russman588

I just finished this, and the only thing I really have to say is that it's incredible that they created a tragic ending where Joel and Ellie are alive and still together. As I was playing it, I'd heard some things about the ending, enough to surmise that Joel and Ellie were both alive by the end of it. But I was very certain that the only way to get that gut punch ending people were talking about would be to have Ellie reject Joel for the horrible shit he'd done and set out on her own, similar to how Tommy did. Instead, the selfishness of Joel dooms humanity and takes away her ability to salvage it, and then he lies to her about it. And the tragic part of it for me isn't even that the human race is doomed to extinction, it's that Ellie never got a chance to make that decision. Whether or not she knows what Joel did, her feelings are never taken into account by anyone and her agency is taken away by both Marlene and Joel.

I'm not a parent, and I definitely think Joel is in the wrong, and voted accordingly, but I find the reason why I think he's wrong to be extremely interesting and a hallmark of excellent storytelling and character development.

@joshwent said:

Maybe I should have worded that a bit better. I would say confidently that some women are driven away from the medium due to the consistent single-mindedness of developers and publishers when it comes to gender in games. Make a compelling enough game with a big enough title on it, and everyone and their grandmother will buy it, we've seen that with GTA V (and that had 3 male protagonists!) But would some women buy 5-10 games in a year instead of 2 or 3 if more respect were being paid to their gender? I think so.

Certainly there are hardcore gamers of either gender that will buy up tons of games in whatever genres they're into regardless of who they're playing as. I never meant to imply this wasn't the case. I just think there are more people on the fringe that would enjoy gaming if there was more variety.

@sergio said:

I kind of already covered this in response to yummylee and darklight above, but like I said, it's not just about Capcom, it's about a larger trend of male protagonists being in the vast majority of games. You and I both know that Remember Me is a very rare exception to what's usually released. When you get a game like Deep Down where it isn't announced up front that the protagonist is exclusively male, has very little characterization in the promotion of the game so far, and features online co-op multiplayer (which is a mode that benefits from character customization and variety), this reaction doesn't seem unjustified to me.

If it turns out that Deep Down has an in-depth story that requires a male protagonist, this will be a case of poor marketing and not a case of a lack of features.

As an aside, vg247 has posted an article about the Deep Down producer's clarification of there being only one protagonist if anyone is interested.

Right, and the vg247 article acknowledges that. One past decision to give players an option doesn't make this decision any less problematic in the grand scheme of things. Like I said above, the problem is not solely with Capcom, this is an industry-wide thing. This one game with this one protagonist seems like a small, unimportant thing, but in order to make any sort of change in the continuing trend of the video game industry focusing on and heavily featuring male protagonists, these seemingly small decisions need to be examined and discussed.

The argument Brenna is making is that doubling down on the animation/voice work (if there even is voice work in Deep Down) is ultimately worth it. The vicious cycle of women not playing games leading to female characters not being featured prominently leading to women not playing games can be ended if more publishers and developers are willing to feature female characters more prominently in their games.

From what we've seen so far, I'm not buying that Deep Down is highly story-driven, although I could definitely be proven wrong. The main character is in a suit of armor and it's an online co-op multiplayer game. It just seems like the sort of thing that would benefit from variety.

I was more referring to the tone of the article and the misandry quote that people have been complaining about in this thread.

In terms of the allusions to Capcom being sexist, it honestly doesn't make much sense to create a modern third-person action RPG in the vein of Dark Souls with a male character and no gender options in a world where Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma and Skyrim exist. Capcom had three options, spend the money to make two character models, have a female protagonist, or have a male protagonist. Capcom went with the industry standard of having a male protagonist.

People are ignoring that this isn't just about Capcom and Deep Down. The title of the article states it pretty clearly, there is an ingrained industry sexism when it comes to gaming, this game and this decision are just another drop in the bucket. In order to make any sort of change something has to be said when these decisions get handed down, however seemingly innocuous they might be.

I guess I don't really get the controversy surrounding the vg247 article. Yeah, it's a little incendiary and over-the-top, but that seems justifiable when you consider the shit that any woman who writes about gender in video games gets on a regular basis.

As for the meat of the actual argument, Deep Down is straight up missing a feature that it's predecessors have had for a while, now. Skyrim, Dark Souls, and maybe even Dragon's Dogma are the recent marks of success in this genre, and all of them had the ability to choose the gender of your character. If Titanfall came out with 7 maps, game sites would be well within their rights to go "WTF, Respawn? CoD's most recent release had 14 maps!"

The story justification also seems like bullshit to me. You can have a compelling story where the player character's gender doesn't matter. Just look at the Mass Effect series.

Does anyone know if they stopped sending out keys via e-mail? I signed up yesterday morning via Origin and haven't seen anything yet. Once they stop I'll probably have to give up on getting in and give Loadout a shot this weekend.

33/100. My aversion to cell phones has served me well.

The Friday shows are always good. The Monday shows depend on the guest, sometimes it can be tough to listen to. Haven't gotten around to listening to the Jim Sterling show, hopefully it's good.

I do sort of the same thing, I watch/listen to it in front of my computer while I play stuff on my Vita. I like the fact that if I pause playing for a second and look up, I can see Patrick or Alex's face staring back. It's comforting, in a sense.

Aside from Knuckles being bigger, I don't understand how any of the characters look any different from how they usually look.