More dissent about the embargo
I suppose I'm curious what exactly was restricted from being mentioned in the reviews, and what more it includes beyond not mentioning late game plot points.
I think writing a review for a narrative driven video game is always challenging. On one hand, you probably have to 'spoil' some aspects of a game's story (setting, basic premise, perhaps specific story moments that exemplify the quality of writing, etc). Otherwise you're writing something that's meaninglessly vague. But on the other hand, spoil too much and I think you risk robbing the reader of the experience of uncovering the game's story for themselves. I imagine this can be frustrating for a reviewer, as important plot moments that may represent the review's point of whether a narrative in a game works (or doesn't) can be seen a major spoilers, and thus they may have to tiptoe around that without being able to clearly explain their point.
To me at least, the primary purpose for me to read a video game review is answering the question of 'should I buy this video game?' (or to put it another way, is this a game that I'll be satisfied with the time and money I put into it?). Since every reviewer has different opinions on games, it becomes important to me to read a lot of reviews to get different perspectives to answer those questions. I think the challenge of writing a good review is trying to answer that question effectively (by means of the reviewer speaking from their perspective and time spent with the game) without giving too much away, at least from the standpoint of a story driven game.
Discussions of 'spoilers' and story critique is great and should always be encouraged, but I feel there are so many other avenues to do that. You can put out a 'spoilercast', spoiler discussion video, or just regular articles discussing a game's story and ending in full detail prefaced by a spoiler warning. I don't even necessarily have a problem with someone writing a 'review' of a game filled with spoilers (as long as it's clearly labeled as such), but I don't think a pre-release review is the forum to do that. I feel those discussions should come from a place where those participating and those listening have all finished the game being discussed, but that's my opinion.
I guess after I'm done playing the game, it would be interesting to know what exactly they restricted from being mentioned in these reviews. I will say as someone who wasn't 'spoiled to hell and back' about this game (perhaps one of the advantages of not being that active in social media), I personally did appreciate that reviews I read did avoid spoiling too much of the plot, and wrote about it in 'broader strokes'. I am looking forward to reading more detailed plot discussions, and I'm sure there will be plenty of that out there once I finish the game.
