mullet2000
Member
I think you're going to get a good amount of counters to this opinion, but I felt the same way when I played the game.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Giant Bomb |OT31| I Think it Might Be for Show
- Thread starter Death Metalist
- Start date
I think you're going to get a good amount of counters to this opinion, but I felt the same way when I played the game.
Ya I had a very similar reaction. To be fair, I'm fine with a Wonder Woman Mary Sue sort of character because having the crazy female empowerment is still nice to see against a much more male centered environment of pure empowerment. But as a "real" character or dramatic and powerful storytelling, it missed the mark pretty well.
Basileus777
Member
People really don't know what a Mary Sue is huh.
I'm always right and can do no wrong.
Or rather I'm super the main character and the world sort of bends its rules around me to let me perservere and get what I want (which is usually on a moral high ground).
John Snow is pretty bad about being one.
mullet2000
Member
Maybe not the best term to describe her, but I was more agreeing with the descriptors that poster used after that term.
bemusedchunk
Banned
agreed.
OdysseusVA
Banned
Im a Mary Sue
We're all Mary Sue
We're all Mary Sue
Nah I'm fucked up and broken.
OdysseusVA
Banned
What happened to the #content? Are we in a drought for the foreseeable future?
Human Trashcan
Banned
Except for where
he got stabbed to death and no the world doesn't bend for him because GRRM seeded the idea of resurrection with Beric and Lady Stoneheart and also the entire point of the Prologue of ADWD is to show how Jon is gonna be Ghost for a while!!!
what were we talking about
Completely wrong.
... in my defense I was mostly referring to show Jon and not book Jon. I still need to finish ADWD but that book is a slog. The show has kinda overtaken my general pictures of each of the characters so that's unfortunate.
Death Metalist
Member
My favorite weapon in Horizon is the Tearblaster. It's so fun to use and is satisfying as hell.
bemusedchunk
Banned
also agreed.
Except for the part where you 'flesh out the characters' you never see again. There's only one other character you repeatedly see in the game to 'flesh out' where as everyone else you spend about one dialogue with them and never see them again or see them for five seconds later
The characters in Horizon are genuinely flat and uninteresting and exist only in an attempt to make Aloy seem more interesting which they all fail at. Only one character in that entire game could be deemed a character.
Liquid Shake
Member
This is the dreaded Pax drought. Although looking at the schedule, I wouldn't exactly call it a drought.
Death Metalist
Member
Worst time
I'm happy for GB though that they get to meet their long time industry friends but PAX does nothing for me and I'm not into wrestling so, yeah. I only watch highlights.
When it comes to characters in that game, Aloy & Sylens are the best.
Yeah, I was just looking. Barely even a drought this year.
Agreed. I'm fine with more women getting the main role in media, but Horizon went too far in making her a perfect character that doesn't show any interest in anything besides her main quest. The story and world building is great, so I didn't have a big problem with it like others. It's still a great new IP that is different from everything else this year in creating an interesting world.
Ninja Scooter
Member
I loved Horizon, one of the best games of the year for me, but I didn't find the characters and their characterization/development to be it's strong suit. Most were pretty one dimensional and one note, as were most of the quests. But it's a beautiful looking game that plays fantastically and has a really interesting setting/story.
She had a bit too much super hero aura about her for me? Hard to describe but the cold staunchness with little extreme expressiveness didn't do much for me. I don't exactly agree with the asexuality thing since she seemed a bit flirty with the black dude in the first area so I wasn't really addressing that point. But after hearing people gush over the story, I kinda expected more? It was just a very serviceable scifi story but I didn't find it exceptional in any particular way nor its characters.
Sylens is really good
for a character that the entire world LITERALLY revolves around, in game and production side, Aloy is really uninteresting.
dannyglover
Member
Do we know how many (if any?) of those will be streamed?
Main, Hydra, and Wyvern theaters having streaming capabilities. So just the PAX Rumble and Improvised post mortem
Death Metalist
Member
Do we know how many (if any?) of those will be streamed?
All you need to know
To be fair, Ashly Burch did a splendid job but Lance Reddick is just fucking awesome. Like even in Quantum Break, he's the best thing about it.
Agree. The best characters were actually the
scientists in the holograms, voice recordings and notes.
