[alt text: Text which says, “The 2 genders according to chuds”. Below the text is two images. On the left is an image of Geralt from The Witcher 3, and he is labeled, “Male, parentheses (white)”. On the right is an image of Ciri from The Witcher 4 trailer, and she is labeled, “Political”.]
Developing from a pretty, young, “vulnerable” girl that needs saving (even though she’s already tough as hell in TW3) into an older (chud translation: “ugly”) main protagonist fighting back against the patriarchy has these fools spitting with outrage. Here’s hoping CDPR doesn’t give them an inch.
Are there actually people complaining that she’s ugly…? She literally looks like a model, just with some scars.
There are certainly some, but that bit was more about certain creatins on this planet treating any woman nearing 30 as detestable.
they will complain about any female face that isnt ‘girlish’ enough or any female costume that doesnt show off enough boob
Who played the witcher 3 and didn’t want more Ciri gameplay? Wtf? The agile movement was so fun. Best parts of the game fight-wise.
Here, me. The Ciri parts were like someone shoved a linear action adventure into the open world RPG I wanted to play.
I wanted to progress the main story but every time it was a ciri part I was trying to rush through to get back to Geralt and go kill monsters and collect items lol
I agree, but I liked the pacing of it. Ciri’s fights were pretty fun, unchallenging as they were. The fact that they were pretty sparse and short probably helped
These people didn’t play Witcher 3. It’s mostly right wing rage bait podcasts. They’ll move on to a different side thing to be mad about in a few days.
I didn’t like the ciri parts, I just wanted to play as Geralt tbh
Game was so boring, so slow, so clunky, so bleak, I never made it that far. Tried twice over the years. I want to like it. It seems great, but then actually playing it becomes a chore quickly.
Same, about 2-3 times over the years. Had to start over each time because I forgot everything. Just looking at the map gave me anxiety because it was just so much. I’m an OCD completionist, so I have to do everything, visit every place, collect everything. That game was just overwhelming. Everything else about it was great though.
Remember there are two religions
Christian and Political
two races
White and Political
two genders
Male and Political
Two sexual orientations: Straight and political.
I bet the people complaining with “what about the lore” have a big overlap with the people that wanted Ciri to be a love interest in W3…
They exist? But she’s practically his daughter🤢
“Uhm, actually, if you think of the historic period…”
Or some bullshit like that. Screw these morons, seriously.
The key words here being “I bet…”
OP is just raging at no one in particular.
As someone who is curious about how they are going to explain the lore (in case you haven’t read the books: Ciri forswore magic after she had to draw power from fire in an emergency situation and that nearly escalated - also, you are missing out, the books are great), I feel offended by your statement.
I think it’s possible to have her somehow take back that magic in a desperate situation, or to have her go through the trial for some reason, too (she always was kind of interested, but Geralt didn’t allow it)
I mean Geralt died in the books and is somehow alive for the games. A lot of stuff can happen and be explained in a way that fits with the lore good enough to spin a story around it
I just ignore the idiots. I have wanted a Ciri game ever since I played W3 almost 10 years ago.
She’s literally supposed to become a Witcher in her own right. Geralt isn’t training her to be his eternal assistant or some kind of sidepiece, after all.
It would be neat if this leads to two storylines that sometimes intersect.
I wish people would just laugh at them, and tell them how fucking ridiculous they look and then promptly leave their asses behind and move on. Instead, we get news articles about a minority of people who have shit opinions about things they have no understanding of.
Kamela’s early campaign of just calling Trump “weird” was all about this, for some reason she dropped it in favor of kissing the asses of the Cheneys for no payoff.
It’s because it was actually a Walz thing, and she sidelined Walz for some reason.
I wish people would just laugh at them, and tell them how fucking ridiculous they look and then promptly leave their asses behind and move on. Instead, we get news articles about a minority of people who have shit opinions about things they have no understanding of.
We tried that with GamerGate, and it didn’t work. Keeping bad people away from levers of power requires constant diligence; we cannot simply dismiss and move on, because then while we are looking away, the trolls continue to build their base. I’m a strong believer in the power of memes in our modern digital age. Try to write a bunch of articles about a problem like this, and most folks will only absorb the pithy headline. Some will read the article, but mostly only college-educated folks. Instead, make a meme about it that distills the logic of your opponent down to its ridiculous conclusion, and suddenly everyone gets it. (this isn’t to say we should never write an article to explore the nuance of a point, just arguing for the value of leftist memes)
We have the discussion out in the open so that the kids and other uneducated folks can read a variety of opinions. If we don’t, the trolls swoop up and try to turn them into incels.
Why isn’t the lady who’s been training all her life to fight monsters in my grounded low fantasy game made to look like she comes from the place it is set, the same as my ones in Stellar Blade!?!?!
I don’t really understand people saying it’s not part of the lore. I did the expansions and everything. I got the ending, assuming that I remember correctly, where Ciri becomes a witcher. And in the expansions, Geralt just wanted to retire on a mountain vineyard in not-France.
One thing I was thinking of with the announcement is what would they do with the witcher powers, but from the electric punch in the preview, my guess is they’re going to expand her psychic powers to take the place of witcher powers.
I’m looking foward to it. It looks kick ass.
Also - are there actually as many compaints as people make it out to be? Like I’ve never met anyone in real life who didn’t like that a game featured a woman.
as someone who read the books (like 10 years ago so i could be wrong), I’m pretty certain it is not psychic powers, but spellcasting. Ciri trained under Yennefer and went to sorceress school for while. Geralt has the Witcher signs, which are like an elementary form of spellcasting, but Ciri learned a bit more than Geralt. Separately, she also has her warping power that is completely unique to her and very important in the lore, but I won’t say more for sake of spoilers. I don’t remember how much of this they cover in the games.
