Wonder Woman (again!)

That's right. There's a new Wonder Woman film out. And if there is anything that's going to get me back on this unfrequently updated blog, it's gonna be Wonder Woman!

I'm gonna handle this like most review podcasts I've encountered, by saying as much as I can without spoilers first, and then dive into Spoiler territory. There will be appropriate warnings.

So first off: I enjoyed WW84. It's a stand up superhero film, and I genuinely enjoyed watching it. I was able to watch it at home, on HBO, with my sister and mother. We had a good time. But this film, unlike the previous Gal Gadot-Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman (2017), was not life-altering. It was good, it was not phenomenal. And even as a film, it had flaws.

I think WW84 fell to the same problem that most superhero sequels do - it got over ambitious. With the Origin Story out of the way, it's now time to flex, and complicate the world. Weirdly, though, WW84 also suffered in a way that not many superhero films do - instead of over-preparing for the follow-up third film, WW84 shoved WAY too much into it's third act, instead of exercising the freedom that an expected sequal can bring. So yes. A lot of the problems with WW84 are structural, and plot-pacing problems. My sister really pointed this out to me well when she said (paraphrase), "I was with it for act 1 and 2, but then the 3rd act started... and then the 3rd act started... and then the 3rd act started again. There were like. 3 different times where you're sure it's the 3rd act now. 3 different emotional climaxes."

Unfortunately, the plot structure (which might have been fixed with some editing, and some willingness to cut content) aren't WW84's only flaw. And I do have trouble with the writing. Some of this has been well pointed out by recent articles from Vox (here) and Polygon (here), and one more I read and can't find... Anyway, in my mind it boils down to this: The Diana of WW2017 had one thing in spades: Conviction. She knew that she would save the world, and that the world needed saving. Even when no one believed her. She was genuine and earnest, and she was not undercut by humor or ever belittled. The Diana of WW84 is more... messy. She second guesses herself, she hesitates, etc, and not in ways that are healthy. Ways that just seem... unlike her. And unfortunately, this attitude of hesitation has an effect on the rest of the film, compiling it's already unfocused, scattered storytelling.

Alright, I tried not doing spoilers but I don't think I can hold this up. Here comes the Spoiler Warning for WW84 for all the following:

Ok, so. The plot of WW84 in a nutshell: There is a magic object made by a trickster god that will grant your greatest wish (or whatever wish you express while holding it) but at a price - one of the stone's choosing. Diana and Dr Barbra Ann Minerva both wish upon the stone. Diana wishes for her man (Steve Trevor) back, and Dr Minerva asks to be Cool Like Diana. (This happens after they go on a date). Then our resident bad guy Pedro Pascal (Max Lord) has a balls-to-the-walls idea of wishing to himself become the stone! And gains the ability to grant wishes and take what he wants in return - honestly did this man ever watch Aladdin? He clearly didn't see the ending with genie jafar. Anyway. So Steve comes back by magic-possessing a man which is a totally fine and normal thing to do. Diana is confused but HAPPY! But also concerned because that means the stone is real and holy shit Max Lord has the stone that's bad. Then Lord uses the store to wreck havoc in Egypt. Diana saves the day but is injured and realises she is losing her powers! Steve realises it's because of her wish. They go to investigate. Turns out, the only way to destroy the stone and undo it's effects is for everyone to renounce their wishes - which would mean Steve "dies" again. Diana refuses and says there must be another way. Dr Minerva, on the other hand, freaks out that they are even trying to destroy and undo the stone - which has made her badass, and popular. Also, Max Lord is now causing HAVOC as he grants people wishes willy-nilly and everyone is on the verge of nuclear war. So that's a thing. (Oh I forgot there's this whole side-plot where Steve steals a plane that Diana turns into an invisible jet because she has that magic now, and they talk about flying. Spoilers, Diana learns to fly later. It's legit.) Ok so Diana, Steve, Lord, and Lord's new defender, Dr Minerva, have a big show down at the white house, and Diana loses big time. Turns out wishing to "be like Diana" gave Barbra super powers. In the ensuing chaos, Steve finally convinces Diana to let him go. It's super sad, because as Diana says "can't I just have this one thing?" like for real. Anyway, Diana finally grows up and makes her hard choice and leaves Steve behind for good. She gets her powers back, and faces off against Lord, who is in the middle of a planet-wide wish-granting frenzy. He uses the "price" of each of these wishes to make himself and also Dr Minerva more powerful - fully transforming her into the Cheetah. Diana shows up. She has cool armor. She and Cheetah have a weirdly areal battle that ends with Diana electrocuting (but not killing!) Cheetah after Cheetah refuses to renounce her wish. Then she goes to confront Lord but can't physically attack him because Plot - I mean because Chaos Wind?? He refuses to renounce his wish, so Diana uses her lasso of truth to speak not only to him but to the whole world, telling them that only they can save themselves by renouncing their selfish wishes and embracing the truth of the world before them - something Steve told her to do. They all do, including Max Lord, after he is confronted by the true reality of how he is endangering his son - a son he has convinced himself that he has been helping in his struggle for power, but is actually harming. The world is saved. Tada!

