[alt text: Text which says, “The 2 genders according to chuds”. Below the text is two images. On the left is an image of Geralt from The Witcher 3, and he is labeled, “Male, parentheses (white)”. On the right is an image of Ciri from The Witcher 4 trailer, and she is labeled, “Political”.]
Developing from a pretty, young, “vulnerable” girl that needs saving (even though she’s already tough as hell in TW3) into an older (chud translation: “ugly”) main protagonist fighting back against the patriarchy has these fools spitting with outrage. Here’s hoping CDPR doesn’t give them an inch.
She aged naturally! Ugh, she was my hot sexy daughter in Witcher 3! Why would they… Have her grow up?! /s
Only thing I’m hesitant about is the actor, but I’m willing to give her a shot. Minor thing.
I doubt CDPR went into this without knowing how incels would react, and knowing they’ll still buy it. After CP2077 with the whole customize genitals issue (that I’m sure most people had forgotten about), I don’t think CDPR cares. They’re Polish, I hope they laugh at our stupid ass “culture war” bullshit
Don’t kid yourself, the culture war bullshit has been exported worldwide, all thanks to the internet. For instance, there used to be self-declared “LGBTQ-ideology-free zones” in Poland until February this year.
Please stop blaming those things on everything except people. I’m Polish. Polish people drink homophobia with their mothers milk. We didn’t need to import it from US or Russia (it’s still better than in the 90s). Average developer is a young male who predominantly votes for outright fascists. The reason CDPR appears progressive is because they calculated it to be more profitable.
About 50% of developers are 25-35. We skew young due to more and more people becoming programmers, that is, for the same reason that cobblers skew old, but not first vote kind of young.
And your source doesn’t even make an attempt to correlate voting behaviour to profession, much less specialised field (programmer vs gamedev), not to mention that not every gamedev is a programmer, all in all not enough data to slander a whole profession. Do better.
The reason gamedevs skews progressive, btw, is because artists do.
But OTOH yes you’re right in Poland’s case it’s not imported culture war BS it’s Catholicism.
People 18-39 vote predominantly for Konfederacja (far right), KO (populist centre-right), PiS (populist right). I could dig some more precise sources with gender data but I think it’s telling that these are the results even with women in the mix. Coincidentally even among young women voting for far right is more common than for centre-left. I’m not mentioning left since their popularity is within a margin of error.
Yeah, artists skew left but you won’t find a more bigoted libertarian than a young polish programmer. Most of them are also pretty spoiled too because of the degressive tax system that favours them so much.
Yeah, artists skew left but you won’t find a more bigoted libertarian than a young polish programmer. Most of them are also pretty spoiled too because of the degressive tax system that favours them so much.
The temporarily embarrassed millionaires don’t tend to be the ones going into gamedev: Our wages suck and being an indie is about as likely to make you rich as playing the lottery. I’d mostly limit that kind of behaviour to FAANG folks as well as people who should have studied business economics instead (or actually did) and probably can’t code for shit anyway, in short: Techbros. They’re about as toxic as your average corporate lawyer.
Assholes existing is a general feature of contemporary society, don’t pin it on people understanding “there are 10 kinds of people” jokes.
Are there actually people complaining that she’s ugly…? She literally looks like a model, just with some scars.
There are certainly some, but that bit was more about certain creatins on this planet treating any woman nearing 30 as detestable.
they will complain about any female face that isnt ‘girlish’ enough or any female costume that doesnt show off enough boob
Who played the witcher 3 and didn’t want more Ciri gameplay? Wtf? The agile movement was so fun. Best parts of the game fight-wise.
Here, me. The Ciri parts were like someone shoved a linear action adventure into the open world RPG I wanted to play.
I wanted to progress the main story but every time it was a ciri part I was trying to rush through to get back to Geralt and go kill monsters and collect items lol
I agree, but I liked the pacing of it. Ciri’s fights were pretty fun, unchallenging as they were. The fact that they were pretty sparse and short probably helped
They were the most challenging on the hardest difficulty at least with Geralt you can RPG.
Interesting. Death march was a bit too much for me in the beginning so I played most of the campaign in Blood and Broken Bones and the main missions were all pretty easy. I think I ultimately switched to death march because by the end I had optimized the fun out of the combat loop.
Yeah but you can’t optimize when you play as her. One of the last times against the witches I remember having to replay it a couple times lol
I didn’t like the ciri parts, I just wanted to play as Geralt tbh
Game was so boring, so slow, so clunky, so bleak, I never made it that far. Tried twice over the years. I want to like it. It seems great, but then actually playing it becomes a chore quickly.
