I’m a dota 2 veteran, 6k hours or something embarrassing like that, but it’s been me and my friends primary outlet of hanging out for forever and it’s a lovely game.
Got invited to deadlock, wasn’t that interested but wanted to have a go anyway. Damn, it actually goes kinda hard? Character designs are awesome, i like the moba elements (I could see how you wouldn’t be if you don’t have a background in them tho), the controls feel great, etc.
I guess i was just surprised by how much I enjoyed playing it despite being pretty bad at it and having no idea how to evaluate items.
Thoughts?
I booted it up and got so put off by the cop vibes. All non-white characters are either some kind of racist caricature or just covering up their face as much as possible to not freak out g*mers with their DEI skin. Clicked around on a few characters to hear their voice lines to see if I can connect with any of them, and heard one of them say some shit like “resistance is futile” and was out after messing around a bit in the tutorial.
Since watching the PMG doc on Valve, I can’t play off this kind of stuff anymore. I really recommend watching it — it’s made by a couple of white men, so they play it down a bit (a lot), but it’s fucking obvious how racist and sexist that place is from what they show.
Not like I’m the primary audience for this game anyway, but I thought I would try it to play with my friends, but it just brought up all the worst memories of when I used to play Dota 2.
Edit: forgot the moment when I got told by the tutorial to “kill neutrals to harvest their souls” or some shit. Fucking wild. (I know it’s a Dota thing, but Dota is racist as shit too, it wouldn’t be so popular with the worst type of shitstain g*mers if it wasn’t)
I think this vibe is basically because the game used to be a half life game. It was originally intended to be set as a war between criminals and the Combine or something like that then got reskinned. Several character designs haven’t changed at all since it was Citadel.
I don’t know anything about that, so fair enough. At the end of the day I don’t trust valve to create a multiplayer experience in which I would feel comfortable interacting with strangers. Not like that’s any different from any other popular multiplayer game tho. Apex Legends might have been the best for that because of the handy ping system tbh
There is a very small amount of footage from the old Half Life version of the game here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g98eQx6WvbI&t=149s
It’s fairly obvious why it has cop vibes so much when its roots are Rebels vs Fascists. What you’re getting from the cop-ishness is the fact that those characters were originally intended to be on the fash side.
I agree with you on Valve’s community cultivation. They cultivate communities that are indistinguishable from 4chan.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. I guess that’s very similar to the setup in CS - Amerikkkan invaders or rebels, pick your team. Except deadlock is much more character focused obv, so if you can pick whichever character for whichever team, then the fashiness just becomes their personality.
Idk which I prefer tbh lol. I’m picturing a Dota-like scenario where the opposite team’s fash character on my lane is killing me over and over, and then a chud playing a fash character on my team is yelling slurs at me. And I’m stuck in the game for another 50 minutes. Not my idea of fun haha. I guess I am a little interested to see if any of the aspects of that specific experience aren’t as bad in Deadlock, but not interested enough to find out.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
When the first leaks got out and I saw they literally just made one of the characters an old silver haired Native American archer guy I immediately assumed “oh this is their no effort early alpha placeholder before they make the real archer character, clearly” because I just assumed that at this point Valve clearly would have more creativity and basic cultural sensitivity to not just make their characters 100% lazy stereotypes.
They’ve managed to be behind Overwatch on this kind of shit, and that’s despite Overwatch making the ability to climb walls a genetic trait of Japanese people.
Yeah it’s so incredibly cringe. Not to mention the psychic damage you’d have to endure as a Turtle Island native unlucky enough to stumble upon this shit when you think you’re about to have a fun time playing a video game.