Anthem reviews

[BreakfastMan]

Well that is what happens when all the creative leads in a studio leave and you force them to work on trend-chasing garbage. You get trend-chasing garbage. Crazy to think, I know.

 

[CritialGaming]

Well that is what happens when all the creative leads in a studio leave and you force them to work on trend-chasing garbage. You get trend-chasing garbage. Crazy to think, I know.

Everyone is doing that too. I wonder how the AAA publishers stay in business just chasing each other's tail and trying to one-up each other in how shitty their monetization can be.

 

[BrawlMan]

Lara Croft in the new Tomb Raider trilogy for example. You see whenever media wants a badass female character, it is often so overdone that the character looses believably. Lara Croft is a badass who doesn't need anyone's help ever, because she is the ONLY one who can do whatever bullshit the game wants her to do. She has no interpersonal relationships to help the audience relate to her. They made her TOO independent, TOO tough, if that makes any sense in this context. It makes her a bad character because you have nothing to relate on her with. And to further dig her into a hole she has no redeemable personality to help make up for her other lacking relationships. She isn't witty, she isn't funny, she isn't particularly caring, nor does she have any real grand goal for herself, no aspirations, nothing. They made her so tough and so independent, that they forgot to flesh out anything else about her.

But too be fair, most of the male characters have the same problem. Most of the male main characters in games don't really have much to emotional connect with them either. Dante is a douche, Kratos is a mindless brute (in 1-3), WTF even IS Mario, Marcus is a walking murder bot, Issac Clark is a shell, on and on and on.



I disagree with you big time on Dante, unless we're talking about DMC2!Dante (written by a writer who did not know thing one about the character) or the DmC version. Both of those versions lacked any charisma. Yes, Dante is a jerk, but he is a jerk with a heart of gold. Sure, he didn't have the most depth in DMC1, but there were still some hidden depths. He's a guy that knew how to make fun of other and himself. Also, him being a bigger jerk in 3 makes sense, because it's a younger, more arrogant, Dante who has not full matured yet. By the end of the game, starts become more like his incarnation from the original. Plus, Dante is a fun character. He does not need to super "deep" to be likeable or relatable. Nor does every single character in any fiction.


Here is some of his more subtle moments.



Skip to 5:17 to go past the fight.

As for Kratos, he became a parody of himself in GOW II & III. He turned in to a whiny ***** that blamed anyone, but himself until the last third of III. Thank God, they finally gave him some actual character progression in IV.

Mario became the video game equivalent of Mickey Mouse somewhere around the mid-late 2000s, Issac Clarke went from Gordman Freeman to Leon S. Kennedy with PTSD (great character progression in my opinion), and Marcus is just another tough soldier/space marine. Marcus voiced by John DiMaggio so it evens out at least in large ham acting.

You want to look at a blank slate of a main character. Look no further than Ryu Hayabusa. The guy has little to no characters in his modern games, yet has more characterization in the NES trilogy and the Dead or Alive series by comparison . It ridiculous. They tried to "fix" the problem in 3/Razor Edge, but we all know how that disaster went.

 

[Hawki]

I thought the lady on the cover was the Norwegian lady from the Sabotage mission,

Doubt it - she doesn't quite match the appearance, and it doesn't make sense in the context of the character.

Lara Croft in the new Tomb Raider trilogy for example. You see whenever media wants a badass female character, it is often so overdone that the character looses believably. Lara Croft is a badass who doesn't need anyone's help ever, because she is the ONLY one who can do whatever bullshit the game wants her to do.

Wasn't that the case in the earlier games as well? Like, more so, where Lara is often the only actual character in the game?

Far as the films go, Alicia Vikander's Lara is much more engaging than Jolie's, in part because she's less of a "badass" and more down to earth.

Dante is a douche, Kratos is a mindless brute (in 1-3), WTF even IS Mario, Marcus is a walking murder bot, Issac Clark is a shell, on and on and on.

Mario doesn't really belong in this conversation, because let's be honest - he's barely even a character.

But as for the others, Marcus is hardly a "walking murder bot." He's got plenty of backstory, he has moments of vulnerability in the games, and he only achieves what he does with 1-3 people alongside him at any given moment. Marcus always accomplishes his goals with the aid of others.