Wow! That was a lot. Ok time for some analysis.

So there are several major problems I have with the plot of this film. I'm going to try and list each of them I see, along with how I would have fixed them.

The first is, as I said before, structural. What is the emotional climax of this film? Is it Diana leaving Steve? is it her having to harm Cheetah? Is it her impassioned plea for the citizens of the world to save themselves? If the first, why does it happen so early? But if not that one, why... just why? This film also has WAY too much going on in it, especially with both Max Lord and also the Cheetah.

How would I have fixed this? I would have changed the pacing of Cheetah's character arc, and also the setting of Diana's leaving Steve. I actually would have treated this as a Cheetah origin story which I would NOT have resolved for the end. It would have been a perfect set up for a 3rd film. Maybe Cheetah is the only person who refuses to renounce her wish - and goes off into hiding, for Diana to track down later. I also would have brought Steve TO the confrontation with Lord, and also would have actually nixed the entire second Diana v Barbra fight (or changed it significantly - more on that). 

So the next, problem, wrapped up in the solution to this one, is a problem in writing. While WW84 has a message throughout - that we should not allow our wish for a better world cause harm to the one we live in, or blind us to the truth and beauty we already possess - it does seem to forget it's themes - the themes of all good Wonder Woman stories; truth, and compassion, and sacrifice. In specific terms, what this leads to is a real under-use of resources. I've seen this in DC films a LOT. There is a solution sitting right there, but that would mean we don't get a big huge fight scene, so we're not going to do it, not matter how well it would work thematically.

How I would have fixed this is allllll to do with the Golden Prefect. That's Diana's Lasso of Truth. So in the film Diana "loosing her powers" is rather nebulous. She just gets... sloppy. Still super strong but not as strong as she was. She gets hit with a bullet and is actually hurt. And stays hurt. She looses her grip on her lasso at an important moment. She's still super fast but not as fast as she needs to be, etc. Now, if this was a whole plot point about Diana learning more of what it's like to be human, than bring it on. But it's not played that way at all. What I would have done instead is to slowly and then all at once at a critical moment taken away one specific power - her lasso. Could Wonder Woman still save the world without her lasso? Yes, of course. Would she still be Wonder Woman? Maybe not. Not only would this deprive her of an extremely useful physical tool, it would bring rounf the theme very powerfully: Diana has lost her grip on, and lost the aid of, Truth with a capital T. The Lasso, for lack of a better word, denies her. This would have been a stark, devestating moment of realization, and a much better kick in the pants to get her on the right path again than the vauge "little bit weaker" that we got. It also would have made the third act much more powerful for my second part of this fix-it fic:

Step two: USE the lasso! My god the entire time Diana and Cheetah were fighting their stupid flying electric fight I was yelling at the screen, "Your lasso is RIGHT THERE" Diana never once uses this lasso to actually bind anyone or confront them to Truth. She never even tries. In my version of this story, Diana and Cheetah's finaly engagement would be an attempt by Diana to use the Golden Prefect on Barbra, to remind her in an emotional moment of the Truth that she was a good, worthwhile person BEFORE she became a magical badass or a cat monster. Diana would have bound herself to proclaim this, and bound Cheetah as well. Then, to continue the plot outlines above, this would, heartbreakingly, not have worked, and Cheetah would run away.

