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While I certainly don't think that AP deserves to be singled out among all the RPGs that include so-called "romance", if you're trying to say that as far as sex is concerned AP is going to turn out radically different from the way the writer's spinning it I think you're trying to pull one over on us. I mean c'mon, we've been keeping track of the PR campaign and the promise of sex with female characters has been emphasized from the first previews. And man, you're not paying attention if you've never read commentary akin to this around film and music. I really wish I was kidding when I said that every single female character in the Witcher (not counting nameless peasant women or old maids) is portrayed as a whore barely restraining herself from shagging Geralt. I wish I was kidding. But it really is that ridiculous. You can seduce dryads who have no prior conception of what sex even is.

That's not an entirely satisfactory answer, though. Homosexual females are stereotypically masculine, yet there is no apparent assumption on the part of adults about a child's sexuality when they're presented with a tomboy. I think part of this might be due to a common belief (it's somewhere in this thread!) that lesbianism isn't so much a sexual orientation as much as it is a stubborn hatred of men that can be overcome, usually through sex with a Real Man (another thing to consider is that with non-het relationships most people are interested in "who the Man in the relationship is", as though a relationship needs a decisive masculine figure to be truly functional) so there's nothing that can't be fixed about a masculine girl. But you're right, gay women are more accepted in our culture than gay men. But you have to ask yourself why that is, and the best answer is in the post you quoted - We live in a society built and ruled by white males, and as such the values we cherish are the values that men are supposed to cherish, masculine values like self-sufficiency and industry and assertiveness, and strength of will. Feminine boys alarm us because we wonder "how can this child survive in a man's world?". Girls were brought up with this question for ages and until very recently they were encouraged to run the other direction and submit, to find the right man to protect and provide for them in exchange for sex, servitude and a family (keeping in mind that displaying masculine traits as a woman will make you undesirable). Parents freak out about feminine boys because nobody's going to take responsibility for them, nobody's going to protect and provide for them. You succeed either through making do for yourself displaying masculine traits, or by attracting someone who will succeed in that way through your femininity, and since homosexual men and heterosexual women can't be masculine there's no recourse for the feminine boy. Proper success can only ever be achieved through showing the characteristics that are valued in your gender. Furthermore, when you look a bit into how the culture views transgendered people, while on the whole it is overwhelmingly negative, of the two sorts male-to-female transgendered people bear a relatively greater amount of abuse. This jibes with what Hell Kitty is saying - While there is certainly a great amount of revulsion at rejecting the sex you displayed physically when you were born, that revulsion is doubled when that rejection is of maleness. It's akin to someone refusing pay for his work - why would they not accept what is theirs by right (that is, all the advantages that men have in life)?

I'm interested in the narrative. Every Obsidz game (Storm of Zehir being an exception) has had an interesting and surprising storyline. With all the deception that goes on in an espionage setting, they've certainly got my attention. One thing I'm concerned about is Obsidz' tendency (going all the way back to the Black Isle days with Fallout 2) to telegraph the stories in its games, or at least the villains, to an extent. I hope that it's not the case here.

