Splash Damage

Some reviewers are panning the recently released Final Fantasy XVI for a pretty dumb reason: Apparently, despite it being an entirely fictional fantasy world based on Medieval aesthetics, the cast is too white. We discuss what a stupid critique this is along with the new Prince of Persia being black, streamer Nickmercs’ comments on Pride, diversity hires in the new Harry Potter show, and more.

Blizzard is virtue signaling hard this month, creating a month’s worth of LGBT pride content for Overwatch 2. The game now includes personalization items reflecting every imaginable sexual orientation, and a map that has been “pride-ified” has replaced a cop car with a standard vehicle. We discuss all this plus Capcom not censoring booties in Street Fighter 6 and Magic: The Gathering’s awful race-swapping of its Lord of the Rings sets.

With the latest predictable twist in Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores DLC, the question must be asked: Why do so many modern female protagonists have to be, well, you know? It’s almost like developers think normal women are incapable of being strong. We discuss this trend and the agenda behind it along with Dove’s awful take on sexualized video game characters, PC Gamer shaming the co-creator of Doom and Quake for attending BasedCon, an actor’s take against Hollywood’s diversity quota, and the hilarious public reaction to the Cleopatra movie.

The arbiters of social justice in the video game sphere, Kotaku, made a little oopsie this week when one of the site’s writers showed his true colors by making a racist tweet in reaction to being upset that Nintendo has (rightfully) blacklisted the publication. We talk about the irony of this event along with the success of the Super Mario Bros. movie, Wizards of the Coast sending Pinkerton agents to retrieve trading cards, and more Queen Cleopatra drama.

Jeremy Crawford, one of the lead designers of Dungeons & Dragons, raised some eyebrows recently when he announced the new Player’s Handbook for the popular tabletop roleplaying game would remove half-species, such as half-elves, calling the concept “inherently racist.” We discuss the backwards idea that race mixing, whether in fantasy or real life, is racist along with a teenager being disqualified from a Pokemon tournament after being asked his pronouns, teabagging being banned from an “inclusive” Overwatch 2 tournament, Netflix’s Cleopatra being black, and J. K. Rowling continuing to not be canceled.

Kotaku has a weird take on sexiness. Things like Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village and the cartoon dragon from Ring Fit Adventure are fine to sexualize, but, for some reason, a human girl’s iconic skirt turning into a skort is something to celebrate. We discuss Kotaku’s bizarre take on such changes to the Resident Evil 4 remake along with Hollywood’s anti-Christian bias, the charges against Justin Roiland being dropped, and a ridiculous article about how to avoid being ableist in fiction.

Since the second failure of G4, Adam Sessler continues to prove how jaded and bitter he is about the industry he covered for decades with his latest Twitter meltdown. We discuss his lack of accountability over X-Play commentary on JRPGs along with yet more and more examples of publishers and producers censoring and gender- and race-bending beloved classics—further proof of the absolute oversensitive and creative wasteland that is the entertainment industry.

Hogwarts Legacy has been in the wild for over two weeks now, and still streamers of this incredibly popular game are being reduced to tears by people who think they have the moral high ground while bullying players of the game. We discuss this issue along with Games Done Quick banning Hogwarts Legacy and other games from its events, Ukraine trying to restrict sales of Atomic Heart, and more.

Due to Hogwarts Legacy’s ties to the “transphobic” J. K. Rowling, many screeching leftists have attempted to boycott the game, but their efforts were in vain; the game has been nothing but a critical and commercial success. We discuss the game and surrounding controversy along with Wizards of the Coast’s decision to reverse its proposed new Open Game License for the next version of Dungeons & Dragons, Forspoken’s flop getting blamed on misogyny and racism, Frosk leaving the video game industry, Xbox’s Phil Spencer acknowledging cancel culture, IGN review scores, and The Last of US TV show.

Dungeons & Dragons fans have been raging for weeks now after Wizards of the Coast, publisher of the popular tabletop roleplaying game, had a leak of its new Open Game License that puts everything from third-party content to virtual tabletop programs at risk of obsoletion. We discuss the ongoing controversy and the hopeful decline of D&D’s popularity along with the ridiculous Velma show and Hogwarts Legacy pending success.