(This is the second part of my analysis on what would a playable version of the character Holst Goneril from Fire Emblem: Three Houses look like. Please refer to the first part elsewhere in this blog before continuing here).
So now that we know how much Holst has grown, how about we see his actual bases? From level 1, Holst would have presumably have a base total of 107. Where did I get that number? Why that’s the sum of Jeritza’s stats if you took his level 27 bases and used his growth rates to level down his bases to how he would look if he joined as a level 1. So, how would we allocate this 107 base stat total? By performing a pen and paper simulation. Specifically, I made tables comparing Nader the Undefeated to Holst and tried to deduce what stats would Holst need to confidently defeat Nader. As an equaliser to Nader's Aurora shield (which removes the triple effective damage of bow attacks against him while he is flying) and his Defiant Avoid skill (when his health is below a quarter of his total, his Avoid score increases by 30), I gave Holst his Goneril Guardians at the middling battalion level of 3 and equipped him with his Freikugel to trade blows with Nader's Silver Axe. With the aforementioned inventory, along with abilities that made Holst better at swinging, hitting and damaging with his axe (Weight -3, Axe Prowess Lv. 5, Axe Crit +10 and, thanks to War Master, Axefaire and Crit +20), I devised that to avoid having to worry about Nader becoming hardier to hit at lower health, Holst would need to strike him down in one hit with Freikugel's crest based combat art, Apocalyptic Flame, which with its extra +15 might and +20 hit (as well as all prior mentioned boosts), Holst would only need a base Strength of 17 to instantly drop the Wyvern Lord down to 0 and 11 Dexterity to turn a 89% chance to hit (which is really over 97% chance when you consider the series' True Hit calculation) into a 100% chance. As such, without trying to load Holst in such a way his stats would be infeasible outside of this one specific scenario, I distributed the 107 base total to give us a Holst with the following total stats: HP = 31 + 22 = 53 Str. = 20 + 26 = 46 Mag. = 5 + 6 = 11 Dex. = 11 + 20 = 31 Spd. = 12 + 14 = 26 Lck. = 5 + 4 = 9 Def. = 10 + 20 = 30 Res. = 4 + 12 = 16 Cha. = 9 + 22 = 31 So, with these stats, skills, abilities, classes, battalion and even a minor crest with a 30% chance to negate counterattacks when using a combat art, would I have wanted this Holst to be added into Verdant Wind? No. Don’t get me wrong, this thought exercise was a fun and novel “what if” to compliment the many artists giving Hilda’s big bro a face, but I feel like the intent behind Holst being this distant commander that we never see helps lend some sense of scale that works pretty well to Fodlan’s world building. As cool as seeing Holst may initially be, I feel like actually having him in combat ruins some of the appeal of the distant big good guy, not to mention what would you do with supports? Oh sure, Hilda, Balthus and Byleth are obvious but is that it? Truth be told, had they not already designed Judith the way they did as an NPC (having her join the battlefield in the exclusive Lord class with an NPC only personal skill "General"), I would have been far more accepting in letting you have her join as the timeskip auto-recruit of Verdant Wind, least her background would actually give us a chance to know Claude’s real name in game! Had I the chance to REALLY reinvent Verdant Wind from the “Silver Snow, featuring Claude from the Golden Deer house” we got however, I think it might be fun to turn someone else into an auto-recruit for Verdant Wind. Sure, the more logical option would be Judith, but I would be a liar if I said I didn’t have an interest in a rather wild card option in the enemy unit Acheron. I may explain my reasoning in a later post but, suffice it to say, it would definitely be novel for the Golden Deer.