And as for Isaac, him being a "shell" only really holds in the first game, and even then he breaks down. After that, he spends three years dealing with PTSD before waking up with a voicebox and discovering "true wuv."

Yes, IsaacxEllie is better than IsaacxNicole. Deal with it!

Issac Clarke went from Gordman Freeman to Leon S. Kennedy with PTSD

Um...

Okay, I get what you're saying, but even in DS1, Isaac has more backstory and personality than Gordon has in the entirety of HL2 and its episodes (haven't played HL1). As for Leon, we talking Resi 2 Leon, or Resi 4 and onward Leon? Because if the former, maybe. If the latter, hell no.

 

[BrawlMan]

Um...

Okay, I get what you're saying, but even in DS1, Isaac has more backstory and personality than Gordon has in the entirety of HL2 and its episodes (haven't played HL1). As for Leon, we talking Resi 2 Leon, or Resi 4 and onward Leon? Because if the former, maybe. If the latter, hell no.

That is what I basically implied about Issac. Yeah, he has more backstory compared Freeman and at least emotes somewhat, but he was just another line-up of silent protagonists until DS2 & DS3. The Leon comparison is a combination of 2 and 4, but more so the latter. Issac tends to snark a lot in Dead Space 2, a la Leon, though it's not as over-the-top. Hell, Dead Space 2 is more like RE4 than Dead Sapce 1. Female companion (though you don't have to constantly worry about Ellie), snarky, action survivor turned action hero with an infection (mental for Issac and physical for Leon), and there is even a bulldozing section. In Dead Space 2, it's a drill, but it's the same difference in this case. DS2 is a serious game, yet is more humorous compared to the original, and to the point that the humor is something you find in the early RE games

 

[CritialGaming]

Considering this is a point by point description of the original Lara croft it's ironically amazing that a 20 year old games female character is still too progressive for some people

How is keeping her a shit character progressive in any way? Progressive would be making her an interesting person to actually care about.

 

[Satinavian]

Considering this is a point by point description of the original Lara croft it's ironically amazing that a 20 year old games female character is still too progressive for some people

Weren't the original Lara Croft games ridiculed for having a sexy pin-up protagonist without any character and used as the go to example for the gaming industry pandeing to a male audience ?

Now suddenly it is "too progressive" ?


Personally i did only play the reboot series and do somewhat agree. I don't have a problem with how independend or skillfull she is, but seriously, the kind of stuff happening in cutscenes and the sequences where she slides down through numerous obstacles with quick-time events should have killed her ten times over and seriously strain credibility. Things like getting impaled on rusty spikes and crashing through half a dozen walls and roofs and fallling dozens of meters should not result in being in fighting condition. At least not without superpowers, magic or scifi-armor.

 

[Something Amyss]

So all the games that have female leads don't count?

I can't help you posted this loaded question only after I made a different, specific statement.

Female leads don't necessarily translate to a targeted female audience, and it's really dishonest to pretend otherwise.

Again, you can #notallmen gaming by pointing out individual exceptions, but that's also disingenuous.

 

[CritialGaming]

So all the games that have female leads don't count?

I can't help you posted this loaded question only after I made a different, specific statement.

Female leads don't necessarily translate to a targeted female audience, and it's really dishonest to pretend otherwise.

Again, you can #notallmen gaming by pointing out individual exceptions, but that's also disingenuous.

Then what games are targeted towards women? Because last I checked women play all kinds of games all over the spectrum. Just look at Twitch and look at what the girls are streaming (not the booty streamers but legit variety streamers like Dodger and Pokket), they play basically everything. There doesn't seem to be a bias in marketing or sexual targeting in most games with the exception of games that are deliberately pushing a sexy agenda.

Take Anthem for example, what part of the marketing is directly geared towards sex? What about any recent game that had advertisement? Kingdom Hearts 3? Resident Evil 2 Remake? Where are you seeing this gender targeting?

You imply that everything related to females, audience and in-game characters, are always just swept under the rug. But where is your evidence of that? It's like you are creating bias where it doesn't exist.

Audience targeting isn't the same thing as exclusion either. You can target women or men without also excluding the other gender. Targeting is not the same as bias, it's a marketing strategy to appeal to the audience that would be most likely to purchase your product. It's how businesses work.

