I were to point out some general things, I would say that character looking healthy would be the first step.
It automatically filters out someone overweight, anorexic, having no muscle, obviously roided, having bad skin and so on.
Then goes some special features like scars(or lack thereof) and muscle ratio. It should be coherent with who they are. For example, you would expect professional assassin and woodcutter to have a different muscle ratio despite both of them being jacked.
Then we have clothes and accessories. I'm not qualified to talk about this one, but it obviously should tell us a bit about characters as well as having stuff like different tones, primary and secondary colours, trim incorporated in their looks and so on.
You can tell that - say - Bayonetta is obviously a witch at the first glance.
@@robinthrush9672 I think Ciri looking significantly older is the main issue with her I see because I believe a lot of us excepted we'd be jumping in as her right after the cutscene we got at the end of Witcher 3 where she's 21 ish.
Witcher 4 Ciri looks like she's hit her low to mid 30's
Pattern: recognized
Wallet: closed
This is why I passed on the Acolyte. Every interview I saw before the game focused on the sexual preferences or gender of the cast and crew. That pretty much told me all I needed to know.
It was an excellent call. That was some of the worst television I’ve ever seen and it sent me down a rabbit hole where I made 6 hours of video on the stupid thing.
Isn't the acolyte a TV show? He called it a game... This guy sounds like he's full of it.
@@gregowen2022 it was good content though! I watched all 4 videos.
@@CVRogers17 it was a typo. I meant TV show but was somewhat distracted while adding my comment. I mean, I AM full of it but not about why I skipped The Acolyte.
I can't even be mad anymore. I feel bad for Star Wars.
We need new legends and new important journeys in Star Wars. Rebels as silly as it was didn't waste time hating on someone, not even the Jedi Order (despite how common it is in everything Filoni is involved with), and it just *tried* to be sincere when it wasn't goofy fun. Other than a few gems, Star Wars has been either fast food tv, pretentious, or intellectually engaging but soulless and spoiled by looking desperate to *seem* mature.
The recent Jedi games -- despite being basic for some -- looked like it was making a new aspirational legend like the OT. Not trendy or self aggrandizing. It seemed aspirational, small scale, lighthearted sometimes, and sincere with a healthy dose of tragedy. Like a needed addition, (rather than a new trend) to Star Wars. But after being handed to Ubisoft, considering how star wars is, all the things part 2 set up, "paid ohmage" to, made references to, and where they left the hero, this just isn't going to go the way we think. We had a good thing with JFO despite it's simplicity.
‘Pattern Recognition’ was my first explanation for the reaction to this trailer.
If this game dropped 10 years ago the reaction would have been entirely different.
That's what I thought as well. The fact that "uglification" of female characters has been so prevalent has primed people to be very skeptical and critical with Ciri's design. Even though it makes sense within the story CDPR are trying to tell. Never mind that they've jumped on the woke bandwagon...
Sad, but true, and I can only blame the industry for that
I wonder if all this incels that complain about Ciri, ever played Witcher 3 or read some of the books.
@@7RicolmE7 I wonder how long it'll take until Poland becomes a Communist commune again...for the 3rd time.
We'd still wabt a face fix but yea the social climate in 2014 was way different and we still had really good games.
Funny little anecdote about woman picking sexualized characters. Back in College we had a Smash Bros night and it was an open invitation. We would get a handful of girls who would come and almost all of them would pick Zero Suit Samus or Bayonetta. Both of which are characters that are difficult to play and they would lose quite quickly, but they kept picking them. They didn't play Peach or Daisy or Lucina or Palutena or Zelda or Samus in her suit. They would mostly pick Zero Suit Samus and then Bayonetta as a second choice. The boys would be playing Villager, K. Rool, Donkey Kong, Ike any assortment of characters, but the girls would nearly always pick Zero Suit Samus.
@AfkAmbiance I 100 percent get it. There is a reason DOOM guy is jacked and all the Gears of War characters looked like weight lighters. And playing as them is fun as heck. I don't want Captain America to look like myself in Marvel Rivals, I want him to look jacked as all heck.
Their pursuit of removing the "male gaze" also sacrifices the fact that women want to play as pretty female character.
I have to give you credit, out of all the exceptions people have had with Bayonetta over the years, you're the first I've seen who's critique is that she appears too masculine.
Companies have done surveys of their playerbase and it's always that exact phenomenon at work. Men pick in an egalitarian manner based on mechanics. Women pick women.
Nothing surprising about women wanting to play the hot avatars. Lara Croft was hugely popular with female gamers. It's a certain breed of puritanical authoritarian feminist game 'journalist' that took issue.
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action” - Ian Fleming
I find being told I have internalized misogyny cuz I don't want to fantasize about being ugly weird. I'm a woman. And if I wanted to be an unattractive person I'd just be me. Why should I spend $60 to $80 to $100 to pretend to be an ugly woman?
Yep. Same here. I don't have much in the looks department, so I like to play characters that have looks. Why is that so hard to understand?
@angelaharris53 As an overweight person, I never pick a chubby character if I can pick an athletic one. I think the thought of players wanting to have themselves represented in a game is very much exaggerated. Games are for escapism, and where's the escapism if you make your character look exactly like yourself with all of your flaws instead of picking your ideal appearance?
@@Immopimmo I'm an athletic middle-aged woman. I don't want to see a "me" analogue as a playable character. It would break my immersion. I *know* what I can and can't do physically, and video game, Power Rangers stuff is not in my ballpark, and I say that as someone who competes in martial arts and does do the XMA category for my age range. I'm just not that fast or athletic and neither are the other women I see. You don't go out online and see other women my age highlighted in videos of it either, but that's the level expected in video game characters and beyond into ridiculous. So if they made one who looked like me, I'd spend all my time laughing and none of it playing. I just couldn't take it seriously on any level. I don't understand why these self-inserts are so important to some of these people. At some point, don't we all like to pretend we're something other than who and what we actually are? I sure do.
absolutely agreed! im a dude and i play woman characters because if i wanted to look at a dude all day i could look in the mirror.
Man leave it to the “ inclusive “ people to be actual sexist and racists. Wow, “internalized misogyny” lmao, holy hell.
Most people, myself included are just exhausted with this “modern audience” ideology in my entertainment.
unfortunately this is still going to carry on for a few years yet. the games being announced now are still games that were approved 2-5 years ago where companies still believed 'modern audiences' exist. These staff members that allowed these games to be made are going to double down because its not about making money.
I LOVE IT!
They're all going to FLOP out of existence! Isn't that absolutely awesome!? I've sold my PS5, this is the best time for your backlog folks!
The world is healing.
On the bright side, it made a lot of people who are addicted to entertainment start to go outside though lol. But seriously, videogames are the new medium for the young generation, of course the "activist" will tap into this new medium.
My ps4 and 360 get more play than my ps5.
@@aminturajev4502 I got an extended hard drive for my ps5 and close to 400 ps4 games to fiddle with.
On Twitter I said I prefer pretty characters over ugly characters as a woman (I'm not gay either) and I got called a gooner. That's par for the course, obviously. But it shows how pointless the discourse has become, you can't express your opinion without being accused of being solely sexually motivated. The tribalism and proliferation of thought terminating clichés has ruined the whole thing, and they won't learn the lesson even when these companies go bankrupt over their poor decisions.
"The tribalism and proliferation of thought terminating clichés has ruined the whole thing."
Couldn't have said it better myself. People are so used to assuming the worst in one another that any attempt at a conversation just devolves into petty shouting matches.
The funny thing is that those accusations are coming from people whose sole goal is spreading and legitimizing their sexual choices
@corenlavolpe6143 I would even argue that being sexually motivated isn't a bad thing either. I don't know why people need to be ashamed for liking sexy things. It's just puritanism honestly. It's possible to watch anime boobies jiggling around for a couple hours a day and go on living a normal life. Sure, some people might get hopelessly addicted to stuff like that (a fact that I admit some of those mobile gacha games take advantage of), but why take it away from everybody because of a few outliers?
You are entitled to your opinion, it is not until someone grabs me that I care, then a line has been crossed, until then I laugh at their stupidity and shaming buzz words, they have no power because I know what I like and want, you owe them nothing
@@Byakkoya11037 "agree to disagree"
The basis of fandoms.
Hate speech to the Right Side of History people.
Amy Hannig was an OG who brought a Shakespearean story to a group of voice actors who had a major theater background. They had so much respect for the script they scrapped the original recording and redid it with the same emotion as they would if they were doing live theater.
Thank you Amy, for giving me the hidden gem that was Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.
Listen to the intro of that game. These feminists cant create a 1/10th of the depth that Amy brought to that series.
