The Good and the Unfortunately Very Bad of POE2: a review NO SPOILERS

[Yonjuro]

 

Of all the women I’ve worked with, been friends with and have dated, only 5% – at most – are anything like the women portrayed in Deadfire. That’s a whopping 95% of female personality types that are completely side-lined.

 

 

 

 

 This is a fantasy game. You can view it as speculative fiction. In this world male and female characters have exactly the same range of physical and mental attributes and backgrounds - you can verify this for yourself by creating any male character you like and then convince yourself that you can also create a female character with the exact same characteristics. The converse is also true. 

 

 The extent to which any of the above is or should be the same in our own world is left as an exercise to the reader but you shouldn't necessarily expect this fantasy setting to mirror whatever you have experienced in your own life or to mirror the experiences of real people generally.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Yonjuro

[Murp]

This is some Codex level stuff right here.

 

Edited May 27, 2018 by Murp

[Katarack21]

This is some Codex level stuff right here.

 

What's really disgusting me is how freaking *many* of these "There are women doing things that I don't like women doing in this game!" so-called reviews have been showing up lately.

 

Really makes me question my self-identity as a "gamer" when I see what's up with parts of gamer culture these days.

[Murp]

 

This is some Codex level stuff right here.

 

What's really disgusting me is how freaking *many* of these "There are women doing things that I don't like women doing in this game!" so-called reviews have been showing up lately.

 

Really makes me question my self-identity as a "gamer" when I see what's up with parts of gamer culture these days.

 

I just don't understand why of all games it's this one that's getting ragged on for these reasons. So far this is like the least "political" game I've played all year.

Edited May 27, 2018 by Murp

[Katarack21]

 

 

This is some Codex level stuff right here.

 

What's really disgusting me is how freaking *many* of these "There are women doing things that I don't like women doing in this game!" so-called reviews have been showing up lately.

 

Really makes me question my self-identity as a "gamer" when I see what's up with parts of gamer culture these days.

 

I just don't understand why of all games it's this one that's getting ragged on for these reasons. So far this is like the least "political" game I've played all year.

 

Remember when the new Wolfenstein came out and people freaked about how you were killing Nazi's and that was clearly SJW propaganda? Despite killing Nazi's being the basis for the *entire franchise since 1981*?

 

Yeah. I honestly don't think these people even need a reason.

[MortyTheGobbo]

Maybe they feel betrayed? A number of gamers might have believed Obsidian to be safe from the imagined hordes of SJWs destroying gaming. But then they had the audacity to provide us with a diverse range of characters not falling into their ideas of masculinity and femininity.

 

But it's also true that Deadfire's "politics" probably wouldn't have provoked any kind of reaction five years ago. But by now some gamers have retreated into the 19th century in terms of expected social norms.

[Hamhaus]

I came here thinking OP was going to talk about the actual main flaw of this game (aside from the bugs, but that's getting fixed soon), which is how the main quest was delivered.

 

 

 

but nope... apparently it's about women..WUT.

[Katarack21]

It's mystifying to me, honestly, because Obsidian games in the past have *ALWAYS* featured the exact same kind of games; deconstructing genres--fantasy, scifi, spy thriller, whatever--and their associated tropes is what Obsidian *does*.

[Abbzug]

It's kind of reductive to pare those characters down to just two types. But I don't entirely disagree that there's a lot of Felicia Day types and a lot of Sarah Connors. But I think there's more difference than you give it credit. Also I think you have to give some leeway for the limits of the medium. It's a fifty hour game, which sounds like a lot but it's a huge cast and the whole game doesn't revolve around dialogue. We don't have a lot of time with these characters, so their traits are going to be exaggerated to make them pronounced.

[KentDA]

Deconstruction of tropes & genres can be great, if done well.

 

Sometimes that means you will have people who behave in ways that you don't "expect" and that you consider "wrong".

