Every time again ... E3 rant topic.

Well, I write for a living and everything about a character's backstory impacts their personality and writing. You can't just write women as men or men as women. In this case, though, it's attention grabbing and is noticeable.

The character's backstory is intriguing from what I've heard. Basically being from a war torn world the Empire brought order to and with a fanatical belief they are actually a force for good and the New Republic are terrorists.

Then, YOU better than anyone should know that gender matters only so few times. Hell, how much were you bamboozled for the reveal that Samus was a girl? Not much?

Anyway, I'm kind of bored of getting igonred. Play more indies, @CT Phipps. You'd be surprised.

In other news, should I add something besides the strict schedule?

 

The best characters are, and always probably will be, well written characters, surprisingly.

Ellen Ripley doesn't go "I haz a vaginaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa LOOK AT ME! VAGINA IN THE MOVIE BOYZ!", she does what she needs to do.

The modern version of aliens would be Ellen ripley bleeding out of her vagina, while piledriving 30 foot tall aliens.

 

I'm not trying to ignore you. It's just I'm writing a book chapter and three people are arguing against me. It's not a conversation I expect to win anyone over on so I was just trying to say my piece.

As for gender mattering, I think it matters a ton in specific situations as while it doesn't DEFINE a character, it certainly INFORMS it. Samus Aran is a character who is remembered because of the reveal but the story built from it included a lot of references to Motherhood and also contrasts between Mother Brain, herself, and the Metroid that came to love her. Later, her character also got sexualized which is a pitfall of the video game world and not something that happens to male characters as much unless your name is Dante or (oddly) Geralt. And hey, she has a banging CGI body.

Gender is also something that male characters often have but are undermined by in video games. This is a strange thing to bring up but one thing about female characters I do like is the fact they are less often used as simply an empty vessel for male characters. Chel from Portal is one of the few I can think of but plenty of male characters like, say, Master Chief are effectively devoid of any personality whatsoever.
It's a shame.

But then again my biggest bugbear in the video game world is writing is so-often treated asn afterthought.

Not to call this horseshit but...uh, wouldn't that just be Alien: Isolation?

 

Also, in hindsight, some of my favourite actors and characters are black.

Jules Winnfield is fucking amazing.

 

Let me put it into perspective.

Does CJ from San Andreas being black matter?

Of course it fucking does. The entire story would change if he was white.

Same as Edward Kenway. He has to be white because he's a selfish asshole who thinks he can become a man of quality.

Adewale, by contrast, knows that door is closed to him because of forces beyond his control.

Does Shepard being black, white, male or female matter? Not at all. its a race and gender blind future where the only thing which changes is who is willing to fuck you.

Does Lara Croft's sex matter? Yes and no because in most games, no it doesn't, but it matters how the PLAYERS have reacted to her versus, say, Nathan Drake.

Battlefront 2 probably didn't NEED to have a female POC character. However, I'm happy it is because it is unexpected and shows it's not going to just be a receptacle for orders and shooting like so many others. I've yet to see a female character in any video game franchise used that way, which is more against men than women.

 

I don't like that game.

It makes no fucking sense.

Firstly, the Empire are assholes, women aren't allowed to be anything more than babymakers, barring outliers like the occasional sith chick, or rare commander.

And of course.

It happens to be a BLACK woman for some reason.

 

https://twitter.com/mombot/status/875941893711970304
You may have noticed that there were a lot of black cultists in FarCry 5 at #E3.

An anonymous Ubisoft developer talked about this:
http://imgur.com/a/KDWeR

 

It's just the way you said that, to me it implied the character's gender and skin colour are the best parts or something.

Saying that though, you've every right to want a game just for that reason. Personally unless it was a story portraying a black person's struggle in segregated society I would find it a shallow reason (buying it just for race I mean, not the story behind it).

Not necessarily. For example, a universe filled with one sapient race of *whatever*, and their women are not as strong or in as great as numbers as men, that would make sense to have only men in the military.

Or like the salarians in Mass Effect. The women are very few in number compared to men, so the men are soldiers etc, whilst the women hold political power.

Was he made black just for the sake of being make black? No, there's good reason behind it.

Whereas say another Medal of Honor game was made during WW2 and you made Jimmy black, it wouldn't make much sense given the context of the setting.

Btw you slipped up and used black instead of POC! I'm telling I'm telling!

Or is that correct? I don't know.

POC is a dumb term anyway. It's just "coloured person" in reverse!

I wouldn't say it was unexpected, hence why some are sceptical as to how good the character will turn out.

I'm not saying don't have diverse characters, what I am saying is have characters that are well-written and not just for the sake of saying "Look! Our character is a *insert race/gender/etc!" and nothing else.

 

Pretty much what I've been saying.

@CT Phipps I'm not arguing against you, I'm just pointing out that the inclusion of representation in any medium should not be done for the sake of token representation. Celebrate if you will but don't make that celebration a premature one.

It is possible that the unexpected inclusion of a female character was only a token effort and EA has no intention of letting the writer go in depth in the writing. Without that writing depth, that celebration will ring hollow.

 

Time will tell. Sooner or later, time will tell.

 

It isn't my goal to shame anyone, just calling things as I see them. If someone were to join the Creation Cult I'm so out of the picture I don't care. But for some to go to great lengths to say they are 100% opposed to it, then join it 2 years later seems like selling out.
Case and point:
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods...ney_for_certain_mods/?st=j41nnpic&sh=19d8d11a

You have Trainwiz and Elianora both mouthing off at how against paid mods they are, and she actually states she is changing her permissions so no one can make money off her assets.
To set the record straight. I'm not judging their actions, I am observing two positions that contradict each other on opposing sides for both of these modders, now, game developers.

Is it white or black? There is no grey.

 

After all I've read I think the whole drama about the new paid mods it's a bit overblown. Specially considering they have to work both on Console and PC so no big mods will be walled off by money. It's just outsourced microtransaction, as long as Bethesda isn't abusing the people that sign up for it (which is very possible seeing their treatment of Obsidian) I don't get why anyone is so upset about it. The good mods will remain free because of the policies enforced by the creation club so I can't really get myself to care one way or the other.

 

>Women.

;P

 

So you know how Bethesda said they would localize the mods.. I mean, "Content" You do realize that they are just going to esmify it right.
Fancy way of being lazy.
They think that if you esmify a mod, master it won't conflict with other mods. esps, this is true, but they will conflict with other esms.
There's a good chance the "Content" will be grossly incompatible

 

Yeah, I can't wait for someone to spend like 100$, and end up with 80% of the 'content' not actually working with other stuff.

Yet alone balance issues, etc.

I mean jesus, who would actually pay for somethign which might as well be a cheatcode?

 

Sadly PS4 users, if you read the comments all around, they are pretty excited to pay for mods. I would go into why that's stupid, but my brain would collapse.

 

It's gonna be hilarious.

 

Honestly, at this point all I can say to such people is.

"Your waifu is shit".

I don't like the term 'objectively' that much.

But this is one of those cases where objectively their opinions mean jack shit.