I don't disagree, necessarily. My earlier contention was meant to point out inconsistency on the part of gamers who downplay the significance of the messages in games but also hold them up as high art. Again, I don't want to get into an argument about aesthetics, but suffice to say that the threshold of consideration as far as I'm concerned is relatively low. I really hope you're not suggesting here that the sort of stereotypes I described earlier are in fact grounded in empirical truth. If an Asian is good at math, it isn't because he or she is an Asian. There could possibly be cultural values instilled in a child that can lead to greater relative achievement, but that has nothing to do with race, and what's more one's apparent heritage is not appropriate shorthand for any cultural values they might have. I do not agree. Misogyny as "hatred of women" is a limited, simpleminded and useless definition. A better definition is "fear of women", which encompasses hatred, objectification and paternalism. This objectification of women, this stated desire to conquer a woman sexually, to have sex with as many women as you can get away with, comes from a deep-seated fear of women, because as the Gamecritic article points out, sexual purity and through it a woman's dignity are commodified in our culture, by and large the act of sex in our culture is considered an exchange of power - seduction is a display of power over a woman, the taking of a precious thing that is supposed to be selectively given out. Women are seen to hold their sexuality as a bargaining chip over a man's head. Women hold power over us and make us vulnerable because they have something that we demand and they control the supply, and that power makes us hate and fear women. The only way we can assert our power is to persuade that holder of the commodity to share it, or to take it by force. Women who don't supply at all are thought of us prudes, or stuck up bitches, and women who like sex denigrate themselves because they give away their sexuality easily, and thus the value of their commodity drops - it's not valuable if everybody's got it. Whether you like it or not the trumping up of the women in Alpha Protocol as trophies to be earned is misogynist. That you can choose not to conquer the women in the game doesn't really change the situation (as I recall, you didn't have to have sex with anyone in the Witcher, by miles the most misogynistic game made since Custer's Revenge) and Josh's point about how game design in general is built around similar power exchanges also doesn't really get us anywhere. I believe he's said in threads of yore that romances can't be done correctly and that they shouldn't be included in games, and I agree with what he said then. I don't know if Matt Rorie fears women, I assume he doesn't, but Obsidz is obviously not above pandering to the common fantasy of seducing the sort of women who would be unattainable in reality. It speaks to the same frustrated misanthropy that would lead people to, say, play a game where you get to beat up the sort of guy who bullied you in elementary school. Your perspective on reality is a lot more rosey than is warranted, I think. In the media homosexuality is "accepted and normal" so long as it remains chaste, the whiff of sexuality removed. The essence of male homosexuality generally becomes a sharp fashion sense or an ability to form close friendship bonds with heterosexual women. At the very least, homosexual men are to be portrayed basically as straight men who just happen to be gay, a signifier with nebulous meaning that's never explored. Outwardly sexual homosexual men elicit discomfort, especially when they're pursuing straight men (a scenario that straight men often live in fear of). Lesbians in the media are of a general type - young, glamorous, conventionally beautiful, and exhibitionist. You don't see a lot of portrayals of butch dykes. Hell, you don't see pictures from gay pride parades in mainstream media outlets, when they're reported on. As for women in power, I don't know where you were during the last presidential campaign. Leaving aside Sarah Palin's highly dubious qualifications, there was a lot of talk about how difficult it would be for her to fulfill her obligations while having such a family to run, and a special needs child. Sort of curious, don't you think? Do you actually think that if Todd Palin was running, there would be the same speculation? No, because men can be leaders and patriarchs, but women are only so capable. Likewise when Clinton scolded a student journalist overseas, there was a lot of MSM tittering about her losing her cool. You didn't get that with Donald Rumsfeld, whose prickliness was a integral part of his public image. Women are held to a higher standard because we don't trust that they can do the things that men, historically, have done. That's not even getting to transgendered or gender variant people, who remain mentally ill freaks. And what of Obama? Sure, we've proven that a black man can be President. But there continue to be echoes through the MSM of doubts of his heritage, his religion, and his credentials for the Presidency. You're absolutely right that the media can reflect social atmosphere. The media in this case is reflecting a nagging fear that Obama, as a black man and a second-generation immigrant, can't possibly be legitimate. President is just not something a black man becomes honestly. Oh, and how about that Sonia Sotomayor, eh? Another thing that I feel I have to point out is that your outrage at the prospect of Obsidz being called misogynist is erroneous, and typical of the way that our culture, oriented as it is towards the white male perspective, handles prejudice. See, you use the phrase "accusing the creators of these works of harboring hatred for women" as though it is somehow a tremendously powerful and terrible accusation. It's not. The fear of accusation in your post speaks to the blind terror that people feel when they're called out. White men typically tend to see accusation of racism or misogyny or homophobia as a sucker punch, a devastating and irreversible attack on a person's character, a one-up that can't be one-upped, an instant TKO. But that's not really the case. Most people are misogynist at times, most people are racist at times, most people are homophobic at times. When I call someone out on their misogyny or their racism, I'm not so much judging (though there is some of that there, admittedly), I'm doing it because I hope that they can recognize their behavior and correct it. Reacting with terror and revulsion is no more than a method of not owning up to mistakes and refraining from correct behavior.