100%! You can totally see her draw elemental magic from the water running down the cave wall then cast it as ball lightning (or electricity at least?). She uses both Quen and Igni in the trailer too though. There’s also book lore about magic that could lend itself well to game play, like the costs of casting more than you’ve drawn and the skill required to draw from different “elemental planes.” Witcher mage would be a fun build!
someone should endeavor to make The Most Political Game In The World by simply having no white male characters in it at all.
Portal was a hit.
And originally created by a university design team with a female design lead, at that.
Even as Portal 2 adds male characters, one is greedy and responsible for all the conflict in the franchise, acting as something of a caricature for masculine stereotypes, and the other’s only defining trait is that he’s an easily corrupted idiot.
Portal is perhaps the best example of, and should be held up as the golden standard of, feminism in gaming.
Super Hexagon!
Pacman?
The bad reactions to this seemed minimal to me, but my god the woman in the Galactic trailer is driving them nuts.
Which I really don’t understand, because I find her look and vibe the good part of that trailer. The slurping drink and forced pop song on the other hand…
They seem to hate Naughty Dog ever since they made them play as a lesbian instead of a generic white guy.
I do like to see those people triggered. I can see them being angry at rainbows for making the sky gay.
I also cannot understand how you could play the Last of Us Part 1 and not realise how horrible Joel is.
Spoilers for both games ahead.
The ending of 1 was super difficult for me to play and super powerful in its delivery. It was horrible to decide to “save” Ellie by literally murdering everyone in the research station and destroying all hope for a cure. I was really impressed that they went there storywise, but then when in 2 Joel gets killed, all these so-called “fans” are angry because their lovely protagonist was killed. It’s like they willfully ignore the complicated morals that were already present in the first game. When Abby does horrible stuff, they hate her. When Joel does horrible stuff in 1, it’s fine. Part 2 had some problems, but I hugely respect what they were going for and how it polarised the community.
Re: the ending and Part II - It pissed me of in particular because I specifically went for a leg shot in that scene, and then Joel just goes on a rampage. And then it turns into a big revenge plot in the sequel for the very thing I didn’t want to do. It was all very frustrating.
I think it has less to do with gender politics and more to do with delivery, though.
The writing was just better. They make Joel to be a complicated, sympathetic character, and create a situation in which, even as Joel/the player murders relative innocents, you know he is doing a bad thing from a complicated and genuine love. Then, they take that character and reduce all his love to “he did a bad” and shoot him, make you chase his killer for half a game, and try to make you sympathize with his killer after the fact? And it’s all tied together through this tired, “cycle of violence” trope that another major post-apolcolyptic zombie survival media has already bastardized and beaten to death.
The “fans” who defend Joel as the hero are insane, on that point I can’t agree more. But I think the dislike of Abby and the love of Joel is deeper than “guy good, girl bad.” I’ve seen far fewer complaints (though not zero complaints) about playing the notably more “woke” surrogate lesbian daughter than about playing as Abby.
As an aside, I’ve been thinking recently about how the game would feel if you spend the first half of the game as Abby, chasing her father’s killer, only to have the rug pull later that the killer is Joel. Then, you spend the second half playing as Ellie, dealing with the consequences, while the player is trying to reconcile what just happened. Though it prob would have been harder to sell a game that doesn’t open with Eillie and Joel.
I looked it up, the horrible sub is TheLastOfUs2 (avoid!), the normal one is LastOfUsPart2
I completely agree with your last part, the story would have been perfect if it was switched.
To counter your other argument, the surrogate lesbian daughter is still more visually stereotypically attractive though. The number of hate posts for Abby that even go into transfobic territory and misgendering was massive. I made the mistake of wanting to read some discussion on part 2 after playing it on reddit: the whole sub is just hate (there probably is an alternative but I didn’t look further, I was to disgusted by it).
But your opinion on Joel vs Abby is valid, it’s actually annoying that actual discussion about storytelling gets overshadowed by bigots.
On a similar note, I had issues with the change in direction of Doctor Who which accidently coincided with the casting of the first female Doctor, and it was so hard to have genuinely critical discussions without misogynists taking over or being accused of being one myself.
I’ve been thinking recently about how the game would feel if you spend the first half of the game as Abby
Ooh. That’s a pretty clean fix for my bigger gripes about the game. I nearly put the game down when the second half was revealed. It felt so forced. Still don’t love the forced participation in the torture porn at the end, but switching the order of perspectives would def be better.
Damn the trailer looked pretty cool. I love the modern retro vibe it has. They have space tech, but also CD decks etc. But the comments on Youtube are an absolute dumpster fire… “How dare they have a female with short hair REEEEEEEEEEEEE”
I just had a conversation with someone about this on Lemmy a few days ago. His response was to call the choice “modern identity politics” and then back up his point by saying he always chose the female choice in games if he could. As if he did it from any belief that women are strong and capable and didn’t just want to see a woman on his screen. And the comment reeks of “I’m not racist! I have a black friend!” vibes.
Anyway he ended up saying Lemmy was just like Reddit and… oh, now he’s in a different thread aggravating people and saying the same thing that Lemmy is intolerant.
I’ve been slightly out of the loop on this, are incels really whining about Witcher 4 using Ciri as a protagonist because she’s a woman?
No. They’re whining about Witcher 4 using Ciri as a protagonist because they think she was made ugly.
Attractive women designed solely to be the object of male affection are allowed to be protagonists. When a woman stands on their own as a unique complex individual, they take issue.
