Look, mom! In the game world, there are no interfering parents to stop me killing myself!
Lusipurr and SiliconNooB consider Nintendo’s changing audience demographics and unchanging business attitude, the decision to make Final Fantasy XV the first car-boot-based JRPG in history, and the shocking arrogance of the Final Fantasy VII Remake devs.
WolfeRe: Final Fantasy: Alright. I’m sick of hearing these disconnected Square Enix ‘creative types’ speculate on what Final fucking Fantasy fans want. It’s not rocket science. Fantasy. Not some Jpop technofantasy crap or some nonsense about a ‘fantasy based on reality’. Just make a damn fantasy setting and get a staff who knows how to write interesting characters instead of trotting out fashion model archetypes whose backstories are secondary to how they visually appeal to fashion conscious Japanese teens.
That XV has spawned a line of hyper-expensive clothing demonstrates that the focus of these games has stopped being games and become… I don’t know what. Multi-merchandising opportunities I guess. Like a Hollywood film does. Only most of those films have a two-hour product worth engaging to back them up. A 40-hour shitfest whose only virtue is pretty CG segments isn’t going to move those two thousand dollar cosplay sets SE is insisted is modern fashion. Christ.
Re: Nintendo: The company died to me two decades ago. Why anyone harbors any gaming-oriented expectations for a company that’s clearly become a toy company I don’t know. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Re: Baldur’s Gate: I never played these games. Nonetheless, I was very, very invested in D&D, especially during the 2nd Edition era, which Baldur’s Gate was born out of just before 3rd Edition came along and brought the d20 template with it. I can say with certainty that SJWs have invested the tabletop industry in a way that vidya can only imagine. The big wigs of tabletop are ultimately D&D and Pathfinder. You look into either of those and you are bombarded with SJW writers and thusly, SJW-oriented worlds. Baldur’s Gate here is just a symptom of that.
As you both discussed here, there’s a good way to write trans characters. This wasn’t it. This was textbook tokenism. Additionally, it was out of place in the world. The Realms have potions and girdles and all manner of high magic goodies that can simply swap your gender for you. You wouldn’t need worry about things like ‘getting the surgery’ or ‘HRT’. You’d just down a bottle and be what you feel you are. This was just badly shoe horning real world current social politics into a world where it doesn’t fucking fit. THAT is why people were so angry about it. Digging up a two decade old game full of good will and packing that baby full of personal social opinions and not even bothering to do it well. Fuck Beamdog.
Lusi’s got the right of it. This kind of bullshit, written by people who are only interested in demonstrating to each other how righteous they are, don’t give a damn about the minorities they claim to champion. They’re stroking their own egos and creating a shit ton of ill-will towards those groups.
WolfeActually, in listening to this latest chapter of The Once and Future King and considering the ‘Final Fantasy problem’ I can’t help wish FF would take a damn cue from Arthurian fantasy the way it used to. Final Fantasy established itself as its own take on heroic fantasy. Final Fantasy VII just applied science fantasy elements to it. Why the hell can’t they just go back to that?
Lusipurr@Wolfe: Why the hell can’t they just go back to that?
Because the people in charge of Final Fantasy don’t even want to make video games. Remember how the director (or whatever he is) said that, “Video games are boring,” and he’d rather provide an “interactive experience”?
Meanwhile, Nomura fancies himself an Yves Saint Laurent, and instead of games would far rather make over-priced grunge wear for the terminally emotarded.
LegendaryAppleAnother great episode!
Let me just say that, even though I disagree with a few of your opinions from time to time, I very much respect what the two of you have to say and your podcast helps me to get through some of the more boring aspects of my job.
KisakiProjectI was gonna comment on your Baldur’s Gate discussion but I think Wolfe summed it up nicely. Basically if you have “quotas” for self hating whites/straights to virtue signal you’re going to get shitty characters and annoyed fans. If you have genuine characters you’ll actually achieve what you want making people like characters of said marginalized group. Basically authenticity is key. And there is nothing authentically creative about virtue signaling. It’s just penis measuring for people with useless liberal arts degrees.
SebastianEverything I have read of this Baldur’s Gate game reeks of lazy, heavy-handed writing. It takes a higher level of creativity and skill to write allegorically, which would convey the author’s meaning without obvious cultural references that have no place in a fantasy world.
Life is too short to waste on juvenile writing that parrots current pop-culture buzzwords.
