• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

God of War Laufey (PS5)

It's so funny seeing the mental gymnastics and blatant obtuse reactions from people defending these clear trends in games.

Why is it incomprehensible that a female character can just be presentable without them being distractingly attractive (stripper? Lol) or unattractive?

See Aloy in Zero Dawn before she gained 20 lbs in Forbidden West and permanent face rash, Ellie and Tess in TLoU vs Part 1 remake, Mary Jane in Spider-Man vs Spider-Man 2, Elena and Chloe in the Uncharted games, females in any non-western games, or even Faye in Ragnarok scenes vs Laufey. All of these female characters were presentable without being overly attractive or watered down versions of the actresses they're based on.

But this is also one of the smallest issues presented about the game, and yet somehow is getting much of the discourse instead of discussing the replacement of male roles with women at all.

So I'm just gonna to quote this for emphasis to keep driving the main issue home:

T4rd said:
Pretty much what I wanted to post in my first post here, verbalized.


View: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZNtqSVTPjF/?igsh=bjdvYnRndGYzODZ2

Key quote here: "It's not about the God of War game playing as a woman, it's why."
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
T4rd said:
It's so funny seeing the mental gymnastics and blatant obtuse reactions from people defending these clear trends in games.
Click to expand...
There is literally no point arguing with these retards because of how dishonest and disingenuous they are. It does not matter how much evidence you present demonstrating they are categorically wrong, they will turn around and give you straw mans, word salads, whataboutisms and general shrieks of 'reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee'. The better strategy is to laugh at them, post funny memes mocking their absurdity, don't buy the game and then bathe in schadenfreude when it fails to meet sales targets and journalists whine about gamers being racist/sexist.
 
aaahhhh, makes sense now....

1781120504807.png
 
pendragon1 said:
aaahhhh, makes sense now....

View attachment 808357
Click to expand...
And? It's not even due to ship until next year, but you're already convinced it'll be a flop because of what the protagonist looks like and one of the people involved in writing the story — and the odds are you've never played a game with her writing in it.

The issue with the attacks on Laufey and Pearce, as Queen Gertrude said in Hamlet, is that the critics "doth protest too much." They claim they're not hateful but are absolutely obsessed with the main character being a woman, that she's not a sex object, and that one of the writers is a feminist and LGBTQ advocate. They're certain the game will fail for those reasons alone, damn factors like "actual gameplay."

As I mentioned earlier, the practical reality is that Laufey will likely sell well, and that the men grousing about the gender and sexuality of the lead character will remain an insignificant contingent. They'd ironically have a better chance if they just let it go and avoid drawing attention to the game.
 
polonyc2 said:
weren't they hinting at Lara Croft being gay in the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot?...maybe they'll make her lesbian in the new 2027 TR: Catalyst game

the 2013 Tomb Raider video game reboot dropped strong hints about Lara Croft’s queer identity, primarily through her deeply intense relationship with her best friend, Samantha 'Sam' Nishimura...while never made explicitly text in the main games, the creative team has openly admitted that they originally intended for the two women to be romantically involved
Click to expand...
No, they were not. It's the same thing with that crowd assuming that two men can't just be friends. Lara was lusting after Jesus in Rise before learning who he really was.
 
zehoo said:
No one hates attractive women more than other women. This is a contributing factor in the hagmaxxing over the last 10 years.
Click to expand...
Tell me you don't talk to women about attractive looks without saying you don't talk to women about them.

Jealousy doesn't really have anything to do with this. It's more that women in game development want to break free from the stereotypes, which tend to involve either damsels in distress or sexualized leads that are mainly there to please men (see: the original Lara Croft, the she's-totally-not-underage-wink-wink anime waifus).

There is a middle ground between over-the-top beautiful and completely plain, but really... it's perfectly fine to have a female lead that isn't wildly attractive. There are other things to worry about than whether or not you'd bang the character you're playing.
 