I also read an opinion in a piece I can no longer find about how the message of WW84 seemed confused in that it punished Dr Minerva for wanting to be like Diana - when the whole point of Wonder Woman is to inspire women to be more like Diana. I agree with this, and would have liked to have seen it addressed by the woman herself - it is not bad that Barbra wanted to be more like Diana. Her end was good. It was the means she got wrong. She also blinded herself to the good parts of the person she already was. She can still deny this, but addressing it would clear the air for the viewer and the message of the film. Diana needs to be affirming, not just pleading in this moment. Diana needs to show that she loves Barbra - and while it could be, this doesn't need to be romantic. Diana loves everyone. 

One of my favorite uses of the Golden Prefect in the comics is from "The Lies", in which Diana binds herself to speak truth to herself. This, too, could have been a really powerful moment - I would have actually had Steve do it. Have Steve bind Diana with her own lasso to speak the Truth - that she knew what she needed to do, which was sacrifice Steve to save the day. (I know I said she lost power of the lasso earlier. Maybe it'll work for Steve for this moment, idk).

I think this would have made a better film. Now let me be clear: I like the film we got! It's good. I just thing it could have been better - in pacing, writing, and thematic elements. I would have put the use of the Golden Prefect at the heart of Diana's struggle, and would have let the Cheetah's plot go unresolved. It would still function as the odd rom-com it is, and all of the plot beats with Max Lord would be the exact same. (He still gets off way better than he did in the comics!)

Unless....

Unless you come with me on an even wilder ride. Are you ready for a true AU? OK so basically my only critique of Wonder Woman 2017 was it's over-reliance on Diana's focused love for Steve Trevor. Now don't get be wrong. I love Steve. I ship it. But I find Diana at her most powerful when she is driven by her Love for humanity writ large, and think that the climax of that film could have just as well ended with a king of flashback of all of the normal human people she helped that would be crushed by Ares' continued war. Instead of focusing only on her loss of Steve.

Let's continue that on to WW84. So Diana starts this film several decades after Steve's death, still actively mourning him. And this is something I want to feel sympathy for but just... can't. In the light of how much more Diana has to mourne, the loss of one man - even a man she loved - seems a bit pale. This is even more emphasized but he start of the movie, which is a scene from Diana's childhood in Themyscira.

Sure, Diana lost Steve. But Diana also lost, in the following years, every single other one of her friends (or most of them). But do you know what else Diana lost in the first film? Literally everything. Her mother. Her sisters. He home. He way of life. Her world. Everything. Diana gave up everything to come and help Steve, and help the world. And then she lost him too. So while I get Diana's whole "Can't I just have this one thing?" And I get why the studio chose for that one thing to be Steve, if *I* were writing this film, the One Thing I would have Diana wish for? The thing that could cause utter chaos in the world?

I would have Diana wish to be back in Themyscira.

Great goddesses, can you imagine a movie like this??? Diana, caught up in a lie version of her homeland - maybe even one where Robin Wright (I mean Antiope) is still alive. The Amazons would be overjoyed and terrified to see her - they would all take a side on whether she should stay or she needed to go. She would have to make a terrible choice. But she would see the world burning, and have to choose humanity again - choose to leave her mother again - choose to leave it all.

You could also go a route where instead of Diana just being whisked off away from the further clutches of the Big Bads, she accidentally wishes Themyscira into Man's World, revealing their secret and endangering everyone. Or worse - make it all an illusion, not the real Themyscira at all, and let Diana discover this too late.

Is all of this inspired by the plot of "The Truth" comic? Yes, it absolutely is. But mostly because I think Diana's choice to be banished from Themyscira is by far the most powerful in her story. Everything after that is just follow-up. Diana binds herself to the world of men - a damaged, ugly, powerful, wonderful, beautiful, terrible world.