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If fans have played “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” for long enough, there is no doubt going to be a bunch of questions that will arise and continue to go unanswered no matter the difficulty you would try to complete it. One of these questions for those of the Golden Deer persuasion no doubt circle around a certain pink haired lady’s big brother. “What does Holst look like?” or “Why do we never hear Holst speak?” are questions that seem reasonable to ask especially in a game where a man with no first name like Count Galatea gets a vocal appearance in a letter during his daughter Ingrid’s supports with Byleth (the player character) but Holst Goneril, the man notorious for frequent letter writing to his little sister Hilda Valentine Goneril? Nothing. As for his looks, well if fan art from websites such as Tumblr qualifies as a viable source, the most consistent thing we can say about how Holst looks is he’s a big, pink haired, cisgendered man. Impressively consistent by fandom standards, but not a perfect description for a notable character design. Between him and fellow non-player character Judith von Daphnel, plenty of players of the Golden Deer’s story path, Verdant Wind, have yearned for their own path exclusive character a la Gilbert Pronislav of Blue Lions' Azure Moon and Jeritza von Hyrm of Black Eagles' Crimson Flower. Judith at least makes appearances in game as an ally unit, meaning we at least know how dexterous the Hero of Daphnel is...but what about Holst? What are Holst’s stats? If a bold modder were to take on the unimaginably lofty task of adding the mighty Duke Goneril to the game as a physical presence, how would he be built? Well, let’s get some scope around this mighty figure. SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 22 OF VERDANT WIND In the lead up to the showdown with the revived Nemesis and his dark 10 Elites, we are told that Holst faced off against the King of Liberation in a battle he knew he could not win, supposedly to hold the big man back to allow others such as Duke Gloucester to retreat, albeit with serious injuries on the miraculously surviving Duke Goneril. So, Holst cannot be stronger than Nemesis, great, we got a roof. And what kind of stats is Serios’ pin cushion sporting, supposing we go for the middle most difficulty setting of Hard? Oh! Oh. Those numbers are big. Well...I guess it makes sense that if Holst was supposedly a figure that dwarfed Hilda’s competence by comparison, he would have some rather inflated stats. But what about a stat floor? Has Holst ever fought a tough opponent and won? Well, yes obviously, but whose the toughest that we have stats for that we know he has beaten? The best I can find would have to be Nader the Undefeated, a presumably legendary Almyran warrior who only saw defeat at Holst’s hands. To try to keep a single line of continuity going, we will only be using the stats of Nader as he appeared in Verdant Wind chapter 18, hard difficulty. Now, presuming Nader has kitted himself up in similar equipment and abilities as he did the day he became the Once Defeated at the hands of Holst, we are dealing with quite a range of stats. Before we touch on other things, I feel I should address a potential question concerning the Nemesis stats. “Nemesis' actual stats are actually much lower when you discount the bonus from the Dark 10 Elites. Would it not make more sense to remove said bonuses to be a more accurate summation of Holst’s stat ceiling?” To that well meaning inquiry, I answer “No”. The bonuses persist so long as the Ten Elites live and given that we never see Nemesis’ army revive lost Elites should you kill any, I feel it is fair to suspect that Holst fought Nemesis at the King’s strongest state as opposed to his weakest. Add on top of that the poisonous swamp that Lamine, one of the aforementioned 10 Elites, is creating and I feel we can deduce that though an impressive combatant, Holst took the questionable strategy of charging at the King himself. Well, we have a scale to work with, now let’s move onto more simple stats for Holst like his Crest. The Fire Emblem fandom wiki seems to suggest that Hilda mentions that Freikugel, the Hero’s Relic of house Goneril was Holst’s blood right inheritance from his father suggesting that the presumably pink haired guardsman of Fodlan’s Locket was a Major Crest of Goneril and I...can’t agree. While the game does make it clear that nobles value the Crests greatly when it comes to demonstrating their familial power, it is not by any means the only factor that determines inheritance and given that Holst was presumably an active soldier when his and Hilda’s father became too old to use Freikugel, it only seems to make sense that the older brother whose going to make active use of it from the word “go!” inherits the family axe versus the younger sister whose about to go to a school far from any known active military campaigns. In fact, I cannot even cite where Hilda makes the statement that it was Holst’s inheritance, as the only time the Freikugel and mentions of Holst’s inheritance seems to list the two exclusively is at the end of Hilda and Cyril’s joint paralogue, “Dividing the World”. Admittedly how Hilda words the matter is vague and I can easily imagine the original Japanese audio made this more