Armenius said:
No, they were not. It's the same thing with that crowd assuming that two men can't just be friends. Lara was lusting after Jesus in Rise before learning who he really was.
Click to expand...

the developers literally said that they originally intended for the two women to be romantically involved...you keep arguing against it when the proof is right there
 
Aurelius said:
Tell me you don't talk to women about attractive looks without saying you don't talk to women about them.
Click to expand...
If you believe their line that they aren’t jealous of more attractive and/or younger women, ignorance is bliss. And I only said it was a contributing factor.

Aurelius said:
Jealousy doesn't really have anything to do with this. It's more that women in game development want to break free from the stereotypes, which tend to involve either damsels in distress or sexualized leads that are mainly there to please men (see: the original Lara Croft, the she's-totally-not-underage-wink-wink anime waifus).

There is a middle ground between over-the-top beautiful and completely plain, but really... it's perfectly fine to have a female lead that isn't wildly attractive. There are other things to worry about than whether or not you'd bang the character you're playing.
Click to expand...

Really not sure how making all the female characters ugly Helgas with Karen personalities has anything to do with trying sell a product to consumers. Are they trying to make a product for sale that the primary consumer of console/pc video games is going to buy (males aged 10-60+). As the last 10+ years has proven, game studios and publishers are going bankrupt because they stopped making games for the market that buys their product, and instead push out poorly written political propaganda slop with ugly characters. (But still has sexy husbando male characters. Almost like they only care about making the women look bad. Almost like it’s not about breaking stereotypes, and just about ruining someone’s fun.)

All those novels that had Fabio on the cover with his shirt off in the 90’s, had Fabio on the cover for a reason. To sell entertainment books to horny female consumers. Sex sells, always has, always will. While video games aren’t porn (and I don’t want it to be) do you really want to be staring at a brick ****house character all game (15-60 hours). Or someone aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Hence why most actors are either good looking in movies and television shows, and if they aren’t, they are good character actors.

An example of devs realising their error would be the Overwatch devs, they have stopped chasing after the modern audience, and now all the game’s new heroes are sexy female characters that will sell skins. Clearly they don’t want to lose their jobs and are trying to focus on making money again. (Maybe too little too late.)

You don’t watch/play escapism to see ugly. And while I don’t think this God of War will lose money, as the brand is still too strong for that, it’s going to miss sales targets for sure in the same way the new ‘Ghost of’ did, and also trash the brand in the process. Lowering potential sales for when they release God of War: Menopause. (Use Laufey’s hot flashes to AOE burn enemies).
 
I hate to beat a dead horse since most of us have already made our points here. But I just want to say that in a vacuum and without the context of all the other Sony/AAA games coming out the past few years, I would likely still be very interested in this game and very much enjoy it. Just like I did back in 2017 when Horizon ZD launched and gave zero thought to playing as a women at the time because it was able to stand on its own as a new IP and had minimal "messaging" or agenda in it.

I'm just personally fatigued at this point, and I'm obviously not alone here and am sure this will factor into the game not being as successful as it otherwise would with Kratos (or even Atreus/Loki) as the main protagonist and playable character. I'm fatigued and annoyed after seeing many of my favorite games and series from the PS3 and PS4 era being infected by these agendas and ideas, which severely dilute their impact and overall ability to immerse me in their characters and stories just so they can make a real-world statement by vitue of them simply existing in the game. I just want a traditional story and game with no identity politics or "progressive" (I usually say "regressive") messaging in it. But just as with any other modern movies and shows, that's becoming hard to come by outside of the independent studio space, which is fortunately thriving now because of this among other reasons.

I would love to just ignore the sex and race of characters in media now, just as I did up until this movement to insert certain races or genders into roles where they blatantly don't belong (either in context of what a game's lore and precedent has set, or just knowing the difference between their actual and target audience) and seeing the clear trend of replacing men in games and other spaces. This is what I meant before when I said that their intent and messaging is actually counter-intuitive to their cause to support minorities in these spaces. Neil Druckmann has clearly taken this to the Nth-degree and deemed any strong male characters as completely mysogonistic, effectively banning them from lead or positive roles in Naughty Dog games now.
 
