Jake

Idle Thumbs 212: DMCA Dad

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I love the idea of Brothers. The game itself not so much, for reasons already covered here.

I think the reason it gets such praise is because it's a really polished game with the kind of personal, almost mythical story that you don't see much in such a well put together package. It deserves praise for what it tried to do, but just as much deserves criticism for the ways it could be better. Sadly, I don't think it got much of that criticism.

 

This is how I feel about the game as well. I think it does a lot of things really well, but I couldn't get into the game at all. I thought the music for the game was super heavy handed with how it wanted the player to feel, and that always rubs me the wrong way and makes me feel like the writers haven't really earned the moment they are aiming for (movies are more guilty of this in general, but you see it pop up in games from time to time).

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I liked the giant battlefield from a raw aesthetic sense (which I think I mentioned), but the puzzles with pushing a giant arm to chop off another giant arm were so fucking goofy and video gamey I just started cracking up halfway through it.

 

I think that disconnect comes a lot from the tone of the game, maybe?  Like Trine and Trine 2 are just as guilty of this kind of world design, but they are so delightfully goofy that it doesn't matter. 

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Wow, so much Brothers hate. You guys are nuts about the gameplay, it was incredibly smooth and fun, made me think of the Ubisoft Prince of Persias without all the fighting. Maybe you just have to kind of like that stuff? I can't imagine it's any fun if you don't enjoy things like Another World and Heart of Darkness.

 

Also I found it very clever that you can finish the game with no achievements or trophies whatsoever and that every single one of those are linked to easter egg type stuff. Games in general don't creatively make use of trophies that much. It's just another layer to a game that thinks somewhat differently.

 

If anything since it's one apparently of those must plays regardless of genre, in my opinion it's much less offensive to hide something novel in an action platformer than throwing innovative stories in a FPS staring at a gun all day.

 

I also don't get the criticism with the lack of women and that the women that are in the game are fleeting or evil. It is called Brothers. I know we are all super sensitive to this stuff these days, but you don't need every game to fit the mold. There's no possible way for the damsel in distress trope to ever disappear, it just needs to utilized less. It is still open for utilization.

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I liked Ico and I wouldn't really compare them, even though they're ostensibly similar.

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Honestly, Ico is a clunky mess. I can only give so many points for being created in the PS1/PS2 transitional period. It has a good story and extremely pretty but I don't know how you could possibly say Brothers is in any way less refined in terms of mechanics, control, environments, and traversing. And before anyone implies I'm bad at Ico, I did finish the two hour speed run with 15 minutes left to spare. It's really a game of constant fighting against bad controls and terrible combat so that you can get the goodness at the heart of it.

 

Part of the reason I don't care that much that last Guardian is vaporware is because I don't have confidence in that team to make a non clunky and glitchy game. I don't have Shadow of the Colossus PS3 complete 100% despite having finished my first playthrough in 2012 just because I feel dread imagining myself doing all of the time attacks in order to get all of the objects. Why does a game with fickle controls and momentum have time attacks? Such a bad design decision.

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Wow, so much Brothers hate. You guys are nuts about the gameplay, it was incredibly smooth and fun, made me think of the Ubisoft Prince of Persias without all the fighting. Maybe you just have to kind of like that stuff? I can't imagine it's any fun if you don't enjoy things like Another World and Heart of Darkness.

 

Also I found it very clever that you can finish the game with no achievements or trophies whatsoever and that every single one of those are linked to easter egg type stuff. Games in general don't creatively make use of trophies that much. It's just another layer to a game that thinks somewhat differently.

 

If anything since it's one apparently of those must plays regardless of genre, in my opinion it's much less offensive to hide something novel in an action platformer than throwing innovative stories in a FPS staring at a gun all day.

 

I also don't get the criticism with the lack of women and that the women that are in the game are fleeting or evil. It is called Brothers. I know we are all super sensitive to this stuff these days, but you don't need every game to fit the mold. There's no possible way for the damsel in distress trope to ever disappear, it just needs to utilized less. It is still open for utilization.

 

On the female characters, it doesn't matter that it's called Brothers.  Like, how is that even a defense?  That's somehow justification for an otherwise pretty terrible cast of characters?  Do women not play a significant role in the lives of many boys?  Okay, they can have the damsel trope, but it's also okay that they fridge the mom and use the evil-spider-succubi all in the same story?  That those are the only 3 plot critical females?  I mean, I'm not complaining about a single damsel here, the entire female cast is a trainwreck.  Also, to quote myself from the Brother's thread:

 

There are more plot relevant animals than there are women.  Women are 23 percent of the humanoid characters, and 15 percent of the plot relevant characters if you include animals.

 

Do young boys have more goats in their lives than women?

 

And I've played Another World from start to finish a good 6 or 7 times in the last 20 years, thank you very much.  I own an original PS1 disc version of Heart of Darkness, but have never got around to playing it.

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Ico is by no means a perfect game, but it felt like a much more compelling environment, largely because it didn't feel constructed solely for me to navigate. It just felt so contrived-- which might not be so bad, except the payoff it was contrived to deliver was completely underwhelming.

