Recommended, on Eurogamer. I really hope this does well. Seems to have ore buzz than their earlier games…
Oh boy.
There’s no polite way of saying it. Greedfall is kind of fucked up. Wrapping yourself in the pageantry of the 18th century means recreating the iconography of colonial expansion and native slaughter. It means emulating a time when supposedly great men failed to do what was morally right, opting instead to do what was politically expedient. To merely call this a tension of Greedfall does it a disservice. It’s not just a momentary tension. It’s the entire game.
The visual language at play in this game harkens back to some vile shit. That isn’t to say that no art could use a setting like this, but it needs to be used with an awareness of what this setting actually means. Greedfall doesn’t demonstrate that level of care at the moment. It’s set dressing. The magical New World is mostly a playground for the player, not a means to examine complex issues. Greedfall wears a costume, perhaps not ignorant to what the costume means, but seemingly unwilling to do anything too powerful with it.
Kotaku. What did you expect?
These people have made it their business to see offense in anything not adhering to their extreme political stances. To these jour-- I mean “journ-”… no, I can’t even put that in quotation marks when writing about Kotaku. Anyway, to these activists, a game that does not spend its time apologizing for its very setting that isn’t even historical would no doubt be a great offense.
Imagine finding it terrible that a game just strives to be a game, instead of trying to pander to some ideology or make political statements.
For anyone not wanting to give these activists a view, here’s an archive link:
It’s a shame to see that Greedfall doesn’t appear to engage with it’s own core premise. Colonialism is a real thing that has shaped the world we live in, and ignoring it’s effects in this fantasy helps no one.
It’s not supposed to help any one. Also he’s 10 hours in, so I’m fairly sure she doesn’t have a fucking clue what it addresses anyway.
Her stance is basically “You can never have a game set in the colonial period because bad shit happened.” Which could easily be extended to… every period of history ever. So basically games can’t be about anything or have a setting because it’s probably analogous to something bad that happened and the only way to do that is to make that the entire game.
All games must be This War of Mine or they’re evil and so are the people who made them.
Edit: “I chose to try to maintain the status quo and didn’t stand for anything, therefor the game is about maintaining the status quo,” might be the dumbest fucking thing I’ve read today and I just saw someone claim they can cure cancer if you just reelect them.
“Greedfall not engaging with its core premise” and “Heather thinking Greedfall does not engage with its core premise” are two very different things. It’s possible Greedfall does engage with its themes, just not in the way Heather expected it to.
There’s a specific line in that review that’s very revealing to me:
The fact that Greedfall tosses occasional scorn against colonial powers and dogmatism only makes it more frustrating that this is a game that appears to be about upholding the status quo, not enacting systemic change.
Most people engaged in activism nowadays will be blissfully unaware of how difficult systemic change is, mostly due to their strong desire of making changes happen as fast (and as noisily) as possible. But there are stories to be told about people facing the status quo beat by beat, even if that isn’t changing the system – and those can be very powerful stories by themselves – and that unfortunately seems to fly by Heather’s head. It’s a bit myopic, but I understand where she’s coming from, even if I think she’s missing the forest for the trees.
Does she have som kind of personal, horrific relationship to colonial times?
I’m on the total opposite of this meaning. I say bring in every god damn historical era or happening you want and make it into fantasy or whatever you like.
What is creativity if we cant play around with facts.
Also, I’m downloading this tonight. Can’t wait!
I don’t think we read the same article. She expressed disappointment that the game did not seem to engage with the themes that it was presenting, and so it didn’t appeal to her. That is different from “ban this sick filth,” which seems to be your reading.
The big mean Kotaku writers aren’t going to take your games away. Why is Heather’s experience with the game so threatening to you?
I think her complaint is that the game doesn’t do more with its premise, and instead presents scenarios that maintain the status quo. The outcomes of the player’s choices have fleeting consequences for the colonial powers in the game. She’s essentially saying that the game, for all its fantasy, does not “play around with facts” and just tweaks the historical reality.
Yeah sorry, I realize I wrote a little too quickly, I just scanned through the article.
Nonetheless, reading it I feel jus… well , that she’s expecting too much. I haven’t played it yet so I should probably shut up until I have, but I feel like she wanted so much political and historical depth in a game that they’d basically had to engage an entire team of historians to write it.
Which is fine. Not everything is (or should be) about enacting systemic change; sometimes reality has a way of destroying those who want to change it, and that’s a perhaps more useful view and lesson than an uplifting story about an individual saving the world from the evils of colonialism.
Which, on a side note, is my gripe with activism these days: the notion that people can get together and single-handedly change something that’s been around for centuries. It’s a romantic notion, much like thinking that a diplomat can change six nations’ view of colonization. Maybe she wants the game to enact that fantasy that’s virtually unobtainable in real life? Does she want Greedfall to be a realistic take into our issues in our past and present day, or another instance of “games as escapism”, this time tending to her personal desired/romanticized political views?
I think the problem here — and it’s possible I’m being unfair, though I don’t think I am — is her expectations, not the game itself.
And that she probably hasn’t reached a point where those actions/decisions would be made anyway.
And of course when she got to them she’d side with the colonial powers so as to not rock the boat and then blame the game for it anyway near as I can tell.
What you said
Thing is, she doesn’t want that at all, because that story would be all about the status quo going virtually unchanged for centuries, and anyone trying to change it being crushed, which is exactly what she does NOT want to see.
Anyway, she expressed her opinion. I understand where she’s coming from, but I don’t agree with her premises or conclusions (and I don’t think she made her case at all in the article), and I’ll just leave it at that.
The game didn’t work for her. Too bad. It happens. Maybe she wasn’t fair but she doesn’t have to be; of course, that means I’ll be less inclined to listen to whatever she wants to say. It happens.
I don’t think there’s any grounds to conclude this on the basis of 10 hours of play. I’m not normally one for the whole “you have to play the whole game to review it” argument, but if we’re talking about a big sprawling RPG you can’t expect it to show it’s hand in that short a time.
Maybe, although if the first ten hours soft pedal the colonialism aspect and then later on it drops the post-colonial hammer on you I could see that make a lot of people unhappy. But I also read the Eurogamer review, so it seems it doesn’t do that.
RPS have a video review up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Ia3XeJuRY
They’re slightly more positive about it’s handling of colonialism, but much less positive about the quality of the game.
The Eurogamer review also comments on this a bit over the last couple paragraphs.
But that reviewer was able to enjoy the game and gave it a Recommended rating.
I read the game is only 15 hours long, if you beeline main quest? She could be near the end.
Even if it were possible to blow through the main story in 15 hours, she’s A) still 1/3rd of the distance from the end and B) doing a terrible job reviewing a big RPG.
This is true! Anyway I bought the game, happy now? ;)