***Nobody wants "realism" though, they want exciting fantasy.***

I want both. An element of realism makes the game better while a fantastical setting and creatures also makes it better.

*** They want great stories.***

And sometimes those come from stories with a more diverse element to them. Not always, but sometimes.

*** They don't want a diversity checklist being forced onto them like they do in every other aspect of their lives. ***

Agreed. And this is the problem. People are making diversity a checklist rather than just a natural element of storytelling and gameplay. Diversity isn't the issue, doing it solely as a checklist element is the issue. BioWare's gay characters add nothing to the storyline. Watch_Dogs 2 comes off as a diversity checklist for me, but Mafia 3 doesn't.

I wasn't as bothered by Nadine in U4 as others as I think it's more akin to the standard issue in action entertainment: the hero is some big action guy and can take on 50 nobodies, but one other person out of nowhere, sometimes a female character, suddenly kicks his butt in (see most episodes of Arrow as an example of this). I don't have the problem with her being black or female, I just take it as the usual "we have an issue where in order to make this fight seem reasonable, we have to ignore the hero's history." Something extremely common on TV shows, and Uncharted plays like a TV show of sorts over the 4 games. I probably would have taken it better if she had used some sort of melee weapon, otherwise she comes off as a fantasy interpretation of the character.

I have way more issues in U4 with the shoe-horned-in brother storyline. But, that's just me.

@Bruce- "Nobody wants "realism" though, they want exciting fantasy"

I see you didn't read my entire post. You want a fantasy game that doesn't have any children of certain races, no old people, everyone the same height and 1 language? I love fantasy games too bud, but something like Fallout or Elder Scrolls, Witcher etc don't just state that there is some reason they don't have much, kids, old people, languages etc. Most just over all don't have them and I normally just add them in mods

Part of the immersion is still grounded in reality of that many races exist, they have kids, people grow old etc. Pretty sure its not part of the "fantasy" of those games to have no kids, old folks, different languages etc lol My point is that diversity is realism. ONLY and ONLY if the game's story resolves around something that gives reason to not have that ie only women exist because of xyz or what have you, does that ever make sense in.

". But the negativity in response to this narrative shows that many gamers don't like this being forced into games"

Yet they are fine that publishers have been forcing the same demographic for decades now? I want to play what the director of the game intended, not what the publisher thinks will sell. Look at how much gets changed in games when publishers think they won't get attention like other titles, think about how much has been the same simply because of that same concept.

If you are fine with publishers continuing to choose games characters JUST based on statistical sales, you're also fine with them throwing in MP or SP even for the sake of sales.

I want it because it has reason, not because some publisher thinks doing this will make it sell.

"the real motive is to" yes...the "the real motive is to" sell games......its why they force features in games to get bullet point sales, its why they jump on trends to make money, its why they censor games in certain regions or change names or even genders to gain some sort of western appeal.

How do you know what you've been currently playing all along as been "the real motive is to" make money?

"portrayal of certain "majority" and "entitled" groups".....sooooo how would that not be any different then? They very much know games statistically sell with certain demographics as the main characters, the changes done from concept to finish or even when the game is going to another region shows this.

All I'm saying, is I want games to reflect the real world, not because I don't want fantasy, because even in the fantasy I play...ITS NOT PART OF THE GAME, its merely as HUGE oversight and mistake.

Fallout is NOT about zero old folks and no children.....yet has very little of them. The real world is not this way, so why should a game that is suppose to be depicting this planet, not have the demographics of this planet?

Buddy, its why I even added the mods in Skyrim lol. My game on PC has kids of all races, different heights, ages etc Yes, I know its a game, but I want it to make universal sense bud.

Oh come on. Nate managed to take down highly skilled soldiers, most were gun play but they had a hand to hand combat feature for a reason. Are you saying none of those soldiers he went against had similar to training to Nadine...I mean come on.

She was potrayed as an amazing highly skilled expert. Not even Sam helping him could land a few hits on her in a row without her beating the shit out of them in a full on streak. It just didn't fit in with what we've seen in the past games. Fair enough if he got beaten but at least show he can fight, it looked like he had never done it before when fighting her.

Talbot, the final boss of U3 was a huge brawl where you actually were winning.

"Also, how does any of what you said confirm a race swap for the character?"

Neil is a massive Anita fan and loves her FF videos

Neil goes on about diversity and saying how they make sure "that people in the game are women and people of colour"

If Nadine was white like the actress then who else MAIN CHARACTER wise is black? Oh yeah no one else.

So they thought "shit we don't have a black actresses, we NEED DIVERSITY" and decide to make Nadine, the only suitable main character in the game black.