The writing of Legacy of Kain will always be lightyears Superior to anything Neil Druckman has written or will ever write, period.
Legacy of Kain Blood Omen/Soul Reaver series fan here! I couldn't agree more with you. I made all the games back then in the 90s'/2000s' (and even bought the recent Soul Reaver remasters; finished the 1st, actually doing the SR2 remaster). The quality and level of Amy's writing as well as voice acting (French version for me, which is really excellent too) are simply legendary. I would love to play new entries in this series (if written by Amy OC) even if I know that she said that the whole story is finished and there won't be any another new game to release in the future. If only she could change her mind... ^^
I wish I could give you more likes! Legacy of Kain was my favorite video game series of all time! A huge part of that was the fantastic story and quality of the voice acting, just second to none!
Amy also was the director for the first three Uncharted games. Very impressive.
@@jamesprumos7775 and unsurprisingly the writing of Uncharted 4 had a stark difference when compared to the trilogy. 4's writing felt like it was missing a lot of the charm of the trilogy and so much of the comedic elements were toned down in exchange for Druckman's more melodramatic style of writing.
"I can't wait to play Critical Theory in Space!" ... Brilliant jab!
There's a topic that I feel has been missed or brushed over regarding Naughty Dog's Stellar Bald...
In that universe, we've apparently mastered space travel by the 1980s. What explanation will they give for this and how _Stunning & Brave_ will that explanation be?
The rumor is that none of this game will actually take place in space. It would be so Druck to tease that and rug pull. I can't wait until he's UA-cam striking people for making videos about how the game doesn't actually have any space parts. It's just ND Metroid.
Critical space theory
Critical space theory
@@titanicpat1275 I would be fine with a soft sci-fi explanation for why Baldina can have a personal craft with FTL and a jukebox, but your intuition that it'll probably be something goofy like it can only be powered by ground-up underprivileged aliens or something and then we all have to feel bad about all the fun corny spaceflight scenes in hindsight.
I like how they only looked at women for the one study not realizing that everyone in the world wants to be seen as sexy and powerful
And they must have bent over backwards to find women who say they don't want to fantasize about being attractive. Because yes. Women want to fantasize about being attractive. Most of us are not. That's just how life works.
As a woman I can say I just want to see good looking characters no matter the gender. Beauty should not be dismissed for some political agenda. Movies and games are meant to inspire not to reflect reality exactly.
It's not even about gender or some level of attractiveness or whatever. It's just simply about good design, a good example I think is to compare Rayman with Ed from Tonic Trouble. Both characters are VERY similar looking, but one character is esthetically pleasing, and one.. is not. Yet neither one have sex appeal. It's about the colour schemes, the facial features, the personalities.
@@Pixel.Lovinglol it's extremely unrealistic and create a delulu beauty standard.
If you ask a random bloke "do you wanna be a Chad or a Chud?" you will get you the exact same answer as asking a random woman "do you wanna be fuckable or fugly?"
The exact same answer you get when asking anyone: "do you wanna look at 0's or 10's, regardless of sex, race, orientation, etc?"
It's almost like "beauty" is universally good and desirable...
BUT BUT BUT BEAUTY IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS ARE BAD! SO WE MUST TEAR THEM DOWN AND REPLACE THEM WITH NEW CONSTRUCTS OUR MENTAL ILLNESSES COLLECTIVELY DECIDED ARE BETTER FOR SOCIETY!
REEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
*sigh*
Game company: 'Our games are not for you.'
Consumers: 'Okay.'
Game company: 'How dare you not buy our games.'
Like clockwork.
"Our money is not for you".
@ThisHandleSystemCanGetNicked 'I identify as non-buynary.'
what they fail to realize is the people they don't want playing their games (aka "racists, "sexists", etc) make up a significant portion of their customer base. they believe they are only alienating a tiny sliver of their potential customers when they shove their woke crap into games because people in the industry are surrounded by other leftists/feminists in development, games journalism, social media, mainstream media, etc.
it's what the left as a whole realized after the election, that there are many more "evil bigots" out there than they ever imagined, which also means they are likely to break out of their spell soon because women and weak men generally lean toward being part of the "winning" team rather than the "truth" team.
"Don't like it, don't buy it?" --> "WHY IS NOONE BUYING OUR GAMES?!" --> "Gamers were a mistake!"
You forgot to call us names for spending our money how we like
The last of us original idea of only women being affected actually would have been cool as a concept and idea. As a women that wouldn’t bother me in the slightest and I can’t think of a good reason why it would or should. For one men and women are different, so fungus affecting one and not the other wouldn’t be sexist. you could come up with a reasons why it’s that way biologically. It would mean you couldn’t populate the earth which could make an interesting storyline
If the reason was testosterone then women could survive by taking shots which would be interesting to see what kind of world that makes in 20 years later.
Well and many women I've known struggled with yeast infections so that would be a vector.
So, Lisa the Painful?
Well I agreed and indicated several ways female could have a unique vector. So, of course, it was censored.
It did use UTI's as one potential vector.
@@thebabyrhino my girlfriend has played all of the Lisa games and I still haven't.
Druckmann is the same guy who was copyright striking UA-camrs in order to hide his story choices in The Last of Us 2 and intentionally used deceptive advertising in the trailer so gamers wouldn’t know the true fate of Joel, the most popular character in the series.
He’s the archetypal male feminist toadie, and used a lot of underhanded tactics to jam his well produced, poorly written feminist fever dream down the throats of gamers.
I refuse to buy anything else with his name on it.
Agreed. His behavior leading up to, and after that launch was gross. I’m going to need HEAVY convincing to make me believe that he hasn’t Drucked all over this game
I was way more emotional invested in Joel than I ever was Ellie. She wasn’t that interesting as a character. Her whole purpose was to make Joel a complex, cool and (mostly) fully realised character.
That’s why the deceptive ads were heinous.
He also " built " the game around his experience as a Jewish man and basically told everybody Jews are better.
I won't go so far as to say I won't buy his games but they are patient games for sure. If the game is reasonably good, I'll buy at $20.
@@Setsuna012how did he say that?
Regarding pattern recognition, there was a great article in Nature around 2008 regarding stereotyping. The article said that stereotyping is an important, adaptive behavior that helps us survive. We judge things a certain way because our experiences indicate that it's usually true -- similar to the recent patterns in video games Greg mentioned. The good news is that people often change their minds more easily than we realize -- a form of Bayesian reasoning.
People who refuse to change their minds -- such as producers who say that customers who don't like a product are bad people -- have "degenerate priors."
So, yes, pattern recognition is a good thing, and the associations are frequently accurate in the realm of entertainment.
What are Degenerate Priors?
I've always found it fascinating that the word "stereotyping" is drilled into us as having negative connotations. It's clearly correct and useful.
@@NedJeffery well it's harder to subvert people if they don't link stereotyping and statistical observation with a negative connotation, as baseline pattern recognition is what is making their subversion and falsehoods seen
You shouldn't need an article in some """scientific""" rag to tell you that pattern recognition is a good thing. If you are trying to survive in the jungle and the last two bright red frogs made you deathly ill when you ate them, *I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN YOU EAT A THIRD BRIGHT RED FROG HMMMM SUCH A MYSTERY*.
Oh yeah I know that exact studies they were referencing in that too... wild to remember how not-cringe Nature used to be at one point.
What about all the women who sexualize themselves? The popstars, the actresses, the rappers? They’re role models too and choose to be sexual so why is it only bad when video games do it?
Superhero movies sexualize male superheroes when they have shirtless scene. But if a movie shows a bikini scene with a woman people cry sexism.
Men an are fine if they are sexualized. Women are the ones very insensitive and insecure about other women being sexualized.
@@petermj1098 TLDR women HATE attractive women.
They are not interested in actually pushing an ideal or advocating for any real change.
They only want to dominate the fields of video games and film. There is no moral prerogative. It's only about cultural domination
I think it's because gaming has been a refuge/escape from that poison. Originally gaming was pretty niche. It seems the powers that (shouldn't) be no longer want to allow that escape from "the message".
@@SurR3AL392 don't forget, that gaming has also dealt with this BS since the beginning of the internet, way back in the forum era.
It is also part of why the original "rules of the internet" became such a standard in the beginning days of the internet (till it all got subverted and crashed and burned when social media did a massive hostile takeover).
Gaming in particular though, is relay hard to actually subvert with "modern agenda/Marxist subversion tactics", as gaming inherently, primes gamers/players, to be meritocratic, and to value meritocracy, which is antithetical to current modern subversion.
It is also why original gamer gate kicked off, as it subverted meritocracy by being a access journalism cabal, and this was known way before the zoie quin allegations, they where just what relay boiled the pot over, and we ended up relay seeing how mask-off the cabal was.
