Yeah, it's meant to be the conclusion of Sol's story, so most things would be wrapped up.
Yeah, this was amazing seven years ago and they have only improved since.
View: https://youtu.be/yhGjCzxJV3E
Hopefully they've added tools to automate it more, this was a lot of brute force hours to pull off.
View: https://twitter.com/KellyOhanianVO/status/1557047142673289217
They unforunately didn't go the extra mile in casting a Trans actress for the dub, but Kelly seems really positive about the character.
In "The 4 Kings in Dark Souls actually have feet" type hidden content we are now burdened with knowing: there's actually a sound clip of Baiken spitting for this win pose. It's not actually used due to her samurai movie gimmick.Yeah everything is 3d, the baiken outro is probably the most impressive thing they've done
I don't speak for everyone, but I'm fine with this. Her voice fits given that Bridget's young, plus ArcSys did hire a trans English VA for Testament.
This was the final push for me to finally buy Strive after being surrounded by friends active in the FGC. Everything about how Bridget's identity and growth has been handled has been so heartwarming, especially as a trans girl myself, and my twitter feed is nonstop Bridget love and queer FGC memes. Also her theme song is godlike, integrating her trans journey into a song that starts off melancholic but becomes upbeat and happy the further it gets in is so damn good. It's about time I really try again to get into fighting games with this one.
Definitely going to try Bridget cause I love her personality, but Testament is who I have my eye on, their aesthetic matches my tastes so much.
Definitely going to try Bridget cause I love her personality, but Testament is who I have my eye on, their aesthetic matches my tastes so much.
This is getting a lot of attention on Twitter with many trans and non-binary voice actors lending support, as well as sharing their own frustrations with the voiceover industry.
View: https://twitter.com/queervoxacademy/status/1557188287772741638?s=20&t=et1tA7oB_8xlWl4MgAvgZg
This might be better as a new thread if someone wants to make it.
Edit: Looking up the actress for this incarnation of Bridget, she is pretty new to the industry so clearly they didn't require a veteran for the role.
View: https://twitter.com/queervoxacademy/status/1557188287772741638?s=20&t=et1tA7oB_8xlWl4MgAvgZg
This might be better as a new thread if someone wants to make it.
Edit: Looking up the actress for this incarnation of Bridget, she is pretty new to the industry so clearly they didn't require a veteran for the role.
It's very surprising and disappointing they didn't go that extra mile especially given how they casted Testament. This is meant with no disrespect to the voice actor they chose since she did a very good job, but hopefully they go for it with a new story dlc or the next title and recast—given there's almost a zero percent chance they redub Bridget in Strive I'd imagine
Man was watching Max and his mod team is so passive when it comes to transphobic people. Youre pretty much allowed to go in there and misgender and push bad faith arguments with no timeouts or bans. Max himself identifies her correctly but its disappointing to see so many transphobes chat freely.
Big of a channel that grew rapidly. Very hard to keep that down unless you nip it in the bud from the start. Like pulling up unending weeds now.
He has a giant mod team who are very active, i understand a few messages going through but there is no attempt to ban or timeout anyone.
That's unfortunate then. I noticed it at the announcement, wasn't sure if they were going to go into high gear.
Leffen basically told transphobes to leave his stream. These people come out of the woodwork just to let everyone know they're not happy that other people exist. I doubt Twitch will do much considering they don't seem to care about reports, but mods need to be on point. I guess chat subbed for the Astolfo custom skin.
Last edited:
His chat is terrible, I remember when he watched the Bayo 3 trailer and it was just a ton of people calling Viola an ugly feminist design
It always blows my mind to see Leffen being the most reasonable person in this kind of situation. Max really needs to do something his chat, it's almost always toxic af.
Noticed this too, chat was just endless transphobia and intentional misgendering
Really? He's playing Bridget in Strive right now and chat is pretty civil, unless this was during the recap. Not seeing anything blatant. Doesn't seem like mods are inactive.
Yeah mods are working on it now, it wasn't the case earlier in the stream
So unbelievably pathetic that this is what it takes to get people to do anything even resembling behaving when this character is on-screen.
The more I think about it, the more it doesn't sit right with me that Bridget looks exactly the same despite it being 6~7 years later in-game, even to the point of copying the height and weight in the profile wholesale. People who were...er...pining for Bridget before (including an incident with another in-game character) were pining for and sexualizing a child at the end of the day. It really seems like a copout to (on the surface level) change the cloak/jacket and call it a day. She's still fumbling while walking backward, etc. Basically hitting all the beats of her sprite set in X2, except Strive-ified. Seemingly no real maturation at all.
