Even Life is Strange, a fucking centerpiece of Hipster douche faggotry, doesn't really escape this rule of logic, since the main reason people like it isn't how Social Justice the story is, it's because of the game's better moments of characterization, decent music, and how the story itself is told. It succeeds despite the fact that I'm like 90% certain it was written entirely by a procedural AI script intended to mimic hipsters. Divorce the hipster douche crap from the game and you still have, to hear the positive reviews tell it, a heartfelt, if incoherent story at its core.
Life is Strange works because it's written by Chris Divine, a guy who looks very Hipstery, but kind of the guy you wind up hanging about with. Not
because he's a hispter, but he knows where to find that genuinely nice relaxing bar with the good beer you didn't know about. He's also a huge D&D and Donkey Kong Fan.
LoS's scripts also worked well because he can write genuinely good characters and every script went through a "Nieces test" where he'd get his nieces to check over the scripts to make sure they felt more genuine and alive. I suspect said nieces are in their late teens/early 20s as there was something wonderfully "90s flashback" shot throughout the whole game and something I really hope turns up in Season Two as well (As Divine is back writing for that too).
Tumblr creamed its panties over the characters dyking out, but the chances of you finding that ending were
pretty fucking slim if you played the game by pinwheeling back and forth on choices as I did, which really let Divine's writing shine through. (Max going from an ex boyfriend to
constantly flirting with Chloe made little sense from a story standpoint anyway.)
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Really the whole thing about Battlefield V is simply a culmination of events. The hardcore has been slowly bleeding from EA
for years (most going off to other major developers and indie games) and they thought they'd staved this off by retaining the casual market via Battlefield/Dice and their sports games.
Then along game a series of expensive, bad decisions. Mass Effect Andromeda was panned by the public and sold woefully to the point EA pulled the studio. Any remaining hardcore fans were then driven off with them canning Visceral Games, an odd move as they'd made Dead Space using an old proprietary engine of theirs. Meaning the Cost/Profit ratio was fairly high on such a game series even when ramming stupid shit in like microtransactions.
Then along came Battlefront II and the very shady dealings that came with it. EA pulled a bait and switch with Twitch Streamers and Youtubers. Being given a "complete" version of the game to sign a contract for before it was essentially gutted for sale. Hence why you had a number of trusted youtubers and twitch streamers doing
only what was contractually obligated of them by playing a game they clearly didn't want to.
Repeat videos and streams of Battlefront II vanished as soon as they appeared once their obligations ended and, surprise surprise, only niche youtube lets players seem to be getting in on Battlefield V.
To say Disney was
unhappy about what happened with EA is likely an understatement and don't be surprised if the House of Mouse won't let EA release any more games with any IP they own (which these days is
a lot of IPs).
This locking off of the game has managed to piss off the more casual playerbase that made up the majority of such releases for EA who're more likely to go for the less intrusive CoD or Rockstar methods of getting your dosh. Both of whom offered a lot of stuff in their base games, gave you easy ways to gain more stuff (Play the game for a bit, or do missions) and then offered up the quick n easy Shark Card/Loot Box.
