I never felt preached to while playing Mass Effect.

I would like to see some. I dont really know of that many that are very woke except for Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Dustborn.

I keep rewatching this cutscene and I don't like it. And it has nothing to do with the nonbinary talk. 

Some of the speech patterns sound a off to me "Where would they gooo", and the person on the left doesn't seem anywhere near as animated as the voice actor. 

And most of the lines of dialogue are spoken so quickly and immediately after another. There's barely any pauses.

I feel like Skyrim has more appealing voice acting. "Let me guess....    Someone stole your sweet roll."

The preachiest part of the video is a direct response to the player wanting an explanation.

"Woke" was a term created by African Americans like a century ago, but was appropriated (i.e., stolen) by American right-wingers as a generalized political slur to mean "Whatever we don't like." It's just one of many examples of weaponized language by the right, where they redefine terms as they see fit for propaganda purposes. It's like they don't care what terms like "socialism" or "Marxism" actually mean, but rather they only care that they're useful terms to throw around as slurs because red-baiting still works in American political discourse (most voters are still old enough to remember the Cold War).

Second, the fact that this is even a discussion is goddamn embarrassing, and is an indictment of American culture and "Western" society more broadly. The right is convinced they're fighting some "culture war" that must be won at any cost. These are people who get apoplectic over anyone other than white cishet males getting treated as equals in both law and in practice. Much of the modern American conservative movement originated as a backlash to the Civil Rights, women's liberation, and LGBTQ+ rights movements, after all. They are tyrants, who, despite all their rhetoric about how they support "individual rights" and "small government," want to use the full power of every level of government to create a de facto Christian theocracy where everything offensive to their religious and cultural views is flat-out banned by law (see Trump's announcement that he'll sign an anti-trans executive order on day one as a recent high-profile example).

Right-wingers care about their freedom and their freedom alone, which also apparently includes the "freedom" to have unchecked power to dictate to anyone they deem "The Other." Right-wing politics was, is, and always will be little more than a negative reaction towards emancipatory movements. That's because those movements upset long-standing social hierarchies and political/economic power structures that have no justification for their existence besides "Well, that's just how we've always done things" or "God said so" or whatever ever bullshit excuse conservatives invent just so they can continue not believing in universal human rights.

And as that pertains to gaming, this simple hobby was turned into another front in the "culture war," because apparently everything must be a part of it these days. It dovetails with the same asinine cottage industry that is "anti-woke" media criticism we see with films & TV. Right-wing gamers are little more than whiny man-babies who do nothing but moan and complain about absolute non-issues. They get angry when video game protagonists don't conform to their incredibly narrow parameters of what a video game protagonist should be. As far as they're concerned, there's no place for LGBTQ+ or POC protagonists in video games, and if we must have women in games, they should be little more than fap fodder.

So, they'll give games like Stellar Blade a pass but act like it's a personal affront to them that Intergalactic has a female protagonist that supposedly isn't conventionally attractive. "Oh no! An average-looking non-white woman with a buzzcut in my vidya gamez! It's the end of Western civilization as we know it!" Or they'll have idiotic freakouts over pronouns. Pronouns! A part of speech that we learned about in grade school! "But I don't want to be preached to!" Bullshit. You just don't want to have to acknowledge the existence of people different from you, much less treat them with basic human dignity.

These incel losers somehow think that their hobby belongs exclusively to them. The view themselves as gatekeepers of an entire industry, and believe that any game that does anything that might brush against their comforting little bubble is an existential threat to the medium. It's a reflection of their overall worldview, where they view anyone who doesn't look, love, or believe like them as an existential threat to society as a whole. Movements like Gamergate from a decade ago or the "anti-woke" crusade of the past few years are just a symptom of a larger problem, that being a resurgent fascism in our politics. These are people who think all aspects of society, from our entertainment to our government, should cater to them and them alone, and that everyone else should be treated at best like third-class citizens.

Oddly enough, there's plenty of things that are decades old that they would deem "woke" if they were released today, but they give those things a free nostalgia pass, and will twist themselves in knots to pretend that their favorite childhood shows or movies or games weren't "woke." It also helps that they often have zero media literacy and don't "get it" unless the message is as subtle as a brick to the face (see how long it took them to realize that The Boys was ridiculing them). Turns out that subtlety and nuance don't come natural to chuds. Who'd've thunk it?

Cant really blame anyone wanting an explanation of someone doing pushups for accidentally misgendering someone. Especially in the middle ages.

No option for "I dont agree with that" or anything. Its just "Thats so open minded of you" and "Self-improving and Excercise". Theres no choice. 

Wait. Queen Latifah is playing AS the Equalizer?? I mean honestly, that sounds wicked to me, I personally like Queen Latifah because of her hip hop history, she's a legend. 

Also, more recently, the Matlock reboot, with Kathy Bates replacing Andy Griffith. I think Kathy is a fantastic actress. 

Nice find Pi, excellent article.

Another movie that comes to mind as being full of politics, is in fact, another Stephen King one.

The Dead Zone (1983)

Great performances by Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen.

Also, a shout out to Tom Skerritt's character.

I especially loved the scene between Johnny and Sam, his Jewish doctor, when he asks him "If you could go back in time to (before WW2) when Hitler was alive, and you had the chance to kill him, would you do it?"  

What a great scene.

I've always found this argument to be insanely weak. First of all, it's up to the creators to do what they feel is right for the game and it's up to you to decide if you like it or not, sure....but with Ciri in particular...did you not play the prior games? Did you not read the books? this was always clearly where it was heading. And it wasn't like they just made up a random 'DEI hire' to replace Geralt, it was an important ongoing character in the narrative. The fact that people STILL have a problem with it despite a legacy leading up to this shows they don't care about integrity, it just boils down to 'any excuse to bemoan change/progress'.