Same, about 2-3 times over the years. Had to start over each time because I forgot everything. Just looking at the map gave me anxiety because it was just so much. I’m an OCD completionist, so I have to do everything, visit every place, collect everything. That game was just overwhelming. Everything else about it was great though.
These people didn’t play Witcher 3. It’s mostly right wing rage bait podcasts. They’ll move on to a different side thing to be mad about in a few days.
I bet the people complaining with “what about the lore” have a big overlap with the people that wanted Ciri to be a love interest in W3…
They exist? But she’s practically his daughter🤢
“Uhm, actually, if you think of the historic period…”
Or some bullshit like that. Screw these morons, seriously.
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I’m 100% for Ciri being the main character and I’m also complaining “what about the lore”. You can do both at the same time. There’s a vocal minority of people who’ll use the lore argument to be sexist assholes, but people who have actually read and understood the books can have some valid concerns (ie where and how did she go through the trials, why can she use magic again, where did she even find how to do the trials, and just… why? She didn’t need them and it’s a bit of a character regression. She was basically already a witcher by title.)
The way I understood it was that she did not loose her ability to use magic, but rather decided not to use it any more after what happened when she had to draw power from fire.
Spoiler
She also used magic to escape Bonhart/Skellen/Rience after Kenna’s attempt to read her mind unintentionally gave her a bit of magical power.
Even if it would be a bit disappointing, I think an explanation as simple as “she grew older, and had a lot more time to deal with the trauma of what happened in the desert” would be sufficient to explain why she is OK with using magic again.
As someone who is curious about how they are going to explain the lore (in case you haven’t read the books: Ciri forswore magic after she had to draw power from fire in an emergency situation and that nearly escalated - also, you are missing out, the books are great), I feel offended by your statement.
I think it’s possible to have her somehow take back that magic in a desperate situation, or to have her go through the trial for some reason, too (she always was kind of interested, but Geralt didn’t allow it)
I mean Geralt died in the books and is somehow alive for the games. A lot of stuff can happen and be explained in a way that fits with the lore good enough to spin a story around it
Why isn’t the lady who’s been training all her life to fight monsters in my grounded low fantasy game made to look like she comes from the place it is set, the same as my ones in Stellar Blade!?!?!
Remember there are two religions
Christian and Political
two races
White and Political
two genders
Male and Political
Two sexual orientations: Straight and political.
Women’s bodies are the battlefield of the 21st, and every other Century.
I just ignore the idiots. I have wanted a Ciri game ever since I played W3 almost 10 years ago.
She’s literally supposed to become a Witcher in her own right. Geralt isn’t training her to be his eternal assistant or some kind of sidepiece, after all.
It would be neat if this leads to two storylines that sometimes intersect.
someone should endeavor to make The Most Political Game In The World by simply having no white male characters in it at all.
Super Hexagon!
Portal was a hit.
And originally created by a university design team with a female design lead, at that.
Even as Portal 2 adds male characters, one is greedy and responsible for all the conflict in the franchise, acting as something of a caricature for masculine stereotypes, and the other’s only defining trait is that he’s an easily corrupted idiot.
Portal is perhaps the best example of, and should be held up as the golden standard of, feminism in gaming.
Pacman?
I just had a conversation with someone about this on Lemmy a few days ago. His response was to call the choice “modern identity politics” and then back up his point by saying he always chose the female choice in games if he could. As if he did it from any belief that women are strong and capable and didn’t just want to see a woman on his screen. And the comment reeks of “I’m not racist! I have a black friend!” vibes.
Anyway he ended up saying Lemmy was just like Reddit and… oh, now he’s in a different thread aggravating people and saying the same thing that Lemmy is intolerant.
The bad reactions to this seemed minimal to me, but my god the woman in the Galactic trailer is driving them nuts.
Which I really don’t understand, because I find her look and vibe the good part of that trailer. The slurping drink and forced pop song on the other hand…
They seem to hate Naughty Dog ever since they made them play as a lesbian instead of a generic white guy.
I do like to see those people triggered. I can see them being angry at rainbows for making the sky gay.
Also, I hope I spend this game collecting so much 80s music that I feel like I’m back in Vice City.
I also cannot understand how you could play the Last of Us Part 1 and not realise how horrible Joel is.
Spoilers for both games ahead.