 

As has been stated multiple times, the Deadfire Archipegalo is a rough area. It's going to breed people who are tougher and stronger as a result. That is not some fantasy mindset, that's reality. Your environment will color your personality given enough time.

[Yosharian]

This is definitely the work of a troll, but whatever, I'll respond just for the hell of it:

 

> what's surely the most slavering, turgid adherence to politically correct characterisations around gender and sexual orientation in all of gaming (do please correct if you know of anything worse).   

 

I'm pretty critical of such things in games and I see nothing in Deadfire which fits this characterisation.  I absolutely despise DA:I for example, for many reasons, some of them to do with what you're referring to here, such as the awful preachiness of the politics, the loathsome tumblr-esque characters, but also other reasons to do with gameplay.  Deadfire has none of those problems, from my point of view.

 

> Of all the women I’ve worked with, been friends with and have dated, only 5% – at most – are anything like the women portrayed in Deadfire. That’s a whopping 95% of female personality types that are completely side-lined.

 

Your anecdotal experiences don't represent the entirety of female civilization.  This is poor logic.  You don't even go into detail about any of the personality types you feel are unpresented.  A mediocre argument at best.

 

> Admittedly, the main Lovable Goof in Deadfire (Xoti) is a decently written character but still a cliché.

 

If she's well-written, what's the problem?  You disarm your own argument.

 

> which makes 2 out of a measly cast of 4 potential female party members.

 

There's nothing 'measly' about 4 potential female party members in a game of this size.

 

> They often have a chip on their shoulder the size of a small planet

I'm partied with Maia Rua right now and I see no evidence of her having a chip on her shoulder about anything.

 

> can easily kick the asses of every man in the room 

 

This would only be indicative of an agenda if it were true of every single female character in the game, which isn't the case, or you certainly haven't proved so.  Maia Rua definitely seems like that type, but there's nothing wrong with one character being like that.

 

> have personalities the equivalent of acid.   

 

Again, Maia isn't like that at all.  But this is really a subjective criticism.

 

>  The Queen of Nebraska – Guess what? Patronising, condescending, haughty (again). So one-dimensional she can only do holier-than-thou or righteous fury

 

Haha, wow.  You just made yourself look very foolish.

 

> None of the female senior management I’ve known behave anything like these women. And I’ve worked for female CEOs. An acutely developed sense of self-awareness is critical for any leader, male or female. None of the characters in Deadfire seem to have any self-awareness whatsoever.

 

Anecdotal evidence again.  You having worked for female CEOs doesn't add to this argument.

 

In what ways do the women you have experience with differ from these archetypes you claim make up the women in the game?  You haven't gone into any detail, aside from 'a sense of self-awareness'.  Your argument is incredibly vague and subjective.

 

What form would 'a sense of self-awareness' take, if it were to be a crucial part of a female character in the game?  And, more importantly, can you show that this self-awareness is present in the male characters, which is essential to proving your argument?

 

> None of the characters in Deadfire seem to have any self-awareness whatsoever.

Why are you focusing exclusively on female characters in your argument then?  Again, you just disarmed your own argument.

 

> in the dark ages, where women had no rights whatsoever and faced even greater challenges in rising the workforce ranks than the already significant challenges they face today.

 

Deadfire is set in a fictional world, thus it isn't beholden to historical accuracy when it comes to depicting women in eras such as the Dark Ages.  It isn't necessarily true that women have 'no rights whatsoever' in Deadfire's world, for example.  Or that they faced 'even greater challenges in rising through the workforce ranks'.

 

> If this fantasy world overcame this, how did it do so?

 

A fantasy world doesn't have to overcome things that aren't part of its world.  That's kind of the point of fantasy worlds.

 

> And no, it's not ok to be unrealistic here, because they're pitching for a mature, 'serious' tone everywhere else, so they are striving for realism.

 

'Realism' doesn't have to mean replicating human history on a 1-to-1 basis.  Just because Deadfire attempts to seriously depict issues such as socialism (The Gullet) doesn't mean it has to replicate every other facet of human history.