Let's be real tho what I really want is more interaction between Diana, Antiope, and Hippolyta. Please.

So yes, how I would have written this movie? Have Diana still be morning the loss of her world, and not the loss of her lover. Have her still be having to remind herself - even after all this time, old habits die hard - of how to act in the human world. Have her be a shining beacon of Amazon light (That Dr Minerva would be jealous of and EXTREMELY interested in). But have her also lose the benefit of the Prefect. Challenge her right to claim Truth. And have her submit to binding herself to bring that truth back. Steve could still be involved in this plot, actually. Perhaps he's still the one to wake her up to do what is needful.

In ANY case. WW84 is good. But it also feels like a lot of wasted potential. The plot is convoluted, the pacing is off, the theme comes and goes, and Diana just seems... off. She lacks the conviction that made me fall in love with her. The film feels unfocused, kind of like Diana herself seems unsure.

If you haven't yet.... I highly recommend the first 4 volumes of the WW Rebirth comic series; "The Lies", "Day One", "The Truth", and "Godwatch". Really I cannot recommend them enough. If you want good Diana and Cheetah content, if you want good Diana and Themyscira content, if you want good Diana and Steve content, if you want good Wonder Woman content! Please read these four volumes. You can borrow my copies! Please.

I hope this post didn't come off as too negative. (Some things I liked: watching Barbra go through the stages of becoming Cheetah, even if I have some qualms about it, Max Lord's humanization and the whole plot with his son (would have been cool if the kid had met Diana, bring those two plots together), the 80s aesthetic (tho lacking in 80s music!), Steve being Steve (tho why did he have to possess a guy? just have him be here by magic. And also the after credits scene, and the accompanying story in film.

Thanks for reading, friends! I hope that you enjoyed WW84, and that you enjoyed reading my critique. I certainly enjoyed watching and writing it.

Peace!

R

A Toast to the Crew of the Good Ship Aurora

It's time to talk about my favorite band.

The Mechanisms.

I think I've mentioned them before on here but it's time to talk about them, because they broke up, and I have a lot of emotions. And because I at this point believe that I will never NOT have a Mechs song stuck in my head ever again.

I found the Mechanisms through Spotify. I had been making a playlist for my D&D campaign about Ragnarok, and so had been listening to a lot of Norse and norse-adjacent music, when a track called "Thor" came up as suggested on my daily whatever-they-call-it. It was not anything like I had imagined it would be. For starters, Odin was a woman? I remember, I was in the car, driving home from... somewhere. I don't remember. The grocery store, I think. And I legit like. my jaw dropped. I found the rest of the album, The Bifrost Incident, and listened in ever increasing awe.

Within the next 24 hours I had listened to all of their albums, and the Bifrost Incident at least three times, I think. I was hooked, bad. And yet, because of the nature of their stories (The blood, the violence, the horror...) I was a bit hesitant to show my friends. That didn't last long, and now you really can't get me to shut up about it... Honestly I have a lot of sad regrets about the fact that I never got to see them in person. I lived in Oxford for two years without ever hearing about them, and then the summer I move back across an ocean I find them? Really? Anyway...

This blog tho has become a space I enquire stream-of-consciousness into WHY I like the things I like, though, so let's have a go.

 So first off, their music is just flat out GOOD. It's well done, well arranged, well performed, well written. Many of the Mechanisms songs are based on tunes that you already know (but maybe can't place). Folk songs that are deep in the social memory of the western world. Some of them I am still trying to give their proper name! And while it would be easy to see this kind of tune-borrowing as "lifting" or "stealing" or even "lazy", I think it's not. If a tune isn't broken, don't fix it. Their music is all stuck in my head because it's got a strong, good tune, that everyone already knows WORKS. And their use of and re-writing of these classic tunes is exactly what they are doing with their stories! It's a beautiful picture really. A mix-mash of so many references and things. Who ever thought about singing a song about Herakles, turned out in pinstripes and working for a mob boss, to the tune of "Rocky Road to Dublin"? That's brilliant. And the original tunes they come up with are just as good.

But no what really gets me about the Mechs is that they did their homework. They did not just hear a myth once and then decide they can muck it up. There are a few artists I know who do this (Heather Dale comes to mind), and I respect it and like it in a way. But the Mechanisms KNOW the original stories well enough to really really play in that space. I think I could write a commentary on almost all of their songs, pointing out the references made by every line. Especially the Bifrost Incident. And it's only when you KNOW this stuff inside and out that when you change something it stands out as so intentional and creative as to be really enjoyed. The Mechs didn't mess up or mis-remember these myths, they re-wrote them on purpose. And it's so. Good. The Mechanisms are also 100% of the reason I started reading Lovecraft, which has in turn started another project of mine, the longest piece of fiction to which I've ever turned my hand, about pirates in 1720 and Cthulhu.

I thought that this post would be longer than it is, but I've kind of run out of words. All that's left would be for me to gush about each individual story and song. Like? Fairy tales in a bloody war in space? A kidnapped princess made into a clone army? Yes please. Greek myths set in a terrible planet-city where the Olympians are the terrible oligarchs? Yeas PLEASE. A western about King Arthur, Guinniverre, and Lancelot, featuring a trans Mordred, all set on a doomed spacestation in a decaying orbit around a dying sun? YES PLEASE. Ragnarok + Lovecraft + Space Trains? GIVE IT TO ME. All told by a bunch of immortal steampunk space pirates?? Where has this been all my life??!

I've you've got the stomach for it, please check out The Mechanisms on bandcamp. And if you do, please message me. I will talk to you. Extensively. About. Every. Single. Song.
https://themechanisms.bandcamp.com/

Thanks for reading
R

Praise God from whom all blessing flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Far Cry 5 is Bad, actually.

Ok so I know I'm behind the ball on this one - and I am by NO means the first to say any of this. But I made a facebook post about this, including the preemptive TL;DR "Polygon was right - Beautiful setting, decent gameplay, bad story, cowardly writing". (this includes a reference to Polygon's review of the game, which can be found here.) So now it's time to write the post that will end up being too long to read...

In short, I think the story of Far Cry 5 was poorly constructed, poorly concluded, and in a sense even cowardly. Especially compared to other Far Cry games. For those who don't know the series, they are in a sense adventure stories, or perhaps the same story told over and over again in different settings, and they always involve 1.) LOTS of guns, 2.) An exotic/beautiful local full of wildlife 3.) An absolutely psychotic villain who has taken control of the land, 4.) Some sort of resistance you must help to take back said land. 5.) Hallucinogenic drugs. Which, when combined with the aforementioned guns, come to bad results. And 6.) A morally interesting ending offering critique of the player and of the genre as a whole. (Reminds me of Spec Ops: The Line in a way, although it is not as well achieved).

FC5 pits you against a cult, caled the Project at Eden's Gate, who have taken control of and (somehow) sealed off Hope County Montana (a fictional place). The game is open-world, with the world divided into three major regions, with each ruled by a different psychotic leader/family member - John, Faith, and Jacob - and the whole thing under the mystic leader Joseph Seed. When promotional material came out for the game showing the use of a lot of Americana and Christian-esque imagery, a lot of people got a bit up in arms about it. But it turns out they really shouldn't have bothered. When I myself first saw FC5's trailer, etc, I thought it was a rather brave step to take a game traditionally set in a fictional and exotic place and set it in America, because it would allow them to stage the same critique they always do, but aim it directly at the far-right. And that's what FC5 could have been. But it's not what FC5 is.

Let's start with this cult. The cult of Eden's Gate is full of the kind of contradictions that make them easy to write off as evil, but the game is written AS IF they have at least a marginally compelling argument and have reason behind their actions. The problem is, they don't - they have reasons, and they have actions, and those two do not line up. The rhetoric and the practices of these villains have no alignment, which both makes them incredible and also lets them borrow imagery but not actually critique anyone. They look nice, but so much of what they do in Joseph's goes against what Joseph preaches. Now this could be seen as a commentary on the church itself, which has both a history of violence and a history of doing things very much in the face of that which they preach. But let me say - if that was the goal, they've done it extremely poorly. Because none of these contradictions are ever called out in fiction. They are not a point of tension for any of the characters or a point of argument - the game writers do not acknowledge them at all, possibly because they don't see the inconsistencies themselves.