clear but for this English speaker, it’s a toss up whether Hilda says Freikugel was part of Holst’s inheritance or a compromised reward on Holst’s part after Hilda refused to accept his entire inheritance. So, does Holst have a crest? I can honestly see it going either way but I settled with saying yes, he has a minor crest of Goneril. The main reason being that it makes greater sense for him to have been elected as a replacement sovereign duke by the Leicester Alliance if he also happened to have a crest, something we are lead to believe is a strong determining factor for whether power is given to someone or not. Thus, for the most powerful position in the Leicester Alliance, it would make sense that the criteria of a crest would be seen as a necessity before someone even as decorated as Holst could be elected to lead as the Alliance’s next sovereign duke. But, the reason I only say minor instead of major is that it otherwise I imagine a majority of the Dukes would not acknowledge Claude von Reigan, a minor crest bearer of Reigan, as a legitimate heir if there was someone with both a stronger history and stronger crest than the recently discovered in Leicester Claude, as opposed to only being vocal opposition of the Reigan family as it was in canon. So what kind of skills would Holst have strengths and weaknesses in? Well let’s get the easiest one out of the way and just say he has no weaknesses. Yeah, it’s a cheat but not an entirely out of canon one given the general’s history of combative achievements even in his early years as a student of Garreg Mach. So I can easily see him rocking 4 skill strengths and no weaknesses. Which skill strengths precisely? The most obvious one is an Axe, the Goneril Hero’s Relic Freikugel is an axe, and at no point in Three Houses can Byleth recruit a unit with a weakness in their original crest’s matching Hero’s Relic weapon type (Lysithea von Ordelia is an exception with her initial weakness in Swords clashing with the Charon Hero’s Relic, Thunderbrand, but given her in narrative reason for this novelty and her budding talent in swords which on cultivation turns into a strength in swords, even that exception can be made to prove the rule). Another weapon skill I feel should be added would be swords in reference to a support conversation between Balthus, Holst's childhood friend and Hilda, his younger sister. The pair reminisce a time when the teenaged Balthus and Holst took down a black beast in a forest when walking with Hilda, after Holst tried to hold the creature off by himself using only a wooden sword. At no other point during this story is another weapon mentioned, nor does the story imply that Holst was working with a handicap due to the weapon being one his isn't strong with (surprising, given it’s made of wood) which suggests to me Holst has to have some justified confidence for using this weapon to protect his precious baby sister. For the last 2 strengths, I would go rather unexpected and say Bows and then Authority. The latter perhaps seems rather reasonable to most, Holst is a known general at Fodlan’s Locket, but why bows? Wyverns. Holst’s duty at his station of Fodlan’s Locket is holding back the waves of Almyran invaders, Almyra has a tradition in rearing and riding Wyverns into battle and being flying steeds, Wyverns produce a natural vulnerability to arrow fire thus, Holst would, if not prior to his enlistment, definitely develop himself as a fairly confident archer to harry down initial swarms to the odd fledgling that draws close to his axe swing. To make the answer to the question of “what would his skills spread look like?” a bit easier, let’s visualize what his class line would be. Obviously, his starting class would be a Noble being the eldest son of House Goneril and as his crest ties him to an axe Hero’s Relic, it would only make sense for him to qualify into a Fighter. The Fighter class gives bonuses to skill experience in axes, bows and brawling, leading us to have many options for his intermediate class. Since we can imagine Holst as being someone with rather formidable strength given Balthus and he downed a black beast without any battalions on hand as teenagers, it seems to make the most sense to give him Brigand, however there’s one weapon that hasn’t been covered yet when it comes to skill experience bonus: swords. So, given that we may not have multiple classes in a single class tier for a recruitable unit, we will need a sword bonus class that compliments Holst’s past established strengths. Interestingly, that would be Archer, as he could qualify for the class with his background in bows from Fighter and get sword bonus to feed into his innate strength in sword skill. The final class I elected to choose would be Hero, as it gives the Verdant Wind cast a unit that is unique from the faculty of Garreg Mach (i.e. doesn’t step on Alois’ toes as your Warrior) while also complimenting his strengths and works with giving Hilda more justification to distance comparisons between her and her brother (“I am not reliable like my big brother, I mean I can’t possibly be! He’s a Hero, and I am just a dainty flower!”). This would mean, at minimum his skills would look like this: Now, if we were to use the suggested level of the final mission for Verdant Wind as Holst’s starting level, we would have ourselves a level 42 unit. That’s a big boy, one who should very comfortably qualify for a Master Class right? Perhaps, the only problem being that as we have set up Holst right now, the closest Master Class he could qualify for would be War Master, which would demand an A rank in Axes and Brawling. I will concede that, at first, I was tempted to just throw Holst’s master class option away as it didn’t seem feasible that he would be practicing punching to such an incredible degree, but then two things happened. 1. I researched Gilbert and Jeritza’s skills Since these two were basically who I was planning to emulate with Holst, it only made sense to me that these two would make good templates, and with them I found seemingly random skill levels without any strength modifier to back it up, and even in some cases such as Jeritza’s authority, a surprisingly high skill rank with a weakness modifier. This meant that in the game’s design, an in character inclination to such strength can justify almost any skill rank. 2. I had tea with Balthus One of Balthus’ tea time conversations covers an occasion where the bragging King of Grappling recounts a time in a Leicester Alliance held fighting tournament that he almost beat Holst. Of course, the nature of the tournament was not specified, whether it was an unarmed tournament or a joust or whatever the Leicester Alliance would qualify as a “fighting tourney” in the words of Balthus, however given that one of Balthus’ interests is specifically “Brawling” I would not be shocked if Holst would prepare to grapple with his close friend for any reason such as, say, Balthus tried to use his preferred combat method to get close to Holst and throw in down in the tournament. With that concession, we now have a minimum skill ranks of this: But how many ranks would Holst have? We need to get an idea of how many character levels a faculty unit (that being, not a student character) needs to increase before they see an increase in a single skill stat. For this, I used Shamir Nevrand as an example unit. According to the Fire Emblem fansite, Serene's Forest, Shamir starts level 1 with a D+ in lances and B in bows, increasing to C+ lances and A bows when she is recruited as a level 11 Sniper. This means upon levelling up 10 times, Shamir gained an increase in her skill ranks 4 times. This levelling progress does match her partner Catherine who similarly gains 4 skill ranks after 10 level ups. While Gilbert gives a similar-ish quota to those two by gaining 12 skill ranks after 25 level ups, it becomes clear that there is more to this supposed formula when Jeritza boasts 17 skill ranks in only 26 level ups and Manuela demonstrates a rather lowly 5 skill ranks in 14 level ups. Even trying to get a consistent pattern from the Ashen Wolves, a quad of recruit-able students from the Cindered Shadows side story, does not appear to be sufficient. While all four of them are recruit-able at level 3, by that time Yuri and Hapi both gained 2 skill ranks following 2 character levels, Balthus only gained 1 and Constance decided to gain 3! It’s from the Ashen Wolves and their desire to go for a mean value of 1 skill rank per level I decided to cap the total number of skill rank increases for Holst to 41, this being Holst’s character level – 1. Yes, I am aware I will be working from the technically inaccurate template of Holst starting with all his skills at E rank but honestly if I were to attempt to apply numeric analysis to every discrepancy in Three Houses, I fear I would become older than Gilbert before this got done. So, with the 41 limit, we have this: I may have been excessive with capping his Axe skill rank (A+ -> S -> S+ for reference) in all honesty but, this guy is meant to be a revered commander in the Leicester Alliance. On the subject of abilities, since we know what his ranks are and there’s no rush to establish him having budding talents, we can now chart out his abilities and combat arts, so let’s go with the general stuff. Abilities
For the Battalion ability, I decided to go for Battalion Vantage, as I felt it was under-represented in the Golden Deer students, giving a Verdant Wind player more variety. As for the arts themselves, I chose: Wild Abandon (gained at C+ Axes) Allow me to ask a question, would a typical military general decide to eat a possibly poisonous mushroom like Holst did in "Dividing the World"? Would a wise man foist his entire inheritance upon his younger sibling if they showed even a bit of aid like Holst again in the same paralogue? What about giving said younger sibling their most powerful weapon just like, yes, Holst in "Dividing the World"? If the word “no” crossed your lips to more than 1 of those questions, then you could see how I concluded that Holst is perhaps a bit reckless. As such, I can easily see him adopting the strategy of throwing his entire body weight into a single swing to down an opponent early in his axe training. Armoured Strike (gained at A Axes) This combat art was more chosen as a means to tie himself to his buddy Balthus and his duty of being the defensive line against the invading Almyrans. He needs to stand against some major pushback if he wants to stop guys from charging Foldan’s Throat, naturally he will have adapted a maneuver that uses his bulk against a worthy enemy. Bane of Monsters (gained at C+ Swords) Since the story of Holst fighting a monster with a