Support NeoGAF

[DeepEnigma]

there's no gender alpha or beta, only male or female

 

[Kotaro]

Every time you play Elden Ring, you get to rest and heal at the church/chapel/cathedral, I hope that don't offend you too much

 

[adamsapple]

But as a Christian Catholic I'm glad to see that Elden Ring is a very Christian game, probably the most Christian-based game ever made.

 

[Nickolaidas]

It's really amazing to see how many people still default to 'you object to DEI because you're racist' (or sexist, toxic, whatever). I expect it on Twitter and places like that, where communication is typically shallow and more about getting traction and likes than discussion, but it occasionally shows up here too - on a video game discussion board where people have given very detailed reasons for being pro, con, and neutral about this topic. That aside, your gif is spot on - that kind of conclusion shows a lot about the person making it.

Where did you expect all those people who got banned from ERA in the last two years would go back to?

What we are witnessing is the migration of multiple 'J.K. Rowlings', woke people who agree on 99% with ERA's guidelines, but performed a single misstep - refused to boycott Hogwarts Legacy, didn't outright demonize a particular developer in the industry and asked whether it would be prudent to ask for proof on that particular person, etc. - and got banned as a result.

So you are getting back the people who left eight years ago to go to/build ERA, got dumped by ERA for daring to disagree on one thing and now had no choice but to come back here, where they know their opinions will be challenged, but at the very least will be tolerated.

 

[Nickolaidas]

But as a Christian Catholic I'm glad to see that Elden Ring is a very Christian game, probably the most Christian-based game ever made. Like how many churches/chapels/cathedrals can you count in the game?? how many bibles/prayerbooks are in the game? how many other Christian symbolism/terms like cross, crucifix, pastor, pope, saints, angels are in the game?? ...countless

Nah. I think this is just your typical D&D thing. Churches, religions, gods leaving their mark on the campaign setting, etc.

I mean, Demon's Souls has Mind Flayers. If that's not proof the guy loves D&D, I don't know what is.

 

[Ulysses 31]

Nah. I think this is just your typical D&D thing. Churches, religions, gods leaving their mark on the campaign setting, etc.

I mean, Demon's Souls has Mind Flayers. If that's not proof the guy loves D&D, I don't know what is.

Might have more to do with Demon's Souls having Lovecraftian inspiration(cosmic horror, forbidden knowledge what turns people mad, hinting at a greater truth that cannot be understood) that there's also Mind Flayers in that game.

 

[Kotaro]

Nah. I think this is just your typical D&D thing. Churches, religions, gods leaving their mark on the campaign setting, etc.

I mean, Demon's Souls has Mind Flayers. If that's not proof the guy loves D&D, I don't know what is.

well D&D IS based on Christian culture, it borrows so many Christian terms

 

[Mister Wolf]

Where did you expect all those people who got banned from ERA in the last two years would go back to?

What we are witnessing is the migration of multiple 'J.K. Rowlings', woke people who agree on 99% with ERA's guidelines, but performed a single misstep - refused to boycott Hogwarts Legacy, didn't outright demonize a particular developer in the industry and asked whether it would be prudent to ask for proof on that particular person, etc. - and got banned as a result.

So you are getting back the people who left eight years ago to go to/build ERA, got dumped by ERA for daring to disagree on one thing and now had no choice but to come back here, where they know their opinions will be challenged, but at the very least will be tolerated.

A lot of them are emotionally unstable, usually crashing out and resorting to personal attacks getting themselves perma banned over here as well.

 

[Nickolaidas]

Might have more to do with Demon's Souls having Lovecraftian inspiration(cosmic horror, forbidden knowledge what turns people mad, hinting at a greater truth that cannot be understood) that there's also Mind Flayers in that game.

Haven't read Lovecraft, so I am not really sure how exactly Mind Flayers 'work' in his books, what abilities they have, etc.

However, in Demon's Souls, the Mind Flayers fire an energy ball at you which paralyzes you - this seems to be inspired from the Mind Blast ability of the Mind Flayers in D&D. And also, when your character is incapacitated by that attack in Demon's Souls, they charge at you and penetrate your skull with their tentacle - this seems to be inspired by their brain extract attack on D&D, which was instant kill in earlier editions and turned into a hefty damage roll in the latest editions. Likewise, the attack in Demon's Souls is often fatal unless you have a REALLY large hp pool.

I mean, there are a LOT of game mechanics in Souls games which seem to be taken straight out of D&D, like grabbing your weapon with both hands to increase damage rolls. Back in 2008 when I played the original, I couldn't help but feel I was playing D&D the action game.

