wankgate | 252: imagine all the tags sitting neglected in inboxes for this

not defending the game but

>the devs think their audience is a bunch of idiot children who need their hands held through how to be a good person

they are

hth

are there any good examples of rep in games these days? curious bc i'd be down to check out something like that. hoyoverse feels very 'sell as many copies of this as possible' w its stuff and bg3 i agree with you it was disappointing.

is it really too much to ask that a game have both representation and be, y'know, good

representation is a noble goal but it in and of itself does not a good story/game make

agreed. it would be really cool to find both, but i can't think of anything off the top of my head that works both a great storyline and representation in, in a way that's believable/doesn't try too hard.

dav and bg3 are mirror images of each other

bg3's representation was obviously just barely enough to make the game still appeal to cishet males and simultaneously pat themselves on the back for it, while the story and writing absolutely deserved every ounce of the praise it got

dav's representation is everything we wanted, but at the cost of the story and writing showing that it spent ten years in development hell with nothing to show for it until ea finally pushed it out the door just in time for the holidays and they're dismissing every ounce of criticism it receives regardless of merit as gamergate-tier chuddery

If you mean rep with extremely involved character creators then not really. BG3 and DA:TV are probably the best I've found out there. If you mean more generally, I've found good rep in indie games like I Was a Teen Exocolonist, Heaven Will Be Mine, Ikenfell, Sayonara Wild Hearts, and Thirsty Suiters.

what was lacking in bg3's representation? genuine question - i'm cishet, so something probably went over my head

maybe you are

I have my own issues with BG3's writing but in general, I agree, it's pretty damn well put together.

My take on issues with DA:TV and writing are hard to explain and I am not close to finishing so I can't speak fully on it. In general, I don't have an issue with the characters and I have enjoyed all the companions I have recruited so far and have had fun conversations with them. However, it's very frustrating that the game doesn't seem to want to go in depth with the lore that was set up previously. So while I hesitate to call it outright bad, I do feel pretty disappointed with the game as a sequel to something I invested a lot of time in (at least so far). Like you said, the development hell is extremely obvious as a long time fan. It feels like there's a ton of story that is just not there that should be.

nayrt, but one of the neat things about games that both present you the option to be a bad person and don't hold your hand is that players who play asshole games win asshole prizes, so even if they earnestly believe that, they basically hacked out an entire modern feature of games like this with a dull hatchet

I've played the game for four hours so far. No comments on the representation or dialogue aspect of it all as I haven't hit any of the pretty egregious spots yet (though God, I am still exhausted by the Varric's everything), but I wish the game had better level design. Maybe I'm just biased as I adored Inquisition and am officially open world pilled, but a few of the levels have had some objectively cool locations that I'd love to explore, but because a weird number of the missions have been "follow X person to Y location," it seems like the game is trying to steer you away from poking around and exploring every nook and cranny.

Like, stop giving me doors I can't open! I want to open all these doors! This is an abandoned village, I should be able to open all these doors and rifle through people's stuff!

there's been a recent surge in reporting and stuff claiming that gamers are "tired of open worlds" that has been weird, to say the least

i'm sure people are tired of levels that don't give you anything to look at or do, but that's not the same thing, and a game on rails can have that exact same feeling when you're just running through a dressed-up corridor that does nothing but remind you you're in whatever location

ayrt

like i said, i'm not defending the game's writing

just pointing out that that's indeed the playerbase

AYRT

Agreed. There's "big exploratory open world gaming where you get lost in the Hinterlands for forty-eight hours talking to NPCs who do nothing to advance the plot and make you collect twelve eggs for them for no real reason" level design and there's "you are in a city except for none of the doors open, overturned carts block off what streets you aren't supposed to go to, and this bridge is 'coincidentally' broken so you have to go one way, btw ignore the fact that there are no people" level design, and a good game should fall somewhere in the middle of that.

But for example, DA:TV has a prison level with a REALLY cool gimmick. I wanted to poke around the prison a bit, maybe see if there are other prisoners there, explore the surroundings, maybe find a codex or two about how the gimmick works, aaaaand the only people that are actually in the prison that aren't faceless goons are the two people relevant to the plot. Cool. If you want to have your game on rails, it's important not to make the rails super obvious and with Veilguard, I can see the rails from space.

ayrt

I can talk about it in a more nuanced way if I want to, especially in a situation where I'm trying to have a discussion about it. I don't come in swinging when I'm trying to discuss it, that obviously defeats the purpose.

When I'm talking about it on an anon comm where I can be open about how fucking disappointed I am in an long awaited entry to a beloved game series that completely axed everything I liked about the game and gave me this slop, "dogshit" is accurate. I don't know what else to tell you.

i'll check these out thanks for the recs anon!

help me wankgate you're my only hope. dreamwidth tools is no longer working, any work arounds?

It feels like they repurposed maps that were built for a multiplayer mode, so they all feel like Overwatch maps instead of a world you're meant to explore.

the only silver lining is this might be the nail in the coffin for the neverending stream of shit multiplayers once it becomes clear it's not easy to just flip them around to something else

this. i want representation in the form of "this character happens to be queer/trans/non-white/non-binary/etc" instead of that being their whole character. otherwise it feels like they're just ticking off boxes on a list and nobody likes that.

they did have total turnover lol

nothing. which is both "nothing is lacking" and "nothing was there". there is no commentary on tav's or any character's gender or identity over the course of the game, and gender/sex/uality does not matter except to drow.

the only things that change from what i could tell:
- npc voice lines will use your selected pronouns when referring to your character
- some sex scenes have different positions (though this can also change with body type selection so it could be more about animation clipping)
- if you are a female drow some things in act 1 have different options because the goblins are scared of you
- the optional female drow companion minthara has a few lines about the surface world sucking for not being matriarchal and has anecdotes about sons being useless but nothing is ever directed at tav no matter what tav is

tav can be trans and just be a person. some people don't like that i guess. it's my preferred "representation" though. the datv stuff is great for some people who want to be validated i guess but i felt uncomfortable, i just want to live, i don't want an award for it.

i couldn't even win the asshole prizes i got a gross goopy vagina instead

>tav can be trans and just be a person. some people don't like that i guess.

you just can't fucking please these people. it's not enough for them to be accepted or seen as normal, even so normal that it's not worth mentioning. no, to them, there's no point in it unless there's an entire plotline based on it. it's not about acceptance to them, they want their special snowflake status.

which is fucking funny because a decade ago these were the same people bitching about queer characters being reduced to their genders/sexuality. now it's 'where's the top surgery scars?'

anon, it could be the worst game ever made in the history of AAA slop, and you should buy it anyway. for representation this game is too big to fail. if it is anything short of a GOTY contender then we'll have to spend 2025 hearing 'GO WOKE GO BROKE' like a broken record. and worse?

AAA companies might start to fucking listen.

252: imagine all the tags sitting neglected in inboxes for this

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hi flatview this is the dragon age thread

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