wooden sword was the basis for his strength in the weapon, it seems only right to integrate that story point into Holst's gameplay further. Given he was using a wooden sword, a weapon I suspect is not high in might, I can imagine he either during or in hindsight, adopted a tactic that would most effectively take such monsters down in future, in his case, this combat art. Windsweep (gained at A Swords) Since we know Holst won’t reach A rank swords by himself, it would mean that he had to have, at least once, came into contact with Professor Byleth Eisner. This means we can assume that this combat art was even in small part a product of the professor’s guidance, and what better way to demonstrate Byleth’s competence as a teacher than to teach Holst a combat art that would allow him to better defeat the one opponent he could not otherwise, Nemesis? Well in the absence of a sword combat art that guarantees two attacks to counter Nemesis’ auto-miss 1 attack per turn personal ability, there is his counter attack ability to contend with (which allows Nemesis to retaliate against an enemy at any range), which Windsweep neutralizes. Point Blank Volley (gained at C+ Bows) Same reason as Windsweep above (demonstrate that Byleth is a great professor even for the already impressive Holst) but this time teaching him a combat art to directly counter the King of Liberation’s personal ability by assuring Holst of two attacks in one. So we have the classes, the abilities, the crest and even the combat arts. So all that’s needed now is his stats and we are finished right? Not quite, there’s still the matter of Holst’s Personal Ability and his battalion. For the latter, I feel that its only fitting that he joins Byleth and Claude with a battalion like the Goneril Valkyries. Of course, it would undermine the benefit of the “Dividing the World” paralogue if one (potentially 2 with respect to the Freikugel) of its rewards on completion was irrelevant so I decided to make a modified variant: And for Holst’s Personal Skill...of the skills in the game itself that are not being used by other player characters, Paragon makes sense. However it has an unfortunate issue of either being too powerful (a level 42 unit that gains experience twice as fast as most of your army seems excessive) or too trivial (how much growing is Holst going to get in 1 in-game month?). Since I have crafted a unique battalion for Holst already, I suppose it just seems logical to make a unique personal skill too: This unique ability gives Holst a greater degree by which he can attack twice in a given turn compared to the in game standard of requiring an attack speed that is greater by 4 or more, hinting to Holst’s remarkable prowess in battle as a man that can strike at openings so quickly one may not even know they were open before his attack. So, what about Holst’s base stats and growth percentage? Well in terms of total growths, Holst’s contemporaries of Gilbert and Jeritza each sport 300% and 350% total growth respectfully. At the expense of being accused of copping out, I have chosen to go with the median of the two values at 325%, while he’s not a weapons savant like Jeritza, he is not quite at Gilbert’s level of over the hill veteran quite yet. With some delegation of growths to favour his background of strength, defence and dexterity, the growths break down thusly: As for Holst base stats, we will first have to figure out how much he grows from level 1 to level 42. As Holst is not a student who joins at level 1, his growth is calculated in game by treating him as a level 1 of his joining class, War Master, and then roll his gains to the level he will join. To simulate this, we will tally up his percentages in each stat and, when they surpass 100, we subtract the 100 from the total and treat it as a +1 growth in that stat from leveling. Before we conclude how Holst grows however, one should note that the War Master class has class growths, meaning that the above percentages will be increased by 40% in HP, 15% in Str (Strength), 10% in Spd (Speed) and 5% in Cha (Charm). Meaning Holst has his stats being:
HP = [base] +22 Str. = [base] +26 Mag. = [base] +6 Dex. = [base] +20 Spd. = [base] +14 Lck. = [base] +4 Def. = [base] +20 Res. = [base] +12 Cha. = [base] +22 [TO BE CONTINUED] Due to an unforeseen collapse of High Rez Gaming, I will be going through the process of republishing my own copies of the articles onto this website. The pages yet to be published are as follows:
It is perhaps no surprise to readers of my publications or those who follow my Twitter feed that I am basically what many may call a “GamerGater”. Now while I take no shame in saying I condone holding games journalism to the standard of having a consistent set of ethics and not devolve to throwing passive-aggressive ridicule at their primary demographic, I will admit that the attempt at a pejorative has thrown me for a loop with news in gaming this past month. To start from the top we have Overwatch, a game that I originally pre-ordered in anticipation for a Team Fortress 2 competitor that might actually get Valve to produce some proper content for the genre. Blizzard recently came under some PR fire after a user posted on their thread about how an unlockable pose, according to him, was against her spunky character as he found it too sexual due to seeing her posterior. Throw in