jcracken

@spaceinsomniac: That's a fair point. I've actually been thinking more and more of it today and I realized the only way what I want to happen to work is if there's like a two hour movie before the game explaining how hyperpartisanship degraded politics in America to an extreme degree, and even then there would have to be a qualifier like "all the people who oppose this have since fled the area and the National Guard is about to come in and wipe out the militia, but doing so will result in lots of civilian casualties so you have a week to take them out from within" which probably would not at all work for a FarCry game, or really most modern AAA games.

@artisanbreads: That reaction is possibly why I find what I'm saying so compelling...and probably why Ubisoft didn't do it. The idea that there are people out there that are heavily religious but align themselves with groups that do horrible things is one many Americans don't like to think about, and portraying racism in games is still really hard for many to be OK with. But it's not a case of "Now That's What I Call Edgy Vol. 20" in terms of why I want to see that, it's more that by portraying the group this way there will be innately gray areas that form. something that video game stories have always been bad at working with and portraying. Then again, Ghost Recon Wildlands portrayed a villain that would've been very easy to sell as having lots of moral pitfalls....and they didn't really seem to address them at all or do much with it. So maybe I'd still be disappointed anyways.

@artisanbreads: I don't know how you got that out of what I said. At all. I'm saying I wish their cult-like group was more aligned with the militia-like groups that already exist in the US that very few people seem to know about or even care about. Those people tend to be incredibly racist, as pointed out in the Mother Jones report I mentioned earlier:

The guys just can't believe how many Muslims there are in the country today. "Saudi fucking Aurora is what it is," Captain Pain says of his hometown in Colorado. "We need to kill more of those motherfuckers. I never seen so many fucking towelheads stateside."

"I remember when the part of Aurora I lived in was just white people," Jaeger says.

Like Fifty Cal, Ghost laments how much the country is changing. People like him with an honest trade used to be comfortable. And he didn't hear people complaining about white men all the time like they do now. Everyone's become so uptight. It wasn't like that when he was young, living in Los Angeles, cruising up Hollywood Boulevard with his buddies. "We'd fuck with the hookers," hanging a $20 bill out the window and watching them chase the car. "Actually, there were some damn good-looking hookers compared to East Aurora. Big old fat nigger wandering around: 'Come here, baby!'" he shouts mockingly. "No! Get the fuck back! There ain't enough booze in the world, woman." He lets the N-word slip sometimes, even though it seems to make some of the guys a little uncomfortable.

Iceman lay awake at night and wondered about the way of things. Why don't veterans get the recognition they deserve? Why is the country so divided? He had a sinking suspicion that the government was behind it all. Racism had been nearly extinct—he didn't care about race—but then Obama stoked the flames and now black people were marching in the streets.

Like, these groups really do exist, and they seem rife for a game like Far Cry 5, and that's what I'm getting at. I'm not saying there's actual people I want to gun down (god no) or that I wish there was more racism towards black people (absolutely not). I'm saying that if Far Cry went all that way and gave a stark portrayal of what militias in this country are actually like, it would be far more compelling than what they have done here, and there would also happen to be some racism...because that's how those groups roll. And it shouldn't be portraying real people either, that's just messed up. It should be a fictional milita, with fictional leaders and group members, but echoing real life groups in how they act and in what they believe.

@spaceinsomniac: No, I'm saying I expected the evil militia to be broadly claiming that they are doing God's work and to be strongly in support of local churches and Protestantism. I'm also not saying they should be evil murderers, I'm saying they should've been friendly to the local people--no violent threats, no bloodshed--but willing to take up arms against federal law enforcement, and, if forced, local law enforcement as well. Maybe this portrayal would be at complete odds with what Ubisoft can do with a Far-Cry game, but it'd add a better reflection of modern society. During the press showing, they kept mentioning the Oregon takeover, and that's what I'm thinking of. The Bundys very much believed they were doing good by Christ, were not willing to kill civilians but were heavily armed and ready to fight off law enforcement, and they had support across the country among the far right.