It reminds me how Capcom had to near be dragged kicking and screaming for Sakura to no longer be in high school. (Uh...she uses her school uniform as her fighting clothes. Yeah, yeah, that's it.)
Maybe they did de-canonize Bridget showing up in X2 to some extent, but I was pretty interested to see what an adult Bridget would be like, what adventures/experiences they would've come up with to shape her. Instead it's just...95% what we got before. I know it can definitely be argued that fans of any type would have wanted the character they remembered back. But change can be fun, too, a la Testament. Testament is frozen in time, physically, and still is clearly a changed Gear.
I hope the dev team at least goes into it in their next Backyard posting, because after 7 damn years, there'd be something visibly different. Characters should be allowed to grow up.
Just as an aside, I think people should be careful in general. As a veteran of ridiculous internet arguments for near 20 years, sometimes people really are just...ignorant. In the purest sense of the word. And sometimes to an alarming degree. You can say things like "How could someone not know something as simple as [X] in [insert current year here]," but it's very easy to project your experiences onto other people. The internet (read: the world) is vast, and everyone has their spheres of influence and bubbles that they reside in. People may not know as much as you, have read the things you have, have been privy to the info and experiences that you have, or simply may be coming from a different or sheltered upbringing. No one was born (or is now) perfectly "woke" and people have to learn things from somewhere/someone. That someone might end up being you one day.
So, while it is important to suss out and shut down bad-faith actors, I would advise against wholesale declaring anyone with [X] viewpoint to be a bad-faith actor and shooting them on first sight, or saying that anyone of [Y] minority group with [X] viewpoint must be a sockpuppet account, or to automatically say "Just asking questions, huh? Yeahhhhhhhhh, riiiiight," because...yeah, sometimes people do have questions. I've had Bad™ opinions before. We all have been there at some point in time, surely. That's what makes bad-faith actors insidious in the first place: they've poisoned the notion that anyone could be coming in good faith or is not out to just waste your time.
I've literally come across people where I was the first Black person they've interacted with. Multiply that by whatever number since I moved to Japan (I'm American). I know that no one, myself included, has time to fix everyone and all of the ill-conceived notions they may carry in their brain. But while indeed "Google is free," sometimes you have to ask yourself are you so sure that what they'd end up clicking on Google would be correct. Are you sure they're not about to end up on Prager U or something? You have to leave that little bit of space, because while you may not always have the time, there are any number of actually malignant (sometimes very well-funded) bad-faith actors chomping at the bit to "educate" people in your stead.
Just keep it in the back of your mind on your daily journey through the internet.
It reminds me how Capcom had to near be dragged kicking and screaming for Sakura to no longer be in high school. (Uh...she uses her school uniform as her fighting clothes. Yeah, yeah, that's it.)
Maybe they did de-canonize Bridget showing up in X2 to some extent, but I was pretty interested to see what an adult Bridget would be like, what adventures/experiences they would've come up with to shape her. Instead it's just...95% what we got before. I know it can definitely be argued that fans of any type would have wanted the character they remembered back. But change can be fun, too, a la Testament. Testament is frozen in time, physically, and still is clearly a changed Gear.
I hope the dev team at least goes into it in their next Backyard posting, because after 7 damn years, there'd be something visibly different. Characters should be allowed to grow up.
Just as an aside, I think people should be careful in general. As a veteran of ridiculous internet arguments for near 20 years, sometimes people really are just...ignorant. In the purest sense of the word. And sometimes to an alarming degree. You can say things like "How could someone not know something as simple as [X] in [insert current year here]," but it's very easy to project your experiences onto other people. The internet (read: the world) is vast, and everyone has their spheres of influence and bubbles that they reside in. People may not know as much as you, have read the things you have, have been privy to the info and experiences that you have, or simply may be coming from a different or sheltered upbringing. No one was born (or is now) perfectly "woke" and people have to learn things from somewhere/someone. That someone might end up being you one day.