some statements referring to his daughter and how this pose is bad because she might be playing the game (the shooter game where you murder people with little motive and no remorse I might clarify) and suffice it to say, the backlash was more visible than Tracer's rear in the original pose. Despite a majority response in said thread crying foul and explaining how absurd the request for the pose's removal is, the Game Director Jeff Kaplan responded with: And then he closed the thread. This unsurprisingly led to a wide variety of responses, one from a mother who was “sick of” Blizzard ignoring the fanbase “to cater to a small minority” that poses as a “very annoying voice in the gaming industry” and another from popular gaming pundit John Bain of “TotalBiscuit” fame parodying the original post in relation to an unlockable pose for the simian scientist character Winston. Though Blizzard originally took to closing threads that tried to call Kaplan out for censorship (both the pose and the thread closing), the Game Director reopened the original thread a day later and explained himself. Of course, by this time, many fans found the excuse to be “a likely story”. “Oh suuuuuuuure you had a pose already set up and ready to go. And yeah, I toooooootally bet that it is better fitting to the character and not just your pitiful damage control” folks muttered to the response. The whole kerfuffle was such a PR disaster that I myself cancelled my pre-order for the title before the new pose even came out, I found the whole event so frustratingly dumb, I didn't want to give them my money for their poor form. And then Blizzard released the new pose and, I admit it, Jeff was right. Posing like a pin-up to be plastered on a fighter plane, the new “Over the Shoulder” pose seemed to win over just about everyone with its reduced exposure that offended the original complainant's perception and its sexual overtones forming a “take that” at “the Social Justice Warriors” fans accused of this controversy to begin with. Of course, that didn't remove the fact such poor PR work was at play as a result of this but it led to some readers of gaming press to ponder that value and meaning of “censorship”. Was this good censorship? Was this even censorship? Who influenced who? Was that a good thing? All these questions, and it was about to get a whole lot more deafening when Beamdog would release downloadable content for the beloved “Baldur's Gate” in the form of “Siege of Dragonspear”. I will disclose that I personally never played the DLC or even the original game in question though the specifics of the contents of the game are not quite the focus of this editorial. To establish the issue, Beamdog released Siege of Dragonspear on their website, GOG and Steam, consumers found the expansion sported many problems, the new User Interface caused issues, the game featured some nasty bugs in general including ones that retroactively harmed non-DLC content, Steam users particularly found their mods were completely broken and everyone in general realised the multiplayer was broken too. The icing on the cake that news media latched onto and rode harder than a bullet train set in a Mad Max apocalypse was the game's rather poor writing with claims of a Mary Sue villain, a once sexually confident and manipulative Safana turned into spiteful thieving vessel hosting the living spirit of sarcasm and a reference to a meme at GamerGate's expense spouted by a character fans stated was VERY out of character were frequently mentioned by the disgruntled players. The cherry on the game writing complaints however was a transgender character named Mizhena whose development could be explained by the following image: The fact Beamdog writer Amber Scott admitted that she did not care if the writing was forced on Beamdog's forums and willingly forces as much diversity as possible probably didn't help alleviate the writing critiques. Suffice it to say, the complaints were pretty clear on reviews at GOG and Steam, “Fix these blasted bugs! Also, your writing could do with some work, BUT FIX THESE BUGS FIRST DANG IT!” If you believe Beamdog immediately made an official statement thanking fan feedback, announcing their plans to fix such game breaking bugs and address writing concerns with more context for characters to develop to such points, congratulations, you are the community manager and PR spokesman Beamdog desperately needed. Instead of such reasonable action, Beamdog's CEO Trent Oster begged on forums for positive reviews. Then moderators started shutting down threads critical of the game or of the developers misrepresenting consumer response or of the moderators shutting down threads (both on the site and on the Steam community page) and journalists joined Beamdog in blaming GamerGate for trans-phobia because (supposedly) they only hate the expansion because of the Mizhena character EXISTS (not at all because some critics felt she was written poorly with the aforementioned development of a name label). Recently, Oster has announced Beamdog's intention to address the bugs, remove the GamerGate meme reference and improve Mizhena's character, a decision that has resulted in articles sniping at GamerGate and complainants in general that were caught under the pejorative label, calling them hypocrites for their stance on censorship, including self-censorship.