T4rd said:
I hate to beat a dead horse since most of us have already made our points here. But I just want to say that in a vacuum and without the context of all the other Sony/AAA games coming out the past few years, I would likely still be very interested in this game and very much enjoy it. Just like I did back in 2017 when Horizon ZD launched and gave zero thought to playing as a women at the time because it was able to stand on its own as a new IP and had minimal "messaging" or agenda in it.

I'm just personally fatigued at this point, and I'm obviously not alone here and am sure this will factor into the game not being as successful as it otherwise would with Kratos (or even Atreus/Loki) as the main protagonist and playable character. I'm fatigued and annoyed after seeing many of my favorite games and series from the PS3 and PS4 era being infected by these agendas and ideas, which severely dilute their impact and overall ability to immerse me in their characters and stories just so they can make a real-world statement by vitue of them simply existing in the game. I just want a traditional story and game with no identity politics or "progressive" (I usually say "regressive") messaging in it. But just as with any other modern movies and shows, that's becoming hard to come by outside of the independent studio space, which is fortunately thriving now because of this among other reasons.

I would love to just ignore the sex and race of characters in media now, just as I did up until this movement to insert certain races or genders into roles where they blatantly don't belong (either in context of what a game's lore and precedent has set, or just knowing the difference between their actual and target audience) and seeing the clear trend of replacing men in games and other spaces. This is what I meant before when I said that their intent and messaging is actually counter-intuitive to their cause to support minorities in these spaces. Neil Druckmann has clearly taken this to the Nth-degree and deemed any strong male characters as completely mysogonistic, effectively banning them from lead or positive roles in Naughty Dog games now.
Click to expand...
I'm just annoyed we got a Laufey game before an Atreus game. We got to play as Atreus for a bit in GoW and it was pretty cool. Laufey makes no sense from a gaming standpoint ... or even a lore standpoint. Faye is dead. This is stupid. Nobody cares about Laufey. Fans care about Kratos and Atreus. Nobody asked for this.
 
T4rd said:
I hate to beat a dead horse since most of us have already made our points here. But I just want to say that in a vacuum and without the context of all the other Sony/AAA games coming out the past few years, I would likely still be very interested in this game and very much enjoy it. Just like I did back in 2017 when Horizon ZD launched and gave zero thought to playing as a women at the time because it was able to stand on its own as a new IP and had minimal "messaging" or agenda in it.

I'm just personally fatigued at this point, and I'm obviously not alone here and am sure this will factor into the game not being as successful as it otherwise would with Kratos (or even Atreus/Loki) as the main protagonist and playable character. I'm fatigued and annoyed after seeing many of my favorite games and series from the PS3 and PS4 era being infected by these agendas and ideas, which severely dilute their impact and overall ability to immerse me in their characters and stories just so they can make a real-world statement by vitue of them simply existing in the game. I just want a traditional story and game with no identity politics or "progressive" (I usually say "regressive") messaging in it. But just as with any other modern movies and shows, that's becoming hard to come by outside of the independent studio space, which is fortunately thriving now because of this among other reasons.

I would love to just ignore the sex and race of characters in media now, just as I did up until this movement to insert certain races or genders into roles where they blatantly don't belong (either in context of what a game's lore and precedent has set, or just knowing the difference between their actual and target audience) and seeing the clear trend of replacing men in games and other spaces. This is what I meant before when I said that their intent and messaging is actually counter-intuitive to their cause to support minorities in these spaces. Neil Druckmann has clearly taken this to the Nth-degree and deemed any strong male characters as completely mysogonistic, effectively banning them from lead or positive roles in Naughty Dog games now.
Click to expand...
bigot ;)