 

For example, Deadfire doesn't depict the scientific struggle against bacterial infections.  There is no Joseph Lister pioneering antiseptic surgery.  Yet, I don't see you railing against this.  They're going for a mature, serious tone, so why don't we see how the treatment of injuries is terribly ineffective due to lack of sterilization?  It's a travesty!

 

> At one point, a female pirate leader makes a direct hit on my prot that would be heavy-handed were it a man hitting on a woman.

This isn't evidence of an agenda.

 

> What about the power of female physical beauty as regards human nature and human animal instinct? It’s never explored in Deadfire because it’s obviously not PC to admit it even exists.

 

I mean off the top of my head there are Fire Godlike prostitutes.

 

> It’s not ‘strong’ because it’s superficial, right? Yet its command over men has influenced some of the most complex dramatic narratives in human history – and not just in fiction.

 

Again, Deadfire is set in a fantasy world.  The developers chose not to use any of those narratives in their stories, I guess.  I don't see why that's a problem.  You haven't proved why it's a problem.

 

> Tekehu

 

I'm not going to comment on Tekehu because I haven't spoken to him.

 

>  It’s because we straights are discriminatory, tiny-brained scum, see. We’re all exactly the same, and we’d be too stupid to accept a gay person in an RPG party unless that gay person was given a character budget the equivalent of all the other party members combined.

 

Facepalm.  Are you serious?  What evidence do you have that Tekehu was given such a budget?  This is so dumb.

 

> Obsidian clearly doesn’t have a huge amount of confidence in the open mindedness of straight males

 

The opposite is true.  Obsi expects straight males to be open-minded enough to accept a female character hitting on them in a fairly obvious (though still quite witty) way.  They expect straight males to be open-minded enough to deal with a bisexual male furry who's a complete <promiscuous person>.  They expect straight males to be open-minded enough to accept females occupying important roles within Deadfire's society, such as Queens, mercenary leaders, officers, etc.

 

Personally, I barely noticed, in terms of the gender war you're referring to.  When I met the Queen, my first thought was 'why the heck is she using ?!?!!?! to talk to me...', rather than 'omg a woman leader? screw this SJW nonsense!'

 

Expecting Deadfire's society to be a 1-to-1 mapping of the Dark Ages seems a little odd to me.  It's behaviour that I would expect of someone that considers themselves to be a (keyboard) warrior...  perhaps motivated by some kind of justice...

 

In my mind, you're no better than people who cry racism at the lack of dark-skinned characters in Kingdom Come Deliverance.

 

> straight male [companion]

 

> Serafen

 

LOL, someone hasn't been paying attention!

 

> They have almost no leadership positions, or are subordinates to the true leader (always a female Iron Maiden type) if they do.

 

There are tons of straight (why does this even matter for a non-interactive NPC???) male characters in leadership positions.  They aren't invisible at all.

 

The leader of Port Maje, for example.  Even if he is actually subordinate to a female character (maybe he is, not sure), that doesn't invalidate his position as a leader.  Guaranteed if this character was a woman, you'd be using her as an example of the 'SJW agenda' at Obsi.

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having Queens in the game.  Queens have ruled over empires in RL history many times.  Queen Elizabeth, for example, ruled over England during an incredibly important period of its history.  The defeat of the Spanish Armada, for example, was during her reign.

 

Here is a list of famous Queens and Empresses throughout history:

 

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/empresses-queens.php

 

Perhaps you need to educate yourself.  Some of these women were absolutely horrible, by the way.  Or 'masculinised', as you put it (holy **** you sound like Anita Sarkeesian).

 

> you’ll meet these Tony Sopranos everywhere in leadership roles

 

> removing them

 

They weren't 'removed' because they were never present in those roles in the first place.  Deadfire is a fictional place.

 

> The male leaders in Deadfire, from what I can recall of these fictional non-entities, tend to be dandyish, vaguely silly and impossible to take seriously.