 

[Bartski]

well D&D IS based on Christian culture, it borrows so many Christian terms

Well, Elden Ring sure does draw plenty of inspiration from the Catholic Church, being full of death cults, perversion, and corrupt faith institutions run by manipulative, gay-romancing tyrants

 

[Filben]

Nah. I think this is just your typical D&D thing.

Lords of the Rings and Elric are probably the books most fantasy traits (or some might even say tropes) are coming from. However, in case of Elden Ring it draws a lot of Nordic and/or Germanic mythology; the biggest one, in a literal sense, too, is the Erdtree. As far as I know, the "Erdtree" is originally called Ōgonju, “golden tree”. In the game itself, however, it is also called “World Tree” at one point in the original Japanese version; the reference to Yggdrasil, the world ash tree, is not far off (and not visually anyway). And in German, the word “Erde” also stands for our world and/or "earth".

Other influences can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon language area and even to Celtic history, for example the character name “Blaidd” comes from Welsh and means something like “wolf”, which of course fits in with his appearance.
Then we have a helmet in the game that looks very much like the Gjermundbu helmet from Norway or the Valsgärde helmet from Sweden.
The knight in gold at the round table (Arthurian legend?) wears a golden masked helmet that is strongly reminiscent of the Western Roman Empire of antiquity.

There is a lot of cultural history referenced in Elden Ring.

 

[BlackTron]

The endboss is Sony. With their AAA game and marketing budgets, games simply can't fail completely and so they can always be an example of how good dei works in games.

areyousureabouthat.gif

 

[Cakeboxer]

areyousureabouthat.gif

100%.

 

[Mister Wolf]

areyousureabouthat.gif

We're going to find out with Intergalactic. Doesn't have the preestablished fanbase of Spiderman or Last Of Us.

 

[Ulysses 31]

Haven't read Lovecraft, so I am not really sure how exactly Mind Flayers 'work' in his books, what abilities they have, etc.

However, in Demon's Souls, the Mind Flayers fire an energy ball at you which paralyzes you - this seems to be inspired from the Mind Blast ability of the Mind Flayers in D&D. And also, when your character is incapacitated by that attack in Demon's Souls, they charge at you and penetrate your skull with their tentacle - this seems to be inspired by their brain extract attack on D&D, which was instant kill in earlier editions and turned into a hefty damage roll in the latest editions. Likewise, the attack in Demon's Souls is often fatal unless you have a REALLY large hp pool.

I mean, there are a LOT of game mechanics in Souls games which seem to be taken straight out of D&D, like grabbing your weapon with both hands to increase damage rolls. Back in 2008 when I played the original, I couldn't help but feel I was playing D&D the action game.

I haven't read any Lovecraft work either but there's things that reoccur in works inspired by it like the things I mentioned. The Mind Flayer appears in a level that has themes of madness and manipulation, the Old One that is a big mystery with unfathomable power, a doomed world.

Bloodborne is also pretty Lovecraftian.

 

[BlackTron]

100%.

But games can fail completely, it literally just happened. I'm not saying this means it will happen again, or your general idea is useless, but the assertion that Sony DEI games cannot fail, I find a perplexing one.

 

[DeafTourette]

There was a recent Court case out of the Northern District of Texas federal court that sued (I believe it was the American Airline pension) for investing in “ESG” as that is a big push of Blackrock (and May have managed the fund).

Either way, the point is that there is growing case law that says if you don’t maximize profits as consistent with your fiduciary duty and instead do things that are not as profitable (ESG) then you can be sued.

This is serious tide Turning

BlackRock's gross profit was $19.36 BILLION ...

 

[Cakeboxer]

But games can fail completely, it literally just happened. I'm not saying this means it will happen again, or your general idea is useless, but the assertion that Sony DEI games cannot fail, I find a perplexing one.

Concord was an exception, won't happen with one of their big AAA SP games. With the absurd marketing they will always sell >10m copies.

 

[RodriGames40]

I don't know if noticed, but the whole nerdom suddenly died in the span of 4 years. There used to be franchises with millions of loyal fans, and suddenly they are almost all dead.
People haven't all "grown up" simultaneously. Something killed them. Something like a movement or mind virus that hit simultaneously all the ip owners and make them swift the target audience from the original to a few activists that insult the original.

You might be up to something here. There are many IP fandoms I used to engage with and they're all dead by now, it is IMO one of the reasons the internet nowadays feels so dead... Maybe the theory is true after all.

 

[krumble]

There was a recent Court case out of the Northern District of Texas federal court that sued (I believe it was the American Airline pension) for investing in “ESG” as that is a big push of Blackrock (and May have managed the fund).

Either way, the point is that there is growing case law that says if you don’t maximize profits as consistent with your fiduciary duty and instead do things that are not as profitable (ESG) then you can be sued.