Liquid Shake
Member
Still happening, Alex is on it this time.
I'm glad interest in sex is the defining feature for all strong female characters. Can't be a strong character unless they dtf. And she's totally a Mary Sue because she spent the entirety of her life training to prove her worth to her tribe and be accepted for who she was. You'd at least have half a point if you mentioned the advantage she does have is not being deathly afraid of technology.
Death Metalist
Member
I didn't feel that much of an impact when it came to those things. Except for that mission where you get the gist of what exactly happened.
It's all good!
The combat in Horizon was actually kind of a let down for me too. I was hoping there would be a bit more to it? But Backalar is super right about how it's just roll and shoot. You kinda have to work tonget anything out of it and even then there isn't a huge amount of pushback against you.
Like I was hoping for a lot more dynamic encounters or behaviors out of the robots but their spawn zones are all static, their actual attacking behaviors are limited and kinda uninteresting. The storm bird was kinda in the right direction but I was hoping for more actual mechanics out of fighting against it? Ultimately the combat all just seemed a bit too defined and lacking.
Like I was hoping for a lot more dynamic encounters or behaviors out of the robots but their spawn zones are all static, their actual attacking behaviors are limited and kinda uninteresting. The storm bird was kinda in the right direction but I was hoping for more actual mechanics out of fighting against it? Ultimately the combat all just seemed a bit too defined and lacking.
mullet2000
Member
I think you're missing the point they're making with the interest in sex thing.
They're not saying a female character needs to be interested in a man as a defining feature. They're saying some writers unintentionally make female characters seem nearly asexual in an attempt to make them seem strong, and somewhat unrealistically take away any sexual aspects of their character in the process. There's this weird connection between being strong and not needing/wanting sex that comes out when (usually) men attempt to write "strong"/self-motivated or "super hero like" female characters.
Not even saying I agree with that point for Aloy specifically, but the point isn't that they need to be dtf or cling to man.
Good shit!
Glad that was the case!
kambaybolongo
Member
This is a really superficial view of Aloys Character. I liked her quite a bit but she certainly wasnt perfect. She was a bit too arrogant and headstrong at times. Can you point out some action game protagonists that arent very strong btw? Pretty sure thats a video game thing more than a gender thing in this case.
broncobuster
Banned
Absolver looks pretty cool. Not sure how I feel about the combat style it and For Honor are going for, though.
Human Trashcan
Banned
You focused on that one part and ignored the rest to build this beautiful strawman.
I love online
Yeah most videogames have shit characters, but that doesn't magically make Aloy a good character. But for the amount of fucks Horizon clearly expects players to give about the story, given all the time and money they spent on it, they've failed to make me care, because there are no interesting characters worth caring about. These kinds of things stand out more the more a game focuses on its narrative, and its characters. Like, Guerilla thinks it's Naughty Dog, but they most definitely are not.
The only thing I didn't like about Horizon's combat was how easy it was to break encounters. The invisible boundaries around what seemed like all enemies made it way too easy to kill them from afar, or from around some sort of geometry, without so much as being touched.
I see at least two points being addressed here.
I see at least two points being addressed here.
What, the part about the Mary Sue comment or the sex part? Cause those are the things you brought up.
Human Trashcan
Banned
You're right, my mistake. I just don't care to have a discussion with someone who takes that kind of tone in a conversation about a videogame. The golden rule of internet argumentation: Interpret with minimum good faith, attack with maximum rhetorical force. You twisted my words about the sex part into something I clearly did not intend.
kambaybolongo
Member
If you think Horizon has a bad story, fair enough, thats your opinion but hardly the argument you were going for earlier.
Agree to disagree about the story and characters. I thought Guerilla knocked it out of the park.
Human Trashcan
Banned
"Horizon has a bad story" and "Aloy is an uninteresting character" are not mutually exclusive concepts. The latter is an argument for the former. You can disagree, of course. And thank you for not being a dick about it.
petethepanda
Member
Speaking of franchises known for poorly drawn protagonists: I started the Life is Strange prequel, and I gotta say, insult sword fighting is the last mechanic I would have expected them to add, lol.
(I loved s1 but Max may as well have been a Persona MC.)
(I loved s1 but Max may as well have been a Persona MC.)