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Post by JDarkside on Apr 1, 2016 19:50:24 GMT -5
Uh... yeah, that's kind of how it works in real life. Right, that didn't come out right. What I mean is that the lgbt characters feel really wedged in. It's so inconsequential to the story that it feels more like pandering to a group of people than a sincere attempt at bringing in more lgbt characters into games. That makes absolutely no sense. If literally filling the vast majority of the cast with queer characters, working it into their back stories and personalities, and even including subtle commentary on gender and sex politics isn't properly including queer characters, what *does?* I even explained in the article that Turing's back story is directly reflected with gender issues. The whole final conflict is a very obvious metaphor meant to connect to the same struggle queer people deal with in modern society (which I would know, being bi and all). It's absolutely a major part of the story. It *is* the story.
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Post by actraiser on Apr 3, 2016 4:15:00 GMT -5
Now I'm confused ... All I really want is a cool detective story with robots and people dying mysteriously. So how big the LGBT theme is in it really? To me it's neither a good point nor a bad point. I just want to have an experience even remotely similar to Snatcher or Cobra or even Jesus on Famicom.
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Post by JDarkside on Apr 3, 2016 6:43:17 GMT -5
Now I'm confused ... All I really want is a cool detective story with robots and people dying mysteriously. So how big the LGBT theme is in it really? To me it's neither a good point nor a bad point. I just want to have an experience even remotely similar to Snatcher or Cobra or even Jesus on Famicom. It's basically Snatcher but gay instead of a 12 year old's idea of sexuality (I love Hideo Kojima but the guy is perpetually in early puberty), tone is a tad lighter.
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Post by Échalote on Apr 3, 2016 13:54:31 GMT -5
Now I'm confused ... All I really want is a cool detective story with robots and people dying mysteriously. So how big the LGBT theme is in it really? To me it's neither a good point nor a bad point. I just want to have an experience even remotely similar to Snatcher or Cobra or even Jesus on Famicom. Most characters are queer but the plot itself is a relatively (no pun intended) straight scifi thriller.
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Post by actraiser on Apr 4, 2016 6:19:07 GMT -5
Sounds good! (I believe Japanese are just very conservative when it comes to sex - not sure if it's in fact so though - just my "first impression"). Good - just what I'm looking for. Most of the characters in the western adventure games I've played so far were somewhat queer, so it's normal, I guess .
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Post by Elvin Atombender on Apr 5, 2016 15:20:41 GMT -5
A thing I liked a lot about this game is how the devs ditched the gritty aesthetics cyberpunk is commonly associated with in favour of bright colours and cartoon-like graphics. Not that I don't like classic cyberpunk; in fact I immensely enjoyed Technobabylon last year and I'm planning to replay Beneath A Steel Sky for the 100th time. It's just that sometimes you need something different and Read Only Memories does a great job at giving a fresh coat of paint to the cyberpunk genre.
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Post by onionski on Apr 6, 2016 19:08:08 GMT -5
Uh... yeah, that's kind of how it works in real life. Right, that didn't come out right. What I mean is that the lgbt characters feel really wedged in. It's so inconsequential to the story that it feels more like pandering to a group of people than a sincere attempt at bringing in more lgbt characters into games. Yeah, I don't think that's how I'd put it but I did feel something "off" about the representation in the game. I enjoy and respect Read Only Memories in a lot of ways but, as somebody who identifies as LGBTQ+ myself, I didn't feel like characters were as vital and relatable as they could have been. I wrote an article about it when the game first came out that didn't quite manage to capture my feelings, but I think it gets the ball rolling. Basically it's that while I'm certain the developers didn't intend to create characters for the sake of pandering to their respective identity's audience, there's still something very fan-servicey in the way the characters are presented. Like, the characters are broadly defined enough to where player can extrapolate upon that character's established surface-layer personality for their personal fandom pleasure. If that makes sense. The kind of phenomenon that goes on with Harry Potter fandom, for example. Honestly it's a trend I see all the time (especially in anime and anime-inspired media) and seems to be more to do with that than the fact that they're all queer and it's marketed toward a queer demographic. Still a great and interesting game tho. Definitely worth checking out.
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ult
Junior Member
Posts: 78
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Post by ult on Apr 6, 2016 23:11:23 GMT -5
I'm sure the author was in no way biased, but I feel like the game is just silly. The total Snatcher-head that nabbed the game right when it came out was totally disappointed. Any animations are few and far between, there's only one shooting sequence, and the story is pretty lame as a whole. A lot of the dialogue feels wedged in, telling rather than showing a lot of crucial information. You spend three hours looking for a specific guy, and his fate ends up being summarized in a twenty second dialogue bit. Show me a picture of him, let me find him, something. Also, there's a lot of LGBT characters, but their whole LGBT status has no effect on the story. They could all be straight and it wouldn't matter at all. I feel like that's a problem with a lot of media nowadays, not just this game. My favorite Snatcher-type game will always be the second Space Adventure Cobra adventure, released in North America on Sega CD. It's a beautiful mess with a simple space opera story that I can get behind. My favorite part: there's like five characters named Joe. Cobra pro wrestles as Joe, there's a guy named Crazy Joe, and then there's a villain named something like Hammer Bowl Joe. A+ Yeah you pretty much hit the nail on the head.
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Post by Allie on Apr 8, 2016 7:29:05 GMT -5
Uh... yeah, that's kind of how it works in real life. Right, that didn't come out right. What I mean is that the lgbt characters feel really wedged in. It's so inconsequential to the story that it feels more like pandering to a group of people than a sincere attempt at bringing in more lgbt characters into games. Eh, I feel the opposite. Pandering would be one of two (or the combination of those two) things, IMO. 1) Getting super-obnoxious about pushing an agenda. 2) Being gratuitous with sexual content. 3) Doing both for the maximum "You don't know what it's like!!!!" factor. Having a character not being solely defined by their sexuality, or not feeling the need to constantly bring it up non-stop (even when not asked about it) is the exact opposite of pandering, IMO.
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