 

Such as?  Where are your examples?  I can't recall a single example that fits this.

 

> The best that can be said of the whitewashed writing in Deadfire is that at least there’s no pontificating on racial inequality

Whitewashed?  Where the hell did that come from?  You're not even trying, at this point.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Ultimately, this entire screed comes off as something conjured up by someone as a false flag operation.  It's that dumb.  If you actually believe any of this nonsense then I honestly feel bad for you.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Yosharian

[FreeKaner]

OP is wrong, but everyone else trying to prove otherwise by claiming Deadfire is filled to brim with varied characters are also wrong. Obsidian did a piss poor job of reflecting a range of people, especially in terms of companions. This game is not even close to New Vegas in diversity of personalities, it's also worse than even Tyranny which was a much shorter game with way fewer important individuals. 

 

Also regarding your other critique such as visuals claiming Divos2 looks better just because it's 3D is simply tasteless. This game is the prettiest game I played in a long while.

Edited May 28, 2018 by FreeKaner

[anathanielh]

It’s like all these troll posts (I truly hope they’re not real) are choosing to come at the same time and it’s absolutely bonkers to me.

[Selky]

I think the OP has a point, it's just taken to an unhealthy extreme and isn't coming across well. Writing of female characters and minorities in video games can easily fall into lazy stereotypes and Obsidian has definitely been guilty of this. Tekehu by himself isn't a problem, but when you have a cast of seven companions with five of them being bisexual and most of them coming onto you strongly... that's a problem.

[PizzaSHARK]

This is some Codex level stuff right here.

 

 

Oh, please.  Codex at least has some valid points and constructive criticism in there somewhere amid all the ranting and raving.  Usually.

 

 

 

This post didn't really go where I expected.  I didn't bother with any of the NPC romance crap because I have never, ever played a single RPG in the history of well over 30 years of gaming that did NPC romances in a way that wasn't cringe-worthy.  It's just too hard to encapsulate a mature, complete feeling of an actual developing relationship in a game that spans a limited narrative and whose interactions the player has with other characters are just a series of branching if/then switches - I guess you could claim Witcher 3 did a decent enough job but that's because it's continuing stories from a series of novels and I'd call that cheating, so it doesn't count.  I know a lot of people like them, but I've always found them unbearably awkward.  I was pleased I was allowed to avoid romantic interactions with my party NPCs without the game forcing me to be a **** about it, though.  Maybe Baldur's Gate II scarred me for life by presenting me with only the choice of an incestuous kinda-sorta mother figure, an unbelievably naive and fragile "elf slave, wat do?" paper cut-out, and an appropriately bat**** insane drow elf.

 

Do people really get this upset over whether a character will or won't **** them in a computer game, or if their favorite waifu isn't as perfect as they want them to be?  Of all the flawed things in Deadfire like the ship combat, the ship combat, the ship combat, Eder not properly reacting to my playing collecting stray animals like I'm trying to fill a ****ing Pokedex and having an entire room on the ship that might as well be "Eder's favorite place he refuses to ever leave," and the ship combat... "Xoti won't put out in the precise way I want her to," strikes me as really odd.

Edited May 28, 2018 by PizzaSHARK

[Murp]

OP is wrong, but everyone else trying to prove otherwise by claiming Deadfire is filled to brim with varied characters are also wrong. Obsidian did a piss poor job of reflecting a range of people, especially in terms of companions. This game is not even close to New Vegas in diversity of personalities, it's also worse than even Tyranny which was a much shorter game with way fewer important individuals. 

 

Also regarding your other critique such as visuals claiming Divos2 looks better just because it's 3D is simply tasteless. This game is the prettiest game I played in a long while.

 

What exactly would you consider a varied character? Tekehu is a literal shark man and Xoti is a grim reaper with a southern accent.

