beccatoria: (commander space jesus)
HELLO PEOPLE!

Okay firstly, I am really sorry I fell off the face of the internet a bit (well except twitter: timesuck of timesucks). There were a couple of reasons, some realworldy, some Dragon Age Inquisition-related, but I'm back now. I've also been trying to pare down this review post for like...a week and I've finally just given up.

So this is ridiculously long and serves as much as an archive of my feelings for the future as something I expect anyone to actually read all of, but I have tried to segment it in ways that are sensible and I encourage people to skip to the bits that interest them rather than trying to read this...novel. On Christmas Eve. ;)

Anyway: The Main Event.

How I Feel About The Setting In General. )

Technical Gameplay Stuff. )

Faux-Open World Exploration: The Best-Worst Thing? )

The Story! The Actual Plot of the Game! )

Cassandra: my darling. )

Solas, Sera and (Not Really Welsh) Elves. )

Vivienne, the Mage-Templar Conflict and Inquisition's Villain Problem. )

The Qun, The Bull and Krem. )

At which point, I have thought all the thoughts and said all the things. Though if anyone has any other things they would like to talk with me about, I would definitely be up for discussion in comments even if it has nothing to do with anything I wrote above.

BOOYAH.
beccatoria: (atris vs nihilus)
I want to talk about Bioshock Infinite. I'm not sure how to begin. This game has been spectacularly successful, critically and commercially, with good reason, and also subject to some criticism, also with reason, and I'm just, I'm in a weird place with it. It's doing some interesting, difficult things with the narrative, but I can't help but feel that it holds up this dark, uncomfortable mirror, one almost pointedly aimed at the entitlement and violence of these...stubbly, world-weary white, masculine protagonists. How hard it must be for them to watch their wives and daughters brutalised and stolen, to be emasculated, to save them at such personal cost to their honour and self-respect, to make such dark, morally ambiguous decisions. Oh! How this new white man's burden is written in every cocked eyebrow and condescending, sarcastic remark about the way things really are and how they're just passing through and do not want to get involved.

But. Of course. We need a hero, and it must be someone bitterly disinterested with exactly the correct ratio of beard to razor.

Bioshock Infinite constructs a beautiful noose around this idea. It hangs you with it. And then it bends over backwards to hide what it's doing for fear of upsetting you.

Spoilers EVERYWHERE. )

And those are my thoughts...

June 2020

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14 151617181920
21222324252627
282930    

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 8th, 2025 07:46 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios