Volition shutdown. Saints row dev.

[M76]

You can make your character into almost anything, including very not so human looking. Practically every AAA game that gives a gender choice defaults to female these days. Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Valhalla are good examples, despite how absolutely stupid that is given the time frames and settings. Far Cry 6 is another example. If you want to compare which games are more "woke", AC Odyssey is much more so than SR given its historical context and how it takes itself seriously.

The side characters were not good, but not far off from typical AAA games. Of the list of things wrong with the game I would probably place "shirtless NPC" on or near the bottom.

It seems you still misunderstand. The problems is not that the protagonist is portrayed as female. All those games you listed, AC Odyssey, AC Valhalla, even Far Cry 6 (which does have some woke elements to it) I played either as a female or tried both options. This does not make a game woke, even if some zealots would claim so.

Representation in of itself is not enough to make something automatically woke. It is the message that matters. FC6 also has its own shirtless dudebro, plus college student types, plus america bad, plus glorification of violence*, and so on. Assassin's creed games don't have any of this.

*This also needs explaining because some will claim aren't all games doing this, but no. Using violence as a means to achieve the game's goal is not nearly the same as when in game npcs dance on the corpses of fallen enemies and show that they enjoy killing them. Even the saints in SR2-3-4 did not enjoy violence, they were just good at it. It was comically over the top, but not in an evil psychopathic way.

 

[socK]

The female characters in the new ACs are great.

God Almighty the male one in Odyssey looks and sounds like the biggest fucking insufferable douchebag ever created.

You can make your character into almost anything, including very not so human looking. Practically every AAA game that gives a gender choice defaults to female these days. Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Valhalla are good examples, despite how absolutely stupid that is given the time frames and settings. Far Cry 6 is another example. If you want to compare which games are more "woke", AC Odyssey is much more so than SR given its historical context and how it takes itself seriously.

The side characters were not good, but not far off from typical AAA games. Of the list of things wrong with the game I would probably place "shirtless NPC" on or near the bottom.

You fight fuckin Medusas and other mythological shit, throw down in volcanos, and wield a magic spear that whispers sweet nothings directly into your mind which is literally explained as like the 6th sense/why your character has such insanely good intuition in combat.

And that's just scratching the surface of the Greek fever dream insanity that transpires

But the character being female is what pushes it over...

 

[pendragon1]

But the character being female is what pushes it over...

that is not the issue, and he clearly just said so.

 

[1_rick]

that is not the issue, and he clearly just said so.

Coincidentally I watched a video that had a clip from the game today. It featured a guy excited to drive a hybrid (or BEV?) because of the great fuel economy or whatever, and then some approving woman telling him how he was a good boy for thinking of the planet.

I'm going to guess that, to a first approximation, approximately zero criminals of the kind that feature in games like SR and GTA have ever said stuff like that.

 

[Flogger23m]

Representation in of itself is not enough to make something automatically woke. It is the message that matters.

And this is my point regarding those two Assassin's Creed games. There is a whole lot more of that in Odyssey and Valhalla than there is in the SR abomination. A side character not having a job isn't exactly "woke", and the main character can be of any design and said design is canon. It isn't like Ubisoft where they forced the outlandish option as canon in Odyssey and Valhalla.

God Almighty the male one in Odyssey looks and sounds like the biggest fucking insufferable douchebag ever created.

It seemed that way to me as well, but it was just the poor facial animations really. The world artwork was good and even character models were nicely done but facial expressions were not the greatest which would look odd at times.

You fight fuckin Medusas and other mythological shit, throw down in volcanos, and wield a magic spear that whispers sweet nothings directly into your mind which is literally explained as like the 6th sense/why your character has such insanely good intuition in combat.

Lets say we have a movie about an alien invasion, flying saucers come down to Earth and start zapping people. That isn't realistic. Moments later a human baby jumps from its crib and magically flies up into the sky and starts punching through the flying saucers. If it was a comedy, that would certainly be okay. But if the movie was serious in tone it would feel out of place, despite the unrealistic flying saucers. If you make something serious in tone and setting, even with fictional elements, there still needs to be some grounding in reality. The problem with Assassin's Creed games is they are 100% serious, and feared lady viking/Greek warrior who smashes through enemies doesn't pass the smell test.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate had a playable woman, Evie Frye, and she didn't feel out of place for her setting and didn't feel cringe and forced.

Seeing this twig armed woman:

Toss around this muscled meathead like a pillow:

Made me laugh aloud. And if the antagonist makes you laugh, you they screwed up their delivery.

 

[socK]

Yeah dude if I can stomach fist fighting the pope because he wants to awaken the remnants of magic space people who live in a secret vault underneath the Vatican and are actually trying to tell us about a prophecy involving the Earth's magnetic fields inverting and plunging the world into chaos or some bullshit, I can stomach Kassandra being woman sized

 

[M76]

Seeing this twig armed woman:

The irony is that people were complaining that she is too buff and muscular. This just shows that you can't please everyone, but it has nothing to do with woke messaging.

 

[Twisted Kidney]

The irony is that people were complaining that she is too buff and muscular. This just shows that you can't please everyone, but it has nothing to do with woke messaging.

Some people's entire lives revolve around the people they hate.

As for Volition... Anyone that played or even knew about SR 4 and 5 knew that studio was dead. They reused EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. That's a symptom of a company that's running out of resources.

 

[Flogger23m]

The irony is that people were complaining that she is too buff and muscular.

Yeah she looks fine given her role, but is still out of place. Previous Assassin's Creed games had women as playable characters but people didn't have issues with them because of how they were implemented.

This just shows that you can't please everyone,

I wish more games would understand that and stop trying to cater to everyone. The best games know their audience and design a specific type of game.

As for Volition... Anyone that played or even knew about SR 4 and 5 knew that studio was dead.

SR4 was essentially a DLC for SR3. Then they put out a spin off, and then a poor selling not Saints Row game that was essentially Saints Row. The main question is how did they hold out for so long. Whatever money they had wasn't enough to develop a proper game.

 

[JustinCorrigible]

Kulas left in 2011 around or after SR3rd, and then the THQ bankruptcy, their output after that shows how directionless that left the studio. I didn’t like anything after SR3rd.