Tal Shiar Agent
Banned
Biker culture is dumb.
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why did people complain about the gruff white male protagonist of Days gone but not RDR 2?
- Thread starter Mister Apoc
- Start date
Bumblebeetuna
Member
Y'all really think Deacon is anywhere close to as well written a modern Rockstar protagonist, thats like comparing sons of anarchy with The Sopranos
Yeah of all the revisionist history trying to paint Days Gone as a masterpiece, this is definitely up there on the bizarre-o-meter.
Halo is Back
Member
One game has some of the best writing and character story in the entire industry, the other game is mediocre at best.
Esparadrapo
Banned
And inconsistent. And I'd understand inconsistency from a background derived explanation but we had none, the character was all over the place for no reason.
I enjoyed Days Gone but Deacon was the worst part of it by far and there were some really eye rolling experiences in that game.
Bumblebeetuna
Member
Congrats OP, someone outdid you on the insanity and posted user reviews from Metacritic.
yanhash
Member
John Garvin? Is this you?
Nobodys listening to their favourite feminist reviewer on suggestions for a single player zombie survival action game. Games perform poorly all the time and we move on but Days Gone excuses are starting to sound like Snyder cult rants, chill out bro
killatopak
Member
Days Gone sold really well. The problem was Sony is very anal about Metacritic scores.John Garvin? Is this you?
Nobodys listening to their favourite feminist reviewer on suggestions for a single player zombie survival action game. Games perform poorly all the time and we move on but Days Gone excuses are starting to sound like Snyder cult rants, chill out bro
7m+ sales. In what way is that a failure.
Vick
Member
Would Metacritic reviews written by these "journalists":
Be better?
Steam users not worthy?
Nor all the people who declared Days Gone to be Best Game of the Year and Best Narrative at the Golden Joystick Awards?
Golden Joystick Awards - Wikipedia
You're part of a minority I'm afraid. Revisionism my ass.
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NeverYouMind
Member
That can be interpreted both ways. For me, story and characters in Red Dead franchise are about as interesting as watching the ugliest shade of paint dry. Gun is so much better than that filler that it is embarrassing to even put it on a pedestal.
I have never watched Sons of Anarchy, but The Sopranos is mediocre if not downright bad. None of the characters are likeable or even relatable. They are all despicable in their own ways. The shrink sessions are boring. The dialogue is slop and every problem in the show is handled in the dumbest way possible. It has one of the worst finales of any show ever, which is quite a feat given that it is competing with shows that were canceled after a cliffhanger ending.
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yanhash
Member
7 mil is actually pretty impressive, but the budget and development length could be the reason. I dont think it was a failure, i just think sony expected a long term mainstream IP
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Bumblebeetuna
Member
Would Metacritic reviews written by these "journalists":
Be better?
Steam users not worthy?
Nor all the people who declared Days Gone to be Best Game of the Year and Best Narrative at the Golden Joystick Awards?
Golden Joystick Awards - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
You're part of a minority I'm afraid. Revisionism my ass.
Dude thinks most people consider DG to be a masterpiece.
SleepMachine
Neo Member
I thought I was gonna find Days Gone uninteresting at first. The gruff biker-dude persona i imagined did not sound like something I'd like. Although the start of the game was kinda boring, after playing a while i saw that my preconceptions about Deacon (and Boozer, to some extent) wasn't quite what i ended up with. Even though the characters were not perfect, they were a lot better than my low expectations. I really enjoyed the game, and the characters in the end. Iron Mike was fucking great, and the performances for Deacon, Boozer, Iron Mike, and some others were really good as well.
Though reading through this thread, it seems like i really need to play RDR2 as well. Everyone seems to be praising Arthur. I'll try to bump it up a few notches in the ol' backlog.
yanhash
Member
Vick
Member
GAF user
Bumblebeetuna
believes his opinion on a game he never played matters more than Steam, Metacritic and People's Choice Awards, while laughing at other people.
Bumblebeetuna
Member
GAF user
I own the game and have played it, thank you. But have fun in Delusion Land.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
The "progressive" 1%er in a dog eat dog post apocalyptical world was pretty silly overall and reeked of west coast cringe, but the gameplay loop was adrenaline inducing.
