@mrfluke: I think the thing to remember here is that women--even American women--even American women who identify as feminists--are not a hivemind. (As someone who recently made a similar comment regarding American sensibilities about sex, I understand the very generalized cultural point that you're making and agree on that aspect, but I've also seen plenty of cosplay of sexy characters at American gaming conventions.) I'm not aware of what the larger conversation about Nier: Automata has been, but I distinctly remember there being a pretty stark divide in how women viewed Bayonetta.
@smackosynthesis: Not only did KotoR use a d20 based system and feature feats and dice rolls, you could actually view a log that showed the math behind those rolls! I think it might actually be one of the last Western RPG games to do that, until the return of old school CRPG style games in the past five years or so.
So this has cameos of main characters throughout the campaign, huh? That is something I absolutely fucking despise in Star Wars media. There are an infinite number of stories to tell in a universe this big.
@elite49: Look, how do we know that someone* really likes games, unless they start every video or podcast with a list of their favorite old and current games?
@fixerofdeath: Thank you for reminding me about this novel! I need to check it out.
Have you read Tarkin? It was excellent and it did a great job of explaining Tarkin without apologizing for him. Tarkin is an unapologetic monster, and the novel walks this line that makes that clear without ever justifying his actions.
I'm looking forward to renting Battlefront 2 for the campaign.
Jeff is absolutely spot-on about how the campaign will see the characters eventually defecting. I mean...look, the Empire are fucking genocidal space fascists and it's not subtle. Even if you ignore all of the EU stuff (in which the Empire is truly monstrous), they are shown literally blowing up planets in the movies. The current unified canon has taken steps to show that the Empire (and subsequent First Order) isn't as blatantly misogynistic as the Empire of old, but I'm pretty sure they're still shown as largely racist. Eventually, there's going to be something that Inferno Squad does that crosses the line for the characters, and is intended to cross the line for the players. You can get away with a certain degree of sci-fi racism--a mission to wipe out a colony of Twi'leks isn't the same as a game about a real world army eliminating an analogue to a real-world civilian population. But if this game's campaign is supposed to end during the time that The Force Awakens takes place...I would find it surprising both from a general story standpoint, and from the standpoint of the types of stories that Star Wars media is trying to tell.
I'm sitting here pondering whether I really need a second Giant Bomb -branded pull over hoodie (edit: yes, apparently I do), and it occurred to me that I would never pay $70 for a corporate-branded hoodie, let alone two, or any t-shirt, coffee mug, or pint glass at any price from any of the many other quality video game coverage sites out there. The moral of this story is GB is a wonderful, special thing and they alone have an override key to the impulse center of my brain.
Hey, I totally feel the same way! First, I resisted becoming a subscriber for years. Then I kept resisting any GB merch until last year, when I got a G-Beast shirt and two shot glasses.
I was definitely planning on getting some type of nerd-related hoodie. Not anything SUPER over the top (personally I've kind of gotten tired of most of the stuff you see on sites like TeeFury or ShirtPunch). This literally could not have been posted at a better time.
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