I'm pretty sure they did, and they do. As for when Bond first came along, it might be the case that prevailing theories on patriarchy and socialization were not formulated or widely believed when Bond came to prominence in the 60's. There were more basic battles to fight at the time. There still are, of course, but media is now identified as part of the problem. Regardless, speaking up doesn't really do a lot of good, as we've seen over the years. What it will take is a brave stance from people who are prominent but aren't academics. Which is rare.

It would be good advertising if you included the strengths of the game in the demo (some minor C&C coming from dialogue, for example) but it could very well be the case that it's just not feasible to craft a 15-30 minute demo from what they have right now. For all we know they're working under the gun to get the full game as polished as possible for shipping and a demo just doesn't figure on their list of priorities.

That's a debatable statement. Not to get into a debate about aesthetics, but I think you could make the serious argument that games are more than capable of being more than just momentary, hedonistic pleasures. Some games that people play and fondly remember / think about well after completion - the Fallout games, Earthbound, System Shock, Bioshock, any number of Final Fantasy games, any number of Zelda games, Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, KOTOR2. People think about and analyze these games as much as they do any classic film or album. Again I'd say that people like to downplay the potential in gaming up until the point where they're really proven wrong, and then they go back to downplaying. It's Rock'n'Roll all over again. Really the rate of success in movies and music is only perceptibly higher because there are more movies and songs being made at any one point than games. People tend to be sneaky and point out all the schlock that hits Gamestop and lament the cultural retardation that games display, but I could just as easily go to Blockbuster and gaze upon all the Michael Bay films and the direct-to-DVD slasher cheapies and wonder why it is that people love movies as much as they do when it's so obvious that film is a bankrupt medium. But if I look a bit harder, amongst the **** there's Scorsese and Tarantino and Tarkovsky. There are fewer great films than negligible ones, of course, but that doesn't really matter. People don't feel comfortable representing gaming by its successes when they can't help but represent other mediums by their triumphs. I'd say you're missing the point by some measure. Your contention that transgression can only ever be intentional sets the bar so exceedingly high it practically obliterates the concept of prejudice outside of cartoonish bigots. Think, for example, of a kid who's having trouble with his math homework, so he seeks out an Asian classmate because he's heard that Asian people are great at math. Is he a racist? Well he doesn't mean to be racist, he's not trying to be hurtful by assuming the Asian kid is good at math (he might even think of it as a compliment). Yet the assumption is still racist. Likewise, many people who believe that women should be kept out of the workplace and should be staying home and cooking meals and raising kids above all else believe that because they were taught that as children, or they read it in an old book. Many of them don't hate women or want to hurt them, but they think they know what's good for women, better than women themselves do. Are they misogynist? Yes, even though their ultimate intentions are nominally benevolent. A game like The Witcher in which every single woman in the game is a whore to be conquered is, in fact, misogynist. Mind-bogglingly so. And there's no excuse for that. Point is, as a general rule focusing on the intentionality of an action in determining whether or not it's prejudicial ignores the perspective of the people who are ultimately at detriment. The fact of the matter is that racism and misogyny and xenophobia are not things that are symptomatic of individual wills being exercised. They are part of our cultural background noise. People absorb misogyny and racism through osmosis, from being exposed to our culture, much in the same way a person would know what sound a car makes when it starts even if they've never drove or even been inside one. In many (but certainly not all by a long shot) cases people can be weaned off of these things - children tend to be commonly dissuaded from racist ideas like "All black people are good at sports" at a young age, for example. Fewer children are dissuaded from misogyny, because as even this thread shows, misogyny is often accepted as fact. Even fewer are dissuaded from homophobia or transphobia. It falls upon cultural gatekeepers - the writers and directors and designers and musicians who shape our social environment - to at least provide counterexamples to the messages this vast apparatus throws at us. They're really the only people who can do it. Problem is that those counterexamples are marginalized, and Obsidz wants to succeed in the marketplace. So we have Matt Rorie touting Sie the Cougar and her sexual proclivities towards S/M as a means to sell this game. You'd have to be stupid not to recognize that Obsidz is using sex (and a nonexistent subclass of women created by tabloids to describe Demi Moore) to sell AP. Which is, uh, misogynist.