Arthur Morgan is arguably the best protagonist in gaming history. Even if he too suffers from the R* trope.
Arthur Morgan is arguably the best protagonist in gaming history. Even if he too suffers from the R* trope.
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Bumblebeetuna
Member
You misspelled masterpiece. It has an 8.5 user score on Metacritic.
Heh heh, thats a classic technique because its hard to say you are influencing kids to rape, pillage, and murder, but easy to think you are adjusting social attitudes towards gender equality or reducing xenophobia.
There is a definite drop in writers understanding of a proper stoic male character, probably because none of them had a dad that came back from war or had a proper dangerous job that required and fostered the reserved leader type. So they are just riffing off prior media and its easy to conflate "frat boy" with "strong but silent" and then fall down on the female relationships that really put the stoic male in the proper perspective. Early MCU NAILED this so well, you had philandering Tony Stark who gets corralled into a monagamous relationship with Pepper and eventually self-sacrifices for his kid, Steve Rogers who pines for a woman from his past, lives a monastic life because no other women can measure up, and then he literally goes back in time for her, Peter Quill with Gamora, Thor with Jane (though I think this was the least well written with the least effective final act). So anyway, its the relationships the stoic male has that defines him, you can't easily make the character stand on his own without this context. John Wick nailed this with the dead wife and the dog. Thats really all that separates JW from a million "lone man on a mission of rampage" stories but damned if that dead dog didn't hit the right chord with viewers! So if the support relationships are dogshit, then so is your main character.
The Cockatrice
I'm retarded?
I love both games but anyone saying Deke is a better character than Arthur is a complete and utter moron lmao. RDR2 is carried by its characters and the story and the acting. Its world is unlike we've ever seen, the simulation of it and how each NPC genuinely feels like they live in that world. Days Gone has a great atmosphere and fantastic gunplay and fighting the Hordes was insane but the characters? Fucking lmao, absolute mediocre. Gamers love zombies tho and you can easily tell that by the huge amount of zombie games we used to get and are still getting.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Arthur did have Mary, and the scenes together were some of the most relatable and well written, so you do have a point.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
For most people, cowboys >>>>>> bikers.
Arthur could have been a silent protagonist and people would have liked him more than Deke.
Arthur could have been a silent protagonist and people would have liked him more than Deke.
Also, his name, Deacon St. John, sounds like the name of a male pornstar... and there is nothing on earth more wretched and reviled by men than a male pornstar.
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JayK47
Member
It is a miracle Days Gone was even made. Even more miraculous that it was a Sony exclusive. Considering everything we have seen from Sony since. The game had some minor issues and the writing could have been better, but it was interesting for a zombie game. A unique game with motorcycles and cool outposts. In the world we live in now, we will never see a sequel. And even if they made a sequel, you wouldn't want it. Gone are the days where we will see a new game with Deacon or Drake in it.
Here is an ULTIMATE example of what I'm talking about. The entire funeral scene is a masterclass in how men grieve, and particularly how stoic men grieve. But the notion of "why do you cry?" "He is Conan, Cimmerian, he will not cry, so I cry for him." moves MOUNTAINS in terms of how it defines Conan, how strong his relationship with Subotai AND Valyria is, and all while Arnie says very little.
McQuarrie did this with Tom Cruise on one of the Mission Impossible movies. Ethan won't show much, if any, emotion, so the Ferguson character has to show his feelings when he is talking with his ex-wife. It's not that Ethan dosen't FEEL emotions, it's just that he isn't a slave to them, he has a mission he has to complete, and we the audience must participate through proxies. A lot of writers neglect this aspect of the "gruff warrior" and either have show basically no emotion through the film, just talk about it which usually leads to badly written scenes of bravado, or have visible displays that are out of character. Tom Hanks going off to the side to have his quick emotional release in Saving Private Ryan is another example of how to do it right.
Angry_Megalodon
Member
The macho types from the 80s were allowed only two emotions:
- Feeling sympathy for little kids.
- Mourning a comrade fallen in combat.
That's old cinema cliché. Deacon is very soft compared to those, he treats his woman like a princess, while the old machos, including classic characters like Indiana Jones or James Bond, treat women like tissues. Indiana Jones admits fucking a 15-year-old pupil and then dumping her.
