For what it's worth, the Cracked article specified that it was addressing only the SOD critics who were complaining about Mizhena, not folks who criticize just any aspect of SOD. Cracked was harsh, but it was clearly directed at the people who were infuriated by Mizhena's presence.
I'm pretty sure that entire article was abusive to people who criticised SoD.
[citation needed]
I was being a bit facetious in an attempt to highlight how nebulous the concepts of "abuse" and "harrassment" can be.
But ok:
Point #4: "And now here are some players reacting to that brief conversation as if the game required them to pledge allegiance to ISIS before proceeding"
"Any attempts to "protect video games" might be a bit undercut by 74 percent of readers considering "Hurr durr!" valid critique"
"serial killers would find the comments a bit much"
"It's called Siege Of Dragonspear: Corrections, because apparently there was a competition to make the Skyrim horse vagina mod look classy."
Point #3 "The reaction reveals a striking persecution complex"
"An angry mob decided that one minor employee was responsible for their inability to caress underage cartoon girls (seriously, it was a face-touching minigame),"
"Finally, a game called Pillars Of Eternity included a quick little transphobic limerick"
"Their goal is to be outraged, no matter what. If the situation doesn't justify it, they'll twist it until it does"
"Advancement is met with walls of fiery hate hiding behind a thin veneer of "tradition" or not wanting to get "political""
Even if one deems these quotes as offensive or abusive to a specific group of people, which I do not, these quotes are miles less abusive than the quotes the article provided. Basically a bunch of people saying that trans people should die, and what appeared to be people reacting to someone's actual suicide with joy. That is the depths of awfulness.
abuse 1. use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse. "the judge abused his power by imposing the fines" synonyms: misuse, misapply, misemploy, mishandle; More make excessive and habitual use of (alcohol or drugs, especially illegal ones). "at various times in her life she abused both alcohol and drugs" 2. treat with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly. "riders who abuse their horses should be prosecuted" synonyms: mistreat, maltreat, ill-treat, treat badly, ill-use, misuse; More antonyms: look after assault (someone, especially a woman or child) sexually. "he was a depraved man who had abused his two young daughters" euphemistic masturbate. use or treat in such a way as to cause damage or harm. "he had been abusing his body for years" 3. speak to (someone) in an insulting and offensive way. "the referee was abused by players from both teams" synonyms: insult, be rude to, swear at, curse, call someone names, taunt, shout at, scold, rebuke, upbraid, reprove, castigate, inveigh against, impugn, slur, revile, smear, vilify, vituperate against, slander, libel, cast aspersions on, offend, slight, disparage, denigrate, defame; More
No 3 is the type of abuse we are referring to here.
You don't think that referring to people who post nasty comments as worse than serial killers is both insulting and offensive? Maybe they would argue that their comments were just hyperbole? Certainly the writer does in #4 "You can play a fun minigame right here. We call it "count the hand-wringing hyperbole"!"
My point being this is just essentially countering abuse with abuse. I don't personally find the article offensive, and I do find many of the comments listed in the article offensive. But I'm not the arbiter of what other people do or do not choose to find offensive or abusive.
Maybe you think I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but I do wish people would take a few moments of self reflection before writing an article like this.
You don't think that referring to people who post nasty comments as worse than serial killers is both insulting and offensive? Maybe they would argue that their comments were just hyperbole? Certainly the writer does in #4 "You can play a fun minigame right here. We call it "count the hand-wringing hyperbole"!"
So why do the posters who write death threats and say trans people should be eradicated (which is more than "nasty comments") get to use hyperbole and the article's author can't, then? Do you really believe the author thinks that these immature people are worse than people who have killed many people?
My point being this is just essentially countering abuse with abuse. I don't personally find the article offensive, and I do find many of the comments listed in the article offensive. But I'm not the arbiter of what other people do or do not choose to find offensive or abusive.
Maybe you think I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but I do wish people would take a few moments of self reflection before writing an article like this.
