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It is true that one can learn a lot about a game from reading reviews and looking at people's opinions on it. The problem is, you didn't do that. You looked at two negative articles on it and promptly deduced that the game was bad, dismissing it as over-hyped and ignoring everyone else's opinion. If that's not bias, I don't know what is. I'm biased too; I
like the game, I was hyped as hell for this, and so far it has gone far beyond my expectations.
Those two articles don't challenge my comfort-zone, and I'm not angry at them for not agreeing with me. People can have whatever opinions they want, it doesn't change what
I believe. I don't hate you for having an opinion either, but at least show some fucking respect and
play the game before calling it shit. For anyone who is curious about the game, what you've written is worse than useless. You did nothing but pull out two articles that agree with your own prejudices, laud them as gospel, and when people then disagree with you, you belittle and insult them, because
surely only someone completely blind to reason would disagree with you, because you
know you're right. You haven't even given the game a chance, your opinion of it was set from the beginning, and all you're doing now is trying to justify it.
As for the rest you wrote, I vehemently disagree with you. Games, like all artforms, are great because they are free; as in free speech, not free beer. They should be able to portray anything, no matter how unreal or uncomfortable, because that's how the artist(s) envisioned it. Those things are there to make you uncomfortable, to revolt you, to challenge your beliefs, to make you
feel about what's happening. It draws you into the world, makes it real, because it feels real. Like real-life, there are both good things and bad things, good people and bad people, and sometimes bad people can do good things, and vice versa. Real life is complex, and so should art be. If you try to remove everything that's uncomfortable to you, you destroy that complexity, and everyone is worse off for it.
And similarly, you can portray something without having to agree with it. You can write about a serial-killer, who murders and tortures people, without believing that it is somehow okay. If we only portrayed things we agreed with, there'd be no art. There'd be no villains, no monsters, no disasters, no tragedy, no
conflict. That, in my opinion, would be horrible.
I've said what I wanted to say. If you want to continue with this, I'd suggest you do it via PM, so we don't derail the thread completely.