Why do "woke" developers like Druckmann think that simply gender bendering everything is "something totally different" or "hasn't been done before!!!"? Like really? Just because you make a common male trope of a character suddenly female doesn't do shit if your storyline gets royally screwed because of it. What's worst is that I truly believe that old school ND did more progressive work in introducing powerful female characters than anything shat out by Druckmann. Here's what I'm talking about:
-Crash Bandicoot had Coco. Yes, there was Tawna Bandicoot in Crash 1 but she was seen more as the typical "damsel" ala Princess Peach and to be fair she was designed to look like a furry pin-up girl. But this was because Gavin and Rubin didn't bother to flesh out an actual storyline because they didn't feel the need to. Platformers in general don't need storylines to be fun games (Mario, classic Sonic). So Crash 1 basically had the whole "save the girl" story. However, what they learned is that girls were also a huge demographic that played Crash 1. So it was Gavin and Rubin themselves who designed Coco Bandicoot for Crash 2 so that they could send a huge thank you to the female audience that were also giving them support. Coco is the smartest out of all the characters. She is great at designing tech, and she constantly helps her idiot, lazy brother out by giving him advice. She is also not "sexualized" like Tawna is, keeping a casual outfit of overalls and in later non-ND Crash games it's implied that she becomes a prominent mechanic. Gavin and Rubin took this a step further in Crash 3 and made her playable, and to be honest her jet ski and China levels are some of my most favorite ones in the entire Crash franchise. I remember some of my friends, boys and girls alike, thinking that she was badass in some regards. And at that time in the late 1990s, it was admittingly rare to see a secondary female character get such popular reaction. When the remake for the Crash trilogy was announced and the developers said that Coco would be playable for all three games, everyone in the comments section were so pleased. Sure, Activision threw in some weird "feminist" angles here or there (They wouldn't animate certain death scenes for Coco like they would for Crash, some levels like the Hog levels in Crash 1 couldn't have Coco playable in (too "masculine"??)) but it's not like they came out and said "Coco is totes lesbian guys!!!! She hooked up with Tawna and that's why she broke up with Crash!!" The characters stayed who they were, and people were happy about it.
-Jak and Daxter had two prominent ones: Keira and Ashelin. In Jak 1, Jak is the silent hero who's a bit happy-go-lucky, while Daxter is the womanizer and know-it-all. Like Coco, Keira is a prominent engineer and helps the team out by harnessing power cells and telling them where to go next. She wasn't a damsel at all, in fact it was her father who got kidnapped and they had to go rescue him. Sure, in Jaks 2 and 3 where Jak is a little more "masculine" and "edgy" now and their world is fucked beyond belief, Keira STILL survives by using her wits and expertise on fixing parts by opening up her own shop and becoming a name in the racing industry. ND didn't do some stupid crap like make her into a stronk transgender who "found her love for playing with the men's toys" or whatever. She's just a girl who loves tinkering with things, and clever enough to avoid trouble. Ashelin is the leader of the rebel guards, who goes against her tyrannical father and deeply cares for her comrades. She's athletic, can kick ass, and she again is not a damsel.
It's like, am I missing something here? From what Druckmann says, it seems to me like he thinks he can shit gold by making "manly" characters out of woman like it's something new. Or to make girls more interesting by making them lesbian or kill each other for no reason for using the wrong pronouns or whatever. It's funny how the old Naughty Dog made more relatable girls out of bandicoots and...whatever Jak's race is, but when it comes to portraying "realistic" humans, they turns out to be an utter shitfest that is devoid of anything you can relate to yourself. Highly ironic.
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