But aren't you attempting to act as the arbiter of what's offensive by saying the article is being offensive?
What would your solution be, then? Write up an article quoting this hate speech and frankly scarily violent attitude toward a group of people, and then be completely neutral about it? The author, as well as the website, is just as allowed to have an opinion on the topic as the posters were who "criticized" SoD.
Again, I'll restate that this is Cracked, and self reflection, important as it is, probably won't be found in abundance on the site.
Actually over the years I have found Cracked to be far more insightful than every major media outlet. Satire can say things on multiple levels others cannot.
But if you look at their citations, you often--in fact, more often than not--find that their evidence is wildly stretched, to the point that their sources often have nothing to do with with the subject, or even contradict their argument. Sometimes you can tell, looking at the article and the citation, that the writer just grabbed an interesting essay from some random site, interpreted it beyond all recognition, and threw in a link to make the claim seem plausible, when in reality the claim is--I'm not exaggerating here--a total fabrication.
The authors are also famously non-reflective and non-introspective. Some of Cracked's most prominent voices are known for writing patronizing essays saying that they are the only enlightened ones around, and everyone who disagrees with them is an idiot (that's a paraphrase) who should "shut up" (that's a quote).
I often agree with the authors' arguments and the writing is strong, but the quality of their journalism is amateurish at best, and the level of analysis is zero.
The most insightful content on Cracked comes from the comment section, which tends to eviscerate every article Cracked publishes about current events.
But if you look at their citations, you often--in fact, more often than not--find that their evidence is wildly stretched, to the point that their sources often have nothing to do with with the subject, or even contradict their argument. Sometimes you can tell, looking at the article and the citation, that the writer just grabbed an interesting essay from some random site, interpreted it beyond all recognition, and threw in a link to make the claim seem plausible, when in reality the claim is--I'm not exaggerating here--a total fabrication.
The authors are also famously non-reflective and non-introspective. Some of Cracked's most prominent voices are known for writing patronizing essays saying that they are the only enlightened ones around, and everyone who disagrees with them is an idiot (that's a paraphrase) who should "shut up" (that's a quote).
I often agree with the authors' arguments and the writing is strong, but the quality of their journalism is amateurish at best, and the level of analysis is zero.
The most insightful content on Cracked comes from the comment section, which tends to eviscerate every article Cracked publishes about current events.
Unfortunately all of those things can be truthfully said about most every major media outlet and talking head these days.
Look, the article is, in the broadest sense, rude. Its author insults some people. I believe that those insults are amply deserved in this case, but they're still insults, and the semantic argument of whether they constitute "abuse" is not interesting to me.
The more important point, which has been mentioned multiple times, is who the insults are directed at. They are very clearly directed at people who get outraged about transgender characters, not at all critics of Siege of Dragonspear.
I hope you don't mean me, @Shandyr. Maybe I was unclear, but I think the article is great and that many of the people mentioned in the article are garbage. I just thought it was unproductive to argue with @ajwz about whether or not the article contains insults, because it (like this comment) obviously does.
I can only speak for myself and my reaction, which was negative.
First, I have to say Mizhena was a small portion of my reaction. Mostly the game was lackluster. It was short, linear, took liberties with characters (Safana went from my favorite "one dungeon" character in BG1 to tied with Volghiln for "most despised character and yes that includes Hef" in SoD), and in the end completely pointless and unsatisfying. Justice is not served for anyone. Not the main character, not Caelar, not Skie, and (at least in the path I took) not Corwin. And definitely no justice for Imoen. You take a fan favorite, the only one possibly more beloved than Minsc, hire Melissa Disney on to reprise the role, and then leave her benched the entire blasted game! Sure, that explains the multi-class narratively, but BG2 made her multiclass because virtually everyone did it in BG1 of their own volition, so it's kind of backwards logic. At least it maintains the tradition of Imoen getting screwed in every installment (late entry with no banter support in BG and SoA, a bug in a script keeps much of her dialogue blocked in ToB, and now she's kept out of the game for all but one minor dungeon at the end.