It is typical for FC games to critique both sides (the player and villain) - FC4 did this exceptionally well - but FC5 chickens out, and lets one side be the Good Guys, who have a weakness for falling under the magic spell of a drug but are otherwise justified in their Red Blooded American Firearm Militia Patriotism, and even in killing and (spoilers?) torturing their opponents, because they are The Good Guys  Yay America. Speaking of - all of the FC games are set in fantasy places, but most of them are also set in fantasy countries. The bad guys in FC3-4 are a fictional group, but the good guys are a fictional people too. In FC5 the bad guys are fictional, but the good guys are American. But the game doesn't use this to critique America beyond a little friendly ribbing (see: Clutch Nixon), and every "success" screen is celebrated genuinely with American flags and fireworks. The game doesn't say "These type of real people should be critiqued", it says "These types of real people should be celebrated, because they are in the right, especially in comparison to these OTHER guys who really are terrible.". FC5 isn't anti-conservative, anti-christian, anti-republican, or anti-militia. It's actually pro all of those things, because it's created a fictional strawman that makes the far right look like moderates in comparison. Which is. The exact opposite of the kind of critique we need, and the opposite of what it gained controversy for.

The Bad Guys meanwhile commit atrocity after atrocity to justify why you ought to stay and fight them. All this is cut through by monologues from the Big Bad that are both magic (they remove the player from their character entirely) and are supposed to make Joseph sympathetic, I guess? Joseph and Pagan Min (Big Bad of FC4) are both psychotic, and there is in both a break from and noted disjunction between their person and their influence - but Pagan's is the type of break that comes from the privilege of being Above the chaos (a critique of capitalism and class divides), where Joseph's is a mystic break that... i don't know how it should be understood. It breaks from the rest of the game. I got so tired of hearing from him. (Spoilers from FC3, 4, and 5): FC3's turn is that Jason might be just as crazy as Vaas, and that anyone can go mad. FC4's turn is that Sabal and Amita (your allies) are both willing to commit war crimes as much as Pagan Min, and you've advanced as much villainy as you've fought off. FC5's turn is that while what you did was good, and you and your allies were all fighting the good fight, nothing you did mattered in the end, because Joseph's prophecy came true, so really that shows you, doesn't it? It is unconvincing, shoehorned in, and means nothing. There is no critique, just a lot of imagery that makes it FEEL like a critique.

(Oh and as a note - if anyone should be upset and feel targeted by this game it's probably the Mormons/church of latter day saints. Because while you can tell me that every OTHER character is or isn't a rip on some such far right so-an-so, you really cannot argue that the Big Bad Joseph Seed bears no inspiration or purposeful parallel to Joseph Smith. As I said, the critique doesn't land. But still.)

The decision to use a mute/blank slate player character is also infuriating because of how much it doubles down on the developer's care to side-step anything that could merit real controversy. I played the whole game as a woman, and a black woman at that. This had literally no impact on the game. There is no apparent sexism or racism in Hope County, two things which are usually VERY associated with the type of characters found there. Because that would get Ubisoft's hands dirty, I guess. FC3's entire critique of the action genre it was a part of came from watching it's protagonist Jason succumb to addiction - to drugs, to adrenaline, to killing, to power, to fantasy, and to worship. FC5's protag is incredibly stoic (because they are silent), and although they finally express some emotion (fear) before Jacob, they have NO opportunity to offer critique or praise at any time, besides the (spoilers!!) two times you can choose to walk away from arresting Joseph. The player character in FC3-4 both prescribe player reactions and subvert them. FC5 has access to none of this. And that's on purpose, because it's safe.

