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glassy_witchAfter my little oops moment, involving a wonky thyroid, two months of a sustained heart rate of 130-odd bpm, and subsequent stay in hospital... I finally bought myself a new computer. Purely for the purpose of playing games on it.
It wasn't the most hi tech, massively overpowered beast out there. I am not sure most "serious" gamers would even call it mid range, but it does exactly what I want, so I am happy. My days of building the damn things myself ended in the early 00s, along with any concern I had for ensuring I had far more RAM than was even usable, let alone necessary. I like my machine. I've called it Diogenes. After the Cynic, not the biographer. But I digress.
The first game I bought for myself was Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I have a love of history, particularly ancient, and enjoy historical fiction, too. Perfect match, considering how well regarded the game was in that respect. The names of some of the characters met along the way called to me - Leonidas, Herodotus, Brasidas, Aspasia, Pericles, Socrates....the list goes on.
I LOVED it. I played as Kassandra (now there is a voice actress who could sell me a glass of water in a rainstorm!) and I really enjoyed what was to me, a blummin good story. I have technically "finished" it but I still revisit just to have Kassandra charging across the Greek islands, looking at the scenery, which is EXQUISITE, I have to say.
Then I played Mirage. It was just as beautiful to look at, and the story drove you on in just the same way. Dashing around to as many of the historical information points as I could, learning about the buildings of the time setting, the characters and the great academics and scientific discoveries of the time was just perfect for me. Wasn't so keen on the protagonist, Basim, but I'm not so sure you're meant to be.
Finally, Ubisoft worked out how to fix the issue with a Windows update which had made Origins unplayable, so I launched into that one. Bayek of Siwa. What a guy. And his voice actor is also kinda....wow. the humour was back in this game - less than Odyssey but definitely far more than Mirage. But the heartbreak. Oh. Oh my.
Then, Valhalla. I chose to play Eivor as female. The opening scenes, I would have said young Eivor was definitely male - so I was surprised to be given the option (which you can even change partway through the game if you wish!). But again, the voice actor was the deciding factor for me.
I have since picked up the older games on PC that I long ago played on consoles. I enjoy them. I like to see the work that has gone in to the textures, and movements, just as much as the scenery, clothing and dialogue. Water in particular fascinates me.
Some of the characters you engage with instantly, some take time, and some...meh. For me, usually it's the writing, or the game mechanics that have the biggest impact on my enjoyment. I simply don't have the coordination to hit five keys simultaneously while mashing the space bar. Syndicate, I couldn't get in to for reasons of the controls. Sorry, Jacob and Evie - we'll just never meet.
Unsurprisingly, while all this has been going on, my phone has been cheerfully trying to offer me content every time I open the browser, largely based around the AC franchise.
And I gotta tell ya. There's some sad little idiots out there. There are people, I kid ye not, who are PERSONALLY offended than the stories of both Odyssey and Valhalla, for example, have female protagonists as the storyline's canon options. Some are upset that the magnificent Bayek of Siwa is not, according to the storyline, the actual founder of the Hidden Ones, but that it is instead his wife, Aya - later Amunet - who sets up the bureaus.
They frothing at their keyboards, complaining hugely about the very SUGGESTION that these female characters could possibly be that important in this entirely fictional setting.
Many of them spit teeth about how terrible it is that Kassandra (later functionally immortal because of a shiny stick), and misthios, or mercenary, rather than an assassin in the Creed which doesn't exist in her time yet...Might go around killing basically anyone that moves, and isn't bound by the not-yet-existing Creed to ensure civilians are not harmed. Funnily though, although the game can ve played as Alexios, while Kassandra takes the place of Deimos...there are no complaints about the exact same behaviour by Alexios.
And finding out that female Eivor was canon came as a surprise to me, as I mentioned earlier. But she gets referred to in-game and in supporting wikis as Eivor Varinsdottir, so that makes that quite clear.
