(no subject)
Nov. 16th, 2020 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlofpreyIt's PS5 week, and I'm - less excited? I don't know. Still happy it's happening, but also remembering that I'll have to go through some 'decontamination' of the thing when I get it back from the shop, and also clearing out (and cleaning) some of the drawers-top where I keep all my consoles - since the PS5 is apparently massive, and also has a tiny disc drive, so - I was planning to keep my PS4 for PS4 games, but I just don't know that I can tetris it. So also considering all the work that will go into it. Having to hook up my PSVR to a new device, having to remember what my PSN username and password are. Also I'm mostly looking forward to it to play games on, obviously, and Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed, so the only one left I was really excited for is Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, which is made by Ubisoft, who...have been very disappointing lately.
And specifically, with Valhalla...they apparently went through a long period of the 'culture' or management of the company not wanting any lead female characters (and commiting sexual harassment!). So they announced - before this came out - that you would always have a choice, a wonderful choice, about whether you wanted to play as a good man or a scum woman. Brilliant. No limitations to storytelling or character definition there. But the thing is, people still noticed they were mostly putting the male 'choice' on the box art of the games, and in all the marketing, and most of the merchandise. But they've come up with a solution to that! In the new game, you can choose to be a man or a woman, if you're boring, or you can let the magic force in the game decide for you, and switch between a man and woman throughout the game. Apparently - spoilers - this means barely switching at all, and sheds a lot of light on the story and mystery in the game, and the magic...but mostly it just feels like a way for Ubisoft to pretend they don't hate women, but still put the male character in all the adverts, because they are both canon! And I don't feel like I have the energy for their bullshit. So that has tempered my excitement for the game a bit. I will probably just play as the female character. Fuck them. Mostly I am interested in the horses. And to see if my home town is in the game. It's in the area - but did it exist yet? Mysteries.
(Spoiler: I have just googled it, it didn't. Maybe there will be a hill).
And specifically, with Valhalla...they apparently went through a long period of the 'culture' or management of the company not wanting any lead female characters (and commiting sexual harassment!). So they announced - before this came out - that you would always have a choice, a wonderful choice, about whether you wanted to play as a good man or a scum woman. Brilliant. No limitations to storytelling or character definition there. But the thing is, people still noticed they were mostly putting the male 'choice' on the box art of the games, and in all the marketing, and most of the merchandise. But they've come up with a solution to that! In the new game, you can choose to be a man or a woman, if you're boring, or you can let the magic force in the game decide for you, and switch between a man and woman throughout the game. Apparently - spoilers - this means barely switching at all, and sheds a lot of light on the story and mystery in the game, and the magic...but mostly it just feels like a way for Ubisoft to pretend they don't hate women, but still put the male character in all the adverts, because they are both canon! And I don't feel like I have the energy for their bullshit. So that has tempered my excitement for the game a bit. I will probably just play as the female character. Fuck them. Mostly I am interested in the horses. And to see if my home town is in the game. It's in the area - but did it exist yet? Mysteries.
(Spoiler: I have just googled it, it didn't. Maybe there will be a hill).
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-17 01:24 pm (UTC)Reminder that you need a free cable to connect your camera to the PS5 so the PSVR still works.
Ubisoft has consistently been bad at featuring their ~optional~ female characters on merch/posters/covers/cgi trailers, they're usually seen in early in-game footage instead. Like, just let people know there's a badass lady you can play by, here's a thought, sticking her on the cover! (the bros will complain regardless)
However, while Odyssey has a pair of siblings, the female character is the canon one in Valhalla. There's some DNA nonsense regarding the dude. And she looks so badass and gay, from every conceivable angle! Plus they let us pet cats and dogs in this one.
Kinda happy Cyberpunk got delayed, I very much intended to save it until they got the proper PS5 upgrade out... meanwhile, Watchdogs Legion looks very promising. I just want a whole band of anarchistic grandmas and I want it right now. Plus Witcher 3 is getting a free upgrade, so I might give that another go now my brain's not too baked to grasp the combat.
Anyways, hi! *scurries back to where she came from*
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-17 03:54 pm (UTC)Ah, one of my fellow reviewers over at RPGFan recently reviewed Assassin's Creed Valhalla and did a rather thoughtful job of looking at both the gender swapping and Ubisoft's disappointing actions in regards to women in general that made for a really interesting read, all in all! This post just reminded me of that. I think if I were to play the game at some point in the future myself, I'll probably just play as the female character too (seems more interesting in a lot of respects to do that anyways from the sound of things). ...Though at some point I should probably finish playing Asssassin's Creed Odyssey beforehand. XD
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-19 12:03 am (UTC)I had forgotten I needed that cable. Mostly I just meant because I have my visual output permanently routed through the PSVR processor - rather than hooking it up and taking it out all the time - so I have to remember I need to do that with the PS5 too. After dusting everything down. So much to consider!
The thing is that Cassandra is the canon character in Odyssey - like it says in the article I linked to, she was supposed to be the only character - so the female Eivor being canon literally doesn't seem any better. And while ever you only get female options/skins, you're never going to get a female character that's as defined and iconic as Nathan Drake, or Solid Snake, or even Geralt of Rivia or Arthur Morgan, despite how much you could 'customise' those characters. So I'm never going to be happy with it, because I do think it's weak bullshit from big corporations. And instead of admitting it or doing better, they just bend over backwards trying to make it 'logical'. I'll still play the female Eivor, it just makes me more aware of their previous shittiness, not less.
I was a little concerned about what I was going to do with all the games on the same day - after months of having nothing to play, I didn't fancy my chances of getting through Legion, Valhalla, Cyberpunk and Miles Morales without running into any spoilers. But I'd settled myself on playing Cyberpunk, just because I miss first-person action RPGs, and then it's delayed. Which is fine and reasonable, but now it's like...do I wait and play nothing until it's out, or just barely scratch the surface of Valhalla and then drop it for Cyberpunk, or resign myself to not playing Cyberpunk until next year? I don't tend to do well playing a bunch of big immersive games at once, so it's just a little frustrating. It didn't work out for me personally so it's obviously bad, is what I'm saying.
Feel free to stick around!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-19 12:08 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm just sick of it all. It feels like people are pretending to be very interesting and creative when actually all it boils down to is the very boring, unpleasant reason of "we don't think female characters are very interesting, and we think giving into sexism will make us more money". In some ways I'd rather they not try at all to make it better, than to just try to convince us being sexist is okay, really. It irritates me. I'm probably just going to play female Eivor though, rather than 'animus canon'. I have some spoilers about what that will actually involve, gender-wise, if you'd like to hear them.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-19 03:05 pm (UTC)Ah, I can see what you mean by that. Sure, I'd love to hear them whenever you have the chance to share them! ♥
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-19 05:49 pm (UTC)