And like, I'm not against the idea of a local Protestant priest against the militia on the basis of thinking what they're doing is wrong, I'm more looking at it and thinking that if they wanted to do this proper, they should've had the militia members leave the priest alone, even if there's a confrontation that ends with "Leave that n****r alone, he's a good Christian like you or I." Instead the trailers seemed to imply that the militia members attacked the church and burned it partway down. I think maybe that's what I keep getting at in my mind--it would've been way more compelling if instead of some crazy cult that has hints of far-right anti-Government wackos, if it was straight up just one of those groups, like the 3 Percenters or the Oath Keepers.

I'm actually a bit disappointed after seeing the trailer, to be honest. After the keyart reveal I was a little hesitant but hopeful that if they pulled it off correctly it would be amazing. Instead it feels a bit staid, a bit...inoffensive? Like, if you read stuff like that Mother Jones piece on American militias, it becomes very evident that those type of groups are interlinked with white supremacy and a hypernationalist take on Evangelical Christianity. What Far Cry 5 is doing, though, feels very much not that. They make noticeable steps to distance it from white supremacy by having black cultmembers, and they distance it from Christianity as a whole, by having a Protestant priest specifically oppose the group--instead of branding themselves as Christians, the group uses their own symbolism (that cross symbol). In fact, instead of feeling like "there's this Bundy-like group with a large group of followers, as well as local support, openly fighting law enforcement and federal authorties" it feels like "there's a cult with a heavily armed group of followers attacking the good, white Christian folk of Hope County, Montana." It's a small difference, but it's hugely important in representing what the game is.

@zeik: @redwing42: Yeah Persona Q was the earliest thing I looked at. The reason I shied away from it was that I had previously read a plot summary of it and remembered it literally ends with "it was all a dream and everybody forgot about it," which alongside hearing the story does a poor job of recreating the characters from the original games made it seem skippable. I might take a second look at it if Devil Survivor doesn't grab me.

@zeik: Yes, Devil Survivor, my bad. Based on your other comment, I'm looking at a list of the Trails games and it doesn't seem like they released any on 3DS (the main reason I tried out SMT IV in the first place). Do you know of any series like that that does exist on 3DS?

@redyoshi: @bisonhero: The stuff I was reading online mentioned that for a beginner one should go SMTIV->Devil Summoner->Apocalypse. Reading your replies it seems like the latter two might be more up my alley, would I be fine going in blind to Devil Summoner or should I just Wikipedia the plot for SMTIV first so that I sort of understand what's going on?

I used to not really like JRPGs or RPGs in general, but as time went on and I got more into RTSes and that type of stuff I found myself more open to some of the complex systems going on in many RPG games and more and more into the genre. Like lots of people I've played Skyrim and Fallout 4 and mostly liked those, and recently I played through Prey. Here's the thing though, I've never really been fond of JRPGs with one exception: Persona. Normally, there are a few things that put me off of JRPGs: the combat can be monotonous and grindy, and the game can stretch on for dozens of hours longer than I have patience to bear, but most of all I'm finding the thing that puts me off of most JRPGs is the story. I'm not a fan of pseudo-philosophical dialogue about gods interacting with man or angels raising a banner against evil flowing over a fantasy land, etc, etc. In addition, I've become more choosey with video games that have weak characters. The difference with Persona, as Jeff put it best once, is that it's a lot more grounded and like-able as a result. There's always the world-ending threat where a malevolent god threatens to wipe out human independence or whatever but it tends to be shoved into and compressed to the last dozen or so hours of the game. (Note: I've only played P4G and Persona 5, so if Persona 3 is different I wouldn't know).

I needed a game to play on my 3DS, so I checked out SMT IV. I got about 30 minutes deep (to where you finish the third training quest and the other two male team members want to meet you on the roof) and I'm mixed. Part of the stuff I like about Persona is here, but it seems to have doubled down on the stuff I've never really liked about Persona: the combat and grind. On top of that, I'm really not a fan of the medieval fantasy setting, since I've always found that type of setting boring, but reading Wikipedia explain that they're actually in the far future got me hoping that maybe at some point it starts to modernize in some way.

So I guess my question is, will SMTIV focus more on combat and dungeon crawling, or will it be more like Persona and have a lot of social interactions and character development?

I ended up importing a model from Japan through an Ebay seller. Even after shipping it was only $205 so it was far cheaper than buying from a reseller in the states, and I should be able to mod it to be region-free. Don't see how NoA won out at all here.