T w e n t y S i d e d
I used to like David Jaffe’s games. The Twisted Metal games were a mainstay with my friends when I was young and I really enjoyed the original God of War games. He made power fantasies to make angry punks like me feel strong and cool. Both of those franchises were quite good at doing that job. Then after he made those games, what has he done? His last attempt at a game was Drawn to Death on the PS4. A game so bad that when Sony gave it away as part of the Playstation Plus program it was still impossible to find a lobby. I tried it. The game sucked. The style was awful, the controls sucked, and the weapons felt like Nerf toys.
Now as you may be able to tell, I was VERY ready to go in on Jaffe. He’s said some incredibly stupid stuff in the past and I can’t say I like him much. But I have to say, the chuds online have taken a bad take from a guy who is related to a product they claim to like and have really run away with it. Jaffe’s assertion was that nobody wanted to play a God of War game where the protagonist isn’t a power fantasy icon. He said that Laufey looks too normal, implying that she’s ugly. He said that he doesn’t find Deborah Ann Woll unattractive, but finds the character model in the trailer was ugly. Feels like a bit of a stretch to me, but fine. And he also essentially said that Laufey isn’t a protagonist that people want to play as. This is the same stuff people were saying about playing as Atreus in Ragnarök, but with a grosser bend to it because he’s commenting on a woman’s likeness not being attractive.
Now as far as the losers parroting Jaffe without understanding what he was saying:
Sure, Jan.
I’m convinced none of these guys have ever actually played video games past the ol’ standards of COD, Madden, and the current month’s trending battle royale. Maybe I’m doing the reverse equivalent of quizzing every girl wearing a Nevermind T-shirt about Nirvana trivia, but I don’t care. You need to have some perspective and a basis of knowledge if you want to raise your voice and claim to speak for anyone other than yourself. Female protagonists are as old as games having protagonists. And even if you exclude 2D games and games without much narrative support, you have Tomb Raider on the PS One and hundreds of games after that.
Jaffe’s take is incredibly dumb and weird. I think it’s bizarre and gross, but forgivable for those that like him. The chud masses truly just took what they wanted to hear and echoed it to each other until it became loud enough for other people to hear. I’m fairly sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but I do want to at least throw in my two cents. In my eyes, Jaffe’s a prick and what he said was stupid and wrong, but he wasn’t trying to start a movement. He was just bitching about a trailer. In the end, the game will sell amazingly no matter what. Hopefully it’ll be great. Hopefully I’ll be justified in having some faith in the same company that took a bland, badass, angry man and turned him into a contemplative character with deep complexities. I don’t typically allow myself to get hyped about games before release, but I have a lot of love for the God of War series, so I’m fighting myself a little harder than I otherwise might.
Now there is a large audience online that has legitimate concerns. The trailer shows a very different tone from what has been offered by the series so far. I hate quippy, lame dialogue as much as everyone else has grown to. I straight-up agree with that sentiment. And I think it’s also fair that lots of people don’t want to play as someone other than Kratos. I care more about the world of God of War at this point than just Kratos so it’s never bothered me. My article here is just a response to the extreme side of the backlash and how misguided it is. Specifically it’s a response to how Jaffe’s words were misconstrued. I really don’t like Jaffe but he has been made out to be someone he’s not.
Freya is a badass. Angrboða is super cool. Laufey seems incredibly interesting. I want to see more and I am excited for the future where the noise dies down and we can focus on what matters again.
Edit: A comment has made it clear that I failed to address legitimate concerns about the game’s shown content as opposed to the unfair and odd criticism. I’ve added a paragraph to rectify that issue.
Mass Effect 3 Ending Deconstruction
Did you dislike the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy? Here's my list of where it failed logically, thematically, and tonally.
The Biggest Game Ever
How did this niche racing game make a gameworld so massive, and why is that a big deal?
Punishing The Internet for Sharing
Why make millions on your video game when you could be making HUNDREDS on frivolous copyright claims?
Dead Island
A stream-of-gameplay review of Dead Island. This game is a cavalcade of bugs and bad design choices.
Hardware Review
So what happens when a SOFTWARE engineer tries to review hardware? This. This happens.
I’ve enjoyed both of the recent God of War games and look forward to this one too… except for the minor detail that I don’t have a PS5. Which is fixable, of course, but feels like a lot to do for a single game. Exclusives are annoying.
The problem isn’t that people don’t want to play as a woman. Yes, there are some weirdos that don’t, but the vast majority of people who don’t like this trailer have quite legitimate reasons for not liking what we’ve seen so far.