It's not hard to add up. They said it was a design choice but after this interview and what he's said it's obvious it was done to bring "balance" to the game.

@foxtrot

"Oh come on. Nate managed to take down highly skilled soldiers, most were gun play but they had a hand to hand combat feature for a reason. Are you saying none of those soldiers he went against had similar to training to Nadine...I mean come on."

That's a fair point, but you are also talking about NPC cannon fodder type of characters, so its really hard to assign individual weight to every person he'd ever scrapped with. Out of the main enemies from the series that were fleshed out a bit though, Nate getting beat in a hand to hand fight tracks w/ the entire history of the franchise. Nadine would've been a special case too because you are talking about a girl who was not only entrenched in a military type background for her entire life, surrounded by soldiers of all classes, she would've also been fairly rich, which would've allowed for the best of training. Even a bit beyond that, Nate even mentions or alludes to it at some point that he is fighting a girl, and it is an evolutionary trait that decent men have a hard time not pulling their punches when being attacked by a woman. Either way, I honestly think out of the entire history of villains in the series, Nadine's background points to her being the most capable hand to hand adversary Drake's ever had for sure.

As far as Talbot, Drake lost the first fight & he had the upper hand a couple times on the final battle, but ultimately it was Talbot straddling Drake nearly pushing a knife through his heart in the end, and it was Sully who had to step in and stop him from being flat out killed.

I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the SJW bent to some stories these days that create forced inclusion instead of letting it come naturally. Maybe ND straddles that line, but the intention seems good to me. They aren't forcing diversity in order to make a buck, they are doing it out of personal conviction, which is a great deal more commendable.

I'm not up enough on Anita, what little I read about her & from what little I've seen, she is pretty awful. She has no real skin in gaming and that seems fairly evident. She is just profiting from being the big fish in a small pond by fighting this battle in a genre that isn't typically regarded on the whole for its narrative depth. Another good example of someone monetizing outrage & controversy while ultimately doing a disservice to the same causes they claim to be fighting for.

I mean you most likely could have a point about Nadine being a diversity addition, but I think it more likely that the character didn't exist at all and that she was added from day one as a person of color. If you look at her role in the story, she could feasibly be cut from the story entirely & it wouldn't have a huge impact. I agree that she could've been included to create diversity, but I don't think they've race swapped her at any point.

While true, Nate has also shown he has enough hand to hand combat skills killing other people to mean he wouldn't be quite so helpless when the boss fight...or cut scene comes. Not that he went up against trained martial artists most of the time, but half the characters you mentioned were not trained martial artists, simply proficient in hand to hand combat. Nate is often shown as being somewhat clunky when it comes to fisticuffs, but not during action game play sequences when it looks cooler to get that awesome death shot in.

I don't take issue with nadine, because she was obviously trained in some form of martial arts, and the Drake brothers seem more like street fighters. I'd be more critical of most of the others you mentioned, because they were in the same league as Drake for the most part. Maybe more proficient, but not so much that Drake would be that outmatched.

I personally have a laugh at the people who say Nate shouldn't have had such a problem with Nadine. You put a highly trained martial artist up against a rather slow and clunky fighter, and the trained martial artist is going to win every time.

But I take it for what it is. An action piece that needs some sort of heightened drama. I don't complain about it in a James Bond movie, or any action movie really, because it's just a trope of the action genre.

@Fox

And we've seen those highly trained solders also be able to take down Nate depending on how good someone is at the melee mechanics in the game. More often than not, hand to hand combat had Nate being beaten too unless you surprised the person and they never fought back.

No, it was about him being black. Google it:
http://fusion.net/story/311...

Huh. That's sad. Though, I don't see an issue about not playing as Aiden again, but who cares if he's black and from SanFran? He could be Native American for all I care, it's really the 'over the top hacktivist' stuff I cringe at.

Both being ridiculous claims. Who cares if a white person voices a black? Nate was white way before this SJW crap was a thing

Actually, I think right around the release of The Last of Us is when Druckmann started to do that. He all of a sudden started mentioning them not testing for female demographic and fixing that (which is fine), he mentioned some things about Ellie's sexuality, then there was an article about letting go a tester who was allegedly sexist to Nadine Ross in Uncharted 4. I get that those sort of things happen, but is it really necessary to mention it? The kicker with diversity is that true diversity isn't something that's forced, it's something that naturally happens. Having a forced level of diversity brings people right back at square one, which is their obsessive attention leads to discrimination from a different angle. Rather than assimiliation (which is the whole goal of a diverse society) a lot of people aim to pridefully tout other people's differences, which is what Druckmann and others are starting to do.