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it didn't feel constructed solely for me to navigate.

Well I sure don't feel that way. It was still a video game-y ass video game. I can vaguely recall certain scenes (climbing up the long-ass ladder in the tower, walking up a three-tiered thing and fighting shadow things, other junk) and man is it a video game.

 

I like both. You all like one or the other. Where's someone who hates both? Let's get this party started!

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I've never played Ico, but I own it.  I can go bust it out and hate on it real quick if y'all want.

 

 

Also, I meant to add, I think it's important to criticize something like Brothers because it's not obvious low hanging fruit, but it's got the same problems with gender representation that a lot of shitty games have.  It's easy to bag on a GTA or Dead or Alive, because obviously they've got sexist content.  But when a beloved darling of the gaming community basically has the same problems with female characters, it's arguably more important to talk about, because these are the games that almost everyone else is going to give a pass to. 

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Okay I have a serious question actually.

 

Y'all keep saying the mom was fridged. Isn't fridging a thing used to motivate the main character? i.e., revenge or something? Iiiii admit I have a terrible memory, so go ahead and fill in the blank if I'm forgetting something, but as far as I recall, the titular brothers' motivation is entirely to save their dad. I don't even know if the mother dying even served a purpose other than to set the scene that they have no mother.

 

This is not a defense. This is a question. And now I'm going to click "Post" before I bother to go look up the definition of the trope!

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On the female characters, it doesn't matter that it's called Brothers.  Like, how is that even a defense?  That's somehow justification for an otherwise pretty terrible cast of characters?  Do women not play a significant role in the lives of many boys?

 

Not to comment on the game itself, by which I was deeply underwhelmed but which impressed the friend with whom I played it, but this seems like an increasingly common argument against having to bother with appropriate and respectful treatment of a game's peripheral subjects. On the Paradox forums, fans (and occasionally devs) repeatedly counter requests for better or more complete gameplay mechanics for non-European factions with "It's called Crusader Kings II" or "It's called Europa Universalis IV," implying that it's already going above and beyond the call of duty to make the rest of the world playable, forget about interesting. Similarly, people have criticized Mad Max: Fury Road for not being completely about Max, as if the title is a promise or something.

 

Honestly, I don't understand it at all. It's not like an artist painting a portrait just needs to do a good job with the subject's features and then can fuck around with the background. It's not like Dostoyevsky just needs to make the brothers Karamazov believable and interesting while leaving the rest of Russian society to be lazy stereotypes. If you include something in a work, you should care enough to make it good. If you don't care, why is it in your work?

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Okay I have a serious question actually.

 

Y'all keep saying the mom was fridged. Isn't fridging a thing used to motivate the main character? i.e., revenge or something? Iiiii admit I have a terrible memory, so go ahead and fill in the blank if I'm forgetting something, but as far as I recall, the titular brothers' motivation is entirely to save their dad. I don't even know if the mother dying even served a purpose other than to set the scene that they have no mother.

 

This is not a defense. This is a question. And now I'm going to click "Post" before I bother to go look up the definition of the trope!

 

It sets up the trauma for the younger brother which explains why he can't swim.  He was so traumatized by watching his mother drown, that he's terrified of water.  And thus his fear is broken by having witnessed his brother get murdered, somehow. 

 

Given that the only real purpose of her death is a) harm a male protagonist and B) create an obstacle for him to eventually overcome, I'd say it counts as fridging. 

 

 

Not to comment on the game itself, by which I was deeply underwhelmed but which impressed the friend with whom I played it, but this seems like an increasingly common argument against having to bother with appropriate and respectful treatment of a game's peripheral subjects. On the Paradox forums, fans (and occasionally devs) repeatedly counter requests for better or more complete gameplay mechanics for non-European factions with "It's called Crusader Kings II" or "It's called Europa Universalis IV," implying that it's already going above and beyond the call of duty to make the rest of the world playable, forget about interesting. Similarly, people have criticized Mad Max: Fury Road for not being completely about Max, as if the title is a promise or something.

 

Honestly, I don't understand it at all. It's not like an artist painting a portrait just needs to do a good job with the subject's features and then can fuck around with the background. It's not like Dostoyevsky just needs to make the brothers Karamazov believable and interesting while leaving the rest of Russian society to be lazy stereotypes. If you include something in a work, you should care enough to make it good. If you don't care, why is it in your work?

 

I can't believe I'm about to reply to a post that includes Dostoyevsky and CK2 with Borderlands...but if you want an example of some care going into the secondary cast, it's hard to find a better example in gaming right now than the entire BL series.  I'm floored by the attention, thought and detail that goes into a pretty good chunk of their secondary cast. 

 

And now I'm going to go think long and hard about how I reached a point in my life of drawing a parallel between Dostoyevsky and a video game with midgets riding alien ape-boar-things.

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Oh yeah forgot that was the reason he was unable to swim.

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Although you're certainly reading his overcoming his fear in the most cynical way poSsible, geez...

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Although you're certainly reading his overcoming his fear in the most cynical way poSsible, geez...