And I am not saying that some products and titles don't gear themselves towards a specific audience, even a male audience, because that certainly happens. But I do not see evidence of targeting specifically trying to exclude women, at least not since the early 90's.

Show me examples, I am fully open to the possibility that my white male brain is oblivious to it.

 

[Something Amyss]

Because last I checked women play all kinds of games all over the spectrum.

Which, again, does not mean women are the target audience for any of them. Women play God of War. Are women the target audience for God of War? Do you really believe that?

It's weird that you keep trying to make a point by making non sequitur arguments which neither support the point or are remotely beneficial except in a "hey, look over here!" context.

 

[CritialGaming]

Because last I checked women play all kinds of games all over the spectrum.

Which, again, does not mean women are the target audience for any of them. Women play God of War. Are women the target audience for God of War? Do you really believe that?

It's weird that you keep trying to make a point by making non sequitur arguments which neither support the point or are remotely beneficial except in a "hey, look over here!" context.

I'm trying to understand WTF YOUR point is. Women play CoD and PUBG, and literally everything else. If they play it, then they are the target audience.

You seem to be implying that people's preferences should be linked to their sex, which seems to be a bad look these days.

Like I said, targeting a specific audience doesn't mean you are excluded other audiences. Audiences overlap all the time, and while you might not fit into the exact label of a targeted message, that message can still appeal to you.

So if you have a point, why don't you clarify it instead of just dodging around it giving non-committal rebukes?

 

[BreakfastMan]

Well that is what happens when all the creative leads in a studio leave and you force them to work on trend-chasing garbage. You get trend-chasing garbage. Crazy to think, I know.

Everyone is doing that too. I wonder how the AAA publishers stay in business just chasing each other's tail and trying to one-up each other in how shitty their monetization can be.

I mean, it won't work for very long. Anthem is probably going to be the first one of these that fails hard.

 

[Something Amyss]

I mean, it won't work for very long. Anthem is probably going to be the first one of these that fails hard.

Copabies have been doing this since the 80s, though. Remember the late 80s and early 90s mascot platformer wars? Pepperidge Fahm remembahs.

 

[Something Amyss]

Like I said, targeting a specific audience doesn't mean you are excluded other audiences.

Oh, good. We're already back to "lecturing Amy about things she not only didn't say, but said to the contrary."

You literally quoted me saying that girls were welcome to come along when you started down this rabbit hole:

Games have very specifically had this sort of relationship with women for a long time. Girls are allowed to come along for the ride on the Kratos power fantasy, but it's very clear you're not the target demo.

My argument was never, ever, ever that girls were excluded. You took this and decided that I was ignoring female-led games, and went down several other non-sequiurs before landing right back at my original point. Hey, yeah, women't aren't necessarily excluded, which might be summarised by saying...uhhh...if only I knew how to phrase this....

Games have very specifically had this sort of relationship with women for a long time. Girls are allowed to come along for the ride on the Kratos power fantasy, but it's very clear you're not the target demo.

Oh, right.

I mean, thanks for agreeing with me, after typing out dozens of paragraphs detailing why I'm wrong for things I didn't say in the first place, but it leaves me wondering what the point of misconstruing me was in the first place.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I've always said that diversity shouldn't be forced into video games?.

?[Battlefield 5] They put the handicapped woman on the cover? it was forced and had no purpose. It was there for the sake of it and not for any character reason.

The halls of this rabbit are nothing if not well worn, and changing minds around here is about as futile a task as making a snowman on the surface of the sun, so I don?t expect much in response, but you have to admit this sounds a little, I dunno, entitled? (And I?m not attacking you, just stating how I took, perhaps mistakenly, what you?ve said.) You make it sound like a videogame, a work of fantasy pulled from the ether, is by default the domain of the straight white male, and any variation from that need tried and proven justification. You?re implying diversity demands not only a reason, but a good one. Is ?the writers wrote in [pick your flavor of diversity] because they wanted diversity in their creation? not reason enough?