This is serious tide Turning

Unfortunately while the central banks are all signed on to the ESG and DEI programs and worship at those alters then lending is being linked to companies that conform to these silly ideas.
Even the biggest lawsuit by shareholders isn’t going to help a company if that then ends up with them being debanked and their borrowing all called in

 

[Nickolaidas]

You might be up to something here. There are many IP fandoms I used to engage with and they're all dead by now, it is IMO one of the reasons the internet nowadays feels so dead... Maybe the theory is true after all.

It's not that big of a mystery. The fandoms were hijacked by people who were quick to silence you for wrongthink. That made people hesitant to stay in communities since they now felt like their tongues were tied and couldn't speak with the same freedom they once could, especially when they witnessed the consequences of cancellation.

You can't easily stay in a community once there are topics related with the longevity of the community and those topics are tabooed by the community's moderators.

In every single community of every single IP that I loved came restrictions which prevented me from talking about the very issues which me and many others thought that they were destroying the community itself.

All the while witnessing more and more bad faith actors coming and claiming more and more ludicrous things and taking ownership of the communities.

We're literally at a point where people tweet that the majority of the Transformers fandom is LGBTQ people.
How the hell can I make meaningful conversation with people who are so eager to literally distort history, and when I know that I am one snotty remark away from getting banned for said remark?

It's just not worth it.

 

[laynelane]

Where did you expect all those people who got banned from ERA in the last two years would go back to?

What we are witnessing is the migration of multiple 'J.K. Rowlings', woke people who agree on 99% with ERA's guidelines, but performed a single misstep - refused to boycott Hogwarts Legacy, didn't outright demonize a particular developer in the industry and asked whether it would be prudent to ask for proof on that particular person, etc. - and got banned as a result.

So you are getting back the people who left eight years ago to go to/build ERA, got dumped by ERA for daring to disagree on one thing and now had no choice but to come back here, where they know their opinions will be challenged, but at the very least will be tolerated.

I think that's part of it, but the other part is when people are "progressive" - well, for all that talk about empathy, compassion, and acceptance - they are some of the most judgemental and intolerant people on the planet. I saw it recently in another post, the one where Jaffe went after a woman who criticized him by saying her success was solely due to her looks - a few people who normally argue in favour of DEI in games were in full support of his take, ie. it was okay to reduce her to her looks (be sexist) because she said things they don't agree with.

That kind of hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness is not limited to Era returnees. It's wherever you find (woke) activists and those that support them. And even though their bullshit is tolerated here, I'm glad it's not predominant. They add nothing to the discussion and are very distasteful to boot.

 

[Madflavor]

There are a lot of Western Developers that think the way we do, whether they're at higher positions in their company, or lower. We've seen plenty of people from the West, speaking out the past year or so. There was the one guy who talked about how he designed a black female character he thought was beautiful, and she wasn't overly sexualized, but he was pressured to change her and make her less attractive. But I think the winds are changing, and people are becoming more emboldened to be more outspoken about their issues about this, and I think things will get better. At the end of the day, companies will follow the money trail.

 

[DeafTourette]

I will never understand making a character ugly ... Unless it's supposed to be a bad guy or a serf from the 1600s or something

 

[rkofan87]

ok ok re4 is not woke but capcom kind of is but still doing gangbusters sales numbers.

 

[Firestartah]

The CEO of the guys who made Lords of the fallen. Degenerates in shambles.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

How many games even have Body Types A/B?

 

[Kacho]

The CEO of the guys who made Lords of the fallen. Degenerates in shambles.

We’re so fucking back

 

[Madflavor]

How many games even have Body Types A/B?

I don't know, but in the past few years it feels like a lot of them.

 

[TheBomb]

woke makes you boil tells us society is ill.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

The CEO of the guys who made Lords of the fallen. Degenerates in shambles.

Just thinking that a question like that could have been considered "hate speech", getting you banned and canceled just a few years back.

Tides have truly changed.

 

[captainpat]

How many games even have Body Types A/B?

At the very least it’s been almost every AAA game with a character creator within the past 4 years (examples cp 2077, pokemon, Elden ring etc…)

 

[adamsapple]

woke makes you boil tells us society is ill.

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

Well, Elden Ring sure does draw plenty of inspiration from the Catholic Church, being full of death cults, perversion, and corrupt faith institutions run by manipulative, gay-romancing tyrants

It crosses multiple religions in time. The Horns being holy but also banned is a reference to the bull worship of Greek areas and goat worship of Northern European areas. The idea that new religions are built on the roots of the old religions and that no matter how hard you hide it, the truth comes out. "New" gods try to pretend they were always there and deny where they originated. Like a certain bronze age deity who almost successfully hidden his prior marriage and later divorce of Asherah. With the only hint remaining being that everyone know that deity is male for some reason.

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

I look at it this way.