Seriously, do you not understand how all of human artistic endeavour works or something? Times change. opinions change. History influences art and art influences history. Resisting it and framing it as bad that change is happening is an inherently political statement, and that statement is 'change is bad'.

You can't even argue that it's just 'changing protagonists' because Intergalactic: The Heretic prophet is also getting a creepily weird amount of hate for...having a non-traditionally feminine female lead. 

You can dance around it all you want, you are free to work backwards from your actual stance with the grace of an Olympic level mental gymnast but we all know exactly why this backlash keeps occurring, and it's always either ignorance or bigotry. Either people are too ignorant to understand that historical context and cultural shifts will inevitably breed change in the medium or they just don't like the idea that they're no longer the primary focus of what was once a strict boys club only. 

I made the mistake of browsing facebook and actually reading comments on random articles relating to these games that are getting online hate, and you know what I discovered? Out of 100 random comments I pulled, 98 of them were from clearly white, hetero males (like 80 of them with weird facial hair and were traditionally unattractively large/chunky). Now, I say this as a thick male myself and I am also not traditionally attractive but it's so telling that dudes who weren't likely to be getting laid in the first place are all the ones bitching about representation.

And ya know what? Every time I See a comment like that I Want to make another Ghostbusters 2016 just to piss these people off. It's so clear that they're insecure and more often than not absurdly pathetic, lashing out at creators that no longer see them as their primary focus. At this point I want the next huge release to FORCE you to chose pronouns that go against your chosen gender just to really piss them off. I want to force people to play as a trans black woman who is pansexual or whatever. I want to make them uncomfortable...because for the vast majority of the medium (And let's be honest, most of human history), most industries have catered to the grizzled white male between the ages of 13-34. Queer people have been forced to play games with blatantly straight main characters. Women have been forced to play as men. Because for so long that was all there was. 

So what, you get a few games where....they give you the OPTION to chose your pronouns and they don't have to match up with the physical body and you throw temper tantrums? Women are half the population and we get a few games with female protagonists and you throw tantrums? IT's never been about what's right, what's fair, or what makes sense, it's always been about maintaining the status quo because the status quo has always catered to you. 

Art has always been and will always be motivated by politics, by challenging the status quo. I want to challenge it, to broaden the horizons instead of restricting growth or limiting change. I want to challenge the 'majority' because that's how we get great art. 

and the fact that so many insecure brats are absolutely crumbling and forming entire personalities around whining about change shows how weak these people are. If these people were strong and masculine as they claim, they wouldn't be so personally offended that Ciri is the next witcher or that the next Naughty Dog game doesn't star the cishettiest, whitest man in existence, NAthan Drake. 

"To those in power, equality feels like oppression." 

And that's what so much of modern culture wars are about (in all categories, not just videogames). The status quo is being challenged and people who are likely to lose some of their power are throwing tantrums over it. They aren't going to be phased out (though they desperately need to convince people they are). the medium will never stop having traditionally masculine characters. The medium will never run out of new ways to cater to more crowds, but because we have women protagonists now, some of y'all have to throw fits and reverse engineer excuses to justify your outrage when in reality you're just scared of...not being the center of attention any more. 

Stop acting like you're oppressed because things change. Especially when that change is just to balance things out appropriately. And heck, even if they over-correct, too fucking bad for you. Minorities had to deal with your nonsense for decades, you can put up with playing as a gender you don't identify with for a bit. IT's only fair. Stop whining about shit. 

Video games will continue to broaden horizons by experimenting with different 'woke' concepts, right? Just because we have non-traditional shit now doesn't mean we won't still have traditional shit, too. We're not going to collectively just...not make games with male protagonists anymore, you know that, right? 

Right? 

You can't honestly think that's where this is headed. 

Right?

Because that's certainly how you and so many others are acting. You're acting like women getting a bit more representation in games means that you no longer will get any and that's just not how things are. That sort of fearmongering is so far from reality that I legitimately don't know how to argue with it except to point and laugh. It's why I don't usually respond to this shit anymore, because the arguments are always asanine nonsense. "Oh, they're changing the main character and that's BAD". How? How is it bad? And why do YOU get to be the arbiter of that? Why do you think YOU Get to decide what these people create? Why do YOU get to decide what people like me want to play? Why do YOU feel that YOUR opinion supercedes that of the rest of the population that DOES want more representation? 

Because you're used to it. and in the end, you just don't want any changes to a status quo that benefitfed you.

And that really is the crux of it all, isn't it?

Since when are we supposed to care about your feelings? I thought the whole thing about this culture war was how the liberal lefties are too emotional, not the other way around?

Honestly, said better than I have in all my little rants...because I try my best to not 'generalize' even though it's almost completely accurate. I keep getting dinged on here for generalizing groups when I Say something like "whatever ever bullshit excuse conservatives invent just so they can continue not believing in universal human rights." So yeah, kudos to you for saying that part out loud.

Because that's how it actually is, even if we've somehow been convinced that it's not nice to say nasty truths. 

Now wait for some insufferable chode to backtrack and conjure up some excuse about how you're just as bad for generalizing conservatives even though, by definition, you are correct (That conservatives primary motivation is to maintain tradition in lieu of progress and will bend over backwards to justify it even when that tradition is outright bigoted or harmful...because change is bad and tradition is good, regardless of context).