The year before GoW 2018, he released Drawn to Death… PS Plus release that had some cool style but otherwise crap game! He was relevant back in the late 90s and early 2000s… but now his opinion hardly matters and he’s a bit of a drama queen. I don’t really give a shit what he thinks.
It’s a very overused and absolutely terrible use of a word.
For two reasons:
It has a predefined meaning, and if you read what the DA creators say, they’re not actually “slamming” it. While they’re pretty openly hostile - and for good reason - that’s a far cry from what someone “slamming” someone else or a quote would be.
It’s inclusion in the headline is for sensationalism, which would not be needed as the “You’re an idiot!”-quote already does that. Or maybe it’s just surprising how desensitivized people on the net are nowadays.
To think it further, consider the whole headline had been slam-ified:
I mean, I too would be unhappy with the new games’ stories. They’re not very good stories overall.
But, they’re better than the vast majority of video game plots, because that’s a low bar.
Still, Jaffe seems to imply the old stories in GoW were any better, when they were pure drivel. I might still be very underwhelmed by the story in the two new God of War’s, but I at least like that they’re trying (even if I think the direction of relying heavily on animation and visual flair is the wrong one, as far as telling good stories goes).
Jaffe always struck me as a perpetual adolescent. The two GoW games he worked on were great for the time, but the stories were shallow excuses to showcase as much gore as possible. His other big property, Twisted Metal, was genre-defining gameplay but any narrative was just edgelord violence and/or crass humor.
The last “big” project I remember coming down the pipe from him was Drawn to Death, which took his signature juvenile tastes and combined them with horrible gameplay and eye-blistering art direction. As far as I’m aware, he hasn’t worked on a game since.
I’m not saying the new GoW games are perfect, but I wouldn’t say Jaffe has a trusted critical eye.
I fully agree. If you read my first comment, I pretty clearly as much as the new ones are pretty bad (story wise), the two Jaffe worked on are even worse in that regard.
If you already own a decent PC, most of these games have already been released there, although later than on PS5. Only ones missing from that list so far are GoW: Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2.
I thought the story in Horizon was fantastic. I’m a Sci-fi nerd, so that all hit home with me. The second game, not so much though. It was like they didn’t quite get why the story of the first game worked.
I have problems with God of War though. The story feels like an attempt to copy what The Last of Us did with Ellie and Joel, but without really understanding why their dynamic worked.
I have a lot of complaints about the HFW plot but the biggest one is the juvenile way they handled Tilda and Sylens in their capacity as prime movers. Aloy herself is a mature character but the story around her takes place in a moral scape of the world as seen by a fifteen year old.
Sylens goes through the motions of his scheme and keeps the same smug “I’m above it all and don’t owe anyone any explanations” attitude, through setback after setback and reality check after reality check. It seemed like the authors were poised to deliver a harsh discussion about ends vs means, how the world isn’t a magical fairy tale and sometimes something important needs to be done that requires dirty politics and won’t be magically solved by the one pure hero pulling the sword out of the rock; but then they squandered it completely and went back to ‘yeah all glory to the chosen one’. Most frustratingly they had their angle right there, already baked in: Aloy fails the first 7 times she tries to do anything, so if Sylens mocked her “this is the real world, you don’t just go ahead and solve things, Hero”, she could legitimately retort “idk, have you tried”. Instead they just don’t have this discussion and go back and forth “screw you I hate you” “behave, girl” again and again in a flat loop.
Tilda was made in the mold of this cringey moral that’s all the rage now about how everyone’s an abuser and when people say “I love you” they really mean “I own you” (as also seen in Dragon Age: Absolution). It reads like someone’s pent up frustration about their controlling parents, like in his nightmares the person who created this plotline sees his mother taking to the air in that floating exoskeleton and shouting amid a rain of guided missiles “you’re going to college and that’s final, submit or perish”.
