tinaun

For me, definitely The Witcher 3. From a technical level everything looks really cool, and the world seems very well made and interesting to explore, but I am extrememly put off by the protagonist.

It provides a good example of "Dadgame", a game where the protagonist is an older man, usually very serious and gruff, with a wife and/or kids, where a threat to their safety provides at least a partial motivation for the plot of the game. As the video-game playing demographic continues to age up, I imagine these themes will continue to appear frequently, especially in AAA products, as I know the dadgame can work well for a lot of people who are of the age to be starting a family -- they just don't work for me.

As a stupendously queer person, i have a strained relationship with gender, masculinity, and the expectations that society puts on you because of that. Like a lot of people, I have long looked at rpgs as a way to experiment with myself, who I can be, in a context where it doesn't really matter if i make a mistake. What I have been finding, especially of late, is that a lot open world rpg's are restricting what type of character you can be, to better set up the initial story bits. I'm not against this in principle, but it seems the dadgame is basically the only way games go about it. Even the latest Fallout does this, with your character starting out in a heterosexual relationship with a child, regardless of what you want your character to be, and again, it puts me off the game. I just want a game that has both a really well made, deep and reactive world and a protagonist I can relate to, or failing that, at least a protagonist where I can have fun time acting as them.

One of the most important ways video games are different than other media is their capability for immersion, to disconnect from the real world to be something that can't be found easily outside the game. I already spend real life pretending to be a traditionally masculine heterosexual man, why do i have to do that in my fantasy video games??