I do not want to play a game where the main protagonist looks like the kind of person who hates me in the real world.
Like I always say if I want ugly. I can walk down the street or look in the mirror.
"If someone is served a terribly cooked dish over and over, they start to become aversed to the ingredients."
Very well said.
"Attack me with all your might"
For sure it took me a decade to be able to drink Sprite after college, because the aversion got so strong
If I wanted to see an unappealing face, I'd look in the mirror. I don't want to spend money on what I can do for free.
You and me both.
@@dougsmith6262 that's exactly what I'm saying!
@@CL053DC45K37Jeez, between this and Greg’s remark about his knees, it’s like the algorithm finally recommended a video made for me
I'm sure yall look fine, but yeah I agree
Honestly when I was just seeing screen shots of Ciri, I at first thought she wasn't that bad they just made her older and more photorealistic. Until I saw the trailer myself and a side by side comparison of Witcher Ciri. Hoo!
They didn't keep her old powers or fighting style, witch I thought were special.
Her voice isn't as sweet. She is too grizzled; she's too Geralt. She just doesn't act like Ciri. And those little things are ignoring the lore issues.
When they want female witchers, they don't realize they are asking for women to undergo a body altering ritual that puts you on death's door step, makes them live a very long time in the harsh horrible world, and makes them infertile "mutants" to the rest of society as a consequence. But at least they get to be action girlies, maybe even better then the guys.
“I want a non-sexualized character.”
DLC literally is entirely about the sexuality of the main character.
They basically plaster it everywhere or have a character in some games tell you their sexual preferences or pronouns these days. Ewww! I WANT TO PLAY A GAME! THAT IS IRRELEVANT.
"That's different"
And that main character is a minor no less
and how he sexualizes abby with the ROUGH sex scene in fiction. I'd rather go back to season six's melisandra reveal of her actually being old back in game of thrones. at least its natural.
“I want a non-sexualized character.”
Rule 34: Your request has been denied. Thoroughly.
This is the same type of pattern recognition that makes people wary of a young man with his hood up and hands in his pockets looking around a room. I'd assume a guy like that is a dangerous criminal, but a progressive would probably approach him, assuming society is unfairly judging him, and get robbed.
I remember that happening recently, the girlfriend of the deceased, refused to help police because of the perpetrator's skin color.
Hey man I'm just trying to walk by. Most I've done is accidentally shoplift.
@@TravisHi_YTA few years they made fun about stuff like that, now it became reality. Lord have mercy.
@@TravisHi_YTdisgusting woman
Niel Druckman is NOT a great writer.
Everything he's ever done is contrived and predictable.
These people are the most predictable people on planet Earth.
Agreed.
They’re all just brainwashed npcs believing everything they were told by their university professor about gender 😂😂😂
Druckmann is the personification of how a C- film or television writer can become "great" in game writing, because the bar is so low, and he bitterly desires to make the industry into a new Hollywood he can be top tiny hat in
Druckman is only great when filtered by someone great.
@@wikipediafollowerwhich is funny because video games having bad stories was never true. People were either playing the wrong games or not appreciating the nuances.
You know, the Acolyte approached SW with this exact same attitude...look how that turned out
The main pattern I see here is how accurate Greg's takes are 🎯
Except that the Witcher 4 will do well with gamers. CDPR is infested by dei and woke ideology, they hired a phuckin woke activist to work on the Witcher 4 a woman who hates men and you don't think she's not going to inject herself into the game and her insane ideology?
Up until the Witcher 4 comments. I'd do some research on that game and CDPR. It has all the warning signs.
i suppose having a ga.y guy on this topic gives these takes more credibility but it doesn't take away the irony.
As a gamer I think the main thing for me is that when I see horrid looking characters, its almost always a self insert by a horrible person. Those people hate gamers, and they want to make games that lecture you about why you are a bad person. At least they are easy to spot and saves us money.
„It’s only non-conventional attractive player models“
„It’s only optional upper body surgery scars“
„Do a Barve, bigot!“
It’s never „only“ the things they initially claim it is.
The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.
The Slippery Slope is not a fallacy. If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll want a glass of milk. If you give these people an inch, they'll take a mile.
This has ALWAYS since day one been about making YOU accept someone else's values and way of life. Don't give them anything. Don't make a single concession. I'm old enough to remember the days of "Who cares what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home?" Ya, this is why I care. Because it's never enough. What starts as acceptable in their home becomes acceptable in their business, then what's acceptable in public, to what's encouraged in public, followed by what's mandatory in YOUR home.
It always progresses.
Tolerance, Acceptance, Celebration, Participation.
I did a barf when I saw Failhard🤮
A bharve is when someone forgets to pretend to uphold someone else’s schizo fantasy and they do a bunch of push-ups so that everyone knows they did a bad thing. It’s slightly gayer than whipping oneself as penance for a sin, but not as gay as kneeling for different-skin justice.
Leads with a woman shaving her head.
“Why do you care so much. You’re just looking for things”
Because we all know where this is going....I mean, would it kill you to have an attractive woman as a Bait and switch?
As shes staring at the mirror with her weird androgynized face and a goofy smirk. They basically introduce their protagonists as comic relief side villains 😂
Then get mad when we dont like them
so how girly should she have been? how much time and attention would someone whos occupation is shooting things in space devote to their appearance?
@ keep that same energy with pretty, square jawed men in action movies and we’ll talk. It’s fiction, bro. Action stars are presented as attractive because they are idealistic. In real like, Indians Jones would be a scared up mess with a crooked nose and missing teeth, but he wasn’t. Stop pretending you don’t understand this concept
@@coffeebux Taken straight from the goarmy website for appearance guidelines on female hair:
Hair length
Women in the Army don’t have to cut their hair. You can have any hair length if it is worn up. If worn down, your hair should not extend beyond the lower edge of your collar when standing up straight in uniform.
Hairstyle
Hair may be worn in multiple styles, such as ponytail, braid, twists, bun, or locs with a side twist to secure hair. Long hair should be worn neatly pinned above the lower edge of the collar. Your hair must be neat in appearance and not interfere with the ability to wear authorized headgear.
Hair accessories
Hair accessories used to secure your hair must not be distracting or decorative. You can use black rubber bands, rubber bands that match your hair color, and plain accessories used to secure your hair that aren’t distracting or decorative.
Highlights and coloring
Hair dyes, tints, highlights, or bleaches must have the same general appearance as natural hair and should blend together in a subtle and natural way.
Wigs and extensions
Wigs and extensions must look natural and may not be used to cover unauthorized hairstyles. Hair should be neat in appearance without impacting proper wear of headgear.
5:24 ''...I wanted to create one of the coolest non-sexualized female video game protagonist, and in Las of us we did that...'' Yeah, they did. And then almost a year later they released Left Behind DLC, where Ellie is portrayed as a teenage lesbian
I dont know if left behind is same as the last of us 2 but in tlou2 , ellie has a very intimate scene with her friend whos a girl. So much for non-sexualizing character.
there's a distinct difference btwn TLOU and TLOU2 biggest being in the TLOU ellie was a normal girl who did normal girl things she was also younger and her dynamic with joel felt more like a dad and his daughter even tho that wasn't the case and people like that but with TLOU2 now ellie's older and now suddenly a lesbian and i don't much care for that but then they killed off joel and wtf neil and we got the terminator abbey supposed woman all to say if you make the game normal with known elements people will like it but if you insert your own ideologies people won't like it and personally i won't ever forget how neil said he wanted to be taken by abby and how the internet roasted him for that and he didn't like it so good game design matters to people crazy i know xD
@@emmanuelwil-jeff Puncuation ffs. Throw in a period once in a while, nobody wants to figure out where one sentence ends and another starts in this incoherent babble.
@DarkSun123456789 grammar police right here too bad no one gives 2 shits can you read this correctly
@@emmanuelwil-jeffI'm not reading all that.
This is how elites are programming kids
The first rule is over saturation with information.
That's precicly why stuff like this is pushed further and further.
This is how elites programmed kids and created the industry we see today. It's a cycle that's restarting.
Ugly women in games are like puddles of oil under used cars. Sure, it could be an exception, but most of the time it's a massive red sign screaming that the rest of the product is rotten.
Why they need to be ugly though? It make no sense. Their personality already ugly, at least make them pleasant to look at.
Actually a very good analogy.
So a car that sprung a measly oil leak is spoiled
@@Momo-xs8mo No, I've had vehicles with slow leaks from the rear main seal in the past. If there's a big puddle of oil under a car, it's a sign that someone probably hasn't been taking very good care of it. Maybe it's just old and that's the only issue, but it's not likely.
