I don't really understand the imran tweet. Was he getting harassed for saying the dialogue was bad or something? Feels like a weird thing to proactively tweet out. On its own I also think the additional context sort of misses the main idea that in a counterfactual world with a white guy protag with similar lines maybe there'd be a bit less scrutiny, and that perhaps the issue is criticizing something that's not the worst in the world as if it actually is the worst in the world, in such a way that just continues this never-ending cavalcade of capital-G Gamer hyperbole that can devolve into unnecessary toxicity on social media. Idk.
Without knowing much about this game, this clip like auto sold me on it if the entire game is like that.
It's Jack Garland energy and I love me some Jack Garland.
Having watched a lot of footage, there's a good number of jokes that work. I found myself chuckling even near the start. There's also a good number that don't, and some otherwise clunky dialogue. It's a real mixed bag of dialogue performances but if lows don't tend to bother you the highs are genuinely fun. It feels like a more hit or miss Guardians of the Galaxy or Spiderman with more jokes but also more "cringe" or stuff that misses the mark.
Wait, you don't think THIS game has a shred of self awareness?
If you read the dev interviews its very clear that its intended to be 100% serious. Not that people can't like things ironically (I certainly did for SoP), but if you play the game in Japanese it also becomes immediately apparent how straight a lot of stuff is played.
The sort of end result in the West was a kind of happy accident, with even (especially?) places like 4chan and general social media really embracing the absurdity. I don't know how relevant it is to critical reception vis a vis forspoken, since SoP sits at like a 71 or something with a ton of flak for how weird and disjointed the narrative and characters were, only really feeling endearing or at all relatable at the end, but in the social media, twitter sphere it is quite a different reaction and maybe more notable in that regard.
I read and watched around 10 reviews today that were all pretty middling about the game. Easy Allies were the most positive of the ones I watched. None of the reviews good or bad that discussed the dialogue were at all criticizing the main characters race. Do you have a specific reviewer you're talking about?
So two parts to this -- I don't think anyone is saying that the reviewers who reviewed this game are card carrying racists or something, but the idea of unconscious bias is well established. Everyone has it, and it can mean the difference between how negative one's first impression is, which can turn into a sort of self validating lens through which to view the rest of a product. Not saying that this is the difference between "this dialogue is shit" and "this is GOTY", but perhaps the difference between a stance like "this is literally the worst dialogue ever written and it is literally torture" and "I didn't care for the dialogue all that much". Maybe in aggregate across all reviewers it's only a couple points difference, idk. That's not really the issue. If we have extensive studies on unconscious bias and how it can be found in almost any context, I don't doubt that it exists in....fucking video game reviewing -- a domain that combines the exorbitant privilege and imbalance of criticism with the structural and institutionalized baggage of a traditionally white and male hobby.
The broader point is that on social media or other channels this is much more of an outright factor, particularly vis-a-vis how excessively a lot of this game is scrutinized. Like there are plenty of games which are in this sort of 7 or so ballpark that don't get as piece by piece picked apart. A lot of stuff from social media channels gets posted here ITT so there's a sort of feedback loop there as well. Very little of social media is obsessing about the other issues in the game, which is kinda telling in that regard.
Re: criticism has been rising for this sort of writing style for a while (not a point you made but dotted throughout here), absolutely. But, I mean, multiple things can be true at once.
