I think part of why it feels so non-impactful to you is because 9/11 truly set off a chain of events that has led to the situation we’re in, including the many tragedies you mention in your comment. Of course 9/11 doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it itself is just a one part of a much more complex web of actions and decisions, but the fact remains that for most common people 9/11 was an absolute tipping point after which nothing is the same. The sort of horrors you’re talking about in the world in the wake of 9/11 just weren’t the same kind of reality in the world before, at least not with the same intents and reactions thereto. You’re right to think it’s strange the way people react to and hold 9/11 because you’re never experienced the world before it. And to be clear, I am not saying the world was perfect before or that there weren’t horrors before, because their were, but 9/11 became a catalyst for so much reactionary evil and overreach and horror that it simply is non-comparable to what came before.

important note: this entire comment and perspective implies an enormous Western post-colonial bias. People in different parts of the world had and have an enormously different reality especially in regards to this event and I will not pretend to be able to speak to their experience.

And was probably said by various people before that too, whatever. The point is this is an obvious derivative.

Somebody really enjoyed the success of the quicksand tweet and was hoping for an encore

No you don’t

Oh so Mary does it and people spend the next thousand years making statues and paintings in her honor, but Elena does it and gets blasted on social media?

Hypocrites

Good for them, but until EGS starts being more pro- consumer, I’m not spending a cent there

God why are we still doing these stupid pop culture opinions?

Nobody actually dislikes hearing the worst moist.

Nobody actually cares if people put pineapple on pizza.

Nobody actually hates candy corn enough to give a shit about it.

Nobody. Not even you. You don’t have to do this, you don’t have to go through the motions just because they laid them out for you.

You can be a real person.

But this shit, this shit is so fucking lame.

I would have pre-ordered Civ7, but then they announced it has Denuvo so now instead of pre-ordering I’m just not going to buy it at all.

Fuck denuvo and fuck corporations who think their customers should just bend over and accept whatever bullshit they offer for the “privilege” of playing their game.

There is so much good indie gaming content these days, we don’t need these abusive mega-corp games.

Fun fact, that braindead player has just as much right to play the game and have fun as you do. Your gameplay superiority in fact does not entitle you to more of the game.

Excuse me I was a cool 16yr old in 2000 so I was busy smoking weed and being way more sexually promiscuous than I realized at the time

Epic: “Steam has an unfair monopoly!”

epic gets pre installed as bloat ware on a bunch of phones

Epic: “What? We never said we didn’t like monopolies, we just don’t like Steam being the ones with the monopoly!”

I’m not saying it’s exactly KH, I’m saying it’s in the action-rpg hybrid combat genre like KH. I don’t enjoy either of their combat. As for my experience, I completed the first KH game and I’m like 90% through FFVII remake, but it is a fucking chore every single time combat happens. I think basically all action-rpg crossover combat is shallow. I want them to give me either a fully satisfying action experience or a fully satisfying RPG combat experience, stop dicking around in this dumb compromise space

I just don’t want this half-assed combat. If they wanted to make this an action game, go full action and give us a DMC-like experience. If they want it to be an RPG, either stick to classic turn-based or iterate in some way that isn’t a shitty compromised half-step between two things, don’t give us this shallow Kingdom Hearts-like (but worse) half & half. I guess I’m in the minority on this but I personally find action RPG hybrid combat systems almost always unsatisfying; very few games offer me something that doesn’t feel like a cheapened knock off of some better game style.

100%. I literally keep falling asleep during combat being it’s so mindless and boring.

I hate the remake’s combat so much. So so much. It’s so fucking boring. God why couldn’t they have just kept the core gameplay mechanic the same?

You’re right; I have been unclear. Allow me to try to clarify.

My issue is specifically with the headline here using the word “political.” This implies, whether by design or accident, that this inclusion in the game is BioWare specifically making a political stance to push some sort of politically-motivated agenda.

This is, 100%, not the case.

BioWare is a subsidiary of EA; the only agenda they care about is making money. This is not making some kind of political statement; this is pandering to ensure free media coverage and to attempt to appeal to what they see as a currently valuable demographic. Fucking blast them to hell for that, blast them to hell for their poor writing—whatever. But calling this political is doing exactly what I stated before: allowing the conversation to happen on the terms of gamergate/right-wingers who insist that anything in the entire fucking world that doesn’t specifically cater to their own individual interests is somehow inherently “political.”

edit: typos

I understand that, but my point is that there is no shortage of shoehorned comic relief characters, or awkwardly placed fanservice, etc. Critique the actual fault at play, bad writing, rather than letting the gamergate right-wing nutsos have the benefit of having the conversation on their terms. Make the headline “DA:tV falls short in the writing department, here are some examples” and include the flimsy way the character is written as the valid critique. Games are going to pander to us, that is what I was saying; when we place special emphasis on this particular type of pandering all we’re doing is letting the right define the conversations we’re having.

I guess I should add that I’m not speaking to this game specifically since I’ve never played it. I really enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins but frankly felt like I got everything I needed of the world from it and haven’t been interested in any of the sequels. So I won’t be playing DA: The Veilguard, but that reason has absolutely fuck all to do with the inclusion of any social politics.

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.

Hot take: as annoying as Mariah’s Christmas song can be, the memes about Mariah’s Christmas song are 1000x worse.