I gotta say though. As a woman, I just hate ugly looking characters. Female or male. I found the main character of red dead redemption really off putting. Just make beautiful people. We have enough ugliness in the real world.
I’ve learned my lesson. The first trailer, along with the developers’ past work and their behavior toward gamers, is enough to judge a game..no gameplay needed.
Crazy how people today are all about "watch for red flags," when those are clear red flag indicators (for gamers, at least)
At this point it's gone beyond the product being garbage. Even if they suddenly start making amazing gameplay, I refuse to financially incentivize the continued existence of people who hate us.
Neil reminds me of George lucas writing the prequels. He has talent and ideas but needs to be tempered by other people or else you get attack of the clones.
after Amy Hennig left (and some say that she was main writer of TLOU1, and it shows) Naughty Dog never recovered and never will
I'm still hoping she makes another Soul Reaver game.
Why are you just flat out making sht up and talking completely out of your arse? 😂 Amy was never involved in TLOU. Just because you don't like Neil, it doesn't mean you just make up nonsense like this up.
Straley was involved in 1 but not 2, co-creator. Hilariously enough, the TLOU TV show only mentioned Neil to cater to his ego.
Hennig was responsible for uncharted, haven't heard anything about her working on tlou
They kick the woman out, and now the players hate their female protagonists. Go figure.
I get the strong impression that Neil is egotistical, and now that anyone who would have challenged him is gone and he’s the head of the studio, all of his ideas will go unchecked, and I think it’s going to get extremely self-indulgent.
Intergalactic smells like a pretentious, preachy lecture about how evil and horrible I am delivered by an insufferable walking (cringe) trope, made by someone who professes to actively despise me and all like me. Yeah, not a good pitch to convince me to give them my money.
Lotta projection going on here buddy. All we saw was a female bounty hunter going after a mark on a planet that's apparently very dangerous. And that there's some sort of religious sect involved. Oh, but she shaves her head, so now it's going to be a preachy lecture about how bad white males are, I guess...
Funny, you just described TLOU 2
That's because it is
@@InfiniteWatcher likely because that's all the author bothers to write. Maybe he can write other things, but I've never seen it happen.
That's what I'm expecting from this. Some kind of extreme antiwytness
The woke stuff does tend to come as a package deal - if you see one woke thing (e.g., girl boss) you tend to see other woke things (e.g., white man bad, race swaps) so it is reasonable to hesitate if you see something political. As for Druckman, I'm curious as to how we're supposed to tell the difference between a developer giving 'representation' to teen lesbians versus a developer exploiting teen lesbians for profit versus a developer who just likes to think about teen lesbians.
It's like if you complained about all the j*w hating in n**i germany and they just point to the smoke break or any of the other less objectionable things or even good things they brought (or at least happened during their reign) and they go "well I guess you just don't like reasonable thing then" it's such a childish tactic.
Well to answer your last question (in what weirdly is probably an overly charitable way for Druckman) ... I think it's one hundred percent 'exploiting teen lesbians for profit' ...but also for social capital. Social capital that will entrench the journalism/propaganda apparatus on his side, inoculate his work against criticism, skyrocket his chances for industry awards, and continue to propel him from his white maleness (the devil in his religion) into the DEI priestly class... making him untouchable. It's a shrewd and wildly self serving form of 'greater good' he pursues. He's the dude who volunteered at the soup kitchen to put it on his college application.
And he wrote it when thinking about his daughter. 🤮
100% it wasn’t just Ciri’s face radically redesigned, it’s her voice, tone and attitude. Not to mention what is happening in the trailer itself. And every single cdpr statement has been red flag city.
I don't hesitate anymore when I saw something I thought was deliberately uglyfied I just lose all interest of buying the game but I do enjoy seeing it get wreck online though I guess that's the only fun thing about this kind of games.
If designing a main character that isn't sexualized you need to give them a good personality that people can get attached to them and see them in a positive way. But if they're unappealing both physically and personality wise, thats a bad character no one wants to play.
Yep, characters have various forms of appeal. Appearance alone has many different types of appeal. If you want to make a game where a fat and happy lady is running a business you totally can! Thing is, personality, colors, everything still needs to be well designed and I don't think there's a single person in the world who considers politics appealing. Engaging maybe, but not appealing
It's like if your boss calls you at 8pm on a Saturday night when you know the shedules are fixed on saturday nights and he has - multiple times in the past - scheduled you for a 6am Sunday morning shift. Do you answer the phone? Maybe he only wants to call you to thank you and say he arranged a prize to reward your great work?
You can't say it's impossible.
But why wouldn't you give such a benefit of the doubt to someone who has proven they don't deserve it.
exactly, why give the benefit of the doubt to Naughty Dog, what have they done to deserve it? They only released one of the most well received games in the history of the industry.
@@joesizzle10The Last of Us was released in 2013, 11 years ago. Naughty Dog of today isn’t the same company of 11 years ago. A company is its people, as people have evidently learned from BioWare. The game director for the last of us had left the company in 2017 and Neil Druckmann is a very different person than he was 11 years ago, as is the rest of the company.
@@Cardinalsqr Thank you. People still think companies are some sort of unchanging monolith. No, they are made of people, and 99% of people who worked in Last of Us 15 to 11 years ago have probably long left the company. Who works in the same place for decades nowadays? Especially if HR goes woke and they start requiring stuff like sensitivity training.
Very good analogy.
The self-own of Naughty Dog almost making a "feminist" game where women are the main and only antagonist (with all agency stripped from them) reminds me of the self-own of Amazon trying to make a girl-boss LOTR show which retcons the story so that an incompetent, petulant woman is the reason for everything bad that happens in Middle Earth ever. It's so funny how these white knight intentions lead to the exact opposite of what they are trying to achieve.
Do you think it's subconscious? Quite often people force themselves into beliefs they don't actually agree with, and I wonder if some of these people have an inner contempt for the things that they preach. They might talk about these problems on the surface, but perhaps deep down they're secretly finding new ways to do the exact opposite.
What's funny is i actually don't find the female only zombies that bad of an idea, it brings to mind the strong theme of men failing one of our most important duties: Protect women, and with every zombie the males have to kill it is a constant reminder of their failure, plus if most women are zombies, then very little children exist and the few uninfected women locked up, hidden and seen and extremely valuable objects with no agency.
Just a depressing world with no female energy that makes life worth living which would lead to a lot of men just killing themselves or risk being turn apart by a female zombie just be held by a woman.
It's really not a bad idea, but one feminists will hate because it is focused on gender differences between men and women.
I find it hilarious how their projection proves *they* are the real ist&phobes.
@@le_fancy_squidit’s the male feminist trope: deep down they are sexist (or at least objectify women) and they try to compensate by being an “ally” and end up accidentally making something stupid at best or sexist at worst.
It’s like racism of low expectations. “Women are helpless damsels in distress and they need me to come save them from the patriarchy since they can’t save themselves. They are so insecure about their bodies I’ll make my characters ugly so they don’t feel threatened.”
@@DeltaDanner Well put.
Soon as I saw the trailer I just thought “dead on arrival, and then it’ll be our fault for being misogynistic, sexist etc blah blah blah.”
IGN is already giving it a 9/10
That is utterly absurd.
IGN will definitely give it a 10/10.
@ Actually yeah now that I think about it.
IGN is RIH (H for hell).
Critics also *loved* cuties. A good axiom is, whenever critics love something, it's probably dogshit, and when they hate something, it's probably worth checking out
You're wrong, ign going to give this a 10 out 10 lol
Saying anything positive about Anita Sarkesian is a huge red flag.
I completely agree with your pattern recognition claims at 13:30. If you are willing to compromise the story by changing characters or situations in a game or show, to fit your personal important ideals, you are willing to change important concepts about story telling and truths that people will not enjoy or be happy with.
There is a form of “ugly” that can work, but it’s basically in the realm of monstrous characters that have traditionally not attractive features but are usually still portrayed in a noble or cute manner. But the point of monstrous characters is usually that they’re tough and scary but the player can find some inner greatness to them. But that’s a far cry from all the recent otherwise normal characters who just happen to be ugly because devs don’t want to appeal to men on purpose, which is what we’ve seen over and over recently.
Personality goes a long way, but it's a problem to make the character less appealing in looks and unappealing in personality.
I think u imagined something like a Pokemon game but we play as the Pokemon, instead of Pokemon trainers. But then you need pretty looking Npcs to be the trainers that are Npcs. You need a normal looking boy or girl in the game. But you and I know they can't do that. Because their aim is to target and remove femininity and feminine beauty in their games. And to reduce Men too.