The ending of 1 was super difficult for me to play and super powerful in its delivery. It was horrible to decide to “save” Ellie by literally murdering everyone in the research station and destroying all hope for a cure. I was really impressed that they went there storywise, but then when in 2 Joel gets killed, all these so-called “fans” are angry because their lovely protagonist was killed. It’s like they willfully ignore the complicated morals that were already present in the first game. When Abby does horrible stuff, they hate her. When Joel does horrible stuff in 1, it’s fine. Part 2 had some problems, but I hugely respect what they were going for and how it polarised the community.
I think it has less to do with gender politics and more to do with delivery, though.
The writing was just better. They make Joel to be a complicated, sympathetic character, and create a situation in which, even as Joel/the player murders relative innocents, you know he is doing a bad thing from a complicated and genuine love. Then, they take that character and reduce all his love to “he did a bad” and shoot him, make you chase his killer for half a game, and try to make you sympathize with his killer after the fact? And it’s all tied together through this tired, “cycle of violence” trope that another major post-apolcolyptic zombie survival media has already bastardized and beaten to death.
The “fans” who defend Joel as the hero are insane, on that point I can’t agree more. But I think the dislike of Abby and the love of Joel is deeper than “guy good, girl bad.” I’ve seen far fewer complaints (though not zero complaints) about playing the notably more “woke” surrogate lesbian daughter than about playing as Abby.
As an aside, I’ve been thinking recently about how the game would feel if you spend the first half of the game as Abby, chasing her father’s killer, only to have the rug pull later that the killer is Joel. Then, you spend the second half playing as Ellie, dealing with the consequences, while the player is trying to reconcile what just happened. Though it prob would have been harder to sell a game that doesn’t open with Eillie and Joel.
I completely agree with your last part, the story would have been perfect if it was switched.
To counter your other argument, the surrogate lesbian daughter is still more visually stereotypically attractive though. The number of hate posts for Abby that even go into transfobic territory and misgendering was massive. I made the mistake of wanting to read some discussion on part 2 after playing it on reddit: the whole sub is just hate (there probably is an alternative but I didn’t look further, I was to disgusted by it).
But your opinion on Joel vs Abby is valid, it’s actually annoying that actual discussion about storytelling gets overshadowed by bigots.
On a similar note, I had issues with the change in direction of Doctor Who which accidently coincided with the casting of the first female Doctor, and it was so hard to have genuinely critical discussions without misogynists taking over or being accused of being one myself.
I looked it up, the horrible sub is TheLastOfUs2 (avoid!), the normal one is LastOfUsPart2
I’ve been thinking recently about how the game would feel if you spend the first half of the game as Abby
Ooh. That’s a pretty clean fix for my bigger gripes about the game. I nearly put the game down when the second half was revealed. It felt so forced. Still don’t love the forced participation in the torture porn at the end, but switching the order of perspectives would def be better.
Re: the ending and Part II - It pissed me of in particular because I specifically went for a leg shot in that scene, and then Joel just goes on a rampage. And then it turns into a big revenge plot in the sequel for the very thing I didn’t want to do. It was all very frustrating.
Damn the trailer looked pretty cool. I love the modern retro vibe it has. They have space tech, but also CD decks etc. But the comments on Youtube are an absolute dumpster fire… “How dare they have a female with short hair REEEEEEEEEEEEE”
I wish people would just laugh at them, and tell them how fucking ridiculous they look and then promptly leave their asses behind and move on. Instead, we get news articles about a minority of people who have shit opinions about things they have no understanding of.
Kamela’s early campaign of just calling Trump “weird” was all about this, for some reason she dropped it in favor of kissing the asses of the Cheneys for no payoff.
It’s because it was actually a Walz thing, and she sidelined Walz for some reason.
I wish people would just laugh at them, and tell them how fucking ridiculous they look and then promptly leave their asses behind and move on. Instead, we get news articles about a minority of people who have shit opinions about things they have no understanding of.
We tried that with GamerGate, and it didn’t work. Keeping bad people away from levers of power requires constant diligence; we cannot simply dismiss and move on, because then while we are looking away, the trolls continue to build their base. I’m a strong believer in the power of memes in our modern digital age. Try to write a bunch of articles about a problem like this, and most folks will only absorb the pithy headline. Some will read the article, but mostly only college-educated folks. Instead, make a meme about it that distills the logic of your opponent down to its ridiculous conclusion, and suddenly everyone gets it. (this isn’t to say we should never write an article to explore the nuance of a point, just arguing for the value of leftist memes)
We have the discussion out in the open so that the kids and other uneducated folks can read a variety of opinions. If we don’t, the trolls swoop up and try to turn them into incels.