As for Mizhena, first I have to say I can never remember which way the gender switch goes, so I'll try to keep it gender neutral out of respect. I might slip a "he" in here at some point or another, but that's just my tendency to supplant uncertain gender with my own.
For me, the problem with Mizhena can be split into a few parts:
1) The appearance of it - I'm not going to lie, the way it was initially described to me, it sounded like pure SJW cow patties. I don't like my games being used to political ends, so the news annoyed me, especially compounded with Scott's publicly voiced statements on the female characters of BG1 and her own proud identity as an SJW. Once I played it, it wasn't nearly so bad as it was played up to be, but that's not a nice place to start from.
2) I felt it was horribly written - I know there's a reason for this, but good grief was Mizhena's spewing dialogue bad, with little provocation and only supportive responses. Would a "Whoa, whoa! TMI! Just sell me some potions, would ya?" have killed anyone? So your wiring doesn't match your plumbing. Fair enough. Be you. I think I still have that ogre's girdle somewhere if you'd like to re-sync. I just don't want to hear a monologue about it. Granted, now that I know about about the writing limits for bit characters, I get how it got that way, but it still boils down to this: if you can't do it right in the space you have, don't do it.
3) It came off as sheer tokenism - There is no reason at all why this cleric needed to have their gender issues discussed at length. You walk by masses of people every day and does it really matter what they're packing in their undergarments? So why was it addressed here? Not because "Mizhena is tran" was important to anything at all, but because the author wanted a tran character and Mizhena was a convenient subject. Mizhena's gender identity doesn't inform the character, it's just an item on a list to check off. Tran character? Check. Now who's going to be our "too old for this excrement" character for this story? Ah, M'Khiin!
4) The defense was louder than the offense - Rawgrim's comparison to Sony sums this point up perfectly, as Ghostbusters 2016 is a great comparison to this game: a harmless, lackluster installment that struggles against a wall of nostalgia for recognition in its franchise but would rather blame any negative reactions on the evil misogynists, transphobics, and generalized bigots. This game, despite some definite high points, is just not that great, and Mizhena is not the reason for it. I honestly feel that some folk were genuinely pleased at the reaction to Mizhena because it gave them a scapegoat to defend against actual criticism.
I don't dislike Mizhena for being trans, I dislike her for being a horribly written, transparently token character serving no purpose but to represent a group of people - badly.
There's a much better example to argue that Mizhena is badly written but no-one seems to ever mention it. I'm of course referring to the "spy" quest. I mean, look at this dialogue:
Charname: Excuse me. Is this your candle? Mizhena: My candle! So YOU'RE the thief. Charname: No, I'm trying to find the thief. Mizhena: Keep on mewling, kitten. Your weakness sickens me. You haven't the guts to steal anything. Charname: One word, one more word, and I swear I'll rip that venomous snake tongue from your mouth. Mizhena: Threaten me again and I'll bloody your nose! Charname: Bloody my nose and I'll blacken both your eyes. Mizhena: Blacken my eyes and I'll break both your arms! Charname: Break my arms and I'll headbutt your face into crimson paste!
Taken directly from the dialogue files, since I don't have a save file at this point to take screenshots. It's obvious the intent was to display two warriors being all macho, but it fails terribly and is more reminiscent of two grade schoolers calling each other poo-poo heads.
Why is this example never used to point Mizhena's bad writing? Why is it always her optional introduction (while the dialogue mentioned above is mandatory to finish the quest that way)?
This is a rhetorical question of course. I already know the answer -- and I'm sure everyone else does too.
The defense was louder than the offense - Rawgrim's comparison to Sony sums this point up perfectly, as Ghostbusters 2016 is a great comparison to this game: a harmless, lackluster installment that struggles against a wall of nostalgia for recognition in its franchise but would rather blame any negative reactions on the evil misogynists, transphobics, and generalized bigots.
