There's "Grimdark," then there's just... clumsy and ignorant. [SPOILERS]

I have been having a good time with this game, for the most part, up until act 3.

I am willing to admit, I'm new to the franchise. This game was gifted to me. I always wanted to play the first, but the early game did not grab me, unlike this game. I knew both games are very dark worlds and stories. I'm vaguely aware that many of the problems of POE1 have likely followed it over to 2.

I am a fan of dark media. My favorite movies and shows are things like Twin Peaks, Possession, I'm a fan of Warhammer games and media. I have very nuanced opinions around ideas around "problematic" media.

Spoilers ahead.

I was tentative but open-minded in Act 2. The story was interwoven and grounded and there was lots of intrigue. It made sense for my character, the sorceress who-- from my understanding-- is of the Maraketh, to be distrusting of the Faridun character she meets. But then she continues to say completely out of pocket, aggressive things when meeting ANYONE of ANY other culture as well. I understood having her be an authored character, with biases and bigotry due to her culture, but displaced from that, she's still just... openly, opaquely racist, despite no longer having narrative reason to be. It suddenly felt comical, flabbergasting. Like, lady, WHAT are you talking about, you're not from here, you know nothing of these people, of their conflict, why are you acting this way? It fully removed me from feeling immersed, and then became a needle in my side.

Act 3 is... a mess. A huge, huge mess. I won't even talk about map or enemy design or progression here. It reeeeally doesn't help that I found Act 3 endlessly frustrating for gameplay reasons on top of plot and narrative reasons.

Not every game or piece of media needs 'perfect, positive, good' representation.

But on the flip side of that... There's imperfect, interesting representation and then there's just... Real Actual Racism, like, historically significant racist tropes. You can tell me it's fantasy, it's fiction, blah blah blah until you're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that these depictions are so obviously inspired by real cultures and the way they're so commonly, maliciously portrayed in mainstream media.

"Didn't you say you like Warhammer? Isn't the point EVERYONE is evil and bad and the world sucks? Isn't this just like that?"

Yes, but Warhammer isn't working all too hard to go out of it's way to fastidiously depict brown/black people (Orkz and some other factions are a whole other convo that's... look, read a book, watch a video essay, whatever) in such obviously caricature-ish ways. Like, yes, Warhammer HAS caricatures, it has race-coding as well, which I also criticize it for, but they're not...

Look, I like Servi more or less as a character. Her design isn't even like, terrible, but the context she exists in, the fact that, from my memory, she's the first *really* melanated character we meet, even if she's not meant to be like, a Real Black Person... Come on, guys. What are we doing here. Why am I seeing my first black character this many hours into the game, and she's hitting *this* many racist tropes, the mystic hoodoo granny (who's quest provides you with a potion).

Aaand then we have enemies with bones through their noses, the act 3 loading key art, to go through it all bullet point by bullet point is tedious and unhelpful, because there's so much obviously questionable (at best). This stuff is *pretty easy to spot if you're educated about these tropes, cliches, and depictions, and why they're harmful.

Big spoiler--

The moment my raised brow changed into a gut-punch was Alva walking through the portal, and *immediately* murdering people who clearly aimed to defend themselves. You then progress through like a typical level, a pale skinned conquistador-cosplaying white lady following along as you murder the original (one might say, indigenous) residents of the Ziggurat.

Like.

Okay.

I get that depiction is not an endorsement. But fuck. Jesus fucking christ?

We're meant to gleefully mulch through them like any other enemy? Huh????????????

This was the moment where I sat back and went "GGG has lost the fucking plot." These are not aggravated cultists, corrupted monsters, mindless zombies, or even people at war with us, these are people acting in fear, in self defense!

I'm dreading completing this section. This made me question my relationship to this game, my willingness to even continue. I still may play more, this won't be the first or last time I'm critical of something and continued to engage with it, but I think my fun is thoroughly laced with disappointment after se this insane choice of narrative through-line, the art direction, everything. I still enjoy playing with my friends, but Act 3 is a stain on an otherwise pretty fun, grimdark romp.

I would rather people not comment under this ngl, but just in case--

"Woke snowflake."
Okay!

"You're the racist for conflating these fictional people and cultures with real people and cultures!"
Not that I think anyone making this argument is doing so in good faith, but just in case, there's an entire history around race-coding in media.

"It's just a video game, it's all fake anyways."
I'm hiding in your walls.

"You're trollling/trying to get the game """canceled"""."
This is the 'feedback' section of the forum, and I am leaving feedback.
This literally won't be notably seen. I'm an anonymous nobody. I do not have the power you ascribe to me, bud. I just want devs to give a shit about their work.

Media does not exist in a vacuum, separate from us, our reality. I would IMPLORE creators to give a damn about their product, from many different perspectives. Or else what's the point of being creative, of making cool art, cool games that are art.

EDIT:
Also just wanted to link back to this post, which very very succinctly gets at a lot of my issues from both Act 2 and 3. The problem is not all these isolated issues, but a pattern, questionable decisions coalescing into a dissonant mess, the ludic elements playing poorly with their choice of narrative beats...

"

The campaign story is highly suspect. In the 2nd act you team up with straight up slavers. You notice the slaves the first time and your character legit says, "Oh, these people are brutal! Let's go keep doing quests for them." You work for the head of their culture, who openly decries peopled deemed lesser than as sub human. These are people that their culture left as babies to die out in the desert. One of these people deemed sub human joins with you and gives you invaluable information to save the day from the big bad and the leader talks about her like she's scum. You end up fighting with this piece of trash leader in the last segment of the act like best buds.

It can't get worse, right? Well, buckle in. You spend the entire next act killing almost 1:1 copies of racist Mayan/Incan stereotypes, people native to the land you are invading. You literally go back in time to kill their ancestors. Then you team up with the worst of them, the ones in power committing blood ritual sacrifices all day. He becomes your best bud and vendor for endgame.