Delete this post right now before the feds find it.
I don’t really understand people saying it’s not part of the lore. I did the expansions and everything. I got the ending, assuming that I remember correctly, where Ciri becomes a witcher. And in the expansions, Geralt just wanted to retire on a mountain vineyard in not-France.
One thing I was thinking of with the announcement is what would they do with the witcher powers, but from the electric punch in the preview, my guess is they’re going to expand her psychic powers to take the place of witcher powers.
I’m looking foward to it. It looks kick ass.
Also - are there actually as many compaints as people make it out to be? Like I’ve never met anyone in real life who didn’t like that a game featured a woman.
as someone who read the books (like 10 years ago so i could be wrong), I’m pretty certain it is not psychic powers, but spellcasting. Ciri trained under Yennefer and went to sorceress school for while. Geralt has the Witcher signs, which are like an elementary form of spellcasting, but Ciri learned a bit more than Geralt. Separately, she also has her warping power that is completely unique to her and very important in the lore, but I won’t say more for sake of spoilers. I don’t remember how much of this they cover in the games.
100%! You can totally see her draw elemental magic from the water running down the cave wall then cast it as ball lightning (or electricity at least?). She uses both Quen and Igni in the trailer too though. There’s also book lore about magic that could lend itself well to game play, like the costs of casting more than you’ve drawn and the skill required to draw from different “elemental planes.” Witcher mage would be a fun build!
I’ve been slightly out of the loop on this, are incels really whining about Witcher 4 using Ciri as a protagonist because she’s a woman?
No. They’re whining about Witcher 4 using Ciri as a protagonist because they think she was made ugly.
Attractive women designed solely to be the object of male affection are allowed to be protagonists. When a woman stands on their own as a unique complex individual, they take issue.
Chuds thought Aloy had a beard because she had peach fuzz. They don’t know what a real woman looks like and they don’t want to know.
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I would have liked more emphasis on replayability than skin textures and raytracing.
Reminds me of the whole kerfuffle of western devs bashing elden ring, a significant portion of which could be summed up as “why would you put something in the game without a big map marker showing them where it is???”
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Normally drag would agree, but outing every misogynist who doesn’t know what a woman looks like is a worthy goal
It’s not an “either - or” thing. The artists modeling fine details like peach fuzz had nothing to do with the game’s design and it also had no influence on how replayable the game would be.
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A AAA game will have these kinds of details today, because it’s expected by customers. AAA(A) games that don’t (looking at you, Ubisoft, with your shoddy animations) get relentlessly mocked unless they excel in every other area. First party Sony titles in particular are expected to push technical boundaries (at least of their hardware) in some way or another. That’s part of the reason why people are buying these games and the systems they are running on. This isn’t an optional thing, it’s not a choice, it’s the baseline.
You also have to consider that even if this wasn’t the case, you can’t just radically change the way studios are being organized. Large studios are art-heavy in terms of their manpower, in large part because it’s very easy to produce tons of game assets in parallel. It’s not easy to hire or retrain people after a switch in priorities and it’s much more difficult to apply the same kind of manpower to game design tasks. The old saying that nine women can’t birth a baby in one month applies here as well.
Taking a rough look at the credits, Horizon Zero Dawn had 30 designers working on it (world, quest, writing, etc.). Compare this to 57 coders coding things and 148 artists creating audio and visual assets. There are other departments like production, marketing, HR, etc. that I’m not counting, but I think you get the picture.
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For those like me who don’t understand the context: https://www.thegamer.com/the-witcher-4-reveal-ciri-woke-complaints/
The gamer is a ragebait shitrag manufacturing controversy where there is none. Stop driving traffic to that piece of garbage.
Give me a source you prefer, I will be happy to swap it. The first results I found was this and Forbes and I was expecting this reaction for Forbes.
Well, maybe, just maybe, it’s a handful of idiots and not worthy of amplifying their message so real journalists just ignore them?
Tell that to OP, I’m providing the context for their post that I didn’t have.
Wtf I found her to be very attractive in the trailer. Some people confuse me.
It seems to me, some people just want to hurt others… Best is to ignore the loud minority and focus on the not so loud majority, which will buy the game 😇
Even better, don’t focus on the majority OR the minority. Wait till the game’s out before you make a decision. Don’t preorder shit.