But on topic, Anthem is indicative of the reason I?ve not been able to get really excited about anything gaming related for the longest time. I?m honestly not hard to please, not nearly as cynical and critical of games as some for whom the Second Coming of Christ would first and foremost lose points for taking its +2,000 years development time, but the trend of modern gaming has shown that it?s not even concerned with meeting my bare bones standards. I listened to a couple of reviews (because I?ve no intention of ever playing so don?t care to have my impression swayed,) and they cited not only the same complaints but some that were just baffling. No way to see your character stats? A looter-shooter with a broken loot drop sysrem? (One reviewer claims to have gotten a gun that had something to the effect of ?a chance of inflicting 0% bonus [elemental] damage? 0% of the time.? Yeah, it never has a chance to do no bonus damage? maybe it?s an intentional double negative, and he actually lucked upon one of the greatest randomized weapons in the game? That (and much more) piled on top of a samey, uninspired, repetitive grind fest with tons of reused assets, ridiculous load times, microtransactions and all from the infamously charitable paws of EA. Nothing about this game disappoints me; it?s pretty much exactly what I expected.

 

[CritialGaming]

The halls of this rabbit are nothing if not well worn, and changing minds around here is about as futile a task as making a snowman on the surface of the sun, so I don?t expect much in response, but you have to admit this sounds a little, I dunno, entitled? (And I?m not attacking you, just stating how I took, perhaps mistakenly, what you?ve said.) You make it sound like a videogame, a work of fantasy pulled from the ether, is by default the domain of the straight white male, and any variation from that need tried and proven justification. You?re implying diversity demands not only a reason, but a good one. Is ?the writers wrote in [pick your flavor of diversity] because they wanted diversity in their creation? not reason enough?

Diversity does need a reason imo. Well....maybe not a reason directly, like I don't expect developers to sit down and say, "This is why we NEED this character to be Latino."

But there is a reasonable expectation for that diversity to have purpose. And that comes from the writing. A good story will naturally have a diverse cast of characters, because the diversity is a natural part of good storytelling. Characters in good fiction are spread out all across the spectrum of humanity. There are men, women, minorities, etc. all including in a good story.

Where diversity has problems is when the inclusion of someone is arbitrary, as it was with BFV. Because the Battlefield series has ALWAYS been about taking a more realistic approach to the military shooter (ignoring Hardline). As a result, making a female soldier the highlight of the marketing campaign (especially showing off the disabled woman) just didn't make sense to the fan base. Now if BFV was a fictional universe or going in a fantasy direction with war, then nobody would have said anything. But they touted that series for it's realism, then put that woman on the cover because one of the developer's daughters asked her daddy why they didn't have girls in the game. That's it. She was put there on a whim.

It's a noble whim, but still just a whim.

There are games that include a diverse cast and it's wonderful, people from all walks of live add a richness to the world. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Overwatch, hell even Anthem. Anthem's story might be mediocre shit, but the cast of characters is diverse in a way that makes perfect sense and fits with what's going on around the player.

The point is that the inclusion of diverse characters needs to make sense, it needs to feel natural. That takes world building and writing. And when you advertise a world one way, but the characters you insert into that world don't make sense (ala BFV) then that's when it feels forced and not right.

Though personally I feel it is kind of crazy that we include female video game characters in the diversity talk in general because there have ALWAYS been a fucking shit load of female characters in video games, and not nearly half of them are over sexuallized damsels as Feminist Frequency would lead you to believe.

Frankly I find the whole concept of more diversity in video games ludicrous because gaming has always had a huge diverse cast of characters. But no matter how many characters you point out, it's never enough, it's always a problem because 100% of all games ever aren't female friendly so it's a problem.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Pulling a Hawki:

Diversity does need a reason imo. Well....maybe not a reason directly?

But there is a reasonable expectation for that diversity to have purpose.

And who has set this ?reasonable expectation?? No one asked me; did I miss a meeting? Was my vote of silence a tacit nod towards ?straight while males for everybody all the time??

And that comes from the writing. A good story will naturally have a diverse cast of characters, because the diversity is a natural part of good storytelling. Characters in good fiction are spread out all across the spectrum of humanity. There are men, women, minorities, etc. all including in a good story.

So ?a good story will naturally include a diverse cast;? does it not then follow that a story without diversity is a bad story?