The first issue however is the meaning of censorship. To summarise, censorship is generally seen as amendments to the work that goes against the vision of the product, be those edits done by an external party or by the creator in question. If one treats Beamdog's recent announcement as self-censorship this suddenly all gets really complicated, for you see, the developers of this DLC are not the exact same developers of the base game of Baldur's Gate, that award goes to BioWare. BioWare being a developer who built the title on Forgotten Realms, a very popular campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons designed by Ed Greenwood, with Dungeons & Dragons owned by Wizards of the Coast and originally crafted by the late Gary Gynax. So the question that responds to the question of “Is it censorship for Minsk's GamerGate meme reference to be removed?” is “Is it censorship for Minsk to have made a GamerGate meme reference at the expense of his original character?” Well, surely so, seeing as it goes against the creator's wish for Minsk to not be some anti-GamerGate meme spouter and Amber Scott was not the series' original writer. But wait, the current developers are mostly made of former BioWare developers who did in fact work on the original Baldur's Gate, how do we know that they didn't tell Amber that the reference fits their vision, assuming that they even had the creative vision of Baldur's Gate in the first place? And what about the Forgotten Realms themselves, do references to memes here on Earth by characters in the Forgotten Realms fit in Mr. Greenwood's vision? Seeing as he admitted to never being shown the DLC's licence for his approval, we can only presume Wizards of the Coast are the visionaries that said yes to it and then that leads into the kettle of fish that Gynax's vision probably entails (who I can only assume would object on the grounds that Minsk did not say the reference in his alignment language or something). Sadly, it is easy for censorship trails to devolve into arguments of people's testimony, what fortunately is NOT so hard to prove is bad community management, the second issue here. Perhaps a far more worrying trend from these “censorship” alerts is the growing trend for developers to silence their fan base, misrepresent their complaints as bigotry and harassment and then throw them into the lion's den of opinionated bloggers to start slandering them, when said bloggers should really be advocating for them and calling the developers to stop such childish behaviour (after all, if a blogger like myself doesn't support the consumer, who'll support me when I become a complaining consumer?). Worse still is when the dust settles, whose unblocking those users and threads with apologies for such terrible PR practice? I doubt its the developers as much as they should. It seems saddening to think that in terms of public relations and community management, developers like Blizzard and Beamdog especially were better off shutting up and doing nothing, instead they engaged and exploited the situation and their contacts, leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of just about all gamers involved. A truly shameful series of events that leaves me yearning for the days where publishers filtered everything to the point there was no communication between us and the developers, true it meant there was less chance for post-release patches and smaller gaming news outlets would have a harder time getting news without regurgitating from the big boys the publishers spoon-fed, but with cases like these, I can't help feel like we gamers are getting treated like trash. If I proposed to you that expecting car journalists like Jeremy Clarkson to have a driver's licence is the product of elitist car fanatics that are ruining car manufacturing, you would be justified to ridicule my stupendously low standards of car critique and advise me to better understand cars. Sadly, I have found too many editorials in games journalism demanding easier experiences, condemning its readership of expectations from their medium's critics and even tried to levy the industry's insecurities against reader expectations, as if the reason the most profitable medium today is not respected as high art because it is not exclusively serving the lowest common denominator. Putting aside such an implication discredits paintings as art whenever Pollock is mentioned, this rise brought about by published journalists' poor form when their competency in any given work is judged has persuaded me to try giving some insight to the matter.