I don't buy the reductionist argument. Not because I disagree with it, but because people tend to agree with it only when it suits them. Roger Ebert frequently makes this argument and gamers tend to get mad and disparage him. Take a game like Torment, a game that people around here and on many other outlets across the internet tend to hold up as an example of intercharacter relationships done right, or "as right as games can get". It seems to me that the reason people love it so much is that they actually believe Torment achieved something that the reductionist argument posits is impossible. The gameplay certainly wasn't exceptionally fun. The C&C was okay, there was certainly some freedom as far as feasible character builds are concerned, but you don't really hear about those things as much as you hear about Dakkon's oath, or the ghost woman's (I forget her name) storied love of the Nameless One. I don't really think people who cherish these things think that games are incapable of portraying meaningful relationships. Doesn't mean that Torment isn't as socially retarded as any other game of course, but people certainly want to think it's special, and that's a hard thing to admit when games are "just a form of entertainment".

It's more accurate to say I am intellectually superior to the vast majority of gamers and I like to flex on dumbass mother****ers. And to egregiously appropriate the words of Dr. King, there can be no deep disappointment where there is not a deep love. I call games on their **** because I love them. And because I'm smarter than the people who buy them. But also because I am deeply disappointed in the capacity of my fellow gamers to think critically, because I love my comrades. To appropriately apply the words of another great man, I pity the fool.

I very much doubt V:TMB taught anybody anything. A game can't teach life lessons when every other game contradicts it. Insofar as misogyny is concerned, they contribute to and enforce a larger narrative about the nature of gender politics that is pushed implicitly through every media imaginable.

Uh, Kotaku didn't actually write the piece on misogyny. That was Gamecritic. Linking to articles on other sites is actually a function of legitimate news aggregation blogs like Kotaku.

Did you read the Gamecritic article? The issue isn't with the specific contexts of the romances, it's the problems that present themselves when you introduce sex as an actual part of gameplay, specifically as a reward for playing the game right, given the limitations of what a game can do, given the goals designers place in games. I remember when V:TMB came out and people were pissed because you had to have certain stats and basically had to plan ahead with your dialogue from the get-go to have sex with Jeanette. That the character was overtly sexual but unattainable (what an odd word to use) in the majority of game builds frustrated a lot of gamers. Which is indicative of the way that gamers generally tend to see women in games. One, they did all this **** for Jeanette and it was a big let-down when she just sends you off after having teased you for the last few hours. People felt cheated. You only feel cheated when you think you earn something and you don't get it. So why did people feel as though they had earned sex with Jeanette? What about VV, who seems actually attracted to the PC but just sends him love letters? It's because of the idea of sex-as-commodity that exists in the culture (certainly not relegated only to video games, mind you) Troika was actually pretty daring in that they presented these sexual women who didn't want to have sex with your character (it's expressly implied that Jeanette only does it because she's crazy and bored out of her skull) They clashed with the idea of female sexuality that most people seem to have - that a woman would talk about sex, work as a stripper, and wear revealing clothing all suggest to most people that she is willing, and it's dissonant to them when that woman is not. Those actions are all "for sale" signs to us, and when a woman who does them are uninterested we feel an affront as though we walked into a shop only to find that they aren't selling to us. They've got the "open" sign on for everyone to see, why can't we buy? That people actually get angry at women for doing these things is troubling - people should be free to wear whatever they want and work wherever they want without assumptions being made about their intentions and their wants. To put it bluntly, people should have the right to act in a suggestive manner and still deny consent. V:TMB is interesting in how it challenges the prevailing notions of female sexuality. But it is a lone beacon in a sea of Witchers. The process of romance in video games is transactional - I pursue a relationship with Aerie, and doing so does not gain me any tangible in-game benefit (with Jaheira it's arguable, considering all the unique encounters and quests you undertake with her) but there's obviously a coda in the sex. All the dialogue leads up to it. As it is with Bioware games, and with KOTOR2 / NWN2 (MotB gets relatively high marks, actually). Thing is, with AP it doesn't look like the sex is there under a pretense of "character development". It's there for its own sake. It certainly seems to be marketed that way. There does seem to be a difference in that there is a tangible effect on the game insofar as reputation is concerned. But the context of it all is sexual trophy-hunting.