If you want a better representation of the people who aren’t excited about this game, I strongly recommend LegendaryDrops’ video on the subject (scared to put links here because of the spam filter – just look up “legendary drops you aren’t the audience anymore” on YouTube).
With these kinds of things, each side likes to take fringe extremists to represent the other side’s opinion and equate everyone who disagrees with them with said fringe extremists. I really like how balanced Shamus’ coverage of such issues always was. If you haven’t, I strongly recommend you read “This game is bad for you” – it’s one of my favourite Shamus essays :)
I should have made it clear in the article that I was only really responding to the massively odd trolls. I think being dissapponted by the actual content of what has been shown is totally valid and I’m going to edit the article to reflect that, so thank you for bringing that to my attention.
I do also enjoy that article of his. I also very much respect and admire his ability to see both sides of an argument fairly. I typically try to remain as neutral as possible but I’m, admittedly, am a lot more biased than Shamus was. I will try to, at the very least, be more clear about my intentions in future posts about things that are a bit more charged like this.
Reminded me to go back and read it again, so I figured it deserved a link: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=41853
Hmm but is that element of ‘backlash’ really large enough to be worth complaining about it more than giving your own opinion on the trailer, rather than on a minority of other people’s opinions? I’d say if people value things different from what you value in a game it doesn’t really matter too much. She has an interesting face, which regardless of attractiveness or age, lacks a certain nobility that one might value in such a character. Maybe looks homely and maternal. Tomb Raider had a turn of the millennium edge about her facial features, Spice Girls style, but not Baby Spice. Her 2013 version looked less aristocratic and “fierce” and more “every British middle class university student called Beth in 2010”. So I can see there being aesthetic complaints that don’t boil down to just “she’s not hot” even if people articulate them poorly (not that there aren’t people complaining that she’s not hot enough for them I’m sure, it doesn’t really bother me personally, they can play ridiculous looking things like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 if they want). I do notice that sometimes in games there has been a tendency towards homely looking characters. Not just games in fact, animation – when Frozen came out I was surprised at how round-faced they were. And it can be like if Kratos looked and sounded like Brian Cranston playing Hal. He’s handsome no doubt, but he just looks like someone’s dad. And so the same is true when a character just looks and sounds like someone’s mum, but is intended to be a cool character. Such people can be cool in real life of course, but aren’t necessarily whom people want to play as in games where you want to spend most of the time wrecking enemies. Do you want to play as Galadriel or Arwen slaying foes, or as Rosie Gamgee? Maybe as a compromise, Eowyn. But Eowyn at 25, or at 45? Playing as someone who just looks like she lives on my street probably isn’t as cool. Maybe it is for a lot of women though, in the same way as men wanting to play as an everyman. But that ‘everyman’ usually has massive muscles and unlimited charisma, like Schwartzenegger in 80s/90s films, or looks as good as Harrison Ford and has an inconceivably beautiful wife. Probably see also Merrin vs Cere in Star Wars Fallen Order/Survivor. Cere is too much like an actual normal person, so she’s bland, just like most of the side characters. It’s Turgle that brings the fantasy to life. And the fish guy. Not the boring DJ woman. Maybe that’s the crux of some of the feeling being described. The funny thing is, Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors were bland as anything, and I didn’t care. I think it’s when you try to give the characters the level of characterisation present in modern AAA games, but then also make them bland. Nuanced blandness, as opposed to good old fashioned low-poly blandness where you don’t even think to notice.
For me, it looks a little too much like the modern God of War in that I don’t enjoy the type of cinematic presentation and dialogue which I have difficulty decribing what I dislike about, but I think that my gf also noticed and laughed at when she walked through the room and saw a cutscene in Titanfall 2. It’s earnest but ham-fisted somehow. The high-fidelity blandness mentioned above. As if everyone was inspired by The Last of Us (game), yet aiming to make the writing/presentation about as good as bad TV series / soap acting. Somehow I prefer the more cartoony approach. The main character seemed a bit lame to begin with, seemingly flinching and whimpering, seemingly lacking the sort of power fantasy gumption, which makes sense storywise perhaps, but then became extremely cool in combat and when she was fighting back. A main concern though was the fact that it seems there are button mashing sections which seem pointless. If the combat system is great, which I’m sure it is, why not just have a non-interactive cutscene, then let us get on with it. Not involve us temporarily in what is essentially a cutscene with a mundane interaction.