Ehhhhhh... I think Ghostbusters is a solid analogy, but not for the reasons you think.
The unfortunate fact is that there are people like you who might have legitimate, well-reasoned complaints about SoD. Same goes for Ghostbusters. Your negative opinion of the product or some component thereof is not offensive, or abusive, or in any way invalid. It's perfectly normal, acceptable criticism.
However, no objective observer would look at the hubbub around either of those products and think that level-headed critics like you are in any way representative of the overall negative tone pervading every possible source of reviews. I didn't see metacritic, or steam, or IMDB and think "hmmm, it appears this game/movie has some legitimate flaws, based on these well-reasoned arguments"; I saw "OMG SJW OPPRESSION MEN'S RIGHTS RAAAAAAAAAAAGH" and figured, hmm, it appears that the lowest common denominator has chosen their new target for the day.
Cracked highlights some of the absolute garbage that went on in response to this game, and they didn't need to look very hard. As for Ghostbusters, there's plenty of coverage of similar goings-on all over the internet, from Twitter threats to explicit sexism to review bombing that just so happened to have an absurdly gender-driven bias when you look at reviewer demographics (and which was largely submitted before the public even had access to the movie... odd, that).
It's a real shame when legit criticism is completely overpowered by ridiculous torch-bearing lunatics. To act as though this is somehow the "defense's" fault, though, conveniently ignores the utter insanity that bombarded these products in the aftermath of their release. If you want to blame someone for your voice not being heard, I'd say the culprits are those who are doing everything they can to scream louder than you. It's hard to blame the ones who are trying to listen but can't hear anything but animalistic shrieking.
Oh, yes. There are a lot of idiots in the world. An astounding number, in fact. There were major assholes reacting to Mizhena, there were major assholes reacting to Ghostbusters, and even Mad Max: Fury Road had people claiming, against all reason, that the movie is somehow not masculine enough because they let Furiosa be the biggest badass in the movie. They acted stupidly and outrageously. No doubt here. What can I say? People suck. Might as well talk about gravity and the hue of the sky. Just facts of life on this planet.
My complaint was that all valid criticism for both GB and SoD were ignored in favor of cases where the critic discredits themselves in the process. Now, I don't know how accurate the claim is, but the story goes that Sony intentionally deleted all negative comments they could, except for those that were inflammatory. They recast comments of "Yeah, this movie wasn't made for me, so I'm not going to watch it" into flaming rants of misogyny. Likewise, while most reviews I read tended to call it "needlessly stupid" at worst and "just there" most often, they act like the handful of idiots rule the world and that anyone saying ill of the work are card carrying members of the absurdly vocal minority.
@Kurona You are right, there are a lot of examples of bad writing in the game, and it is doubly strange to make your custom "player insert" character such a raging moron in a separate character scene. The whole trans thing stands out because it wasn't necessary. It was done for purely personal reasons and done blatantly and poorly. If you're going to take the risk to turn a game into your personal soap box, have the decency to make a good show of it.
cases where the critic discredits themselves in the process.
It's so funny, how many people feel the need to comment on such topics, while they basically spend no comments on the actual content of SoD. The moment I saw Rawgrims comment, I knew what was going to happen and put some beer on ice. Glorious show.
Another fun fact: Wasn't it you, who said it first, that the inclusion of Mizhena as a transsexual person, was an elaborate ploy to deflect from the shortcomings of SoD? (Though you probably meant it half joking/half serious)
And that's basically what Calmyr here said again; and it worked. On this very forum I've read some comments, where people accused other people (even longtime modders) of trans/homophobia simply because they said, they weren't happy about the storytelling, and that therefore all their criticism is invalid. It happened right here.