I think the OP has a point, it's just taken to an unhealthy extreme and isn't coming across well. Writing of female characters and minorities in video games can easily fall into lazy stereotypes and Obsidian has definitely been guilty of this. Tekehu by himself isn't a problem, but when you have a cast of seven companions with five of them being bisexual and most of them coming onto you strongly... that's a problem.

 

I don't understand. This game is based on the Renaissance era, People were super gay throughout all of history. The ancient Greeks and Romans banged anything that had a pulse. Hell, even pirates got some on the high seas, It was called "matelotage".

 

Even then Eora is a completely different planet so just maybe cuture and society there is a little different then on earth.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Murp

[Purudaya]

 

 

This is some Codex level stuff right here.

 

 

What's really disgusting me is how freaking *many* of these "There are women doing things that I don't like women doing in this game!" so-called reviews have been showing up lately.

Really makes me question my self-identity as a "gamer" when I see what's up with parts of gamer culture these days.

I just don't understand why of all games it's this one that's getting ragged on for these reasons. So far this is like the least "political" game I've played all year.

RPGs seem to be particularly vulnerable to this stuff for some reason. The worst I've seen was the Beamdog forums during the release of Siege of Dragonspear a few years ago. The devs included a minor NPC with two lines of dialogue about gender fluidity and gamergate launched a weeks-long review bombing campaign knocking the metacritic and GoG scores down to 3 (meanwhile: 7.5 among verified Steam purchases). The developer downsized and hasn't released any OC since.

 

Yet it's somehow the "SJWs" who are still charicatured in the gaming community as the unreasonable value crusaders. Goes to show that gamergate was never really about combating censorship in gaming so much as fighting cultural change and representational diversity.

 

I mean, I get it. When games have been made with no care for any demographic but yours for the past thirty years, it's hard to adapt when the industry *finally* notices that other people want to play too. Same thing is happening with comic books – a female Thor and a black Spiderman are always going to cause some people's heads to just explode.

[Katarack21]

I think the OP has a point, it's just taken to an unhealthy extreme and isn't coming across well. Writing of female characters and minorities in video games can easily fall into lazy stereotypes and Obsidian has definitely been guilty of this. Tekehu by himself isn't a problem, but when you have a cast of seven companions with five of them being bisexual and most of them coming onto you strongly... that's a problem.

There's always a conflict when it comes to romancable companion sexuality; if you lock it behind gender tastes you can create more nuanced characters by reflecting their personality in their romance, but you'll cut out gameplay options for segments of your players. If you make everybody willing to sleep with anybody, then you increase player opportunity and choice but cut out some nuance of story and character.

 

It doesn't mean anything as far as SJW propaganda is concerned; it's just a gameplay choice.

[Murp]

 

 

 

This is some Codex level stuff right here.

 

What's really disgusting me is how freaking *many* of these "There are women doing things that I don't like women doing in this game!" so-called reviews have been showing up lately.

Really makes me question my self-identity as a "gamer" when I see what's up with parts of gamer culture these days.

I just don't understand why of all games it's this one that's getting ragged on for these reasons. So far this is like the least "political" game I've played all year.

RPGs seem to be particularly vulnerable to this stuff for some reason. The worst I've seen was the Beamdog forums during the release of Siege of Dragonspear a few years ago. The devs included a minor NPC with two lines of dialogue about gender fluidity and gamergate launched a weeks-long review bombing campaign knocking the metacritic and GoG scores down to 3 (meanwhile: 7.5 among verified Steam purchases). The developer downsized and hasn't released any OC since.

 

Yet it's somehow the "SJWs" who are still charicatured in the gaming community as the unreasonable value crusaders. Goes to show that gamergate was never really about combating censorship in gaming so much as fighting cultural change and representational diversity.

 

I mean, I get it. When games have been made with no care for any demographic but yours for the past thirty years, it's hard to adapt when the industry *finally* notices that other people want to play too. Same thing is happening with comic books – a female Thor and a black Spiderman are always going to cause some people's heads to just explode.

