Dustborn - The Latest and Biggest DEI Flop to Date that No One Asked for!

[Scream Aim Fire]

the one where they rhyme newborn with porn?

I think so? I don't listen to Dustborn's soundtrack; I don't hate myself that much.

 

[Whore of Babylon 69]

Meanwhile in Japan.
View attachment 7677773

Still funny to know that's HIM on the left, by himself. I wonder what was going through his empty head while he stood there like a retard.

 

[Whore of Babylon 69]

The fact that the call people that don't want to be replaced by lunatic foreigners "bigoted trolls" shows just how out-of-touch these loons are. Anyone remember the lyrics to that one Dustborn song, which openly states that they're here to kill/replace white people?

We're the freaks
We're the outcasts
We look just like you
We're nothing like you
You're past due
We will eclipse you
We're the aliens
We're the refugees
We walk among you
We're right behind you

I'll nitpick a bit, but this sorta shit would sound like a threat from anyone regardless of their ethnicity. Actually, it sounds like something an alien straight out of Body Snatchers would write, and that pretty much shows how out of touch Fagnar is. The song itself represents everything I hate about Dustborn: It beats you over the head with its message, it's tactless and offensive to the senses, it's childish and ironically offensive towards the minorities it claims to defend.

Also I'm no lyricist, but Jesus H. Christ are these lyrics fucking clumsy. lmao Even I could come up with better lyrics than this.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Dustborn is still getting updated, even though no one cares about the game, with version 1.14 out now.

Great, so not only is a disgustingly bad concept but does the whole thing that early access games do--change or add a bunch of stuff post-release ("the ending has been improved", "there's more choices/additional lore", "there's new mini-games") which serves to only fuck over early adopters. This is especially egregious in Dustborn's case as it was developed by a professional, well-funded team, not a bunch of independent developers (nor was Dustborn marketed as Early Access, which has specific warnings about things changing significantly pre-release).

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

We're the freaks
We're the outcasts
We look just like you
We're nothing like you
You're past due
We will eclipse you
We're the aliens
We're the refugees
We walk among you
We're right behind you

I'll nitpick a bit, but this sorta shit would sound like a threat from anyone regardless of their ethnicity. Actually, it sounds like something an alien straight out of Body Snatchers would write, and that pretty much shows how out of touch Fagnar is. The song itself represents everything I hate about Dustborn: It beats you over the head with its message, it's tactless and offensive to the senses, it's childish and ironically offensive towards the minorities it claims to defend.

Sounds almost like a cult mantra. Fitting.

 

[Baraadmirer]

They probably tried to do that with the amputee Asian lady, but the first thing they do when she enters the story is to call her a GILF in her Boderlands-like intro, which I find demeaning and gross, and it also goes against what these people preach since it's sexualizing her.

I am reminded of this excerpt from How Not to Write a Novel:

Readers understand that people have sexual needs, but if the first thing they see are those needs, they will just think your character is gross. It's not that the reading public is uptight or moralistic; they know everybody masturbates, has unworthy thoughts about the buttocks of colleagues, etc. The reader also knows everyone poos. But if the first thing a character does is poo in front of the reader, the reader will think of him as the Pooing Character forevermore.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

We're the freaks
We're the outcasts
We look just like you
We're nothing like you
You're past due
We will eclipse you
We're the aliens
We're the refugees
We walk among you
We're right behind you

I'll nitpick a bit, but this sorta shit would sound like a threat from anyone regardless of their ethnicity. Actually, it sounds like something an alien straight out of Body Snatchers would write, and that pretty much shows how out of touch Fagnar is. The song itself represents everything I hate about Dustborn: It beats you over the head with its message, it's tactless and offensive to the senses, it's childish and ironically offensive towards the minorities it claims to defend.

Also I'm no lyricist, but Jesus H. Christ are these lyrics fucking clumsy. lmao Even I could come up with better lyrics than this.

It's always intriguing what is the thought of White (and I mean actual White) members of those groups. It's like a sexual fetish of living through their puppet minorities.

 

[Whore of Babylon 69]

I am reminded of this excerpt from How Not to Write a Novel:

I don't mind characters who are openly sexual, but there's a line -a very thick line, mind you- between a character who's openly sexual and a promiscuous whore.

This character, I think her name is Nai-Nai -I don't know enough to tell if this is ironically racist-, talks about how much she fucked a LOT. And because the game's "comedy" and tone suck so much, I can't tell if it's meant to be funny or endearing. It's gross either way.