So, while it is important to suss out and shut down bad-faith actors, I would advise against wholesale declaring anyone with [X] viewpoint to be a bad-faith actor and shooting them on first sight, or saying that anyone of [Y] minority group with [X] viewpoint must be a sockpuppet account, or to automatically say "Just asking questions, huh? Yeahhhhhhhhh, riiiiight," because...yeah, sometimes people do have questions. I've had Bad™ opinions before. We all have been there at some point in time, surely. That's what makes bad-faith actors insidious in the first place: they've poisoned the notion that anyone could be coming in good faith or is not out to just waste your time.
I've literally come across people where I was the first Black person they've interacted with. Multiply that by whatever number since I moved to Japan (I'm American). I know that no one, myself included, has time to fix everyone and all of the ill-conceived notions they may carry in their brain. But while indeed "Google is free," sometimes you have to ask yourself are you so sure that what they'd end up clicking on Google would be correct. Are you sure they're not about to end up on Prager U or something? You have to leave that little bit of space, because while you may not always have the time, there are any number of actually malignant (sometimes very well-funded) bad-faith actors chomping at the bit to "educate" people in your stead.
Just keep it in the back of your mind on your daily journey through the internet.
Unconventional walk cycles have been a thing since the first Darkstalkers, Menat's got nothing go so with it. GG has a lot of them, for example in the modern era Jack-O' has a really bonkers backward walk and she predates Menat despite being a late GG addition. Like most of her animations Bridget's walk is based on the one she already had as a sprite, although of course it was elaborated upon.
a) i think you are dramatically understating how huge of a deal it is for bridget to come out as trans for her story. her entire gimmick before strive was about her conflict between how she presents and what she feels internally and how she needed to prove people wrong since she's biologically a boy. in strive she resolves these feelings and accepts that she's the same inside as she is on the outside. her being the exact same girly girl while comfortable with the fact she is a girl is incredible development for her, and frankly far above what i ever imagined they'd pull off for bridget.
b) i am also a veteran of many 'stupid arguments' as well and what i am used to is a huge amount of disingenuous bullshit and FUD shrouded in the language of sincere 'questions'. no one is entitled to infinite patience especially if they're literally opening with 'but i thought he was a guy??'. it's a lot easier to suss out when people are actually asking a question and when they're trying to create uncertainty than you suggest. besides, bridget's name is... bridget. the entire 'joke' about her was how many people would 'mistake' her a girl. somehow in 2022 i'm pretty sure much less people would need to be 'corrected' about the truth of her gender now that it's... completely congruous with her appearance.
like the max chat example above is a pretty fucking great example. the mods mostly clamp down on it but there's a few morons who stick around trying to push the envelope of what they're allowed to say by repeatedly asking how much trouble they'd be in if they said the 'wrong' gender and how it doesn't sound 'right' because it goes against 'the character arc'. this is not good faith. it doesn't deserve to be treated like it is.
b) i am also a veteran of many 'stupid arguments' as well and what i am used to is a huge amount of disingenuous bullshit and FUD shrouded in the language of sincere 'questions'. no one is entitled to infinite patience especially if they're literally opening with 'but i thought he was a guy??'. it's a lot easier to suss out when people are actually asking a question and when they're trying to create uncertainty than you suggest. besides, bridget's name is... bridget. the entire 'joke' about her was how many people would 'mistake' her a girl. somehow in 2022 i'm pretty sure much less people would need to be 'corrected' about the truth of her gender now that it's... completely congruous with her appearance.
like the max chat example above is a pretty fucking great example. the mods mostly clamp down on it but there's a few morons who stick around trying to push the envelope of what they're allowed to say by repeatedly asking how much trouble they'd be in if they said the 'wrong' gender and how it doesn't sound 'right' because it goes against 'the character arc'. this is not good faith. it doesn't deserve to be treated like it is.
I totally get the feeling. 3D fighters often feel better at first because of how animations flow into each other and how they're often more "mash-friendly", I'd say the gatling system in Strive kiiiindaaa emulates that by giving you strings of buttons/move that combo without having to care about timing but it's not really the same. I think the consensus is that Strive did a lot to help new players (reduced and homogenized gatling routes, big damage, dash macro) but, still it's a shame there's no f2p version of the game to at least try it out.
I personally got back "seriously" in fighting games with Strive (at the old age of 38 lol) and I think I got to an intermediatish level, so when I read people say they're bad at FG's I always think "yup so was I, if I could do it there's a good chance you can too". But there's one thing to keep in mind, some people might feel like they're good at the game (and for good reasons) but you never run out of ways of improving. What I find fun is not so much being happy about my current level of play, it's the learning process, getting my mind wrapped around rps situations, noticing that I'm doing stuff that I struggled with a few days ago but now without thinking about it, etc. It sometimes feels like working out to some extent but in a good way.