I feel like HFW kind of lost the plot when it introduced the Far Zeniths. They just didn’t work for some reason. I kind of wish if they were going that route, they had been the descendants of the people who left for Far Zenith and they had a better reason for wanting Gaia and Earth or something, so they weren’t just cartoonishly evil.
I think the main problem with the world of Horizon is that the most interesting event in their world has already happened.
The story of Zero Dawn worked so well because it is the interwoven tale of a young woman who sets out to discover why she was cast out of her village at birth, and the almost archaeological unraveling of why the world is the way it is. When you finally piece together both the plot is almost already at it’s climax, and you are left with both the understanding of why it must be Aloy who stops the new threat to the world, and the motivation to do so.
But that doesn’t work for a sequel. The format of Zero Dawn relies on exposition about the very nature of the world, that’s why the main quest has a bunch of missions that more or less boil down to walking around an old facility and listening to recordings.
How are you going to translate that into a new sequel? Either you’ve got sequels planned already, which I find unlikely given what Forbidden West amounted to, or you need to try to invent more world building and plot. It seemed quite clear to me that Guerillas writers for Forbidden West didn’t know their own world as well as I had assumed they did. The “how did we get here” plot in Zero Dawn revolved around a small cast characters, who, with the exception of one, were all both very neuanced and strongly invested in their own plot. The Zeniths of Forbidden West come across almost as inverse Deus Ex Machina, characters who fly in from the moon with what seems like no other reason to mess up the plot than “We had to find something”.
It’s the reason why I’ve been holding off on getting a PS5, and recently decided I just won’t. The only thing that has come out recently that tempts me is BG3, but I’m past buying a console for a single game; I’ll just play it on PC.
First, I think its the first game of this type to have any successful control scheme for a controller at all, so I think it deserves accolades for making it happen at all.
Second, while I still mostly play in traditional mouse and keyboard, I am an old man now, having played the original BG as a teen when it came out. Having the controller as an option is huge for me when I am in pain.
Anecdotally, my partner never played these games growing up and she fucking hates trying to play with mouse and keyboard. She says it feels clunky and slow and confusing.
Is it the best? No. Is it an excellent effort? Yes, because it actually works.
The fact that a game with a ruleset as complex as DnD manages to have a couch co-op option and gamepad controls built-in is an achievement, imho.
Eh, it depends more on what you’re used to. I personally hate using a mouse and keyboard and greatly prefer a controller, and it’s not that different from other RPG games that use a controller interface. I’m used to a wheel interface from games like Mass Effect, so it’s more intuitive for me than a mouse and keyboard.
Funny thing is, I realize now there’s multiple franchises I’ve stopped for gameplay reasons, not story.
In God of War, not only was I contending with an offset thumbstick that I didn’t feel like replacing, but I was stuck on a fight that I didn’t seem to be geared for, and was getting pummeled.
Last of Us, I got stuck on some stealth section against enemies that didn’t seem to behave as the tutorial suggested.
Demon’s Souks would just be leagues beyond me anyway, so no chance there.
I like the 2018 GOW and first Spider-Man, but just couldn’t get into the sequels. I guess they’re just so similar I felt like I was done and didn’t want more. Horizon I never liked because I hate the combat. I also liked the first Last of Us, but didn’t want to play as someone I hated in the sequel.
I kinda wish the article has expanded on what he said, if anything. Does he still think they are well made games even if he doesn't like the direction?
Like, I don't like the new Zelda games, I don't think they have stayed true to the original Zelda (not you Zelda II) games. That said, I cannot deny that a lot of care and polish went into them, I just don't like the direction.
Sure, the new God of War games are not the original avatar-of-rage Kratos but they are still exceptional games.
Is this going to be another ET situation where we find hundreds of Xbox games in a random desert 40 years from now because Microsoft wanted to kill physical copies?
I’m pretty sure this is less about the quality of the game and more about ppl working on his creation without him. You can see this a lot in comic books
Creators will be pissed that ownership has continued work on something they created without them.
Pretty much why Allen Moore hates comics so much. Or even why John McAfee hated his anti virus program.