Also, a nitpick: Why is she using a huge ball for her wheelchair instead of the more conventional and stable wheels? I know this is "DA FUTUR", but there is such a thing as conventional and timeless designs, Fagnar. Even when they're moved by electricity, wheelchairs have stayed the same design-wise.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Also, a nitpick: Why is she using a huge ball for her wheelchair instead of the more conventional and stable wheels? I know this is "DA FUTUR", but there is such a thing as conventional and timeless designs, Fagnar. Even when they're moved by electricity, wheelchairs have stayed the same design-wise.

Nothing makes sense for the time period, it's where robots coexist with 1950s diners among other things. I think I mentioned that in these types of games, the less you try to explain the setting, the easier people can accept which technologies are available and which ones aren't. I think I mentioned Chrono Trigger but Full Throttle is another example.

Unfortunately in this case they DO try to overexplain the setting. It's like everything that can go wrong, did go wrong.

 

[Whore of Babylon 69]

Unfortunately in this case they DO try to overexplain the setting. It's like everything that can go wrong, did go wrong.

Here's what I think about the writing and brainstorming that went to the setting and the game as a whole: Fagnar has no real idea of how storytelling works, and no perception of why some stories work the way they do. He's seen the X-Men, so he tried to copy it. He's heard of 1984, so he also tried to copy it. Dude even had the audacity to reference the latter in the game.

It's what I call "Tommy Wiseau Syndrome", something I came up with after I watched too many bad movies for fun while noticing facsimiles of things the directors tried to copy. Either because he's too lazy to read or simply too stupid to comprehend why those stories work and why people love them, he's only managed to try to understand them at an extremely shallow level. But he's seen those things and thinks they're cool, so, like an ape, he tries to mimic them, to no success, the equivalent of a schizoid smearing crayons on the wall in-between taking bites of them. No writer who actually read 1984 would ever come up with this much of an infantiloid take on dystopias.

If you allow me to be more of a pretentious analyzing fag than this, I'd also add that Fagnar has no artistic references beyond hacks and creeps like Joss Whedon, whom I wouldn't even consider artistic at all, but we had a lot of nerd poser fags back in the day who overly analyzed Buffy and thought that shit was deep with "commentary on gender norms", which probably influenced Fagnar to further copy his alleged pedo idol. "He's a genius, so I should probably copy him!"

And that's how we got this scummy excuse of a game. Thanks for coming to my Faganalysis 101.

 

[ZMOT]

And that's how we got this scummy excuse of a game. Thanks for coming to my Faganalysis 101.

to be fair he did alright with longest journey and secret world.
the problem isn't talent but the usual IQ dropping by 50 points once people go full leftard.

I'd also add that Fagnar has no artistic references beyond hacks and creeps like Joss Whedon

 

[Whore of Babylon 69]

to be fair he did alright with longest journey and secret world.
the problem isn't talent but the usual IQ dropping by 50 points once people go full leftard.

Haven't played those games, so I'll take your word for it.

It does make me wonder what Fagnar feels about one of his favorite icons turning out to be a creep, with his shenanigans going as far back as Buffy. I think I saw somewhere that Whedon wrote his self-insert Xander into dating Buffy's little sister, who's half his fucking age, and they would later marry each other in the comics also penned by Whedon, Can you spell statutory rape, Mr. Whedon? I'll be honest, people aren't harsh enough with that degenerate, between his nonce behavior behind the scenes, shitty writing, and his kowtowing for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Here's what I think about the writing and brainstorming that went to the setting and the game as a whole: Fagnar has no real idea of how storytelling works, and no perception of why some stories work the way they do. He's seen the X-Men, so he tried to copy it. He's heard of 1984, so he also tried to copy it. Dude even had the audacity to reference the latter in the game.

It's what I call "Tommy Wiseau Syndrome", something I came up with after I watched too many bad movies for fun while noticing facsimiles of things the directors tried to copy. Either because he's too lazy to read or simply too stupid to comprehend why those stories work and why people love them, he's only managed to try to understand them at an extremely shallow level. But he's seen those things and thinks they're cool, so, like an ape, he tries to mimic them, to no success, the equivalent of a schizoid smearing crayons on the wall in-between taking bites of them. No writer who actually read 1984 would ever come up with this much of an infantiloid take on dystopias.