Woke characters are ugly on the outside *and* the inside
An ugly character can still be likeable. It's just more pattern recognition. You can tell when a character is going to be insufferable, arrogant, and annoying to be around. You want me to pay $70 to spend 20 hours with this character? Nah, I'm good. I want to spend my time with likeable people and likeable characters.
@@Brekfastmachine Spend 0$ and play free to play games like Naraka Bladepoint and First Descendant bro! They want to give you Ugly chars and you have to pay for em! But Devs in Asia give you beautiful perfect characters for free... Haha which you choose? You played those games bro? Naraka Bladepoint I highly recommend yeah!!
Mr Owen, honestly your channel is one of my favorite things in the internet, I like your honesty and your "dad talks about stuff vibes". Thank you for what you do :)
Yeah, he aligns perfectly with how I evaulate and think about entertainement, and he is very articulate in making a logical argument that flows easily from point to point... very based, and always spot on.
That is incredibly kind of you to say, thank you!
👏 Totally agree! I also learned to be careful with my coffee while watching his videos because I have choked from laughing hard while drinking my morning coffee too many times! 😂😂😂 ☕️ And his mugs are always funny so I love seeing them. Lol!
As a Christian dad of five who has fostered kids in the past, watching Greg's videos makes me feel like I'm hanging out with a close friend.
I fully believe that the folks trying to “fix” things are making them actively worse. As someone also cautiously excited for the Witcher 4, I completely understand why people are concerned. Because the people trying to make things better have damaged them so much that a trailer that would have been super cool 10 years ago is making people raise their eyebrows
What I always find both hilarious and infuriating is that having women dressed in skimpy revealing outfits is objectification but women dressing in skimpy revealing outfits is empowerment. A woman is still on display for all the world to see in either situation. The end result is the same.
Okay, so the counter to this (because I've had this exact conversation before) they'd give is that at least then a woman is doing it of her own volition whereas if you make a character in a video game dress skimpy, you're basically showing you hate women or something.
My answer to that response is: it's a video game character. It's already an object. Why is objectifying an object immoral? Lol.
EDIT: and, lo and behold, someone made this exact point, lol.
I mean, the difference is that real women are able to make the choice to wear whatever they want. I personally don't think there's anything wrong with female characters wearing skimpy outfits (as long as it fits the style/setting/character), but that's why those are different things.
I'm also not a huge fan of how far and long everyone has conceded the territory of 'objectification' as some horrific unnatural sin. So what if women are objectified in video games? I have yet to see a cogent argument (not based on feelings or speculation on feelings) that that is something that requires combatting or that it would even be remotely close to the first place in line to start. Every human in the course of daily life that you don't know is an object to you in some way or another. Hell, most marriages that dry up in the bedroom ... are due to the partners losing the ability to objectify (at least temporarily) one another. In many ways, appropriately objectifying other people at appropriate times is the healthy, humane way to navigate life and the world -- being unable to do so would be grotesque and debilitating.
Furthermore, from inception ... the battle against objectification in gaming has never been waged in good faith. For good or ill, being aesthetically pleasing to others carries a measure of power and value in this world. People who don't have that aesthetic value or those farthest removed from it -- hate it; resent it because they will never have access to that value or power. This whole movement away from 'objectification' in gaming has always been a crusade by the resentful on behalf of people who never asked for it in a sphere where it wasn't needed. It's only ever been about reducing pleasure and trying to engineer tastes to a more equitable place for insecure people.
Feminists create male vs female conflict. The skimpy outfit is bait for such conflict. They're mad.
@@farharbor3178 as someone who has suffered from social anxiety for a huge chunk of my life, I agree 100%. Don't let the insecure people like me run the world. They're pretty much worse at being actual people in every single way than the 'normies' they despise. And that's no way to be motivated, move forward, or do better. You don't improve with subpar material.
The lead lore designer for Witcher 4 (who didn’t work on the previous titles) is your run of the mill western prog, who can’t help themselves to inject their real world politic believes into the game. He was in favor of the changes Netflix did compared to the Witcher books. Most of his comments both on the tv show and about Witcher 4 are major red flags.
100 %
>He was in favor of the changes Netflix did compared to the Witcher books.
So was the original writer. Gonna call him a western prog too?
yes and they hired a woman from spiderman 2 who said "we need to pull all levels for queer representation" and an unhinged lunatic for lore master. Its fried.
@@leadpaintchips9461 yes, he is and he only cares about money, or you are unaware how he wanted more money from witcher 3 because he didnt expect it to be this successful?
@@arkgaharandan5881 No, just pointing out they hypocrysty of ripping into the director of the game while being silent towards the person's work we're supposedly so defensive about.
I'm just sick of all this stupid bickering about women and minorities in media, leading to poorer quality overall as people go out of their way to prove that their point is 'right'.
When the cast for the Wheel of Time show was being announced in 2019 many of us could see the writing on the wall.
My favorite fun fact for the Wheel of Time series is that the Haremlit reddit community actively claims it and it meets the genre criteria set in the reddit
@tannerbowen5536 I had to look that up term up. Lol
These fools really fucked up. Wheel of time was the perfect device of this whole feminism agenda. The writer of that book really did a good job yet these holywood fools felt they still had to mess with the lore. It wasnt woke enough.
@@tannerbowen5536 I mean... it is a "harem", by the East Asian definition of the trope. The main character ends up with three wives, one is a tsundere, and it even has the "strangled by the red string" trope going on with the last one due to magical foresight shenanigans. So yeah, it's technically a harem series, but when we're so reductive, we might as well call it a post-apocalyptic series as well, since all of it takes place after the high-civilization of the Age of Legends was ended by the Breaking of the World.
@@Horvath_Gabor
Don't forget the handful of isekai sequences
Meanwhile at Warhorse studios…
(Camera pans to devs tripping in piles of money & positive reviews)
I completely disagree that a zombie virus that only effect women would be a bad idea for a game. That is incredibly rich storytelling territory. Imagine being a man, wired to carry on with the building of society, but the very mechanism that we have to bring about the next generation is slowly being taken from us. Imagine the heart wrench that every "zombie" you kills is a thousand unknown futures flushed down the toilet in order the save the here and now.
I agree, it is the inverse dynamic of ME’s genophage it would make for a game with a lot of tough decisions.
It would also take the whole 'men are expendable/have no inherent value' to nightmare extremes. The survival of the species now depends on the survival of the few viable women left, who absolutely can't be placed in anything even remotely dangerous. Literally everyone is stuck getting screwed in that situation, not to mention the population collapse that'd happen in a couple of decades time. So you'd have to wipe out the zombies now, in this generation, because there simply wouldn't be anyone left to do it later.
Yeah, I’m a woman and I thought it could actually be a really heart wrenching plot. Imagine being a woman in that environment too. Also a father daughter plot line would work well too, especially if they don’t know at first that only females are affected. Maybe the father could think that it doesn’t affect his family if it’s only himself and his daughter-for example, he could get hit by the monster and then he doesn’t get infected.
So, he might assume that his family might be immune.
They wouldn’t have to reveal right away that it’s only females. That could be an early plot point but it’s revealed slowly.
And if the father is protecting his daughter that would be really impactful.
@@narnia1233Not only would it take "men are expendable" to a terrifying extreme but it would put so much emphasis down the line on why women are so valuable to humanity. In a story like that, women become synonymous with life, preservation, and perseverance. What better way to say women are needed, important, and irreplaceable, right? Especially if it's a father-daughter story.
Dude, I recommend you the Lisa the painful, is an rpg maker game of a post apocalypse where females got almost extinct all except one, Lisa, it is a very soul crushing experience
Not just physically unappealing, but these characters also have horrible personalities.
If you're a game journalist, you're allowed to say that the game will be good just from the trailer alone. But if you're the consumer and you point out that the game looks bad, you'll be bombarded with "IT'S JUST A TRAILER BRO!"
And yeah, the main character looks terrible, so bad in fact that a simple image edit posted on Twitter looks way better. Let's not forget that the Devs can make good looking characters, they just choose not to for ideological reasons.
YES! This is my favorite type of comment I’ll sometimes receive. “It’s not out, you don’t know!” Weirdly, I never see comments on positive reaction videos saying “How can you know it’s good, it’s not out yet!”. They put out a trailer to tell us about the project, we react to it. Just because the reaction is negative doesn’t invalidate it
Yea witcher as a world has an established precedent of very attractive female characters. Fans demanding to maintain that aesthetic design is valid since the customer is always right in matters of taste.
The other group that irks me is the "I don't care so neither should you" types. I'm like "ok if you don't care than you won't object if they make ciri hot like the 3rd game."
Seriously the minute you have customers that will buy the product either way why even listen to them?
