We get it, but chill on the “representation” in video games

Sorry, my mistake, not fragile masculinity, this thread is about white Cis males explaining to gearbox that they’re doing representation wrong…

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Wait, it’s an issue that Borderlands supports inclusivity?

Torgue and Hammerlock are both gay. Axton, Gaige and Moxxi all are Bi. So is Anthena and Janie. Tina is Bi curious. Ellie, Lilith and Maya are all strong hetero female badasses.

Also, plenty of racial diversity.

And there’s still plenty of room for straight, cis male, testosterone fueled, cro-magnon, alpha-male shenanigans.

This is a bad thing? What’s the complaint again? Get over it.

https://www.gearboxsoftware.com/2013/08/inside-the-box-inclusivity/

No, by and large that argument hasn’t been made, at least not in the unsubtle way suggested.

And I haven’t seen anyone on this thread actually criticising other games that don’t represent minority identities. I.e., no one’s really claimed that games shouldn’t just represent cis males. Vicious attacks on Call of Duty or Half Life haven’t gained much traction.

And in fact, the OP doesn’t ask for any particular kind of representation; their complaint that certain groups are represented too much.

Personally, as a straight woman who likes indulging in shallow cliches of all kinds, I absolutely love “matcho soldier” types, and CoD is very satisfying on that front for me (although in fairness there’s an awful lot of barely disguised homoeroticism in that series), as is Zane, and even Axton… I’m glad Borderlands has more diversity as well though, for plenty of reasons, including that I think it makes for a much more interesting story to vary it up a bit.

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Vaughn : idiot bandit leader in his underwear and cape
Rhys : corporate leader and established idiot who can’t take 2 steps without falling on his face

minor spoiler

Hammerlock and Jakobs: really showed Aurelia what’s what when they both got shot

don’t do this one unless you are at the end of the story

Typhon: funny set up, where you expect to get a nathan drake type character, but instead get danny devito

With Roland and Scooter dead, Brick and Mordecai showing up and leaving so fast they probably have whiplash, there isn’t any good, non-joke, competent NPC male in the story, with the exception of…whoever it was in the Jakobs area. can’t remember his name. He’s also present for about 2 minutes before moving on. I’m sure it was a matter of time before he got egg on his face

That’s quite the spin on the OP. He is actually asking for more inclusivity by including a strong straight male character somewhere in the game.

I say this out of genuine interest, not trying to make a point - what would count as a ‘good’ and badass male character? I guess, non-corporate, makes no mistakes, likeable to all?

I honestly can’t say I’m concerned? The game has been out not quite one week and we still have some number of DLCs to go. Plus I’m not counting out other games in the series as a whole, because (1) it’s Borderlands (so they all count) and (2) who knows who will appear/reappear in the DLCs? We have Krieg, Axton, Salvador, and Timothy the Doppelganger somewhere. Plus August from TftB (+/- on him - not exactly the sharpest).

So maybe wait and see?

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I don’t agree (although I’m still on Eden 6 at the moment). There are plenty of males who kick ass (is zero male?), and plenty of females that don’t. It would also be a fairly dull game if the NPCs did all the work, so none of them from what I’ve seen tend to do much of the heavy lifting.

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Personally, I’m glad they will at least revive you though!

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I also haven’t seen Troy mentioned in this thread, but he’s hardly a wall flower.

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this here is straight up ignorant and bigoted. Fl4k is a robot, and Fl4k was not programmed as a male or female.

she is military. long hair gets caught it stuff, and since she is in a mech, if her hair gets stuck, its gonna hurt.

they represent a lot of straight people. they also represent a few of the LGBT+ community. you just need to grow up and accept people

Male character who follows traditional masculine archetypes that most every male falls under in real life would be my guess as to what he is wanting.

What are these? Again, a genuine question, I’m not sure.

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the guy who makes every girl swoon, has big guns, smokes cigars, drinks alchohol.

Definitely the description most males fall under :stuck_out_tongue:

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Look at most forms of mythology and you will see the major archetypes. The king, or just ruler, the warrior, the loving father, the intellectual, etc. etc. Most male leads in movies play one of these types of characters as well. There isn’t really a Morgan Freeman type intellectual or a Bruce Willis type warrior male character in BL3.

Personally I’m fine with it, just trying to get to the meat and potatoes of his argument.

A better way of putting it would be a male role model. Maya and Lilith are definitely female role models, but there just really isn’t a male role model.

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That seems like a weak argument. The rest of the games are still canon, just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there?
If there were no strong female characters, and there were a handful that were damsel’s in distress 90% of the time there would be an uproar about the portrayal of females in video game. If Lilith and the other female leads were (for whatever reason) absent, and the story was a sausage fest of masculinity, you wouldn’t say “oh lilith and maya exist in the universe, so don’t worry about it”

Assuming that people who feel representation is skewed here must be White/CIS/Male. :unamused:

Odin was angry, paranoid and generally more of a danger to things himself (the amount of self-fulfilling prophecies he caused).
Zeus caused most of his troubles by screwing anything with a pulse.
Kronos was paranoid of dying so ate his own children, which Kronos fathered with Rhea (his sister)

From that I get you’re saying men are Angry, Paranoid, Sex-crazed, incestuous maniacs?

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by “most” you mean the cherry picked ones?

Yes, absolutely those are in fact different types of archetypes. You also skipped Hercules, Jesus, Thor, and a large swath of others. Also note that like most people in real life, the ones you listed fall under more than one archetype.

I said I’m not counting them out, meaning that I am not discounting or ignoring them - so the opposite of what you understood me to say.

Odd thing - in TftB Vaughan actually became pretty competent as the story progressed. His current incarnation seems a little at odds with how I remember him from the end of Tales.