- Feeling sympathy for little kids.
- Mourning a comrade fallen in combat.
That's old cinema cliché. Deacon is very soft compared to those, he treats his woman like a princess, while the old machos, including classic characters like Indiana Jones or James Bond, treat women like tissues. Indiana Jones admits fucking a 15-year-old pupil and then dumping her.
Soleil rouge
Member
Speak for yourself.
Also, I somewhat agree with your final statement. As far as AAA studios are concerned, we won't see that for a while, but I do believe the tide is turning.
The recent massive failures of AAA titles and major successes of games like Wukon is further proof that the gaming audience is roughly the same as it always was. Independent game companies will be eating good for as long as the AAA studios continue to cater to the "modern audience". They'll come around eventually though.
Roberts
Member
Arthur is interesting, because he is complicated and very simple at the same time. Perhaps not the most original character but a gamey anagram of many classic western protagonists/anti-heroes. It was always pleasure to listen to his ramblings and ideas. He was also kind of funny, sometimes.
That dude from DG was simply annoying.
That dude from DG was simply annoying.
NeverYouMind
Member
Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis bucked that trend.
SleepMachine
Neo Member
They are... *da dum tish* Days Gone.
Peroroncino
Member
People sure as shit complained. GAF was riddled with "generic white guy" posts. That is until release when it turned out Arthur is one of the best written protags by R* ever.
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I'm not sure Indy was the classic macho guy. In Raiders he was far more the anti-hero/rogue type than later versions. But yeah, the whole Marion thing was bad, even if you try to push her up to 16 by the time they may have gotten physical, though that stuff certainly does happen (I hear she was initially ELEVEN!! :O) but I think it's also deliberately vague as to what they actually did together. I've certainly had friends younger sisters get very flirty with me to where some of the dialogue from Raiders
taken from https://www.ign.com/articles/indian...s-scene-indy-predator-raiders-of-the-lost-ark) might work even though there was definitely no physical relationship:In the exchange, Marion says to Indy, "I was a child. I was in love." Indy responds, "You knew what you were doing." The vague language carries the possibility of some disturbing history, to say the least.
Allen acknowledged that there are sparse details about Marion and Indiana's past, but said her own understanding of the situation was it being "quite innocent"
"I think I say I was 16. I don’t know," Allen said. "That’s always what I imagined is she was 16, he was 26. And he was her father’s student. And it’s left very mysterious."
"We don’t even know what it is," Allen continued. "What’s great about it is we don’t know what the circumstances are. So she obviously cared deeply for him. He may have cared for her, too. But, in the end, [he] decided it was a dangerous situation and he didn’t want to be involved. I mean, I guess, when something is as vague as that, you can color it any way you want to color it. I’ve tended to color it, sort of, that it was quite innocent."
I do think that exchange has hampered any real attempt to have a "young indy" reboot covering that time period though. Indy the selfish bastard is not something Disney is interested in and even the books set around that time soften him considerably.
HogIsland
Member
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cinnamonandgravy
Member
because outrage's mostly a fad
why arent people playing with pogs anymore
why arent people playing with pogs anymore
S0ULZB0URNE
Gold Member
Media bias against Sony.
Raven117
Member
None of which was true. He was one of the more layered characters to come out in years.
Raven117
Member
Deacon may not be Arthur (and none are John), but Deacon is a much more complex character that folks give him credit for.
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Heimdall_Xtreme
Hermen Hulst Fanclub's #1 Member
He has tattoos.I do find it interesting that the discourse around Days Gone was Deacon was another "gruff white male" protagonist. It permeated through the discussion of the game from the beginning and even IGN mentioned it in their review..
although i remember their was never really any criticism about this for RDR 2 and Arthur who by all intends and purposes was another "gruff white male"
why was it different
Arthur, No.
Sushi_Combo
Member
Was already fatigued by the amount of Zombie games were coming out. Tried it a few times it never stuck with me.
digdug2
Member
To be completely fair, the beginning part of the game was an absolute slog. The game had some pacing issues throughout... and the first part of any game should NEVER have pacing issues. It's an action/adventure game, so let your players actually experience some adventure from the get-go.
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