I agree completely. It was difficult to remain moderate and polite when facing an overreaction to a token character. I know there are reasonable mild-spoken people who objected to the Mizhena's inclusion, but a lot of people obsessed about it -- to the point where there was little mention of the game's content. (The return of David Warner? The new shaman class? The lich fight? The dragon? Weapon switching?)
It doesn't seem there's much desire to talk about it. I've made several attempts to start up conversations about the game in this forum, and they all fizzle and die very quickly. All but one, anyway.
Yeah, it's sad but true. Calmyr tried a lot to get some discussion started, be it in detail about Skie or more generally if SoD "delivered" as an BG expansion. More sooner than later though those topics have been driven into a direction, where he and other people were put into a corner and have been treated how my good chum joluv said it here:
many of the people mentioned in the article are garbage.
Way to go. Garbage needs to be disposed of. Let's see if we can get the ovens in Ausschwitz burning again?
Comments
abuse
1.
use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse.
"the judge abused his power by imposing the fines"
synonyms: misuse, misapply, misemploy, mishandle; More
make excessive and habitual use of (alcohol or drugs, especially illegal ones).
"at various times in her life she abused both alcohol and drugs"
2.
treat with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.
"riders who abuse their horses should be prosecuted"
synonyms: mistreat, maltreat, ill-treat, treat badly, ill-use, misuse; More
antonyms: look after
assault (someone, especially a woman or child) sexually.
"he was a depraved man who had abused his two young daughters"
euphemistic
masturbate.
use or treat in such a way as to cause damage or harm.
"he had been abusing his body for years"
3.
speak to (someone) in an insulting and offensive way.
"the referee was abused by players from both teams"
synonyms: insult, be rude to, swear at, curse, call someone names, taunt, shout at, scold, rebuke, upbraid, reprove, castigate, inveigh against, impugn, slur, revile, smear, vilify, vituperate against, slander, libel, cast aspersions on, offend, slight, disparage, denigrate, defame; More
No 3 is the type of abuse we are referring to here.
You don't think that referring to people who post nasty comments as worse than serial killers is both insulting and offensive?
Maybe they would argue that their comments were just hyperbole? Certainly the writer does in #4
"You can play a fun minigame right here. We call it "count the hand-wringing hyperbole"!"
My point being this is just essentially countering abuse with abuse.
I don't personally find the article offensive, and I do find many of the comments listed in the article offensive. But I'm not the arbiter of what other people do or do not choose to find offensive or abusive.
Maybe you think I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but I do wish people would take a few moments of self reflection before writing an article like this.
But aren't you attempting to act as the arbiter of what's offensive by saying the article is being offensive?
What would your solution be, then? Write up an article quoting this hate speech and frankly scarily violent attitude toward a group of people, and then be completely neutral about it? The author, as well as the website, is just as allowed to have an opinion on the topic as the posters were who "criticized" SoD.
But if you look at their citations, you often--in fact, more often than not--find that their evidence is wildly stretched, to the point that their sources often have nothing to do with with the subject, or even contradict their argument. Sometimes you can tell, looking at the article and the citation, that the writer just grabbed an interesting essay from some random site, interpreted it beyond all recognition, and threw in a link to make the claim seem plausible, when in reality the claim is--I'm not exaggerating here--a total fabrication.
The authors are also famously non-reflective and non-introspective. Some of Cracked's most prominent voices are known for writing patronizing essays saying that they are the only enlightened ones around, and everyone who disagrees with them is an idiot (that's a paraphrase) who should "shut up" (that's a quote).
I often agree with the authors' arguments and the writing is strong, but the quality of their journalism is amateurish at best, and the level of analysis is zero.
The most insightful content on Cracked comes from the comment section, which tends to eviscerate every article Cracked publishes about current events.
The more important point, which has been mentioned multiple times, is who the insults are directed at. They are very clearly directed at people who get outraged about transgender characters, not at all critics of Siege of Dragonspear.
I'm afraid that calling people out without causing any offense is an impossible dream, though.