@@gregowen2022 I think it goes hand in hand with toxic positivity. You're not allowed to criticize, only praise, especially when it comes to slop.
That's like saying it's just a sample. Yeah it's a little bit of the product. If this little bit of the product sucks this badly I can only imagine how much the rest of it sucks!
@@MamaMOB Especially if this little bit that sucks is probably them putting their best foot forward, why else would they show you THIS little bit instead of the better ones?
1:30 the like button lit up the moment he said "boop"
i don't understand why it's so hard
Stellar Blade : hit
1st Descendant : hit
Marvel Rival : hit
Dustborn : flop
Concord : flop
Veilguard : flop
i mean the pattern is there. and they still refuse to admit.
They pursued stylization instead of realism?
Ugly doesn’t sell. Never will.
They will try and act like bg3 was actually woke lmao
@@kurodo9926 It was, y'all are just coping because it proves your philosophy wrong.
@@Terranallias18 my guy, research what philosophy even means first.
Also a game that let's you add and roleplay your own ideas inherently can't take one side of your petty politics.
I compare the Ciri thing to how I feel about Echos of Wisdom where you play as Zelda.
I was SO HAPPY with the game that Zelda had her own unique play style and wasn't just "Link with a Zelda skin on" but still was a hero, and I feel like that's what people wanted with Ciri, not a replacement for Geralt, but showing in her own way she can do the job of a Witcher.
Exactly. And it would be also great excuse to invent some new fight mechanics to much her. Instead of that, it looks like she is reshaped to match fighting mechanics of Witcher 3.
@@ravensblade It's like they wanted to make another Witcher game but HAD to have Ciri as the protagonist too, so they changed a bunch of shit and ham-fisted her into the game. That's just a recipe for a bad game
@@funtourhawk But that's not even a problem. Ciri was set up as next character in the series, and she has lore-wise been trained as a Witcher and wanted to do job of a Witcher. You could do that nicely without making her a true mutated witcher. For example her using sword fighting styles or knowledge about monsters wouldn't be wrong. Her using silvers swords also not a problem. She could and propably should lose some of her powers and you can make hunting and preparation phase that is unique for her.
It looks to me that it simple lazy job of trying to use the same mechanics of potions and "powers" instead of inventing a new ones. Instead of thinking how Ciri would actually do a job of Witcher with her own abilities that Geralt didn't have, it's how to fit her to old Witcher mechanics.
@@ravensblade That's far too much work for them to do. They gotta go the lazy route.
It's a real shame that gamers were so upset Zelda was not realistic and hot enough to fap to that the game flopped on the sales, right? Right?
Witchers - "We never want to perform the trial of the grasses again. It's cruel and traumatic and has a high mortality rate. I would never put someone I care about through that"
Activists - "I'm going to go ahead and deflect this on how gamers are sexist and hate women."
Ciri being an actual Witcher sounds like a downgrade to me. Her elder blood and magic are stronger than any Witcher could ever hope to be.
@@MaidenlessScrubCirisously, not my favorite ending to 3 at all. Total downgrade.
@@MaidenlessScrub yeah but it’s not titular, therefore it’s lesser.
Oddly similar to the whole trans movement...
@MaidenlessScrub except the one paints a massive target on her back and leaves her a glass cannon especially as a monster hunter and the other solves both those problems.
Stalker’s characters always looked like clay that wasn’t fired properly, but those games are still beloved.
Female stalkers exist. They just dress in available stalker suits so look like any other stalker. Stalker is unique.
"Sexism of low expectations" 😂
Did you know the trailer for the new bald mixed girl is actually a straight rip off of Akira? They can’t even design their own aesthetically pleasing shit either!
Always good to remind people they don’t owe businesses anything.
I swear bro, their fixation on ugly characters needs to be studied. I get it that you wanna bring realism, but that doesn't translate to "Uglify Everything". Like, it felt like they did this as some sort of 'fetish'
It's for the trans gaze probably. Like, men make ugly women in general and they want you to accept their standards of 'beauty'
These same type of people have said Western beauty standards are racist so add that to the equation
I live in an area with very attractive people so these ugly freaks are unrealistic to me.
It’s not that complicated really. They were told it was moral to “not appeal to the male gaze,” which essentially means “make characters as ugly to straight men as possible” to these people.
“They” do the same thing they always do when they “influence” other cultures… they subvert and destroy…. They are parasites.
Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist's real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.
I don’t understand how people can look at Ciri and think “ugly.” They must have some top tier gooning level of beauty standards 😭
She isn’t hot or ugly but they made her face to sharp making it look like a witch’s face from some angles if they brought her chin in a bit and softened her features to be feminine and not as masculine for her jaw line she would start to look like ciri imo
I like how whenever we talk about female characters in video games, several of them just magically cease to exist for the sake of pretending that we've never had great female characters in video games before. "I wanted to create the FIRST super cool non-sexualized female video game character!!!" (please ignore the fact that Nintendo already did that nearly 30 years ago with Samus Aran in the og Metroid games).
She was kinda sexualized. I wouldn't exactly call a woman in a leotard the height of titillation but that'd be enough to get on some puritans shit list. Later on though she really isn't ever even the zero suit is genuinely practical given the nature of the suit. Zelda also isn't sexualized nor is peach though they do get captured. Cynthia in Pokemon is another considered one of the harder champions and got around a lot in gen 5. Iris is another one she becomes the champion in the gen 5 sequels and is a black girl. Lot of "black" anime characters are just dark skinned Japanese who can get pretty dark but she genuinely qualifies. Pokemon in general since the sexuality needs to be low key.
Nearly 40 years ago, actually. But just because Nintendo did it once (in an era where games barely even had stories, and none of the Metroid games have had much in that regard), that means we should be all set with it and shouldn't continue having games with strong female characters? No one is claiming that these are the "first" time that's been done...
@@Highlander77 uhh yes they do. if not explicitly then its through their work. if they recognize that it has indeed been done before then why do they advertise their work as if it hasn't then? also his point wasn't "we should stop having strong female characters" its that people ignore the ones that already exist. reading comprehension my friend.
@@xaevius5319 you're making this up, lol. I haven't seen any marketing for these games that implies, explicitly or otherwise, that strong female characters in games haven't been done before. This is frankly just a strawman argument.
I've never had an issue with great women in gaming - Nova, Kerrigan, Tanya and that barbarian lady from golden axe from Red Alert, and a whole host of women from tekken and sf immediately come to mind. The modern trend of pretending they don't count because they are problematic for some reason or another has made me more intolerant I feel
I see nothing wrong with how Ciri looks. What I have a problem with is how she's portrayed. In Witcher 3, she's her own character and has her own abilities. She was raised by Geralt, but she's not the same person as Geralt. She's clearly her own person. However, the cinematic trailer they showed just made her look like "Geralt, but girl." It felt like they could have just replaced Ciri with Geralt in that trailer and nothing would have changed. If I'm going to play as Ciri, I want to play as Ciri, not as female Geralt. If I want to play as Geralt, I can play Witchers 1 through 3.
It is, of course, just one cinematic trailer, so things could change or the game's story could have good explanations for why Ciri is like this now, but right now, this is my only criticism.
Largely agree.
Ah No problem how Cirri looks? Are you another one of those that didn't see the Naraka Bladepoint Witcher trailer? Or u totally ignored that? Go and compare Naraka Bladepoint and Witcher 4, how Cirri looks like. I think Sapkowski will be praising the Chinese this time and Cykablyat his own Polyaks!
They got what they wanted though. Publicity. Literally millions upon millions are talking about this, and that's what CDPR wanted. To bring attention to their project.
They are uncrowned masters of PR. Just look at what they've done with a bad game like Cyberpunk(i.e. sales of said game) just by releasing a subpar anime. They know they own gamers, and it'll be no different with Witcher 4.
@@zaskiaalsakila7248 I saw what she looks like in Naraka Bladepoint. It's clearly a slightly more cartoony style than what Witcher 4 is going to go for. It looks good for something like Fortnite, but since CDPR tends to go for a more realistic style, it wouldn't work for their game.
@@bmsuperstar1 The age of "any publicity is good publicity" is over no matter how much you guys try to gaslight others that it isn't. The Ciri situation is negative publicity which WILL bite them in the back soon. Also, cyberpunk got a second chance thanks to the japanese studio Trigger and something tells me they're not coming back to save CDPR's butt this time.
I can't speak for everyone but my joy for Naughty Dog vanished when they massively shit the bed with TLOU2 and and it will take a miracle to regain that trust for me.
But whats wrong with teenager lesbians taking out entire armies with their bare hands just to discover the power of friendship in the end? 😂
Ah... TLOU... never have I enjoyed an original so much, and had so little interest in playing the sequel.
