Hiku said:
If you're referring to the tweet I'm thinking of, they said they do everything they can to be inclusive and diverse. But they're also no doubt aware of the fact that many players like myself like playing as female characters some times, even though I'm not female. It's just for aesthetic reasons.
I'd accept that some people have issues with these things if the other historically inaccurate scenarios of the Battlefield series garnered even a fraction of the same backlash.
I can ask the same question about the Zeppelin. They were actually used by Germany in World War 1. Couldn't Dice have written a realistic story about how they were handled in the war? Instead they wrote a story scenario about how the main character's plane gets shot down, crash lands on the zeppelin, then they walk around on top of it while its flying. And other planes come crashing down on it right in front of them, creating holes that let them jump down to the interior, and then take it over from the inside.
It's absolutely ridiculous. Not only did that obviously never really happen, but it's not even realistic. It's the kind of thing you'd expect from a Bond film.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, the main characters jump off the Zeppelin while it's up in the sky, without a parachute, and somehow survive without a scratch because they landed in water... (Water is almost like pavement if you jump from that height. They were above the clouds.)
And people were so outraged about this historically inaccurate (and unrealistic) scenario that they made a grand total of 0 topics to complain about it.
Meanwhile we've had several topics on the issue of a woman soldier fighting for England rather than Russia or whichever other nations had them on the front lines.
And people are livid about this. It's not the way people normally react when they don't like something about a game. Something about women and minorities get people really riled up to the point where they start boycotting campaigns and want it to fail.
Like Dice said, if you want a historical portrayal of things like that, don't count on it from their Battlefield games. They leave that to other developers.
You mentioned artists integrity, which reminds me, if they had stuck to trying to keep things historically accurate, then they would limit their creative freedom in what kind of story they could have written for this soldier. They've never worried about that in the previous Battlefield games.
The mechanical hand and katana are silly, out of place and over the top. Whether people like or dislike the arm and the katana is understandable. But it shouldn't come as a big surprise to anyone who has played through previous Battlefield games that they take liberties with the story and characters.
Metal Gear Solid is also based around real events from history, albeit much more loosely, since the focus of the story takes place entirely within fictive events.
But whether you implement one scenario that never happened, or fifty, in both cases you end up with a game that isn't historically accurate. You can't just change some historical events, but not others. Either fully commit to portray an accurate retelling of events, or do whatever you want. Dice never intended to do the former with the Battlefield series.
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the backlash wasnt due to people complaining about the katana in women in the front lines, it was because the response to that that nobody who liked that was "sexist". and the issue here is grander than just this game because its representing a trend of developers and publishers pushing political agendas in media regardless if its artist quality.
the zeppeline is a perfect example. its reason, and thats the main point here, the REASON it was included because it was FUN. it was a purely artistic and gameplay design choice. it made the game better, not worse and thats why there werent many complains about it. AND because it wasnt in the first damn trailer of the game! this was the reveal for the game, the trailer that was going to set the tone and feel of the game, and EA/Dice decided to make it political, and thats the issue. the zeppeline is a poor rebuttal and only furthers my point of view.
Dice never intended to do commit to a historically accurate battlefield? then say so. have you watched the reveal event? i did. and a lot of focus was on "taking us back to WW2", "immersion", "realism". they were selling a WW2 game, and using WW2 as their marketing push. and then they revealed something else. katana's, prosthetics and bats. they built it up as something that will put you right in the middle of WW2, but they didnt deliver, hence the backlash.
"the team back home in Stockhom had a clear vision on what we wanted to do: deliver an unexpected take on the Second World War,” Senior Producer Andreas Morell added. “To tell the untold stories.”
ill give them that, they did deliver an "unexpected take", but they these arent "untold WW2 stories". EA/Dice cant have their cake and eat it too. if they want to use the appeal of WW2 then stick with it, but if they want fictional setting sell and market that, just like your example MGS does.