 

:)

 

That game super duper annoyed me.  I wasn't going to talk about it again at all after I said everything I had to say in the original thread on it...but then I couldn't stop myself.  Some days I have poor impulse control.

 

Edited to add: Part of my annoyance with it is that I was really looking forward to it, and the hype around it only made that worse.  So when I finally played through it, there was a double blow of both too high expectations plus all the problems I did have with it. 

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IIRC ghost-mom also appeared with ghost-bro at the climactic moment to help him overcome his fears or whatever.

 

Mostly I just would have rather played the spider girl eating obnoxious generic boys than played the obnoxious generic boys killing a spider girl even after she was crippled and unable to fight back.

 

Edited to add: Part of my annoyance with it is that I was really looking forward to it, and the hype around it only made that worse.  So when I finally played through it, there was a double blow of both too high expectations plus all the problems I did have with it.

Also that.

 

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If it helps Twig I had problems with both Ico as well as Brothers, but for different reasons.

Ico was mostly the usability, and frustration. I fought smoke stuff too often and Yorda was just that burden I had to carry all the way.

They actually do both have problems with female tropey representation too. I guess Ico gets slack for... Having less characters?

I would say Ico was better though.

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Also, I meant to add, I think it's important to criticize something like Brothers because it's not obvious low hanging fruit, but it's got the same problems with gender representation that a lot of shitty games have.  It's easy to bag on a GTA or Dead or Alive, because obviously they've got sexist content.  But when a beloved darling of the gaming community basically has the same problems with female characters, it's arguably more important to talk about, because these are the games that almost everyone else is going to give a pass to. 

It's because you seem to think every game must hit some kind of percentage. It's just never gonna happen with every game. I don't feel like in Brothers it necessarily means much on how the gender is distributed. Basically what's important is the two boys. You can't expect every game to fit this mold and games have been coming more diverse than years. It's not always a bad thing. As far as I can tell nothing harmful was done except it didn't conform to a checklist. Almost all of the genders could have been anything and the townspeople and such seem mostly arbitrary. Are you mad the reason that the younger brother is afraid of water because someone drowned and it could have been written as a fear of some sort without involving a death or are you mad it's just because it is a woman? If it were the dad would it have been A-OK? The dad is the damsel in distress the whole game and is the motivation for the adventure, not the mother. Should the dad have drowned and the mother played the damsel in distress role? Is that going to patch up the fridge problem (even though that is not the motivation for the adventure but an aspect of the younger brothers characterization) or is the shorthand of a drowning accident just poor writing to you?

 

It could have been a game about sisters, but I think it should be considered that a part of this probably comes from Josef Fares' own close relationship with his older brother, a leading actor in almost all of his movies and had escaped from Lebanon with him, and so that's probably what he would relate to most.

 

It seems like what people want to fix this is to just redistribute the genders, and since they are so interchangeable that says to me it doesn't say much about patriarchy or gender at all. Even the spider girl didn't say really anything about relationships and it could have been another boy they befriended and it wouldn't have made a difference either.

 

I'm not going to agree about all this stuff as per usual I suppose. I will stick up for the gameplay, it was great fun. The rope swinging stuff was a nice touch that felt very smooth to control. As far as the emotional core not always resonating, I did have problems with this mostly because you are dealing with characters who speak gibberish and the mocap was kind of dumb.

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I think it's important to remember that this criticism is not specifically that Brothers is making mistakes that other games do not, nor is it a criticism that Brothers is out of line, specifically. In a world where stories about sisters having adventures or growing up or grieving or whatever were commonplace, very few people would have a problem with Brothers being about two boys doing things.

 

Unfortunately, saying 'everyone keeps making stories about men and boys and there's very few stories about women and girls that don't box them into fairly boring roles' is too broad and high-level to really be interesting as a criticism, and nor does it say anything about the myriad and creative ways society has found to marginalise female characters.

 

I haven't played the game, and so had to cut my podcast short, but it irritates me that the subtitle is 'A Tale of Two Sons'. That's not a subtitle, that's a lousy rewording of the title. That's like calling the podcast "Idle Thumbs: A Podcast Recorded After Our Thumbs Have Been Engaged".

 

"Polygon: On Media Made Up Of Shapes"

 

"Firewatch: A Tale Of Lookouts In The Forest"

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It's also not about every game hitting a percentage, it's about games as a whole consistently being too far one way, and how often games continue that trend rather than undermine it. The problem is less that Brothers doesn't do good female representation so much as yet again a video game does bad female representation. Brothers is not especially bad, it's another entry on a long list of bad, but that doesn't mean we need to accept the consistency instead of highlighting it when it stands out to us as offputting.

 

Brothers doesn't need to hit a quota but it could've done with paying any amount of attention to the significant focus on gender representation in current media because it made some basic level poor choices.

Making your game have a damsel and evil seductress (as the same person no less) is pretty tone deaf.

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I haven't played the game, and so had to cut my podcast short, but it irritates me that the subtitle is 'A Tale of Two Sons'

Yeah that annoyed me too, which is why I named my review thing the way I did (Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons of the Same Father: That’s What Makes Them Brothers)

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