First, I have to say Mizhena was a small portion of my reaction. Mostly the game was lackluster. It was short, linear, took liberties with characters (Safana went from my favorite "one dungeon" character in BG1 to tied with Volghiln for "most despised character and yes that includes Hef" in SoD), and in the end completely pointless and unsatisfying. Justice is not served for anyone. Not the main character, not Caelar, not Skie, and (at least in the path I took) not Corwin. And definitely no justice for Imoen. You take a fan favorite, the only one possibly more beloved than Minsc, hire Melissa Disney on to reprise the role, and then leave her benched the entire blasted game! Sure, that explains the multi-class narratively, but BG2 made her multiclass because virtually everyone did it in BG1 of their own volition, so it's kind of backwards logic. At least it maintains the tradition of Imoen getting screwed in every installment (late entry with no banter support in BG and SoA, a bug in a script keeps much of her dialogue blocked in ToB, and now she's kept out of the game for all but one minor dungeon at the end.
As for Mizhena, first I have to say I can never remember which way the gender switch goes, so I'll try to keep it gender neutral out of respect. I might slip a "he" in here at some point or another, but that's just my tendency to supplant uncertain gender with my own.
For me, the problem with Mizhena can be split into a few parts:
1) The appearance of it - I'm not going to lie, the way it was initially described to me, it sounded like pure SJW cow patties. I don't like my games being used to political ends, so the news annoyed me, especially compounded with Scott's publicly voiced statements on the female characters of BG1 and her own proud identity as an SJW. Once I played it, it wasn't nearly so bad as it was played up to be, but that's not a nice place to start from.
2) I felt it was horribly written - I know there's a reason for this, but good grief was Mizhena's spewing dialogue bad, with little provocation and only supportive responses. Would a "Whoa, whoa! TMI! Just sell me some potions, would ya?" have killed anyone? So your wiring doesn't match your plumbing. Fair enough. Be you. I think I still have that ogre's girdle somewhere if you'd like to re-sync. I just don't want to hear a monologue about it. Granted, now that I know about about the writing limits for bit characters, I get how it got that way, but it still boils down to this: if you can't do it right in the space you have, don't do it.
3) It came off as sheer tokenism - There is no reason at all why this cleric needed to have their gender issues discussed at length. You walk by masses of people every day and does it really matter what they're packing in their undergarments? So why was it addressed here? Not because "Mizhena is tran" was important to anything at all, but because the author wanted a tran character and Mizhena was a convenient subject. Mizhena's gender identity doesn't inform the character, it's just an item on a list to check off. Tran character? Check. Now who's going to be our "too old for this excrement" character for this story? Ah, M'Khiin!
4) The defense was louder than the offense - Rawgrim's comparison to Sony sums this point up perfectly, as Ghostbusters 2016 is a great comparison to this game: a harmless, lackluster installment that struggles against a wall of nostalgia for recognition in its franchise but would rather blame any negative reactions on the evil misogynists, transphobics, and generalized bigots. This game, despite some definite high points, is just not that great, and Mizhena is not the reason for it. I honestly feel that some folk were genuinely pleased at the reaction to Mizhena because it gave them a scapegoat to defend against actual criticism.
I don't dislike Mizhena for being trans, I dislike her for being a horribly written, transparently token character serving no purpose but to represent a group of people - badly.
I guess this makes me a bad person.
Charname: Excuse me. Is this your candle?
Mizhena: My candle! So YOU'RE the thief.
Charname: No, I'm trying to find the thief.
Mizhena: Keep on mewling, kitten. Your weakness sickens me. You haven't the guts to steal anything.
Charname: One word, one more word, and I swear I'll rip that venomous snake tongue from your mouth.
Mizhena: Threaten me again and I'll bloody your nose!
Charname: Bloody my nose and I'll blacken both your eyes.
Mizhena: Blacken my eyes and I'll break both your arms!
Charname: Break my arms and I'll headbutt your face into crimson paste!