After seeing that I am only a year older than you are, I have opened a bottle of scotch and poured a glass.

sig'd

The way that game romances function is a direct extension of quest and narrative design - buildup to payoff, and for any number of reasons, most of them commercial, the payoff is sex. Note how in Bioware games, romances pretty much cease existing after intercourse has taken place (perhaps a notable exception is in BG2, wherein the vampirism subplot can potentially ask players to be attached to the romantic interest past the point at which sex happens) The argument is essentially correct. It's unfortunate there's no real discussion for the argument to exist meaningfully in. Gamers are consumers first, and where they aren't misogynistic they are by and large not opposed to misogyny. In cases like The Witcher, misogyny is openly and enthusiastically touted as an appeal of the game, a part of the atmosphere or a (embarrassingly ironic) proof of maturity and gravitas. Still, I wouldn't say that it's demanded to such an extent that it ensures the success of a game, and so I don't actually buy the commonly argued idea that developers are helplessly subject to the whims of their audience. Obsidian in this case is making a blatantly calculated overture to the puerile sensibility they perceive in the marketplace by choosing to lift the Bond sexual sensibility wholesale while being more selective in other respects. I think it was Ryan who gave the interview about the sex scenes and how "tasteful" they are, and just reading excerpts from the interview it's pretty clear that he knows what he's saying is utter bull****. He seems supremely uncomfortable trying to spin it as though it's not what this article suggests. That isn't to say that Obsidz is full of misogynists. On the contrary, there seems to be an attitude amongst prominent devs that romances are useless and tasteless (which should serve as further indictment against the shamelessness of AP) They just make misogynistic games. Isn't it sort of funny how a "casual" game franchise like the Sims, which presents the mechanics of sexuality at an elementary school level, is more realistic than "artful" games that are far more suggestive?

Cue the sound of hair being torn out as forumites begin to unload treatise after treatise on the superiority of mouse and keyboard.

huh, GT still has the RD as 10/6/09

In all seriousness, even though I don't play either game very often I'd go with Rock Band, because by and large when I like the core concept of a game I tend to credit the designers. The people who created both Rock Band and the first two Guitar Heros make up Harmonix. Activision has been churning out samey sequels featuring big names in middle-of-the-road rock / metal (or aping Harmonix via World Tour) while Harmonix looks to be making a cogent effort to diversify their song portfolio and what's more, their office culture promotes, from a PR standpoint at least, real passion for music, and is Silicon Valley-esque in its employee friendliness (though to be fair, I'm sure Harmonix employs far fewer **** than your average Valley firm)

Back when I was 11 and I was playing the Fallout demo from a PC Gamer disc, I made this exact mistake. The Pipboy picture (I almost wrote "VATS Boy" and thus I am now preparing to wash my ears out with bleach) for the Small Guns skill featured an SMG and I wasn't too keen on reading minutae for a game I had barely played at that point. Was a bit surprised when I tagged big guns and couldn't work a shotgun. Shotguns get pretty big compared to SMGs!

I think Rorie has mentioned that "taking out" enemies, be it through lethal or nonlethal means, leads to experience. I think he's also said that slipping by enemies unnoticed yields experience at some juncture (?) So I'm assuming that the leveling system will resemble Mass Effect's.

Yeah I don't think this is the kind of forum for either of these games. Many of the regulars are against them on principle until they bring back turn-based solos, or whatever. The majority are not active enough to be standing up for a minimum 2 minutes of gameplay.

Hobbida bobbida Everything we've read up to this point indicated that there was no "Replay+" option. Is this guy just confusing the Veteran mode (only acquirable through recruit, or "hardest" mode) for a replay?

Dialogue-only missions have been mentioned several times.

I don't believe so. Ammo, perhaps, but weapons and armor used by enemies are not the kind that Mike uses.

I believe there are creative ways of getting around killing some of the mandatory enemies (Navarre, etc.) but I can't remember them off the top of my head.