So if that sounds interesting/fun to do, I'd say go for it. Not even with Strive especially, FGs are just dope as a genre I think.
I'll end up on a quote by someone better and more articulate than me :P
View: https://twitter.com/onidavin/status/1556758225441107968
Question: does Strive have much in the way of single player content (kinda like Soul Calibur does)? I'm hopeless at fighting games and can't get anything out of playing them online, but I really want to support Arc for how they've handled Bridget. Is she easy enough to play as for newcomers?
Regarding single player content : sadly there's not much in Strive, certainly not to the extent of Soulcalibur (I assume you're talking about the PS1 game), you got arcade/survival modes, a story mode that is an anime made with the graphical engine of the game, a mission mode that I think is kinda well made and teaches you some notions/matchups and... that's it.
Is Bridget hard to play? I'd say that depends on how far you want to push her, with the influx of players the game is seeing with Bridget's release I'd say you will find players around your level right now. I'd say you can do cool stuff with her pretty fast but there's depth to explore there with all the yoyo set-ups/mixes. It's mostly quarter circle motions, with one dp motion and one half circle motion move.
Execution wise Bridget isn't that bad, but her damage is low so you have to be more ontop of your neutral and pressure game.
Well, any of the Soul Calibur games I'd say. 6 was kinda light on single player content for me, but I got enough out of it, Tekken 7 I would say simply didn't have enough. Having a mode which has a unique story and ending for each character in the game is what I'd consider as robust enough.
Generally I'm just not good at pulling off fancy combo strings, I'm ok with characters who have simple to execute moves that can flow together in different ways, and are pretty relentless in attacking, like Lucky Chloe.
Did you check the animation when Faust does his wheelchair special on her? Before the wheelchair part there's a neat little detail with the yo-yo.Animation touches on this character are great. The end animation after a dash is so good.
They can be relentless, more rushdown elements than zoner I think now. The tools for learning and the execution are pretty good for new players compared to contemporaries but if you're looking for much more than Tekken in terms of single player then unfortunately I don't think its much better.
Re: Bridget's voice actor
I'm guessing they wanted a cutesy fem voice from the start, and I imagine it's probably hard to find a transfem voice actor who can do that kind of performance the way they wanted it. I mean, I think my voice passes well enough, but I absolutely could not do Bridget's voice. Testament is obviously quite a different situation because their voice is masc. I guess the more interesting option would be to have given Bridget a more masc or androgynous voice (idk how old she is, but I'm assuming she would have been through puberty) but it seems that's just not what they wanted for the character. Ultimately they knocked it out of the park with representing Bridget respectfully so I feel like I can't hold it against them that they didn't get a trans actor as well.
I'm guessing they wanted a cutesy fem voice from the start, and I imagine it's probably hard to find a transfem voice actor who can do that kind of performance the way they wanted it. I mean, I think my voice passes well enough, but I absolutely could not do Bridget's voice. Testament is obviously quite a different situation because their voice is masc. I guess the more interesting option would be to have given Bridget a more masc or androgynous voice (idk how old she is, but I'm assuming she would have been through puberty) but it seems that's just not what they wanted for the character. Ultimately they knocked it out of the park with representing Bridget respectfully so I feel like I can't hold it against them that they didn't get a trans actor as well.
That is actually really sweet.
Man I don't even know much about the game but I do know a bit about the Bridget drama and transphobia and goddamn I was nearly tearing up hearing some old Texan and Matt Mercer being supportive allies to a girl coming to grips with who she is. Like that was so beautifully done and I kept telling myself "this is a fucking fighting game?"
I kinda bounced off of strive after buying it earlier this year after experiencing the... how do I put it... brutally gruesome evisceration of Baiken's kit. But Bridget is damn fun, I really like the combination of mobility, zoning, and rushdown. She has twice as many specials as baiken :(
Her old story is a bit awkward for a trans character yeah. But I guess the transition from joke/fetish character to more sincere representation can be bumpy. It works pretty well just within the context of Strive I'd say.
Also not Bridget-related, but I swear I remember ASW announcing like have a year ago the Strive sold over 1m units. Am I experiencing a Mandela moment?
