-not a game for coomers and gooners as many have said !!! fr though i have seen lots of both pos and neg attention being given to this game in that regard and in a way i do absolutely understand the negative reaction to it. however idk it’s all mostly in the background and in the advertising,, i think my politics and opinions on womens bodies and issues tend to lean more radfem than anything else (tho not in a scary or bad way bc like lmfao look at the site im on yk) and i dont have much to say about the treatment of women in this game. obv it’s shitty that in 2024 a game that’s more than a one handed type of thing has to be sold as such but that’s more to do w where we’re at a society and culture lol the word society being said earnestly. but this is not a game that’s turning any straight man into anything he’s not already + the game never treats womens bodies as commodities or objects but obv straight men will see it as such. the story never treats womens pain in a overtly sexual way and while theres def weirdo type men that’ll see women being violent and having violence done onto them and be gross about it, the narrative of the game and the framing of bodies in these scenes is never truly gross or objectifying. idk idk TnA exists and it’s a fact and not necessarily smth that’s bad it just usually leads or ties into smth kind of gross and shitty but personally I don’t think so here.
-which is to say i like both the design and characterization of eve!! she’s cute and strong but still obviously can fail and let ppl down and that’s not an especially riveting or new concept but it’s nice ig. love a good dress up sim lol. thought the characters of lily and adam were like genuinely pretty poorly written and consistently boring,, kind of bad designs too. idk idk im not uhh fourteen so marvel type quips rlly do nothing for me but rlly thought all the other npc’s were v charming and lively and well rounded
-tbh it’s okay that the actual dialogue is pretty bad bc i dont gaf about dialogue but i do care lots about like world building and lore and especially vibes and feelings and w all of that the game excels sm. u can feel how real the games world feels and how each individual place in game has a reason for being and it’s own sad shared history w the ppl in these places. very much so fucking w like how hard games in the last decade lean into overgrown mall abandoned core pinterest image search type aesthetic. shit looks lovely and almost always gets across this nice nihilistic and melancholic worldview that maybe I don’t one hundred percent fuck w irl but do in stories about the end of the world.
-been watching lots of anyaustin as of late and find his thorough searching of game worlds and lesser explored areas of those worlds endlessly fascinating!! this game is like full of unexplored and uninteresting areas. every inch of the world of the game exists as a simulacrum of a real worlds pain and sorrow and regret. everything looks purposeful but also painfully real,, places left in a hurry due to a panic, stores shuttered and places of living abandoned but still furnished. every new area tells a story visually and doesn’t need to or care to explain it to u. <3 seeing a game so thoroughly committed to being realistic in some way break apart in small ways under close examination. lots of smart ppl have said it in more intelligent ways but yeah it is very pleasing to see textureless and flat rocks ur not supposed to jump on or even rlly see off of or above these highly detailed and sort of realistic looking cliffsides. it’s nice to see the bones of a game and the real life work spent on creating them inside the game itself. love how goofy the blood will sometimes look and how shii just clips sometimes.
-don’t usually gaf to do side quests in open world/open world adjacent games but idk feel like I did a vast majority of them here. like 75% or so and not everything has the strongest writing but all the side characters/quest givers do feel like real ppl w issues and problems that u can choose to fix. very rarely is the reward needed or worth it but idk think the places u visit and stories u piece together by doing a bunch of the side stuff is def worth it for ppl that enjoy exploring in games like this. u open urself up to see more unexplored areas by doing all this random content.
-crazy how each new area looks so visually distinct and diff from each other. for a game that very rarely changes up type of gameplay I never felt bored or like I saw everything I needed to see,, always felt like there was something more yet to be seen. don’t even gaf that it’s clear that part of the visual identity for levels in this game are heavily inspired by the resident evil remakes and the avatar films bc what the game does w those areas looks rlly good. there’s also all these beautiful slow moments where ur just meant to chill in the games environments and take it all in and stop the bloodshed and action for a sec and appreciate the art of every abandoned building or the backgrounds of shops or whatever. to me the best and most remarkable and memorable moments are when the game takes itself very slow and just wants to invest and immerse urself in what the game is doing.
-most side quests narratively are about finding some sort of closure. it’s a bleak world and most side content begins w suspicion of death and ends w confirmation of a death. ur usually tasked w either finding out what happened to ppls loved ones or finding a keepsake belonging to the loved one. it’s incredibly repetitious but i still found myself consistently doing these types of quests bc i wanted to see a good ending for these npcs and i think that says sm about how excellent the world building is and how real some of the stories feel. I loved these stories of false hope and delusions that these characters needed to rely on to simply keep surviving in this world.