(POSSIBLE SPOILERS INSIDE) The agenda and political discussion of Naughty Dog

[DonFerrari]

the-pi-guy said:

I just want to preface this first. This isn't directed at any one in this thread, it was more of a response to some reddit threads that I read following the game. And if you feel that some of my criticisms are pointed at things you posted in this thread, I hope that instead of getting bothered, that you'll put some real thought into what I've said, why you actually feel the way you do about the game.

Spoiler!

The only thing I knew about the game going into it was that there was a transgender character, and that there was some outrage over a scene.  

So I played through, clocked about 22 hours of the game wondering what kind of scene would trigger the outrage.  I got to the end and was incredibly confused. The whole time I was basically waiting for some kind of scene where a character gets a sex change right on screen, instead I thought it was the biggest nothing to ever get outraged against. I had been avoiding all spoilers, because I wanted to experience the entire game.  I did not even watch most of the trailer that were put out.  I only watched the ones shown at E3.  And I quickly played through the game to join the conversation about the game.  

And the conversation has been ridiculously disappointing.  The game has a lot of flaws.  It's weirdly the best incredibly flawed game I've ever played. Some of my favorite games, I have a really hard time thinking of any real flaws with them.  Not that they're perfect, but to me they're so darn close, they might as well be perfect games.  Bloodborne, Uncharted 2, the original Last of Us, there's nothing I'd change about those games.  This game on the other hand to me feels like it has a lot of flaws, and yet I'd rate it almost as highly as those games.  Which is crazy.  

It was overly long I felt.  And it was a bit jarring to go back between very long flashbacks, and very long present day gameplay.  I think the game would have felt better by cutting out a day for both characters.  I think it would have felt better if some of the flashbacks were replaced by more shorter lighter hearted moments in the game.  

There are other problems that weren't as big of a deal to me, but some brought it up.  Basically the game makes you feel bad for things that weren't your fault.  

It's been frustrating, because there's a lot to discuss with the game.  There's flaws to talk about.  There are design choices to talk about.  And yet a fair amount of dialogue is about things that didn't even happen in the game.  Like Abby isn't trans, and she's never suggested in the game to be as such.  I watched the first 10 minutes of the Angry Joe review, and he started complaining about things that never happened.  

It's been frustrating, because people are complaining about the mere existence of certain kinds of characters.  LGBT isn't a political position.  Strong women isn't a political position.  They're people.  They're just people.  Some of those people want to be represented somehow.  A lot of people just want diverse characters and stories. I honestly have no clue, how some people can basically imply that buff women are a political agenda, without face palming themselves.  

Imagine if someone said "The Last of Us 2 is pushing a conservative agenda, because it glorifies guns as a life saving tool. It also pushes out how important it is to have that right to defend yourself.  

Skyrim is pushing a conservative agenda by having a semi-capitalistic society, and represents a proud almost patriotic group of white people who are fighting off their oppressors just like us Americans did in 1776.  

The magic bit here is that if you go into any game trying to find an agenda, if you're clever enough, chances are pretty good that you'll be able to argue that the agenda you expected is actually there.  

Even more frustrating is that every time a diverse character like I talked about previously exists, people demand that their existence be justified somehow.  As if character traits have to be justified somehow.  "why is this character male, that needs to be justified"  Even more frustratingly this game literally went to lengths to justify the characters.  Lev being transgender was part of his story.  Abby being buff was part of her story.  They weren't just token characters who were just thrown into a regular story to check off some boxes.  And yet the outrage was worse than ever.  So apparently the issue wasn't that these characters weren't justified.  

And frankly even if buff women was part of some kind of liberal agenda.  Why do you think that pixels on a screen is worth getting upset over?

Agree with your post. And again for me it was easy to see the changes from previous game and how this have more elements of a politically progressive oriented team, but nothing in the game really is lost, tarnished or reduced in quality because of it. For me it doesn't make sense someone would break a law in the clan to get expelled and put sister in danger because couldn't hold the urge to cut the hair, but well if chars didn't do bad choices there wouldn't be a story at all.

And I'm middle ground on the need to justify a char, most of time it isn't necessary. But if you are portraying something (with some tentative of realism) and that char is very different than what should be there, like if you wanted to have a black samurai or woman shogun, then some narrative explaining that would be good to ground us on why he is there without breaking immersion or bringing unneded questions.