• Julian@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    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.

    • Codex@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      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.

  • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz
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    4 months ago

    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

    • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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      4 months ago

      They complain about reboot Lara Croft’s tits being too small. Regular sized boobs are woke of course.

    • missingno@fedia.io
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      4 months ago

      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.

    • Princeali311@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      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.

        • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Nah, women can’t have peach fuzz on their faces, or skin with spots and texture. Also Aloy didn’t use machine blood to make eyeliner and eye shadow, so apparently she’s not female enough for these morons.

          The most obvious way these people tattle on themselves and their small dick energy is when you hear them start referring to all women as females. They aren’t people, they’re a caste of other lifeforms that can be boiled down to their sex.

          Hearing how “woke games devs are too threatened by attractive females” is a good sign whoever is speaking slipped and landed on their head too many times.

        • Princeali311@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          There were tons of comments about her being overweight, which is just comical.

          Don’t even get me started about the Last of Us 2 hate

    • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      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

      • thomas@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        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.

        • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 months ago

          Did some googling. Apparently the Justin Bailey cheat code, which lets you play as Zero Suit Samus, was described in many publications as “it turns Samus from a cyborg into a woman”. It seems people couldn’t wrap their heads around Samus being a woman the whole time, and didn’t know what to make of the ending even if they got to see it. Some things never change, I guess. My googling suggests that this confusion was still prominent when Metroid 2 was released in 92 but was mostly dealt with by the time Super Metroid was released in 94

        • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          You had to finish the game within a certain time limit too. For super Metroid, you didn’t get the full perfect ending unless you did it in 3 hours.

          Which is impossible for a normal mortal…

        • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 months ago

          I am aware of several angry letters written about Samus being a woman. But I did some digging and I think you are closer to right than I was. It seems that the average reaction was confusion. Like, someone (likely a boy named Justin Bailey) discovered a cheat code that, according to several publications such as Boy’s Life, “turns Samus from a robot cyborg into a woman”. It seems people just didn’t know what to make of Samus taking off their suit and suddenly turning into a blond woman in a leotard. Based on my googling, it seems like many people were still confused about this when Metroid 2 came out in 91, but by the time Super Metroid came out in 94 most people understood that Samus was a woman the whole time.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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”

  • BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    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.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months ago

      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.

      • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        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

  • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    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, Gamers™ have unintentionally collaborated into creating echo chamber where the worst of humanity is given the largest soap box.

    • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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      4 months ago

      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.

    • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      There are plenty of modern games that deliberately make these kinds of discussions. A handful I’ve played recently with strong political or at least philosophical themes:

      • Helldivers 2
      • Talos Principle (both games)
      • Deus Ex series
      • The Witcher series in general
  • EvolvedTurtle@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      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.

      • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        They had it all setup and then fumbled it.

        Well, no. JJ Abrams had some bullshit vaguely scribbled out in the margins - probably the Palpatine nonsense. The actual movie was promising.

        Rian Johnson accepted everything the first movie did and gave different answers. The answers were fantastic! The movie was… okay.

        JJ then went nuh uh! nuh uh! and crammed eighteen different half-baked ideas into a MacGuffin chase that made absolutely everything worse. The movie was so pretty, and the movie was so dumb.

          • batshit@lemmings.world
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            4 months ago

            “Minority” in this context does not mean having a smaller population. Minority means a group of people that have been historically oppressed or persecuted.

            Women are a special kind of minority because even though they make up the majority of population worldwide, they’ve faced oppression for centuries.

            Another example would be white people in South Africa—even though they are a minority as a percent, they still aren’t a minority because they don’t face oppression.

    • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Why do you think The WokesTM 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.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Those games would have been shit with more… traditional characters as well.

      It’s like with comic books. The writing has never been great, but incels only had a problem with it when they can’t self insert into a power fantasy.

      I recently learned there’s at least one writer who has worked on both Halo 5 and Forspoken. A lot of people have issues with the writing quality of Halo 5. One issue I personally have is how many scenes don’t really start or end. The scenes often open with the conversations already having started and don’t seem to conclude by the time it ends. The lines I’ve heard of Forspoken are also awkward, but there’s way more vitriol for Forspoken. Now why could there be so much more negative attention for that game?

  • NostraDavid@programming.dev
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    3 months ago

    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)).

      • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        Not to put words in their mouth, but I think that’s what he’s saying:

        Miles Morales is cool, because he’s his own person with their own character traits.

        As opposed to rebooting Peter Parker and making him a half black, half Puerto Rican (which I think is what he is inferring when mentioning Luke Skywalker and Klingons).

          • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
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            4 months ago

            Absolutely; but I was more interpreting what that one person commented on - rather than speaking for a larger community.

            Miles was absolutely hated on by racists, which is a massive L for them as Stan Lee had repeatedly said that one of the reasons why Spider-Man’s outfit covers him from head-to-toe is that anyone could see themselves in that character.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    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.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      As a needlessly serious answer - conservatives don’t mind exceptions. What scares the shit out of them is any systemic challenge to The Hieararchy.™ Guys in dresses as a punchline doesn’t ask them to reconsider how men and women are treated differently. Like asking why there’s a female-only residence in the first place.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        Have you ever watched “Some Like It Hot?” Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemon

        It came out in 1959 and asked all the questions you brought up. Sailed past the censors and was popular on TV for decades

        My opinion is that because it was a ‘silly movie’ it got to say things a ‘serious’ film would be condemned

    • whoreticulture@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Never seen the show, but isn’t this an instance where cross-dressing is seen as a gag and not necessarily an acceptable and normal thing to do?

      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        She’s tall but she’s way too narrow to actually fit the shoulders on the suit. It’s one of those weird game oversights, like how many game building interiors are too large for the exterior to contain.

        • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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          4 months ago

          I don’t think it’s an oversight as much as it is simply the design of the suit to have large pauldron-like shoulders that also make it look like mechanical joints. And I mean, the biggest “how does that work” thing for me has always been the morph ball. How does she not just liquify?

          • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            The issue is that her arms would have to be cut off at the shoulder to fit into the arms of the suit. This fan-made diagram shows what I mean:

            • BluesF@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Her arms are actually bunched up in front of her so she can hold a little Xbox controller

          • Fishbone@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            My absolute favorite thing about the morphball is that even in canon it’s a total mindfuck that makes no sense. Very light lore spoilers for Metroid Prime 1:

            spoiler

            There’s a couple of research scans that essentially describe Space Pirate reverse engineering of Samus’ morphball tech that basically say “This morphball shit is a lost cause. All our test crew have ended up as extremely dead pretzels. We should just quit while we’re behind on this one.”

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      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…

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    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…

  • Emmy@lemmy.nz
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    4 months ago

    No, there’s a tiny sexy blonde girl in a leotard inside. Heck if you finish the first game fast enough you get to see it as a special reward.

    Probably the wrong character to make the point tbh

    • ysjet@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Actually, the ‘waifuization’ of Samus Aran is relatively recent- originally she was described as 6’3" and 198lb, and looked like this:

      • Emmy@lemmy.nz
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        4 months ago

        Not so, her original appearance. In the game. Is this

        A far cry from what you posted, but at absolute best it was confused and mixed.

        • ysjet@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I mean, you can hardly tell her height or musculature from 30 pixels lmao.