If you allow me to be more of a pretentious analyzing fag than this, I'd also add that Fagnar has no artistic references beyond hacks and creeps like Joss Whedon, whom I wouldn't even consider artistic at all, but we had a lot of nerd poser fags back in the day who overly analyzed Buffy and thought that shit was deep with "commentary on gender norms", which probably influenced Fagnar to further copy his alleged pedo idol. "He's a genius, so I should probably copy him!"

And that's how we got this scummy excuse of a game. Thanks for coming to my Faganalysis 101.

There's a lot of games that are "inspired by" (or worse, "a love letter to [game]") but most of those seem to be coming from the right place. If you look at a shitshow like YIIK: A Postmodern RPG, you can see someone who really, really liked 16-bit JRPGs and wanted to have his own take on the genre while introducing more complex themes then what might be found in a 16-bit JRPG. Unfortunately in YIIK's case you had a case where ego outweighed talent and the end result was several significant post-release updates while Allanson waffled between declaring it was a parody, that people didn't "get it", and tacitly agreeing with criticism by making updates.

At the end of the day, however, it was still a video game that was meant to be enjoyed, even if the game was clumsy. Dustborn on the other hand, doesn't look like it was actually meant to be fun, coming from entirely spite and to an audience that doesn't really exist. Based on my anecdotal experience, the left-wing vidya audience (troons and women) leans to "heckin' wholesome" games that are compatible with their worldview but are still mainstream enough--Stardew Valley, Deltarune, and (in a bit of a stretch) Night in the Woods, especially as how it does resonate with left-wing millennials. (Who does Dustborn really resonate with? It would be like a video game adaptation of "The Turner Diaries").

The reality is that if you create a video game to sperg at the status quo you'll either get ignored or mocked.

For a good example, in 1985 Infocom released A Mind Forever Voyaging, an interactive fiction game by Steve Meretzky basically criticizing Reagan-era politics and policies. It moved copies (not enough, as Infocom was already starting to become irrelevant--it was sold to Activision less than a year later) but it Meretzky WANTED it to be controversial and was disappointed he didn't get hate mail. No one remembers it now.

Even selling a game on controversy is hard to do these days. Senators don't get baited with "extreme" content anymore and retailers aren't relevant when it comes to if they carry your game or not...and if you try to push the boundaries with sex and violence you'll likely run into problems with payment processors as seen with the recent Itch/Steam purges and beyond that you'll get into a position so repugnant that no judge would stick their neck out for you. It's a fine line to tread. I guess one recent example that's not some flavor of coombait would be Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by @nidalnijmgames and it still works as a game concept because it's built on solid FPS mechanics.

But with Dustborn. It's just a spergout that's not even fun or appeals to people who play video games, it doesn't create controversy where that would sell copies, and the creator is enough of a blowhard where it is amusing to see his breakdown on social media in real time.

 

[Whore of Babylon 69]

I'd also like to add that Fagnar is too much of a coward. Yes, the game is trying to be controversial. In a very stupid manner, but it's still an "attempt", but also: The setting is not HARSH enough. I'm going to bring up 1984 again: The book goes in detail about how miserable Oceania is, how Ingsoc -the totalitarian socialist party- controls everything by creating paranoia among the populace and breaking solidarity by pitying one against the other as part of a mass-surveillance plan, and how Winston's job is about controlling the news and changing history to fit the narrative of the party. It's hopeless from the start and good ol' Orwell makes sure to drive the point home.

In Dustborn, uh... the US fell apart, and there's I guess a police state on one side of the country, then a puritan state in the other? And they sorta of hate each other, I guess?? And there's no real sense of danger, at all. The policemen, from what I've watched on YouTube, are also kind of polite and nice, to the point of being wimps -with one saying the main black bitch was "rude" during one of the first fights-, and they're sort of a bunch of pushovers whom are revealed to be indoctrinated into thinking they're "doing the right thing". Literally none of the bad guys in blue even sound menacing, and the evil puritan pope woman is just a mustache-twirling whore who gets easily offended by the stupidest of insults, like how she got pissy over being called "techno-pope".

Fagnar makes zero effort into actually making the setting cruel enough for me to understand why the characters, who are just a bunch of asshole manchildren in their 30's, are fighting for a "cause". Everything seems all fine and dandy outside of the gang's little world, which makes them a bunch of domestic terrorists, because there is good enough reason to be afraid of them, since they can fucking brainwash you by talking, and the rest of the country seems marginally better, because Dustborn wants to please everyone that potentially picks up the game without trying to come off as offensive to them.