No other channel gets me to so consistently hit the like button simply by making me chuckle in the way that I am asked to do so. I realize that's very specific praise, but I need you to know how much the effort into that particular joke is appreciated.
Haha, I genuinely DO appreciate it! It started off as a weird one-liner, but now it’s fun to come up with a new one each time
@@gregowen2022 funny enough that's one of the reasons I subbed to you. I enjoy how creative you get!
@@gregowen2022 I also like your channel, can you give a heart to comment 😊
If I wanted to play a fantasy in which I was an ugly male or female I would just role-play as myself. When I play a game, I want to be someone attractive and interesting and doing interesting things.
One of the reasons why Baldur’s Gate is so popular is because most of the characters, PC and NPC, are appealing in looks, personality, and story.
Arcane too
Even the demons.
I thought it was mostly the bear.
@@realistic_delinquents2 arcane went full woke bullshit sadly.
@@Steir12 LGBTQ+ product commercially successful and critically acclaimed = umm its actually correct representation and good so no woke
if not = WOKE GARBAGE!!! 😡😡
Spot on again good sir. It's getting irritating to be honest. I don't need people who want my money preaching to me about what I like and what I want to see.
Quality keeps taking a hit because the people who make these calls have lost sight of what makes a story "good".
It is as easy as not giving them the money.
Their only goal is to entertain us. If they're failing at it, they don't get paid.
I suppose these people were thinking they now own the media, so they are in a position to dictate what we should buy, because apparently we're all mindless junkies who can't stop consume.
But in reality they would just collapse this media. And new actually good media would appear in the vacuum they would create.
It's weird. Nobody was noticing anything just few years back and now suddenly everybody notices. And they notice all kinds of things, not necessarily gaming related. World is becoming more interesting by a day.
I think it’s a consequence of folks in entertainment using it as a marketing tool. It’s not so much a hidden code everyone is noticing, as much as actually listening to what writers and directors are saying in interviews and speeches and then seeing the pattern in their work. 15 years ago, it either wasn’t as prevalent, or the folks making it weren’t as vocal, so calling it out either looked like reaching or being paranoid, but now it’s all out in the open.
It's almost like the more something happens the more people notice it happening. Isn't that crazy! If I slap you 25 times you're probably going to be madder the 25th times in the first time.
You do understand that pattern recognition requires something to happen over and over and over again right? You're not going to notice a pattern the first time cuz it's not a pattern yet. But the 20th time that something happens you're going to go hey this keeps happening, I think it's a pattern. It's almost like it takes time for pattern recognition to work.
@@MamaMOB Yeah, obviously, I've no idea why'd you feel the need to explain the obvious. You do understand, from reading my comment, that I'm not speaking strictly only of gaming, right? I've been "noticing" for a decade now and it seems that slowly everybody else catches on.
One could call that the advent of critical theory 😂
Ciri just looks like she aged, I think most of this outrage is by people who don't play these games
0:28 Never noticed this but if you pause at the timestamp you can see Ciri's eyes have cat slits like Geralt and other Witchers, which is wrong because you only get eyes like that from the trials of the grasse which Ciri never took because she was too old and the recipe for the potions needed was lost long ago thus no more Witchers. Witcher 4 will be bad because they've ignored world building and retconned something unnecessary as Ciri is a powerful mage who's abilities match most Witchers thus negating the necessity for the trials. Ciri's magic is way more powerful than signs which are basically "magic for dummies." Also potions are used by Witchers to mimic magic that mages use. I think OP writing off this by saying it's a cinematic is childish optimism when we all know better because of pattern recognition. Also CDPR has only recently got enough goodwill back because if y'all remember the launch of Cyberpunk and how for years it was unplayable and CDPR told people to go F themselves until recently when they fixed it and released a good anime about cyberpunk. CDPR isn't the same studio that made the Witcher anymore just like Naughty Dog isn't the same studio that made Jak and Daxter or Uncharted 2&3.
Nerd I’m not reading all this shit
Jk I did
Youre talking about Cirilla, the person who hates their elder blood, hates that they're royalty, hates being hunted down for her blood, and wanted nothing more than to be a Witcher. You really think that the most headstrong character wouldn't go through the trial just to prove all the in-universe (and out like you) naysayers that she can in fact do the thing you say she can't do. The girl was in Night City for a while you think she can't figure out some chemistry?
Pretty sure they’re also inventing a whole new all female Witcher school just to explain it away. Plus the potions would kill her too without the mutations
@@TheYardninjagoes against the pre written rules of the fiction, there are no new witchers, that would just be bad writing
LOL what a bunch of idiot. The book never said there CAN NEVER be new witcher, just that the method was lost when kaer morhan fell. Not that all methods and writing has been lost in the wild in all the world. And that they didn't have a mage who knows how to carry out the process.
Both of which are not impossible to surmount.
And no girl witcher was produced as boys have higher survival rate than girl, thus their focus on boy apprentices.
However i doubt there was any witcher candidate that is like ciri, trained in witcher art, exposed to mutagen when younger, possess hardy constitution and have eldar blood.
So impossible? You over step yourself in saying what the book never said
Your, "The worst that could happen is you'll miss out playing a fun game. (Eye roll)" reminds me of something that I have stressed to my children. "Playing video games should be fun, which is a good thing. But in the end, never forget that it's just a waste of time." Let me add that I also play and enjoy video games. I'm playing Mechwarrior 5 right now.
Yep, there are plenty of games, but I know I’m entertaining myself. It’s still important to me, but I can’t “miss out” on a game, it’s not that serious
The concept of "missing out on fun" only makes sense in the minds of people who don't experience much fun in their lives, so the scarcity can invoke FOMO.
For the rest of us, we have lots of options of fun. We aren't experiencing any loss by not going out of our way for one specific thing.
Which mech?
Just curious.
Also if it's such a good game I can play it next year. It'll still be there. Good games don't just disappear cuz you didn't buy them immediately. And as the customer, I'm allowed to change my mind.
@@phosspatharios9680there's tons of fun you can actually miss out on. Events. If you don't go to the event you miss out on the fun of the event. But video games aren't events. They're products. And once a product exists it pretty much always exists. If you don't buy it right away you can wait a little while and buy it later. There is no worry of missing out on a video game.
I think I understand what is happening with these "religion is bad" stories. I am a non-religious person and am somewhat envious of my family and friends that seem to get deep fulfillment from their faith, which is something i will probably never have.
I think these writers see the same thing and get angry instead of humbled. "They CAN'T be fulfilled by this thing because i can't have it, so actually they aren't and it's all an elaborate grift!"
It's never too late, friend. Read the Bible, like really read it. Start with the gospels, find some commentaries for the more difficult to understand parts. It's fine to find multiple commentaries that conflict in their interpretation, cause some passages have room for interpretation. But don't just take meme bible videos or videos that just claim to dunk on Christians, cause they're more often than not dunking on a version of Christianity that doesn't exist.
A lot of people never develop beyond a five year old's level of understanding of God (intentionally so in the case of a lot of churches these days, because it's a comfy easy level of understanding to live in), and so they first time something happens above that level of understanding, they get mad, hurt, or confused and quit. Then they rage at it for a very long time.
As someone who works at church, I can say that some of those criticism are not without basis. Yes, there are some predatory church leaders who use religion to control and exploit their people, and there are some people who think having certain types of labels makes them better than those outside those labels. Even when we have the same understanding of the faith, differing personalities, working styles and personal flaws can cause a lot of conflict (but that's why the gospel is such an important message. Because no single person can actually fulfill all those religious "do"s and "don't"s).
But, yeah, a lot of those "religion is bad" stories seems to just be lazy mechanisms for inexperienced writers to feel better about themselves. Because it's easier to bash a caricature of the opposing viewpoints. Meanwhile, to write a coherent story that can demonstrate why your viewpoint is better/more feasible, you need to actually be a good writer.
As a non-religious person, I think theres a much better way to show off this grift.
Just show multiple religions arguing and the main protagonist seeing how they are made intentionally to hate another group of an opposite religion. Thats it. That would clearly show how religion is a grift. They would get their point across.
@@thesneekione7983 that's why i said "probably", never know where life will take you.
Making Zaalbar kill Mission Vao was some dark stuff, man. Whuff. Messed me up.
That was some bold videogame design.
Damn I love your takes man.
"THEY ARE need us NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND" BOOOOM.
we hold the power to make them burn into oblivion.
And best of all, all we have to do... is nothing.
Yep, make them earn your time and money. This whole “don’t expect everything to be as good as Baldur’s Gate 3” attitude is disgusting, but we can simply starve it out
This is what they have been trying to make everyone forget, hence the smug "don't like it, it's not for you" attitude.