Taken directly from the dialogue files, since I don't have a save file at this point to take screenshots. It's obvious the intent was to display two warriors being all macho, but it fails terribly and is more reminiscent of two grade schoolers calling each other poo-poo heads.
Why is this example never used to point Mizhena's bad writing? Why is it always her optional introduction (while the dialogue mentioned above is mandatory to finish the quest that way)?
This is a rhetorical question of course. I already know the answer -- and I'm sure everyone else does too.
Ehhhhhh... I think Ghostbusters is a solid analogy, but not for the reasons you think.
The unfortunate fact is that there are people like you who might have legitimate, well-reasoned complaints about SoD. Same goes for Ghostbusters. Your negative opinion of the product or some component thereof is not offensive, or abusive, or in any way invalid. It's perfectly normal, acceptable criticism.
However, no objective observer would look at the hubbub around either of those products and think that level-headed critics like you are in any way representative of the overall negative tone pervading every possible source of reviews. I didn't see metacritic, or steam, or IMDB and think "hmmm, it appears this game/movie has some legitimate flaws, based on these well-reasoned arguments"; I saw "OMG SJW OPPRESSION MEN'S RIGHTS RAAAAAAAAAAAGH" and figured, hmm, it appears that the lowest common denominator has chosen their new target for the day.
Cracked highlights some of the absolute garbage that went on in response to this game, and they didn't need to look very hard. As for Ghostbusters, there's plenty of coverage of similar goings-on all over the internet, from Twitter threats to explicit sexism to review bombing that just so happened to have an absurdly gender-driven bias when you look at reviewer demographics (and which was largely submitted before the public even had access to the movie... odd, that).
It's a real shame when legit criticism is completely overpowered by ridiculous torch-bearing lunatics. To act as though this is somehow the "defense's" fault, though, conveniently ignores the utter insanity that bombarded these products in the aftermath of their release. If you want to blame someone for your voice not being heard, I'd say the culprits are those who are doing everything they can to scream louder than you. It's hard to blame the ones who are trying to listen but can't hear anything but animalistic shrieking.
My complaint was that all valid criticism for both GB and SoD were ignored in favor of cases where the critic discredits themselves in the process. Now, I don't know how accurate the claim is, but the story goes that Sony intentionally deleted all negative comments they could, except for those that were inflammatory. They recast comments of "Yeah, this movie wasn't made for me, so I'm not going to watch it" into flaming rants of misogyny. Likewise, while most reviews I read tended to call it "needlessly stupid" at worst and "just there" most often, they act like the handful of idiots rule the world and that anyone saying ill of the work are card carrying members of the absurdly vocal minority.
@Kurona You are right, there are a lot of examples of bad writing in the game, and it is doubly strange to make your custom "player insert" character such a raging moron in a separate
characterscene. The whole trans thing stands out because it wasn't necessary. It was done for purely personal reasons and done blatantly and poorly. If you're going to take the risk to turn a game into your personal soap box, have the decency to make a good show of it.It was just necessary to do it much better than the character we got.
It's so funny, how many people feel the need to comment on such topics, while they basically spend no comments on the actual content of SoD.
The moment I saw Rawgrims comment, I knew what was going to happen and put some beer on ice. Glorious show.
Another fun fact: Wasn't it you, who said it first, that the inclusion of Mizhena as a transsexual person, was an elaborate ploy to deflect from the shortcomings of SoD? (Though you probably meant it half joking/half serious)
And that's basically what Calmyr here said again; and it worked. On this very forum I've read some comments, where people accused other people (even longtime modders) of trans/homophobia simply because they said, they weren't happy about the storytelling, and that therefore all their criticism is invalid.
It happened right here.
More sooner than later though those topics have been driven into a direction, where he and other people were put into a corner and have been treated how my good chum joluv said it here:
Way to go. Garbage needs to be disposed of. Let's see if we can get the ovens in Ausschwitz burning again?