 

 

I was actually one of the people that had a problem with SoD. Now THAT was just virtue signaling garbage. It was embarassing. Don't get me started on the state of Marvel comics.

 

I just want a healthy middle where any character can be made without the writing being a huge dumpster fire.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Murp

[Mikeymoonshine]

I think the OP has a point, it's just taken to an unhealthy extreme and isn't coming across well. Writing of female characters and minorities in video games can easily fall into lazy stereotypes and Obsidian has definitely been guilty of this. Tekehu by himself isn't a problem, but when you have a cast of seven companions with five of them being bisexual and most of them coming onto you strongly... that's a problem.

 

Sure but once again anti sjws are hyperfocused on the issues with female and minority characters specifically. I've heard this about so many games, "oh the lgbt character is a steriotype, the female character is badly written ect" added into the same rant about how the presence of lgbt characters and women in positions of power prove some kind of conspircy by the devs to push feminism or whatever. It's utterly transparent lets not pretend this was about wanting more realistic female/lgbt/whatever representation, it was not.

 

Also what steriotype are you talking about in reference to bisexual people? Is it the one where bi characters are often portrayed as being inherantly promiscuous because this game has bi characters who are promiscuous and bi characters who are not, so how is that a problem?

Edited May 28, 2018 by Mikeymoonshine

[Murp]

Oh, please.  Codex at least has some valid points and constructive criticism in there somewhere amid all the ranting and raving.  Usually.

 

Yep, a Codexer. Sniffed that one out.

 

 

Man I took the bait hard..

Edited May 28, 2018 by Murp

[jf8350143]

Here it comes again, people demanding men to be superior to women in a fantasy world because "the real world use to be like this " etc.

 

"If this fantasy world overcame this, how did it do so? And no, it's not ok to be unrealistic here, because they're pitching for a mature, 'serious' tone everywhere else, so they are striving for realism."

 

You know there is no proof that in Eora men are physically stronger comparing to women, so does tons of other fantasy world. If my memory serves me right, Balder's Gate's character creation screen right out says that in the forgotten realm, women can do anything just as good as men, or something like this.

 

They never overcome this, because there is nothing to overcome. Fantasy world is based on reality, they are not reality. Why does people shooting fireball out of their hand is OK, but males and females are physically equal is not?

Edited May 28, 2018 by jf8350143

[algroth]

 

Same thing is happening with comic books – a female Thor and a black Spiderman are always going to cause some people's heads to just explode.

 

 

To be fair, I think it's more the matter of reinterpreting an existing character as one of a different race or gender that really stirred the pot in that case, more than whatever else. Personally I do think that's problematic, because it's a move that does reek of corporate cynicism, detecting a popular trend and applying it to an existing franchise to feed off a brand's popularity - but then again I don't lose sleep over it either.

[FreeKaner]

 

 

 

What exactly would you consider a varied character? Tekehu is a literal shark man and Xoti is a grim reaper with a southern accent.

 

 

 

Those aren't characters, those are identifies. The characters of the companions are not varied, despite the best efforts of the setting which begs for variance and identities you mention which should pave way to varied character design. Nope, the companions aren't even close to being varied expect maybe for Serefan. Sidekicks aren't bad but they don't really count as they are essentially hired adventurers with a background. 

[Murp]

 

 

 

 

What exactly would you consider a varied character? Tekehu is a literal shark man and Xoti is a grim reaper with a southern accent.

 

 

 

Those aren't characters, those are identifies. The characters of the companions are not varied, despite the best efforts of the setting which begs for variance and identities you mention which should pave way to varied character design. Nope, the companions aren't even close to being varied expect maybe for Serefan. Sidekicks aren't bad but they don't really count as they are essentially hired adventurers with a background. 

 

 

I repeat "What exactly would you consider a varied character?" That isn't an answer. I'm guessing your answer is probably an Avellone text box.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Murp