There is no shortage of non-woke games. The problem is that chuds shit on them just as hard as they do DEI-infested stuff.

Until the chuds start showing some love to these AA games, we're going to watch the slow death of woke AAA and the slow death of quality non-woke AA studios.

Explore AA publishers and buy their games, those are the studios we want to level up to the AAA world.

The vast majority of game devs are left of center politics wise there arent many "conservative" games at all. At most you get a few centrist games but conservative or right wing politics don't get represented almost at all. It's the same thing with movies. This isn't a problem just an observation.

 

[DeafTourette]

The vast majority of game devs are left of center politics wise there arent many "conservative" games at all. At most you get a few centrist games but conservative or right wing politics don't get represented almost at all. It's the same thing with movies. This isn't a problem just an observation.

What would make a game "conservative"?

 

[Draugoth]

 

[tomato shrub]

I won't call Elden Ring a 'woke game' simply because in the character creation screen it says Type A / Type B instead of Male / Female.

Nor am I going to call Resident Evil 4 Remake a 'woke game' because it doesn't let the camera look at Ashley's panties.

I usually agree about the most vocal anti-wokes being as sensitive and dumb as other terminally-online folks. But RE4 is a bad example. There for sure are some Westerners in charge who try their best to cancel out the "bad Japanese stuff" out of Capcom. Whether it's their localisation team or the Western writers they've hired since RE7, I don't know. But it's pretty blatant. Whenever RE4R recreates the dialogue of the original, the only lines that were changed or cut were exclusively sexual references or jokes. Not just the (intentionally) sleazy quips from Louis, but even extremely low-key flirts by Ada. Something only the most sensitive slacktivists would be offended by. Also, when the original RE4 came to VR a few years back, they also cut all this out. And of course, all of a sudden Ada gets a new inferior voice actress in RE4R, because the ethnicity of the actress in RE2R wasn't "right". Thankfully these outsiders aren't powerful enough to prevent Capcom from making quirky Japanese stories and characters, but then look at Dead Rising Remastered, which took the bastardisation of RE4 to the next level.

edit: Difference is that I won't cry about it and it isn't distracting in RE4R, but woke elements for sure influenced the final product.

 

[Lillie]

 

[Kacho]

 

[Raven117]

BlackRock's gross profit was $19.36 BILLION ...

Unfortunately while the central banks are all signed on to the ESG and DEI programs and worship at those alters then lending is being linked to companies that conform to these silly ideas.
Even the biggest lawsuit by shareholders isn’t going to help a company if that then ends up with them being debanked and their borrowing all called in

They have a fiduciary duty to shareholders. They can’t get a round that. (And shareholders dont necessarily bank with them or borrow).

They can’t breach their fiduciary duty over and over without very real consequences.

The worm is turning here

 

[Kacho]

Printing this out so I can frame it and hang it in my office

 

[Lillie]

Printing this out so I can frame it and hang it in my office

Sean Dyche THE GOAT

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Where did you expect all those people who got banned from ERA in the last two years would go back to?

What we are witnessing is the migration of multiple 'J.K. Rowlings', woke people who agree on 99% with ERA's guidelines, but performed a single misstep - refused to boycott Hogwarts Legacy, didn't outright demonize a particular developer in the industry and asked whether it would be prudent to ask for proof on that particular person, etc. - and got banned as a result.

So you are getting back the people who left eight years ago to go to/build ERA, got dumped by ERA for daring to disagree on one thing and now had no choice but to come back here, where they know their opinions will be challenged, but at the very least will be tolerated.

I would have to disagree. The majority of the people banned from Era are people that don't think like them. That is why they are the hivemind that they are. Some of those people were wrongly banned, and some of the more extreme ones were banned for good reason. Either way they end up on other forums like this one which causes the opposite effect. One extreme is acceptable there and another is acceptable here. Only good thing is you're not banned here for thinking different. Though it doesn't matter when anti-woke is the predominant way of thinking here.

 

[Mister Wolf]

The CEO of the guys who made Lords of the fallen. Degenerates in shambles.

And people have always felt like this. The loonies just controlled social media, so they could control the narrative.

 

[mckmas8808]

This thread is politics.

But all these things ebb and flow. Large developers will follow the market and go with what sells.

Yep! Shouldn't even be in the gaming section.

 

[notseqi]

I am really enjoying 'woke' being so non-precise they fuck off japanese audiences too:

 

[GermanZepp]

Sony Playstation developers

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

Marvel Rivals has got to be the game to finally make western devs have a change of attitude, right? It's BEYOND obvious by this point this is what makes money.

It's insane what happened, a single asshole gets on a soapbox in 2012 and the entire western industry has to pivot to cater to hers and only hers tastes which most people don't share? Why?

 

[KXVXII9X]

You guys have lost the plot.