I've played computer games for...40-odd years now? And in most of them, where you are playing a character, that character has been default- depicted as male. (Tomb Raider being one obvious departure from this!). And it has never really bothered me. It's a game. It's not real, and I've never expected my personality and theirs to become so intimately entwined that I think it's me climbing up those canyon walls, or shooting up that crowd nest of security guards. So I struggle to understand the genuine anger that is displayed by some of these people. All of the ones I've seen so far have been written (according to the information available at least) by those of the male gender. And they are unreasonably upset over the inclusion of female characters at all, it seems, let alone as protagonists or as anything integral to the story at all.
It gets better though. AC Shadows comes out soon. The two protagonists in this one are an African man, the Samurai, and the female Japanese Shinobi. I kid ye not,I saw one post bemoaning the fact that AC now had a setting in Japan,but that "Ubisoft has chosen not to bother giving us an Asian character". Erm. Dude. Naoe is standing RIGHT there! Say what you ACTUALLY mean. Not what you think you can get away with. You must realise on some level that what you're thinking is not socially acceptable, so you're attempting to dress it up as if you're some kind of weeping victim. Come ON.
It's a departure for one of these games to use an actual historical person as a protagonist. The Samurai, Yasuke, was an actual person (some may argue he was never actually Samurai, but this doesn't mean he didn't exist at all) so it would be hard to offer up that character for customisation. But there's Naoe, a shinobi, out to avenge her father's killing. You can play as one or the other or even as both. Why not?! But the thread that binds the whinging together is that a female might have the audacity to appear in a video game.
It's sad. It's utterly pathetic. And it's actually quite scary just HOW angry some of these people are getting. It is clear that they have absolutely zero emotional regulation and frankly, some of them exhibit such an unhealthy level of aggression towards women generally that they should probably be on a list somewhere. Not a single one of them could write the stories, or code the game itself, but they are blithely trying to tell Ubisoft what they SHOULD be doing. The only thing I would tell Ubisoft to do? Would be to sort out their service desk. Because it is, without a word of a lie, abysmal. And t least I know a thing or two about service desks ;)
It wasn't the most hi tech, massively overpowered beast out there. I am not sure most "serious" gamers would even call it mid range, but it does exactly what I want, so I am happy. My days of building the damn things myself ended in the early 00s, along with any concern I had for ensuring I had far more RAM than was even usable, let alone necessary. I like my machine. I've called it Diogenes. After the Cynic, not the biographer. But I digress.
The first game I bought for myself was Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I have a love of history, particularly ancient, and enjoy historical fiction, too. Perfect match, considering how well regarded the game was in that respect. The names of some of the characters met along the way called to me - Leonidas, Herodotus, Brasidas, Aspasia, Pericles, Socrates....the list goes on.
I LOVED it. I played as Kassandra (now there is a voice actress who could sell me a glass of water in a rainstorm!) and I really enjoyed what was to me, a blummin good story. I have technically "finished" it but I still revisit just to have Kassandra charging across the Greek islands, looking at the scenery, which is EXQUISITE, I have to say.
Then I played Mirage. It was just as beautiful to look at, and the story drove you on in just the same way. Dashing around to as many of the historical information points as I could, learning about the buildings of the time setting, the characters and the great academics and scientific discoveries of the time was just perfect for me. Wasn't so keen on the protagonist, Basim, but I'm not so sure you're meant to be.
Finally, Ubisoft worked out how to fix the issue with a Windows update which had made Origins unplayable, so I launched into that one. Bayek of Siwa. What a guy. And his voice actor is also kinda....wow. the humour was back in this game - less than Odyssey but definitely far more than Mirage. But the heartbreak. Oh. Oh my.
Then, Valhalla. I chose to play Eivor as female. The opening scenes, I would have said young Eivor was definitely male - so I was surprised to be given the option (which you can even change partway through the game if you wish!). But again, the voice actor was the deciding factor for me.