I played about 3 hours of 2018, and my honest opinion is that the story was kind of interesting, but the gameplay was slow and clunky. The most fun I had with my time was the fight in the beginning with Baldur, and most of it was a cutscene. I prefer the gameplay and fluidity of combat in the original trilogy, which I have beaten, to this new version. With that being said, it’s still a good game, just not my cup of tea.
Exactly. Woke is just a symptom not the reason. It’s hard to see a beloved series go bad but people should learn to move on if the game is bad. Just buy the game when it’s good and the problem is solved.
I think it’s a symptom because the creators using it to hide their bad games, and the idiots think the game is bad because it’s woke. If the game is already bad, it’s bad. Dragon Age games were always diverse and Dragon Age Origins was epitome of its genre. No one is talking about it being woke.
because the creators using it to hide their bad games
How does this work in particular? The hiding bit? Doesn’t it actually draw attention, considering how many people then spam “OMG SO WOKE!11!!angry!!” and so on threads everywhere?
They indeed draw attention. It’s basically there is no good or bad advertising from their point. However, this is a fantasy world and people would like to see psychically appealing characters, especially the playable ones. I believe this is the root issue.
When they have no good material, they start to promote unrelated things to gameplay. This is just one of those things.
Visuals are part of the experience, it’s not unrelated. Gameplay is the core, you only have make up without it. If the game turn out to be good, most of these will be forgotten. There are a lot of good games that can be considered as “woke” and no one talk about them like this. Because they are good games.
On broader range everything in the game is part of the experience. However there is a significance order to that. Core gameplay loop comes first, every person who plays the game experience this. Back story is lore. To me lore is also important and a very enjoyable part of the games, but some people are not interested in this and they tend to skip these parts. If they are optional (like reading books in Skyrim or reading pamphlets in Shadowrun etc.) they don’t even bother with them.
Citation: Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur’s Gate 3, I can even put Stardew Valley in this list, though not as vocal as others. I didn’t see anyone bash these games as being woke, or maybe they are a minority if there are.
Not sure how commercial flop part is related but from what I understand from the people who talk about this, yeah it’s more or less something like that. Though I can easily say that many people have different definition of “woke” in their minds and it shows. Consistency differs.
This is my conclusion, from what I see, it is mostly about TQ+ part.
So this then begs the question, why are people decrying games as “woke” trying so hard to push their political agenda into gaming discussions? After all, as per point 1 + point 3, the game was already criticized/panned anyways, then someone came in and tries to push the critique onto a political level instead of a game one.
That’s a good question. I think it’s more like reciprocal, as a counter measure from conservative people. I wouldn’t approach this as left and right quarrel. What we see is political but not in its core I believe, it’s pushed into politics.
If simplify it, this whole debate is around having transition chest scars as a customization option, at least that’s what I see. Woke is just a bigger cluster here.
Citation: Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur’s Gate 3, I can even put Stardew Valley in this list, though not as vocal as others. I didn’t see anyone bash these games as being woke, or maybe they are a minority if there are.
You have spend zero time in game forums talking about Baldur’s Gate 3 if you think it wasn’t criticized for being woke. The best game of the year by every metric, and conservatives got batshit insane about a slider for gender that contained “non-binary” as an option. The first year or so every second steam discussion was about that topic.
Which goes to show that it being heavily criticized for being woke has nothing to do with quality. It’s not a “symptom” of a bad game, like you wrote earlier.
If Dragon age flops it will do so because it’s a bad game, not because it’s woke - the people who actually give games bad ratings for that are thankfully always a very small minority, no matter what a conservative bubble, right wing influencers, or some random internet shit storm might suggest to you. Your original comment simply missed the point.
That’s a good point. I probably missed that because I didn’t visit those forums. Usually these discussions go around with already bad games. I actually checked BG3 Steam forums now however couldn’t find those threads without searching. Perhaps it was a vocal minority? If a game is good, majority don’t care about these details or they don’t express their feelings even though they’re conservatives.