They can get away with it for a long time if they just buy everything up.
@@gregowen2022their job is to get me to buy their product, technically my job is to not buy their product. Which one of us will win? So far me.
The irony is there's a far better female character in the fake anime playing on her tv in the trailer. We see this awesome babe right alongside, the actual protagonist shaving her head. It's a huge insult.
Yes, all the weirdos in commercial media love insulting us. I cannot believe that people are actually defending a marketing trailer online!
Anime vs realisitic human 😂 touch grass loser
17:43 So I want to point out the person writing the lore for the witcher 4 was a writer for the gamer. A games journalist writing the lore for a video game? That is another piece to the pattern. We all know how most journalists view the gaming community!
Studios don't need us anymore. They need investors for whom they must respect very specific subjects and elements to be financed again.
And it's unsustainable, because if they are gonna produce slop after slop, investors will lose more and more money, they will have to change strategy at some point
@@zelky1394 Yes they will have to change strategy, but I don't think that time has arrived yet.
@@zelky1394 I agree with you. In the long term it is not a viable system, but I think we'll have to wait a little longer for the studios to change their financial strategy.
A great side effect of videos like yours on subjects like this, is that people who have those negative feelings or thoughts about said product or subject may not have even known exactly why they started experiencing those feelings but it became clear to them upon watching. Excellently worded and argued Mr Owen, have an amazing day!
Only for peopel who don't really think about it most of us who've been watching the trends definitely know why we feel the way we do.
That is very kind, I appreciate the encouragement!
@@wingsoffreedom3589 Certainly!
@@gregowen2022 Of course! It’s great work you’re doing!
I HATE everything Naughty Dog stands for.
toxic positivity; puffing up slop to be positive.
Including Witcher 4.
It's also prevalent in these groups that puff up every objectively unattractive person as "omg yaaas queen"
The worst part is they're not just visually unappealing, but they tend to be either written to be obnoxious, dull, or just poorly written on top of that. Somehow they expect us to engage with these characters they've purposely made annoying or barely better than a paper doll. Actually no, that's insulting to paper dolls; at least those you can make exciting by how you play with them. So, they're worse than paper dolls... Joy.
Here’s a pattern. Hollywood never gets average or below average people to be the stars. Maybe games should take a note from that.
I mean… they are trying to tho.
One example is that new Romeo and Juliet movie with Tom Holland
The Whale was a hit, not Hollywood though.
@@NERO_MYBAND Fairly certain that's a Broadway production, tbh. Even so- it came and went without fanfare, that should tell you how much of a flop it was, even with Tom.
They don't necessarily have to be attractive, but they have to be either attractive OR very interesting looking.
I salute that Toy Story reference. The more I look at a world of people who have lost their sense of purpose, the more that movie rings out strong.
Quentin Tarantino really enjoyed Toy Story 1 through 3.
Western media in a nutshell.
Also western media: “STOP recognizing patterns, that’s anti-semantic!!!!”
Desert goblins in a nutshell.
Thank fuck for japan
They're infecting Asian media too. Look at Dragon Quest 3 HD which removed gender options for characters. It's not as bad (yet), but that doesn't mean I want modern western propaganda infiltrating creative, beautiful asian games!
The miserable trope of corrupt church is so overdone and over used, to the point where just having a regular functional religious institution in fantasy, would be a breath of fresh air.
Honestly even just some realism in how corruption functions would be nice. Very rarely does evil plan to do a genocide. Mostly it just wants money.
I think the real issue with Ciri is not that she’s the MC but that they say she’s a full-fledged Witcher that’s gone through the Trial of the Grasses (something the series has established only boys can go through and it must happen around the age of puberty).
Given the current ideological pushes, they could make her a "he"... that looks female-ish... so it fits lore in a "monkey's paw" wish-come-true-but-with-a-twist-nobody-wanted.
This. Cdpr could use her elder magic etc to replace potions and signs in a gameplay sense and reinvigorate combat while keeping nature of series the same in that you have to research and know your enemy to have best chance against them but nope she is another witcher
Agreed, I’m not loving that shift. I wanted Ciri to stay herself, but do Witcher stuff, not actually be a Witcher. She was unique!
Not to mention that all the books and mages that used to perform the ritual have been pretty much lost. Hence why so few witchers exist now.
@@gregowen2022 that seems to be the general complaint most people have. It seems like wasted potential that could make for great story telling and gameplay mechanics.
I'll never understand why they equate the admiration of beauty with lust
They have to equate beauty with evil, so that way they don't have to justify why, they, themselves are so repugnant. "Being beautiful means being evil, so I'm not going to try to be beautiful, hence why it's ok that I'm morbidly obese".
NOOO STOP NOTICING
NOSE 👃.
The great noticing will continue in more than just games
The only pattern recognition these people want you to have amounts to a Magic Eye Illusion where they tell you what the image is.
Woody's, "YOU ARE A TOY!!!!!" hit extra especially hard in this one. Outstandingly done as always Greg.
Druckman seems like the type a dude who keeps a pantry full of his farts in jars.
bold of you to assume he doesnt airlock all his farts inside his house for daily intake.
14:50. I wouldn't care if it was Ciri if the devs hadn't already announced they picked her in order to "explore the sexism within the world of the Witcher." As for gameplay. CP2077 launched as an absolute mess and it took them 2 years and a DLC to make it somewhat feature complete. Hard pass, thanks.
And the fact they also pretty much said “oh the codex says woman can’t be a Witcher? Then Ciri is gonna re write it!”
It's worse than that. Literally every game CDPR has evrn dropped have ALL launched as broken messes that required a year of patching to fix. That's just their modus operandi. And that was WITH the OG devs who actually knew the code and engine. The team is now comprised 90% of new devs that don't even know their own engine so they have to use UE5, an extremely bugged engine because devs don't know how THAT works, either. Witcher 4 is gonna be a shtshow.
@@jase276 You forget that most, of not all Witcher 3 devs have already left. They're under the company that did Marvel Rivals now. Add the Cyperpunk release mess to that and i can't wrap my head around anyone giving them the benefit of a doubt.
I don't have problems with addressing sexism in W4, in theory. the Witcher books did that. I just have an issue with _how_ they will
I tried looking up the article, but apparently the quote is fake
This is very well put. I've been expressing the same thing for a while.
Blatantly woke-looking characters are like seeing and smelling smoke. It's enough to tell you there's a fire even if you haven't seen the fire yet.
TL;DR Thank you sir for being our voice when we really do say we hate games like this.
I hate how shillers and left leaning normies keep saying stuff like "i hate this focus on trans/lghdtv hate and anti-wokeness is plaguing gamer's minds and thinking this brainrot is actually happening when it's not"
Bruh, Drukkman saying he wanted to create a "cool unsexualized woman main character" is a clear red flag of where his priorities are. Other devs would seeiously say "we want to make a great story with fun gameplay" and he could have said that, just to keep it simple, yet he chose to share his true intentions. Tell me how wokeness is NOT being pushed?? Veilguard was a prime recent example.
Also no, in not hating against any community, one of my close friends is gay and he also hates this over exaggerated push for inclusivity for the rainbow community, he even thought "wtf is this sht" when he saw gameplay of DragonAge Veilguard.
Agreed, Druckmann wants to focus on these things, but we aren’t supposed to mention them in critiques?! He’s the one who said it was a priority
@gregowen2022 Yeah, priority for snowflakes like him
6:25 bruh.... Like... I would not believe that someone would actually say this until I saw it myself. 🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️ Pretentious af
I think it's hilarious that he's clutching pearls the same way conservative Christians did thirty years ago and conservative Christians these days are on board with gooner anime games.
Those ladies are dressed EXACTLY like every good Christian woman should, apparently.
Right?! There are parts of that speech that are so cool, hearing how Last of Us came to be and the process of creation. And then he starts talking about gender stuff and it goes of the rails instantly
@@VeylonI would reply to that that 30 years ago Christians were on board with trying to legislate morality. Nowadays I think they're realizing censorship is a two way street and they're more concerned with freedom of speech across the board.
@@TheColonelOcorn I would like to think so. I sure didn't think thirty years ago that someday they'd be loudly cheering the guy on the cover of Playboy with the foreign porn star wife. Times change I guess.
Why? Seriously what exactly is wrong with what he said I'm not trying to get into a argument I'm genuinely baffled
I'm just burnt completely out on the girlboss trope. I think i just wanna play as dudes for a while.
I'm getting burnt out on nu-media entirely. Honestly it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I focus on my own health and use creative hobbies as an outlet now.
Their heroes are unappealing because they reflect the hearts and minds of their creators.