Domingo said:
It must be frustrating always having to look for reasons not to like anything.
Click to expand...
we dont have to look, its right in our faces.
 
zehoo said:
Really not sure how making all the female characters ugly Helgas with Karen personalities has anything to do with trying sell a product to consumers. Are they trying to make a product for sale that the primary consumer of console/pc video games is going to buy (males aged 10-60+). As the last 10+ years has proven, game studios and publishers are going bankrupt because they stopped making games for the market that buys their product, and instead push out poorly written political propaganda slop with ugly characters. (But still has sexy husbando male characters. Almost like they only care about making the women look bad. Almost like it’s not about breaking stereotypes, and just about ruining someone’s fun.)

All those novels that had Fabio on the cover with his shirt off in the 90’s, had Fabio on the cover for a reason. To sell entertainment books to horny female consumers. Sex sells, always has, always will. While video games aren’t porn (and I don’t want it to be) do you really want to be staring at a brick ****house character all game (15-60 hours). Or someone aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Hence why most actors are either good looking in movies and television shows, and if they aren’t, they are good character actors.

An example of devs realising their error would be the Overwatch devs, they have stopped chasing after the modern audience, and now all the game’s new heroes are sexy female characters that will sell skins. Clearly they don’t want to lose their jobs and are trying to focus on making money again. (Maybe too little too late.)

You don’t watch/play escapism to see ugly. And while I don’t think this God of War will lose money, as the brand is still too strong for that, it’s going to miss sales targets for sure in the same way the new ‘Ghost of’ did, and also trash the brand in the process. Lowering potential sales for when they release God of War: Menopause. (Use Laufey’s hot flashes to AOE burn enemies).
Click to expand...
Sorry, but the "game studios must cater primarily to horny men or they'll fail" trope isn't supported by the evidence. Some of the best-selling games of that same period (and before) have had female leads, including ones that aren't meant to be sex symbols. Like I noted earlier in the thread, many of the top-selling games that aren't female-led are generic military shooters and sports titles where sexuality has no role.

Yes, sex sells, but it doesn't sell in every case and isn't necessary to do well. You bring up romance novels but conveniently omit the legions of far better-selling books where sex isn't a major factor. Many movies have conventionally good-looking actors, but some successful movies don't... and movies are based around passive watching, not playing.

I'm not worried that the character I play isn't eye candy; believe it or not, I'm there for the gameplay and story... and clearly many others are as well. And it's funny you say this when every other God of War game (plus Gears of War and other titles) has you looking at the very sort of "brick ****house" character you're talking about. Are you going to tell us not to play those games, then, because Kratos and Marcus aren't dashing hunks?

Laufey isn't going to trash the brand as long as the game is good. Frankly, it's nice that the studio is taking a chance and refusing to do the easy thing.
 
Aurelius said:
Sorry, but the "game studios must cater primarily to horny men or they'll fail" trope isn't supported by the evidence. Some of the best-selling games of that same period (and before) have had female leads, including ones that aren't meant to be sex symbols. Like I noted earlier in the thread, many of the top-selling games that aren't female-led are generic military shooters and sports titles where sexuality has no role.

Yes, sex sells, but it doesn't sell in every case and isn't necessary to do well. You bring up romance novels but conveniently omit the legions of far better-selling books where sex isn't a major factor. Many movies have conventionally good-looking actors, but some successful movies don't... and movies are based around passive watching, not playing.

I'm not worried that the character I play isn't eye candy; believe it or not, I'm there for the gameplay and story... and clearly many others are as well. And it's funny you say this when every other God of War game (plus Gears of War and other titles) has you looking at the very sort of "brick ****house" character you're talking about. Are you going to tell us not to play those games, then, because Kratos and Marcus aren't dashing hunks?

Laufey isn't going to trash the brand as long as the game is good. Frankly, it's nice that the studio is taking a chance and refusing to do the easy thing.
Click to expand...
WTF are you talking about?
 