I guess it would be more fitting if I said “symptom of an ongoing debate” or something like that. But like I said, these conversations go around on already bad games. Maybe they being bad attracts these conversations since those people have a tangible indication, even though it’s actually not the real reason of it’s being bad.
If Veilguard flops, there will be a lot of reasons to list. Not sure if wokeness would make into top 10.
Based on that, then, do you think that the folk complaining about wokeness are always the vocal minority and the reason you see it far more in unpopular games is that there’s not a higher ratio of positive reviews to hide the assholes?
They are not unanimous on everything, so probably no. However the racist and misogynist ones are a vocal minority. Like on everything, it’s a spectrum and it’s not wise to put all of them in the same category.
there’s not a higher ratio of positive reviews to hide the assholes?
I don’t think it works like anonymity and if they are the only ones who give negative reviews on a successful game, it would be easy to find them in all those positive reviews. It is possible that people who gave a positive review also mentioned that they are uncomfortable with these specs. You won’t see them if you only check negative reviews. I would say you can find both civil and assholes in anti-woke people. Same thing goes for the woke people as well. The problem here is, the ones who hold these debates on the internet are usually the assholes from both side. It’s crazy. I guess we have enough people here on Lemmy now since things are not so different from Reddit anymore.
Aye, it has become another dogwhistle of the weirdo alt right crowd. It’s kinda helpful because whenever you see someone use it unironically, you can just safely block/ban them at no loss of conversation.
Woke is not a symptom. What people usually complain about with “woke” is more choices for the player to personalize their experience. Body type 1 or 2 instead of male female? Woke. Different skincolors? Woke. Woman in charge? Woke.
(I’m so sorry for writing so much. Skip to the last paragraph if you have to. There’s a tension in me because I fall on both sides a bit.)
It’s an indicator of developer focus and intent. Sometimes.
If people’s introduction to trans characters wasn’t “hi, I’m trans” then maybe they wouldn’t have these stereotypes, but we are where we are. Pretending that it’s just extra options is ignoring that the people that push this sort of thing also seem to think we also want to read their shitty writing and shitty characters.
Their dumblelore/voldemort slash fiction bullshit was trash 15 years ago and they haven’t improved because their focus is social issues, not good writing. That’s the real issue - paper thin characters that are just vehicles for social commentary. Subversion isn’t annoying your audience from the start, it’s developing deep characters with all the flaws of humanity that also happen to have atypical identities.
My favorite book series are The Culture novels and Discworld. They both have trans characters that aren’t there just to push narrative. They were well written characters that fit the world and also trans. In the culture it’s not even remarkable - they’ve solved everything biological so it’s just kind of there. Discworld is more by-the-horns, but he still manages to be sneaky with the subversion and it works every fucking time.
On the flip side, Hugo award winner A Deepness in the Sky has a character that uses gender neutral pronouns which is whatever. Not a big deal, but it was the first time I saw it in a book. What was the book? Torture/rape fantasy set in space. It’s one of two books I couldn’t finish. The other is Atlas Shrugged. Coming from someone that’s read a lot of more classic science fiction and considered a Hugo a seal of approval, that was a very harsh realization.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with extra options or making ugly characters (though I don’t get that - there’s a sweet spot between fan service and trash can) but I don’t consider them a useful feature if the game is shit. If they focus on the game and add ‘woke’ shit to a good game with well written characters it’ll go down like honey. If the devs see the game as a vehicle to disseminate their social ideas, they’re in love with themselves and not the game and people will see that. It can, and has, been done well.
That’s what I think as well. If it requires, just put 18+ inscription and let people decide for themselves, which I believe Veilguard already has that rating.
His tone, the way he mocks other creators, comes off as (for lack of a better term) developmentally stunted. I understand if you disagree with the product because your vision is different, but the way he expresses it is so reductive that it’s hard to see his points as valid beyond his feelings.
With that being said, It’s been awhile since I’ve seen David Jaffe and he’s kinda got a “We’ve got Dan Harmon at home” vibe about him now.
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