All of this coming from a bunch of white dudes from New Zealand, a country with historical and concurrent racist systems of oppression to it's native people. Really makes me worry what they got cooked up for acts 4-6.

100% with you. The story in PoE2, especially in act 3, is so tropified it's insane. Alva walking through the portal and murdering the natives.. it could be a representation of any part of colonialism.


It also suffers (in act 3 especially) very much from "go into zone a1 > a2 > b1 > b2 > c1 > c2 > d1 > d2 > holy shit when is this going to end > I painted my house in the time this act took to run through > z1 > z2 > holy shit I finally finished I have to do that again in cruel jesus christ.

While none of this is particularly important to me I respect your opinion and values. It is definitely being voiced in the right place, however, Alva doesn't attack the people in the past. She walks through the portal and tries to talk to them and then they attack her. I am 90% sure the reason they attack Alva and the player is because there is a prophecy that that says when we arrive it marks the start of the cataclysm. It's the same reason Doryani attacks us.

"

however, Alva doesn't attack the people in the past. She walks through the portal and tries to talk to them and then they attack her. I am 90% sure the reason they attack Alva and the player is because there is a prophecy that that says when we arrive it marks the start of the cataclysm. It's the same reason Doryani attacks us.

You've already stated you don't care about this topic overly much, but I'll try and thoroughly explain why this moment does not sit with me.

So, there's a term, ludonarrative. This term is about the meld between gamic actions, gameplay, the mechanics of a game, and the narrative/story/plot.

Ludonarrative dissonance is when these parts are not unified, are at odds.

I played the moment where the player and Alva come through the portal immediately before posting, and the sequence of events is this:

The portal opens. You and Alva traverse inside. Alva, in her naive, nerdy overenthusiasm tries to talk and the native people *run away from her*. We """follow""" (chase) them into our next, for lack of better term, regular map level.

Here's where game and narrative fully stop cooperating as one. When you get to that level, Alva takes on the game behavior we saw from Asala in Act 2, she kinda orbits you. You approach a group of people (who clearly don't want to interact with you!), who move to defend themselves against us. We have to remember, we just stepped through a portal and then continued to pursue them, in spite of them FLEEING from us.

Alva's words, something to the effect of "Ugh, I didn't want it to come to this"/"I didn't want this to be a conflict," but at this point, she's killed, her sword is DRAWN, and we are now meant to play the level out much like all the content before it.

Like, okay, whatever narrative reason these people have to be suspicious, wary, even violent, fine. But this was written by a team, this was developed by a team, not in a vacuum. They made the choice to have the game and narrative flow in this bizarre way, to have us, not even metaphorical invaders but very real invaders, come in and start dropping fireballs on people who moments ago *ran away from us* as if they were the same as the zombies and vampires of Act 1, mechanically. We are conditioned to think that any and all aggression towards us is a punishable offense, when it's merely a completely reasonable response to the situation these people are in. We are the aggressors here, however. We are the instigators.

Alva could stop, turn back, think of a different approach, realize she's going about this all wrong after that first violent encounter. but we just... continue!

It really, really did NOT have to be this way.

We can ignore the optics of a pale conquistador tagging along while we freeze and burn countless indigenous people who are notably some shades darker than her, and just focus on that dissonance, that "awww, I didn't want to fight :(" *continues to plunge sword into rib cages*. From a craft perspective, it feels sloppy, half-baked, just overall thoughtless.

I appreciate you taking the time to diligently lay out your thoughts. Allow me to play devils advocate for a moment though. I am going to put the race issues aside as I personally don't feel that is demeaning or malicious, could be wrong but that's my feeling. I will just try to offer a counter argument for the reasons we effectively level a civilization. Forgive me if my lore isn't spot on. In act 3 we leave the Maraketh in order to search for a way to stop the beast. We travel to a old Vaal civilization in search for some way to stop the beast. The Vaal were the most technologically advance civilization by a long shot so it seems like a good place to start. The Vaal, however, are known to be one of the morally, umm, loose civilizations. A lot of their advancements in technology came from blood magic and LOADS of sacrifices, as seen in the past in act 3. I believe Doryani was tasked by Atziri to find a way to keep her alive or beautiful (i don't remember) by any means necessary, thus the mountains of body's outside of his workshop. My point being we had knowledge that the Vaal were a dangerous and corrupt society before every taking a step into their civilization. While obviously murdering an entire population, regardless of their beliefs or morals, isn't ideal, if it is the only way to save the future then we are tasked with prioritizing the needs of the many over the lives of a few. I'm no writer as I'm sure you can tell but I actually kind of like the story telling, again putting the potential race issues aside. I especially like that Doryani fights us because he simply doesn't want to believe the cataclysm is going to begin and is hoping we are not the ones foretold. Regardless thanks for taking to time to read my rant. I adore the game and I'm super excited to see the new acts

"the moment my raised brow changed into a gut-punch was Alva walking through the portal, and *immediately* murdering people who clearly aimed to defend themselves. You then progress through like a typical level, a pale skinned conquistador-cosplaying white lady following along as you murder the original (one might say, indigenous) residents of the Ziggurat."

This is not what happens. Alva is peacefull until they attack her. Alva is in awe of the culture and loaths to fight them. IF the indeginous poeple would be peacefull, they woudl have tried to communicate, they just attack you and Alva.

Maybe im wrong, but i got a feeling you are one of these poeple that try to find "social injustice" in everything...

Allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go.

Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the facts. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.



[Removed by Support]

Umm creative

Orkz are literally based on British soccer hooligan culture [Removed by Support] :D

Barbarians at the gates! To arms! To arms!