Her old story is a bit awkward for a trans character yeah. But I guess the transition from joke/fetish character to more sincere representation can be bumpy. It works pretty well just within the context of Strive I'd say.
Also not Bridget-related, but I swear I remember ASW announcing like have a year ago the Strive sold over 1m units. Am I experiencing a Mandela moment?
It will always never not be funny/sad for me that in a fictional world where genetically altered beings & magic exist, the appearance of someone trans is what throws people for a loop. This isn't the only time I've seen this reaction in vidya gamez.
Probably lol. I watched Max's Bridget Reveal reaction and before her reveal they said that the game only released June (I think) of last year. I doubt they hit 1m in two months lmao Maybe you were thinking of the game before?
Probably lol. I watched Max's Bridget Reveal reaction and before her reveal they said that the game only released June (I think) of last year. I doubt they hit 1m in two months lmao Maybe you were thinking of the game before?
Agreed. The way I see it, being a good ally to causes involves educating people who express that ignorance, because I don't think trans and NB folks need to constantly reassert their humanity on their own and tear down dogwhistles when they're the ones most at risk for the consequences of that prejudice existing.
My first interaction with 'transgender' as a term, the first time that was something real to me and not a vague dismissive joke I'd see on Family Guy, was with an internet critic named Linkara who used one of his running gags to go "trans rights aren't as well understood and we should correct that." A few years later it was another guy named Moviebob doing a review of a movie with transphobic stereotypes and he basically took an entire minute to lambast anyone who buys into them as idiot manbabies. I think it's a shame that the first time I got to understand was with these two cis guys making a point, but, like, that's who was there back in 2008 and 2011. If they didn't, where was I going to hear it?
Bluntly, I'm a really susceptible person. I'm the exact kind of terminally online shut-in who drifts into right wing spaces and I think the only reason I'm as aggressive about my beliefs as I am is because the forums I hung out in had folks who made more sense to me than the guys going "ugh why do you have to be so PC???" Comic Book Resources' X-Men forum, I kid you not, was the first place I was able to express my attraction to men, and I Gay Chicken'd my way through so hard that I recognize in hindsight that it was a vital step for me to have that space populated by queer voices who were cool, alternative, in your face and didn't take mewling and pissing about the PC police lying down. What if I didn't? Would I develop the beliefs I hold dearly to me now? Would I even figure out I was bi if I didn't have a space to express that banging Gambit sure would be funny haha until eventually I figured it out it wasn't a joke?
If I had to put up with bisexual prejudice (which I had to do on this very forum last week) then I'm not going to be calm and considerate because I have no desire to be. That's me, I'm not going to patiently explain that we're still bisexual if we date a partner of a different gender and that prejudice towards this from gays and lesbians is an overpowering subtext that is constantly and repeatedly permitted. In this instance, I'll be as vengeful and angry as I damn well please.
But if I, a clueless cis person, see another clueless cis person expressing clueless cis perspectives, what am I losing by stepping in? Even if that banned guy was just dogwhistling, what if saying that stuff was helpful to someone else here who never thought about it? We shouldn't have to be teachers but all of us here still had to be taught by someone who also shouldn't have had to be a teacher.
Hmm thanks for this, this honestly feels quite reassuring about the systems in place and that Strive tries to help as much as it can. And the rest, it's awesome to hear that you could get into fighting-games still 😊 It's totally true that these games are all about self improvement, I guess the biggest hurdle for me is to get over the feeling that 2D games feel super rigid in terms of movement and physics. I don't mean that in a bad way but ever since I stopped being a masher around 2012 when I met my group of fighting-game playing friends I always felt I have it easy with 3D games since on a basic level I only have to memorize the "physics" of the game and not the frames while the physics in 2D games feel so stiff that I can't wrap my head around them 😅
But yeah having fun is the most important thing and the feeling of seeing improvements is awesome :D
From the bit I played GG before I really like May (though her fighting style with the anchor is a bit too "heavy" for me), Jam and Ramlethal (sp?). Jam felt the best for me since she felt kinda fast and fluid and Ramlethal, her cute winning animation with the animals won me over 😅
Also this a fantastic quote and definitely a good motivator!
Had this completely go over my head but listened to the audio logs and my heart just asploded. So nice to hear that inner turmoil and journey represented with care, and how important it is to have people there to encourage you and guide you through it. Rarely have much interest in fighting games outside of the new SF around release these days, but I'll be looking to grab this soon if only to support having trans rep like this in games.