feedback for devs Cool game, but why the ableism?

[Ice-Fox-of-Camelot]

THRILLING title, eh?

This thread will have spoilers for the main quest "A Complication with the Computronic Cerebrum". Please complete said quest before continuing onto the rest of this thread. 

!!! You Have Been Warned !!!

Spoiler

I'd like to talk about a critical tonal issue in the main story quest "A Complication with the Computronic Cerebrum" that goes against everything we've come to expect from an Obsidian game, and how it promotes harmful stereotypes and ableist ideas. I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but that'll probably be impossible with what I need to bring up.

The proverbial "Chekov's Gun" of the issue begins with meeting U.E.N.I.A.C. We arrived thanks to the help of the Order and Aunties Choice after brokering the peace treaty, and upon meeting U.E.N.I.A.C and its trifurcated personalities, we were absolutely delighted. 

You see, we have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), meaning we're a plural system with multiple personalities (although other systems may dislike that description). This is a very real mental condition which we have been living with for quite some time. People who know us well have told us it's visually and audibly apparent when one personality "switches" for another; our posture, tone, and personality (duh) all change.

I've had my fair share of issues and arguments with my other headmates, but we've also gotten a lot of help them too! Heck! Sometimes they're really funny! (Imagine having a twitch chat inside your head). Basicly, there's good days and bad days, but we function perfectly fine in our day to day life. 

Unfortunately, so many movies, books, and video games portray systems like us either as "secretly having an evil alter-ego who wants to kill you" or "Someone who's broken and needs to be fixed". So, to see a positive representation of a character with DID was very nice to see!

You may now see where this is going.

While we understand that U.E.N.I.A.C is textually not an A.I nor sapient, in the mind of a player it is still perceived as a character, and thus, a person. While the average player wouldn't think twice about being forced to choose which two subroutines are shut down, for someone like us it's downright fowl. It's not only emotionally devastating on a personal level, it promotes stereotypes and misinformation about systems.

Systems aren't people who need to be "fixed", and we don't want to be "fixed". One of the handful of upsides of being plural is the fact we all have our own, for lack of a better word, specialities. I, Pix, am the host, the face, the person who does the day to day stuff. Patzu loves to cook, and can get through work days that are exhausting. Domaskis might not be social, but they can talk to authority figures a lot better than I can. 

So how, we ask, would getting rid of these personalities help me? And how is getting rid of these subroutines the good outcome for U.E.N.I.A.C? Why is Actuational not the "host", the face that talks to the holder of the Calcaduceus? Why is Profitalist not running a subroutine focused on corporate logistics and branding like was agreed upon in the treaty with Aunties Choice? Why is Sovereignist not running subroutines focused on the Archives own security or the logistics and maintenance of its own systems?

We understand this is a moment where the player is supposed to make a choice with no compromise similar to Milverstreet and Kaur, but why is it at the expense of people like me?
I had to mute the game and turn off subtitles to finish that segment, and even then we were so angry we had to stop playing and cool off for the rest of the day. When we finally came back to finish the game, we'd get reminded of the Archive and get upset all over again. I tried starting a new game, but I've lost all motivation.

So for this reason, pease! For Laws sake! Just give us an option that's not, that!! This is something that, genuinely, Cyberpunk 2077 handled better, so please and thank you!

 

[TheLearnedHand]

It's a computer. It doesn't have DID. It is glitching due to three different factions trying to give it three different conflicting priorities.

[Ice-Fox-of-Camelot]

10 hours ago, TheLearnedHand said:

It's a computer. It doesn't have DID. It is glitching due to three different factions trying to give it three different conflicting priorities.

Try actually reading the words I wrote down, then reply. We know it's not DID, but if it smells like DID, tastes like DID, acts like DID, then it'll be met like DID.

It doesn't matter that "erm actually in lore it's a robot", this is a character, in a story, which has proved in the eyes of the player to have emotions. And what, are we not supposed to associate that with things in the real world?!? Come on, dude.