I have since picked up the older games on PC that I long ago played on consoles. I enjoy them. I like to see the work that has gone in to the textures, and movements, just as much as the scenery, clothing and dialogue. Water in particular fascinates me.
Some of the characters you engage with instantly, some take time, and some...meh. For me, usually it's the writing, or the game mechanics that have the biggest impact on my enjoyment. I simply don't have the coordination to hit five keys simultaneously while mashing the space bar. Syndicate, I couldn't get in to for reasons of the controls. Sorry, Jacob and Evie - we'll just never meet.
Unsurprisingly, while all this has been going on, my phone has been cheerfully trying to offer me content every time I open the browser, largely based around the AC franchise.
And I gotta tell ya. There's some sad little idiots out there. There are people, I kid ye not, who are PERSONALLY offended than the stories of both Odyssey and Valhalla, for example, have female protagonists as the storyline's canon options. Some are upset that the magnificent Bayek of Siwa is not, according to the storyline, the actual founder of the Hidden Ones, but that it is instead his wife, Aya - later Amunet - who sets up the bureaus.
They frothing at their keyboards, complaining hugely about the very SUGGESTION that these female characters could possibly be that important in this entirely fictional setting.
Many of them spit teeth about how terrible it is that Kassandra (later functionally immortal because of a shiny stick), and misthios, or mercenary, rather than an assassin in the Creed which doesn't exist in her time yet...Might go around killing basically anyone that moves, and isn't bound by the not-yet-existing Creed to ensure civilians are not harmed. Funnily though, although the game can ve played as Alexios, while Kassandra takes the place of Deimos...there are no complaints about the exact same behaviour by Alexios.
And finding out that female Eivor was canon came as a surprise to me, as I mentioned earlier. But she gets referred to in-game and in supporting wikis as Eivor Varinsdottir, so that makes that quite clear.
I've played computer games for...40-odd years now? And in most of them, where you are playing a character, that character has been default- depicted as male. (Tomb Raider being one obvious departure from this!). And it has never really bothered me. It's a game. It's not real, and I've never expected my personality and theirs to become so intimately entwined that I think it's me climbing up those canyon walls, or shooting up that crowd nest of security guards. So I struggle to understand the genuine anger that is displayed by some of these people. All of the ones I've seen so far have been written (according to the information available at least) by those of the male gender. And they are unreasonably upset over the inclusion of female characters at all, it seems, let alone as protagonists or as anything integral to the story at all.
It gets better though. AC Shadows comes out soon. The two protagonists in this one are an African man, the Samurai, and the female Japanese Shinobi. I kid ye not,I saw one post bemoaning the fact that AC now had a setting in Japan,but that "Ubisoft has chosen not to bother giving us an Asian character". Erm. Dude. Naoe is standing RIGHT there! Say what you ACTUALLY mean. Not what you think you can get away with. You must realise on some level that what you're thinking is not socially acceptable, so you're attempting to dress it up as if you're some kind of weeping victim. Come ON.
It's a departure for one of these games to use an actual historical person as a protagonist. The Samurai, Yasuke, was an actual person (some may argue he was never actually Samurai, but this doesn't mean he didn't exist at all) so it would be hard to offer up that character for customisation. But there's Naoe, a shinobi, out to avenge her father's killing. You can play as one or the other or even as both. Why not?! But the thread that binds the whinging together is that a female might have the audacity to appear in a video game.
It's sad. It's utterly pathetic. And it's actually quite scary just HOW angry some of these people are getting. It is clear that they have absolutely zero emotional regulation and frankly, some of them exhibit such an unhealthy level of aggression towards women generally that they should probably be on a list somewhere. Not a single one of them could write the stories, or code the game itself, but they are blithely trying to tell Ubisoft what they SHOULD be doing. The only thing I would tell Ubisoft to do? Would be to sort out their service desk. Because it is, without a word of a lie, abysmal. And t least I know a thing or two about service desks ;)