Games

I am nonbinary, I haven't played a Dragon Age game before Veilguard, I haven't yet gotten to this one scene that's apparently damned the entire franchise, nor have I even met Taash(?) yet. Here's my off the cuff rambling thoughts:

I've just now watched the scene devoid of context, and if that's where the misgendering conversation started and stopped, I think everyone is wildly overreacting. The first minute is fine, a weird older lady apologizes for screwing up in her own way, I've had people react in much stranger ways than that, and in it's own way "Whoops I fucked up, lemme do some push ups to show I feel bad" is kinda sweet. I'll concede that the explanation after was heavy handed, but you could definitely include the gist of it somewhere else easily. "Don't be weird, just say sorry and move on" is the correct advice to give to someone who doesn't know how to interact with trans people but wants to be supportive. If that last minute of the conversation happened somewhere else in the game, it'd have been fine.

The game overall has been mediocre so far, a solid 6 out of 10, nothing to write home about, but certainly not deserving of the flak it's been getting. This is one of the first games I've played where I feel like I'm represented, I think it might be the first major game where you can make a custom character who's explicitly transgender, and that counts for something in my book.

From where I'm standing, it really feels like a lot of the outrage DA:V is drawing comes from some discomfort(conscious or no) with having the queer experience very out in the open for everyone to see, which is what I would expect from a series that (as far as I can tell) has always had tons of explicitly queer characters. I'm sure that's not universally the case, but I simply don't buy this narrative of "I'm fine with trans people, but the way it's written is so clunky." because I've had almost the polar opposite experience. I can think of few other games that talk about transness in the way that actual trans people talk about it.

Regardless of content. I learned a long time ago that only unhappyness can come from paying for games by EA.

Though all AAA should come with a "may cause irritation" label.

Indie games are king and that is where my money goes.

I feel like I have a outside the norm third-take opinion on this topic, tbh.

I think including the hot social topic of the day often time is pandering.

But I also don't think pandering is a problem. The muscles on the main character is also pandering. When McDonald's does market research and then releases a new product, that is pandering.

Games are a sales industry; they are going to pander to potential buyers, period.

So yes, a potentially trans-centric storyline in a game is unnecessary. But so is including a longsword, or a tavern, or a comic relief character. Unnecessary doesn't mean bad; all of those things are likely only adding to the depth and value of the game.

So all this to say that when crazy right-wingers talk about SJWs and pandering and all that nonsense don't waste your time trying to fight them on the irrelevant bits - go ahead and acknowledge the pandering aspect and fight the real fight by telling them it's not negative pandering and minorities deserve to be pandered to and represented just as much as anyone else. They just don't recognize the market targeting the white male demographic as pandering because it is the sphere of normal under which they operate.

Having not played it, I'll stick to using a review I read in the past few days.

To sum it up, the game felt too positive to the reviewer. To them it felt more like a Disney adventure than a grim fantasy world that's invaded by malevolent, torture-happy evil gods. They felt no bite from their choices, from the story or from their companions. Everything felt like it needed to be happy in some way, like the idea of conflict was a far more terrible outcome than being skullfucked by an angry tentacle god lady.

To sum it up even further, the game felt too safe. And so became a bland meal that's easily forgettable.

I don't care about wokeness, the game looks like plastic garbage and they genericized the combat

Being preached by a game company owned by EA is like being preached by actors at the oscars. Gotta love the bourgeoisie proselytising. (edit -at)

I remember very well bioware games and others in past decades got the same kind of reaction because « omg gay romance, that kind of agenda shouldn't be pushed in a video game, think of the children ».

So now the new social "battle" is trans right and the game has a gender questioning character (From a review, I haven't played) that seems to take at most a whole 5 minutes over the course of the whole game. Why not.

Now the game has been designed to cater to 10 year old and not the older crowd who played the original so it doesn't have the depth you'd want and the dialog is on the nose. Well, too bad. Just play something else.

I haven't played it yet, still unsure if I will, but everything I've seen of it is nudging me towards not playing it. The dialogues I've watched were poorly written, cutscenes were okay at best, and the new companions seemed all to be obnoxious teenagers.

To me, Dragon Age Origins is the only game in the franchise that's worth playing. The Warden is your character as the player, and that, to me, is the hallmark of a good rpg. None of the other Dragon Age games put as much effort into allowing you to choose and make your own character. The fact that DA:O had entirely different intros, that were both long, well written, and nuanced, based on your combination of class + race was the thing that sold me into that game. Hawke is not your character, but a character they wanted you to play for a reason, but I'll give it a pass since the idea of Hawke's story was fairly good, just not as well implemented (DA2 should have been a spin off and not part of the main series). The Inquisitor is even worse, it could have been your character, but it's some weird generic character that's there just to perform a function in the world. I've played most of DA2, but only a couple of hours of Inquisition, and it was enough to know that both those games fell short of Origins, and this one is looking even worse.

An RPG needs excellent writing above all else. Good gameplay comes as a close second, but it should be mostly about allowing players to forge their own path and have their own interpretations of the world. RPGs need nuance and subtlety, you can't just constantly regurgitate something to someone's face and expect them not to be annoyed by it.