Half-Life 2 introduced a sidekick who's mixed race, has dyed hair, and punches cops in her first scene. And yet I've heard no one call that game woke.
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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There was some around HL: Alyx when it came out ("replacing a man with a femoid character!!!") but I don't think VR is popular enough with the kinds of people that really carry these movements.
As to HL2, well, for one that game I'm sad to admit is pretty old now. It predates gamergate by a full 10 years, which really kicked off our current era of astroturfed antiwokeness. And despite incredible influence and critical acclaim has never actually been very popular.
Also they see a sidekick to a white man as an appropriate place for such people. Also she was somewhat deeper into the game and chuds don't actually play these games they complain about so they probably didn't get to her. Lots of contributing factors.
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Honestly I think this is a bad example. Guys are generally happy to play games with attractive bad-ass female leads. See Metroid/Tomb Raider/Bayonetta/Nier/etc
I actually think this is a fantastic example for this reason. Gamers back in the day were PISSED when they found out Samus Aran was a fEmOiD
Yeah, but fort that you had to finish the game. That was HARD as hell back in the days. I believe neither I nor anyone in my elementary school knew Samus was a girl because nobody managed to finish the game.
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They complain about reboot Lara Croft's tits being too small. Regular sized boobs are woke of course.
The twist in the original Metroid was that you didn't find out Samus was a woman until the ending, I could totally see today's dumbass gamers calling that a bait-and-switch.
Kicker is that they have to be attractive, which is the real reason most have no hate towards them. Aloy wasn't traditionally attractive in the Horizon sequel and people lost their shit.
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Games if anything are less woke now than they used to be. Forget games featuring female protagonists; well-loved classics like Final Fantasy 7 have strong underlying themes regarding pollution, climate change and environmentalism, and Metal Gear Solid was a biting critique of the military industrial complex all the way back in the 90s!
Prior to the current, rampant commercialisation of video games - they used to be viewed as art or at the very least passion projects, intentionally designed with a strong underlying message.
The problem now is that with the ubiquity of the internet, Gamersβ’ have unintentionally collaborated into creating echo chamber where the worst of humanity is given the largest soap box.
you can type ™ for the proper β’ symbol.
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I think it's the same issue as conservatives suddenly realizing their favorite band or movie/tv franchise is gasp woke!
They passively consume media without analyzing it beyond the surface level, then are personally offended that they were "baited" into consuming what they see as woke propaganda.
Then they also notice a trend of more overt progressive elements in media because of an increase in surface-level corporate pandering, and they blame "wokeness" for bad storytelling without realizing people who are actually woke hate the shallow pandering too.
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Games if anything are less woke now than they used to be
For real, check out this dude complaining about anti-religion in Castlevania lol (I feel okay sharing this because account is deleted and thread is ancient by internet standeds, otherwise I always wanna prevent brigading etc): https://www.reddit.com/r/castlevania/comments/d57q9m/does_anyone_else_feel_like_the_antireligion/?rdt=55043
Or consider that God always dies in SMT games, or thereβs a path to always do that
There are plenty of modern games that deliberately make these kinds of discussions. A handful Iβve played recently with strong political or at least philosophical themes:
- Helldivers 2
- Talos Principle (both games)
- Deus Ex series
- The Witcher series in general
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Not sure if it's mentioned yet but the "secret ending" of Metroid was that she takes off her helmet and reveals herself to be a woman in the end. It was actually written to be a surprise for people who beat the game very fast, which makes this a really weird example.
And honestly, I think that's them being accidently progressive for shock value, since subsequent secret speed run endings in later games had her in a bikini...
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If Metroid came out today:
"UNBELIEVABLE!!! Woke SJW cultural marxists made Nintendo to put politically correct forced diversity into Metroid! Only on Chudcast, the podcast by naiveCentrist1355, formerAtheistTurnedChristianFundamentalist23456, epicGamer7822, Dr IGroomTeens, and iSwearIamNotANaziJustAModerateChoservativeChristianDemocrat1488"
Tom Hanks had a TV show about two guys who wear women's clothes so they can live in a female only residence.
Ran from 1980 to 1982 and it was never a big deal with the Christian Nationalists then.
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I don't think this is a particularly good take. Inclusivity IS much more important today than it was to people even 10 years ago. The real issue is that being woke is GOOD! It's crazy that people have twisted it around, like shutting our eyes to the world's problems (being "asleep") is somehow the right way to be.
