magicwalnuts

@shotgunblast97: This is a tough question because many modern games often don't commit entirely to having player agency over the story, which is what I think you're looking for. The reason for this is likely rising production costs, but that's besides the point. Some of the suggested games only play lip service to the idea of actual player agency, such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Binary Domain, (still good though!) and Mass Effect. For modern games The Witcher 1 and 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout: New Vegas, Dishonored, Alpha Protocol, Heavy Rain (Indigo Prophecy too!), and The Walking Dead all at least do a decent job of making the player's decisions the focus of the game, some even go out of their way to give the player as many tough and nuanced decisions as possible, with observable results.

As for older games, there are any number of RPGs out there that have stories dependent upon the player's choices, Fallout 1 and 2 are some pretty well known ones. But I personally think the holy grail of player agency in a game is the original Deus Ex. The myriad of ways you could influence the narrative and the way people spoke to you and treated you was pretty impressive, even today. But my favorite thing about Deus Ex is how many moral choices the game posited to you without actually telling you. There are no explicit "press this, this, or this button" or "make a decision, shoot him or her" messages popping on screen, instead the decisions are hidden.

-Borderlands is a bad game and Borderlands 2 is only marginally better.

-GTA IV is a bad game and the reason rhymes with Rico Sellick

-The RTS genre is on life support and pointing to Starcraft II isn't going to save it.

-EA isn't THAT bad

I was just about to post that nobody has mentioned Exo Squad, but someone right above me has just mentioned Exosquad. however, I'll mention it again.

Also, the recently deceased Sym-Bionic Titan MUST be mentioned. It only aired last year, but was tragically cancelled. Created by Genndy Tartakovsky of Dexter, PPG, and Samurai Jack fame. That one season is super excellent.

World of Tanks, so much about that game is atrocious. The production ranges from unrivaled to completely amateur (mostly in the latter) The in game currency is a complete ripoff, if you want to spend 80 dollars to buy one tank, the game will gladly oblige you. Progress will take you the better part of a year unless you buy an xp booster. The gameplay isn't even complete after years of being in the wild, and was never anything special to begin with. Higher tiered gameplay requires you to buy your ammo with real money for every single match, or else be at a huge disadvantage. The UI for grouping sucks. I could go on and on forever about how WoT is at best a bad game and at worst a total scam, but that didn't stop me from pouring 100+ hours into it so I could unlock the next tank.

I was playing Wing Commander recently, and I got stumped on the mission where you have to protect the captured Ralari destroyer. But I mostly stop playing games cause I get bored.

Nothing against Kiefer, but FUUUUCKKKKKK, that is a bummer.

I agree with most of what Anita is saying, but I think her strength is also her main drawback. She approaches these videos in a largely academic fashion, only focusing on one argument, much like a thesis. So while all of what she's saying is true, convincing, and nicely organised; it also seemingly ignores much larger meta-realities such as different cultural inclinations towards patriarchy. One of the things that kind of really annoyed me was how many juicy examples she found in Japanese developed games. Well of course the Japanese games are going to be blatantly mysogynistic, Japanese culture is heavily patriarchal!

The other thing that annoyed me was her not mentioning the existence of many of these tropes in fiction dating all the way back to ancient Greece, but she does sort of indirectly acknowledge this by mentioning that the trope is both a product and a propagator of a long sexist western culture.

What people seem to be getting angry is a perceived blame being placed on devs for intentionally reusing the trope to propagate the idea that women are weak and need to be taken care of. She's not really doing this. She not only acknowledges that this is a widely used device in all media, but she also acknowledges that, in the case of western developers, the competition and risk leads to this desperate endeavor to distinguish their games from each other at any cost. She does, rightly IMO, say that it's irresponsible of developers to be so thoughtless with their story and design mechanics that they stick to cheap and harmful tropes like these.

For me personally, while the damsel in distress trope does bother me a bit as problematic, it's the sexualization of women in games that resonates a bit more with me. How many T&A shots did I sit through during the Mass Effect trilogy? Way too many. I would get behind Anita if she did something like that as well.

It's definitely going to have to be David Duchovny in Thirteen. His voice acting abilities in that game frankly blew me away.

Deep Silver might not have a sterling pedigree, but they did make the X games. Imagine seeing another Freespace game?!