M76 said:
Wrong. I'm convinced it will be shit. I just hope it will be a flop.
Click to expand...
And the evidence for either is...?

I'm not expecting Laufey to break sales records, but the odds are that it'll sell well and won't ding the brand.
 
Aurelius said:
And the evidence for either is...?
Click to expand...
What do you mean? Are you really asking for evidence to prove what I think of this?

I suspect you meant why I think it will be bad.

  1. Gender swapping always a red flag
  2. Deliberately unattractive female protagonist - also a red flag
  3. A literal jelly cube as a companion - this is more cringe than forspoken
  4. Written by one of the stupidest people on earth
  5. They literally dressed up a famous actor as a cube for millions of dollars
Now that I think of it, i don't just think it will be bad, but offensively bad.
 
Aurelius said:
I'm not expecting Laufey to break sales records, but the odds are that it'll sell well and won't ding the brand.
Click to expand...
I don't expect the game to not make a profit either, the brand is still currently too strong and many people will sleep walk into buying it purely based on the brand. But the God of War brand has become a skin suit for an untalented writer's bad ideas that wouldn't be able to sell without the GoW brand attached to it. This game is going to not hit sales targets, underperforming probably by a large margin and will damage the brand.

The western games industry has become infested with incompetence on all levels, and the few competent people left can no longer carry the weight of all the rot.
 
Last edited:
M76 said:
What do you mean? Are you really asking for evidence to prove what I think of this?

I suspect you meant why I think it will be bad.

  1. Gender swapping always a red flag
  2. Deliberately unattractive female protagonist - also a red flag
  3. A literal jelly cube as a companion - this is more cringe than forspoken
  4. Written by one of the stupidest people on earth
  5. They literally dressed up a famous actor as a cube for millions of dollars
Now that I think of it, i don't just think it will be bad, but offensively bad.
Click to expand...
So the summary is...

1. Woman lead
2. Woman writer
3. The cube (probably the only real gripe here)

What I don't see:

1. Actual gameplay quality
2. Actual story quality
3. Proof most gamers will actually object
 
Aurelius said:
So the summary is...

1. Woman lead
2. Woman writer
3. The cube (probably the only real gripe here)

What I don't see:

1. Actual gameplay quality
2. Actual story quality
3. Proof most gamers will actually object
Click to expand...
To use an analogy from a YouTuber that I think fits the situation quite well.

A chef comes to serve you food, gets on the table, pulls down his pants and squats over the plate. What they're about to serve you is obvious.

"But how do you know that's what they're going to serve you, it hasn't come out yet" you ask?

This same play book has been played out for 10+ years now. With the same result every time. It's very clear what we're going to be served. Pattern recognition is a valuable human instinct.
 
Aurelius said:
So the summary is...

1. Woman lead
2. Woman writer
3. The cube (probably the only real gripe here)
Click to expand...
I think your fingers might have slipped because you misspelled strawman, you wrote summary in its place.

  1. No, context matters. Female lead in a traditionally male led franchise, who will be presented as the real hero by attributing some or all of Kratos's previous achievements to her. They already hinted at this, so this is known, not just a hunch.
  2. Again, no. This specific writer, who has a storied history of making stupid statements. There are plenty of moronic male writers that this one happens to be a woman has nothing to do with it.
  3. As if the main companion following you presumable throughout the entire game being cringe and annoying can't be a deal breaker in of itself. In fact I should've put it at first, because this weighs more to me personally but it is part of the writing so it overlaps with two.

Aurelius said:
What I don't see:

1. Actual gameplay quality
2. Actual story quality
3. Proof most gamers will actually object
Click to expand...

  1. I like storied games, gameplay alone is rarely enough in of itself.
  2. That's why it is an expectation, not a judgement. I'm not saying it is definitely terrible, but all the patterns and signs suggest it is.
  3. Who cares if they object? I said I wish it flopped (if it indeed turns out bad) not that it definitely will.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top