Allow me to start this piece with an explanation of the term “Ludology”. Ludology is the name of the practice of studying games and the act of playing them, while this term is not exclusive to the digital games covered on this website and others like it, said medium can be attributed to being a rather common jump on point for its enthusiasts in the modern day. Much like a film critic is expected to have studied in film studies so that their critique may grant a more productive insight for film makers and audiences, so too should game critics be expected to at least peruse the findings of Raph Koster or Steve Swink so that clarity can be brought to reader's wishing to find what didn't make this game click as well with them as the last game they played did. While film studies requests an understanding of a medium that is predominantly a visual and audio experience, Ludology also demands practical application of the user's knowledge not only of information in the context of the medium's world (for instance, knowing that in Civilization V, Scouts are typically the only unit that has no movement penalty over rough terrain) but also in interfacing with the game's outputs (for instance, knowing in a typical action game to dodge roll to the side at the moment of time where the enemy's attack will not track the player's movements and hit them during recovery animation but will also clear the player away from the initial attack). Essentially, the games critic will need to have the ability to “git gud”, but not just for the reason the game demands of its other users. The phrase “git gud” has gained some contempt from writers for its application against them by readers. The meaning behind the phrase is rather simple, “your anger towards the game is a failing on your part, please cease projecting your low performance as a flaw of the game” to parse into a more polite though far lengthier phrase. It should be clear that while not an all-encompassing definition within the digital games community (particularly with the presence of Dear Ester and its contemporaries), the first definition of “game” found in the Oxford Dictionary is “a form of competitive activity or sport played according to rules”, so naturally a level of skill to engage with any given piece is expected by users so that they can procure the experience the designer was aiming to communicate. While not the most welcoming phrase, the humbling misspelt words are the populous informing the critic that their critique needs work, hence the next reason for critic's to “git gud”. Much like how an art critic can be dismissed by observers for simply “not getting it”, a games critic who cannot dictate thoroughly the failings of a given game could be dismissed on the grounds that said critic just needs to “git gud”. Here is where From Software's “Souls” series comes in. This series received some editorials on the build up for the release of “Dark Souls 3” with writers speculating the inclusion of an “easy mode” to the game, including a few of such writers excreting nonsense that the only reason not to want an “easy mode” was elitism on the part of the fans. That discussion could have in fact been interesting by itself, a dissection of a series whose loyal fans have shielded one of its unique selling points on the grounds of it being fair, how the changes between games have faired under the “tough but fair” philosophy, whether every instalment did in fact deliver on such a premise and even a thought exercise on how an “easy mode” could be implemented to a game with a theme of crippling despair and ruin. Sadly, beyond a slew of Youtube videos like Matthewmatosis' “Dark Souls 2 Critique” two years before this, no such critique came to fruition. Had more critics came forth with a practised knowledge of Ludology and the sheer basics of the “Souls” franchise, their proposal of an easy mode may have been taken in with more interest than out-right rejection punctuated with the words “git gud”. There is not exactly an excuse for games critics to not have a developed craft for ludology enough that their play sessions punctuated by their informed insight to game mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics should provide a satisfactory information piece for their audience. No one had a gun pressed onto Arthur Gies' head to play DOOM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yYp8ZeQ-I8) and publish a video of his play session, Polygon's writing staff comprised of plenty of viable console first person shooter players who could carry themselves with the needed competency to demonstrate the game, no currently running games journalist outlet requires journalists to disclose their playtime and what options they enabled during their play-through, gamers and other such readers are all too willing to give critics the leg-room to stretch and demonstrate their knowledge in ludology and said knowledge's application to the reviews and editorials of all sorts of video games, its the critic's failing to learn such studies that is what holds them back. Frankly, I along with many others could not care if you are not in fact the next Daigo Umehara when you make a critique of Street Fighter V, as such a level of skill is not needed to understand Street Fighter V (it sure didn't stop my review, and I am self professed to being terrible at the fighting game genre). However, when you cry foul at hit stun (a status applied to a fighter when hit with an attack where they will not respond to player inputs for a predetermined number of frames) without an understanding for its function and application to the game including its relationships with other such mechanics, you prove your poor Ludology comprehension. And that, is where you need to “git gud”. |
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October 2020
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