Outside of these broad accusations, the actual structure of the story also doesn't hold up. This game tried to fit too many cooks in one kitchen. The three sub-bosses, John, Faith, and Jacob, are so jarringly different in their ends and presentations that this is basically three games cobbled together, and  the tie that each of them (especially Jacob) has to Joseph seem quite nominal.  Having the world be open-world also allows the player to tackle these problems in any order. I think I did them in the intended order (John, Faith, Jacob) and I could talk about why I think that order makes the most sense and how the game leads you in that direction. But the fact that I could do them in a different or opposite order is... odd, to say the least. And it doesn't let any of the player's major actions have as much impact on the game as they should.

FC5's devs really narrowed down on it's gameplay, and focused on what makes FC games fun and enjoyable. The gameplay is genuinely good. The puzzles are fun, the world is GORGEOUS, the effort-reward system is well worked through, combat and movement feel fluid, they took out all the gate-locking and made it truly open world. And they let you have and pet a dog, and a cougar, and a bear! I even like several of the characters. It's a good game, as far as a FC style game goes. It took the things that were fun in FC3-4 and did those things, but more, and better.

Story wise tho it's almost the exact opposite. It's like they took everything that made the story of FC3-4 engaging and hard hitting, but then threw all that in the garbage. Either that or they filed it down and padded it so much that it achieved the opposite result. And don't even get me started on the ending. (Spoilers!) The fact that the ending is cut-scene heavy and negates literally all of the player's effort, is neither bold nor good. It's pretentious, disappointing, and infuriorating.

When FC5's promo material came out, it put people at arms. Their marketing team was GOOD. But they mis-sold the game, which failed to live up to any of it's controversy by pulling every punch it could have had, and throwing away any decent discussion it could have prompted. There is potential in FC5's story, but I don't think it ever actually figured out what story it was trying to tell. So it told a bad one.

Don't even get me started on the ending....

Anyway, thanks for reading. It's been a WHILE since I posted on this blog, and I'd quite like to get back to my Mythology series sometime.

I hope you are all healthy, well, and safe during this whole pandemic business, and that you are all taking proper precautions to halt or slow the spread of disease, especially to the vulnerable, are washing your hands, and using your time wisely (more wisely than me, since I've spent about a week mostly playing this bad game...)

As always, Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

R

P.S. Oh one last thing - another really notable absence in this game is the lack of Sex. Like I know that's a weird thing to bemoan, but I think it's highly indicative of American media's and ESPECIALLY American Video Games' 100% acceptance of violence - murder, mutilation, firearm worship, power fantasies, even nuclear force - and willingness to accept drugs, which are both good and bad in this game - alongside the American video games industry's absolue FEAR of sex and nudity. Like sure you can give me a lot of examples of when this has been broken (especially in female character design) and whole games where sex is a huge theme. I mean Far Cry 3 (Spoilers!!!) actually has a first person sex scene in one of it's endings, including a bare chested woman. But really. For how hyper-masculine and Red Blooded American FC5 is, and how it has multiple villains interested in different forms of torture, it's notable that sex - and sexual violence - doesn't come up at all. I'm not complaining. I don't WANT there to be sexual violence in this game. I'm glad there is not sexual violence in FC5. But it does I think shine a light to ask - why are we so accepting of other forms of violence, if we are too scared of this one to even mention it in a game?

And even more so with nudity. Villains who brutally mutilate corpses or still-living victims and display the bodies, or worse? Fine. A penis? Absolutely not. How dare you. Totally reprehensible, cannot be shown. (boobs are ok tho, apparently. There aren't any in FC5 but just in general you see more in games). Talk about double standards, on so many levels! I think this is another thing that made using a blank-slate character a "safe" choice for FC5. Because this would present really differently for a female character than a male character. That said, I think the game is designed for a male character through and through. Which sucks, btw. One more thing the games industry has been cowardly about; creating games where you have no choice but to play as a woman. There are loads where you have no choice but to play as a man, and a great number where you can choose male or female. There are very few where you can be anything other than a man or a woman (genderfluid, etc), and none that I know of where you must play someone of a non-traditional gender. But there are also sadly only a few where you must play as a woman, and where the whole game is designed for you to do so.