I think both are true. We are more interested in inclusivity today, and that is a good thing! But it's also true that certain currents in our society have reacted to that like an immune system to a foreign body. Things that were benign previously become objects of irritation and anger as one of the 'outsiders' even if it's no different than the long-established and beloved things.
It's honestly insane that gamers are not down with communism, given that the games industry is the prime example of all the failings of capitalism
The only time I hear about a new game coming out is when the protagonist or side character is a woman or black and the outrage from right wingers leaves gaming news
The issue I have Is when there whole character is that they are a minority
Like I love Ashoka but Ray Skywalker is just boring
Now when people hate on actual good characters like Samus That's when alarms should be sounded
I love how Rey could have been an example of how the force can manifest in anyone . But instead she's Palpatine's granddaughter so never mind turns out it's just hereditary lol. They had it all setup and then fumbled it.
It's kind of amazing how shitty episode 7-9 are. The franchise made a profit on momentum alone.
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Her shoulders were only big because of the outfit. Which was very much in style for 1986.
On the best endings, especially for the games where she isn't 27 pixels in total, she's traditionally shown to be pretty muscular.
Not space-marine pauldron-filling muscular, but far too big not to be called woke..
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If it came out today by a "woke" studio she wouldn't be blonde, attractive, or white, and she would use shitty popculture references.
Also, the gameplay wouldn't be good because the studio would blow the entire budget on paying celebrities to be voice actors, and culture experts.
Why do you think The Wokes^TM^ don't like hot women? Why do you think we're all prudish? At most, we all want different types of beautiful women.
You also conflate us with corporate shittyness, even though we're doing more to push back against it than anyone. We form unions to challenge these suits that are only good at squeezing money.
You think getting mad at woke games will challenge the forced references or overpriced celebrities? If anything, you're only ensuring the industry gets more soulless and creatively bankrupt. Game devs become "woke" after exploitation awakens them.
I used "woke" in quotes because the definition of woke is debatable. You clearly identify with a different type of "woke" than what I see as "woke".
To me "woke" means taking an established franchise that has a core audience that is mostly white male, then change that franchise to target a minority that probably doesn't like the franchise to begin with. This includes taking away the ability to self-insert for the majority, or making a character less attractive so that someone else can self-insert or be less offended about seeing beautiful characters.
Samus is a strong female protagonist with little personality, and you also barely see Samus outside of her armor. She is therefore a good self-insert for anyone. The reason she was made a woman and not just a mystery is because of the sex appeal, which clearly paid off if you ever search her rule34.
Viewing her sex appeal as problematic and removing it to promote body diversity is a "woke" thing to do, but also incredibly stupid, because of how important that sex appeal is to the franchise. A "woke" company would make this stupid decision, and the core demographic would be rightfully infuriated, because their beloved character was ruined.
I don't see for example Forspoken as problematic or even "woke" on a franchise level, because they made a new franchise with a new character, rather than ruining an existing one. It is maybe woke on an industry level because they target an almost non-existing demographic (people who can self-insert into the insufferable main character), but in my opinion, the only problematic part about that franchise is the way gamers were shamed for not liking it.
Now where do celebrity voice actors come in, you may ask. And to be honest, it is less about "wokeness" and more of a recent pattern seen in games that tend to be "woke" but it is a weak correlation, and more of a thing I said to highlight these studios inability to prioritize the important parts of games (making the gameplay good). A better example would probability have been only hiring voice actors of the same ethnicity as the character, thereby limiting the available high quality voice actors, and ending up with lower quality as a result. This is a "woke" move because it prioritizes DEI over quality.
About that thing you said about unions. I'm not really sure what wokeness has to do with it. Are you saying the main driving force behind these unions is wokeness? I only see unions as something that improves the quality of the workers rights and life, not the product itself. Not that I would know much about it. The japanese game industry that I'm part of has no unions as far as I know.
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No, because she'd be a new character instead of a lazy, crappy rewrite of already established characters. Which is why I hate current Luke Skywalker, but not Miles Morales. It's why I hate current Klingons, but not Baldur's Gate 3 (haven't played it (yet), but I know there are gay characters involved, which is fine by me).
Thank god it's fine by you.
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