Where diversity has problems is when the inclusion of someone is arbitrary, as it was with BFV. Because the Battlefield series has ALWAYS been about taking a more realistic approach to the military shooter (ignoring Hardline). As a result, making a female soldier the highlight of the marketing campaign (especially showing off the disabled woman) just didn't make sense to the fan base. Now if BFV was a fictional universe or going in a fantasy direction with war, then nobody would have said anything. But they touted that series for it's realism, then put that woman on the cover because one of the developer's daughters asked her daddy why they didn't have girls in the game. That's it. She was put there on a whim.

It's a noble whim, but still just a whim.

It?s debatable that Battlefield has always had a more realistic approach to military shooters for the simple fact that I don?t recall any stories of anyone in the history of ever being shot multiple times and it had literally no impact to their immediate ability save for a brief red glossing over of the eyes that dissipated after a few seconds. So ?the fan base? can suspend disbelief for that much more unlikely scenario, but a solder with a vagina crosses the line?

There are games that include a diverse cast and it's wonderful, people from all walks of live add a richness to the world. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Overwatch, hell even Anthem. Anthem's story might be mediocre shit, but the cast of characters is diverse in a way that makes perfect sense and fits with what's going on around the player.

The point is that the inclusion of diverse characters needs to make sense, it needs to feel natural. That takes world building and writing. And when you advertise a world one way, but the characters you insert into that world don't make sense (ala BFV) then that's when it feels forced and not right.

See my last bullet. These are works of fiction (even those that depict real world events are telling those events from a fictitious standpoint,) so whatever the writers put to paper and ultimately on screen is what makes their sense in their world; whether or not that aligns with YOUR version of ?sense? is a nonissue. And that?s not said snidely; I?m being earnest; you can?t pick a choose when to suspend disbelief and tax the developers to omit certain groups simply because? well, no reason other than an entitled fan base refusing to see past or take in stride a nominal inclusion of someone(s) without a penis.

Though personally I feel it is kind of crazy that we include female video game characters in the diversity talk in general because there have ALWAYS been a fucking shit load of female characters in video games, and not nearly half of them are over sexuallized damsels as Feminist Frequency would lead you to believe.

Frankly I find the whole concept of more diversity in video games ludicrous because gaming has always had a huge diverse cast of characters. But no matter how many characters you point out, it's never enough, it's always a problem because 100% of all games ever aren't female friendly so it's a problem.

You?ve generalized quite a bit here; I don?t even know which points to address, but can we not argue that since ?gaming has always had a huge diverse cast of characters,? (implied that there?s enough to sate the desire for representation by non-straight white males,) the exact same argument can be said of straight white males? Are there not PLENTY enough games featuring straight white guys that adding diversity shouldn?t be such a big an affront as to be worth mentioning? For every uninvited vagina in a modern military shooter, is there not really a DOZEN without them? I guess it?s ?never enough.?

 

[Dalisclock]

Where diversity has problems is when the inclusion of someone is arbitrary, as it was with BFV. Because the Battlefield series has ALWAYS been about taking a more realistic approach to the military shooter (ignoring Hardline). As a result, making a female soldier the highlight of the marketing campaign (especially showing off the disabled woman) just didn't make sense to the fan base. Now if BFV was a fictional universe or going in a fantasy direction with war, then nobody would have said anything. But they touted that series for it's realism, then put that woman on the cover because one of the developer's daughters asked her daddy why they didn't have girls in the game. That's it. She was put there on a whim.

It's a noble whim, but still just a whim.

It?s debatable that Battlefield has always had a more realistic approach to military shooters for the simple fact that I don?t recall any stories of anyone in the history of ever being shot multiple times and it had literally no impact to their immediate ability save for a brief red glossing over of the eyes that dissipated after a few seconds. So ?the fan base? can suspend disbelief for that much more unlikely scenario, but a solder with a vagina crosses the line?

It's a point I keep bringing up. Sure, Battlefield and CoD have Marketing Pretensions to "Realistic Military Action"(because nothing screams real like Blue and Orange with glow and lens flare), but everything I've seen tends to "One man army charges fort after fort by themselves and wins the day unless story says otherwise surrounded by lotsa plosions" school of Micheal Bay spectacle. Hell, the same trailer with the lady with the hook hand looks like a michael bay movie on meth. So it's hard to see the "Realism" arguement of "No Ladies allowed" here. I can have GPS tracking artillery shells and one guy in steel plate armor shooting down half an air force in WW1 but a woman is just a bridge too far?