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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   32549 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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I remember reading the Warcraft 2 game manual multiple times as a middle schooler. It was dark, gory, and realistic. There were heroes, but they weren't larger than life and sometimes they got died. It read like a chronicle of Aztecs invading England, it was badass. I especially enjoyed how each Orcish clan was essentially a separate tribe with it's own rituals and cultures, lovingly detailed. Shout-out to my homies from the Bonechewer and Laughing Skull. The human kingdoms also had interesting histories, I loved the stories of Lordaeron and Alterac. Even the heroes were cool. Aleria, Turalyon, and Uther were badass.

Warcraft 3 pushed all of this into the background to focus on goofy Arthas. The gameplay was good, but the SOVL was gone.

(Controversial take -- I feel very similarly about Final Fantasy VI and VII.)

Reading game manuals in middle school is such a unique time period. It think it was really only the mid 90's where the manuals had enough heft and fluff to make that an interesting exercise, and also they were still actually printed and shipped with games. I poured over the manuals for Diablo, WarCraft 1 & 2, StarCraft, etc in middleschool. It really built up the anticipation to run home from school off the bus and boot them up again.

I remember the manual for Red Baron was about 1/3 game , 2/3 history, planes, and pilot profiles. And that the BG1&2 manuals were basically the D&D rulebooks, but with some added character commentary.

I remember the manual for Red Baron was about 1/3 game and 2/3 history, planes, and pilot profiles.

See also the gigantic wirebound manual for Jane's Fighters Anthology.

I’d highlight the old Homeworld manual as another great strong point. The game’s mechanics were okay, if a little easily solved, but the universe it drew and the bounds of what it left to the imagination were fantastic.

I also enjoyed in Warcraft II how you weren't the hero. You were a commander doing his job. And got promotions along the way.

This is a sentiment I've heard a number of people express. Borderlands 1 being preferable to 2 because in 1 you play as a nobody merc while 2 makes you the savior of the world and center of the narrative. Classic WoW being preferable to later expansions because you're a nobody adventurer as opposed to Azeroth's Greatest Champion. Half Life 1 vs 2. Seems there's a kind of gamer that doesn't like the conceit that the player is always the center of attention.

Single player video games almost always require the player character to be the Chosen One, because in a meta sense, they're the only one with free will, and they almost always follow a unique set of rules compared to NPCs. I think, as storytelling in video games took more prominence, too many devs saw this as an opportunity to be clever by making the in-universe story reflect this, leading to it being done so much that many players got bored of it. There's something to be said about the power fantasy of being the Chosen One, but that also can make the player feel like their success in the game is pre-planned rather than earned.

This is why I personally didn't like Commander Shepard filling such a special role in Mass Effect rather than being the right soldier in the right place at the right time to save the universe. Doomguy in 1993's Doom was more that, and I was disappointed in the narrative of the 2016 Doom making Doom Slayer the Chosen One. I think From Soft games tend to do a good job at finding a good balance between the 2, where the player character is usually a member of a class of characters with special abilities including resurrection, but they're not a particularly special one of those, other than that the player controls them to accomplish special things which earns them the status of a Great Chosen One by the end.

and I was disappointed in the narrative of the 2016 Doom making Doom Slayer the Chosen One.

I don't think it hurt, mostly because it was earned. As in - after the first 2-3 bigger fights it is obvious that you are indeed the slayer. Also the enemies treated you as a regular marine - they tried to rip your guts out and wear them as a scarf.

It is a bit like Kratos being the god of war even if underpowered at the beginning of 2018 GoW

This is why I personally didn't like Commander Shepard filling such a special role in Mass Effect rather than being the right soldier in the right place at the right time to save the universe.

It's especially bad because as Shamus Young pointed out, that's the story Bioware originally set up! Shepard, in the first game, was a soldier who happened to be in the right place at the right time, got a bunch of Prothean knowledge crammed into his/her head, and was positioned to save the universe because of that stroke of good fortune. Then the ME2 writing team completely scrapped that for whatever reason, and made Shepard a chosen one. It was a real unforced error from Bioware.

I forgot about that, but yes, completely agree. I played a recent Fire Emblem game (Engage, I think) and the MC is fanfic-tier overpowered dragon goddess who has a dark alter ego. In older FE games you were some guy who was good with a sword, or at best a noble who had fallen on hard times and had to play politics and win difficult military victories to regain power. I guess normies enjoy power fantasies.

Engage's story was godawful, but let's be real who plays FE:Engage for the story?

(I had a chuckle when the first autocomplete result when I tried to google "fire emblem engage* story" in Japanese was "fire emblem engage* story bad")

edit:aword

I quit when I got to the Anime Brazil continent. At that point I wasn't sure why I was playing it at all, and that setting was too goofy even for FE.

Mostly the combat system? I think Engage has one of the most robust combat systems in FE history.

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