The game wants to talk about dystopias and "Trump bad", but isn't gritty and depressing to sell it for me, nor is it violent and dark like other dystopias. Fuck's sake, one of the Mad Max ripoffs gives the main bitch a bat so she can fight back.

 

[Disc]

But with Dustborn. It's just a spergout that's not even fun or appeals to people who play video games, it doesn't create controversy where that would sell copies, and the creator is enough of a blowhard where it is amusing to see his breakdown on social media in real time.

The only thing that is even really worth talking about reustborn is the fact that at least one government spent money on it.

 

[30+GameOvers]

I'll nitpick a bit, but this sorta shit would sound like a threat from anyone regardless of their ethnicity. Actually, it sounds like something an alien straight out of Body Snatchers would write, and that pretty much shows how out of touch Fagnar is. The song itself represents everything I hate about Dustborn: It beats you over the head with its message, it's tactless and offensive to the senses, it's childish and ironically offensive towards the minorities it claims to defend.

Remember, this game got government funding, so this is not only a threat but one from your very own elected officials using this shitty game as a proxy.

Nothing makes sense for the time period, it's where robots coexist with 1950s diners among other things. I think I mentioned that in these types of games, the less you try to explain the setting, the easier people can accept which technologies are available and which ones aren't. I think I mentioned Chrono Trigger but Full Throttle is another example.

Unfortunately in this case they DO try to overexplain the setting. It's like everything that can go wrong, did go wrong.

It's simpler than that: Everybody involved in this project is creatively bankrupt and this is why nothing makes sense. Governments didn't pay for a good game or a piece of art, they paid for propaganda and they got it.

In Dustborn, uh... the US fell apart, and there's I guess a police state on one side of the country, then a puritan state in the other? And they sorta of hate each other, I guess?? And there's no real sense of danger, at all. The policemen, from what I've watched on YouTube, are also kind of polite and nice, to the point of being wimps -with one saying the main black bitch was "rude" during one of the first fights-, and they're sort of a bunch of pushovers whom are revealed to be indoctrinated into thinking they're "doing the right thing". Literally none of the bad guys in blue even sound menacing, and the evil puritan pope woman is just a mustache-twirling whore who gets easily offended by the stupidest of insults, like how she got pissy over being called "techno-pope".

The classic "Our villains are all powerful and scary but also stupid and incompetent" strawman because people this delusional think they can have their cake and eat it too I guess.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

The classic "Our villains are all powerful and scary but also stupid and incompetent" strawman because people this delusional think they can have their cake and eat it too I guess.

There is some nuance to it...you can pick any losing side in history from 300 years ago and go with some variation of the "yes it's an all-powerful empire but the people under the Big Bad have some level of incompetence or arrogance that will prove to be their undoing" but even when the media treats Republican presidents as both "powerful fascist" and "complete buffoon", it's never in the same story, and the only way you can write such a character is if you don't take yourself so seriously. (The "take it seriously otherwise but write a joke" is straight out of the Joss Whedon playbook, which should NOT be a how-to guide when writing a story).

I'd also like to add that Fagnar is too much of a coward. Yes, the game is trying to be controversial. In a very stupid manner, but it's still an "attempt", but also: The setting is not HARSH enough. I'm going to bring up 1984 again: The book goes in detail about how miserable Oceania is, how Ingsoc -the totalitarian socialist party- controls everything by creating paranoia among the populace and breaking solidarity by pitying one against the other as part of a mass-surveillance plan, and how Winston's job is about controlling the news and changing history to fit the narrative of the party. It's hopeless from the start and good ol' Orwell makes sure to drive the point home.

Dystopian world-building doesn't have to be a cartoonishly psychotic totalitarian government, and in stories like that it's to make a point, not be something reflecting reality. (Brainlets don't understand this—a supplementary footnote in The Handmaid's Tale references an in-universe history book called "Iran and Gilead: Two Late Twentieth Century Monotheocracies" and proclaimed fans of the book are STILL too dim to get the hint).

You can still have a dystopia that's still a shitty situation but your characters have to act accordingly. Brazil—the main character is content to live as a cog working away in bureaucracy and only "rebels" (by falsifying government records) for the sake of his girlfriend. One Piece—up until around 40% of the story in do they well and truly become enemies of the government and even then, it's not to overthrow the World Government as Luffy's father intends to do, it's because the World Government wants to imprison Nico Robin for knowing too much. Akira—at least the 1989 film, there's clearly social unrest with the government and military, along with high crime, but ultimately Kaneda is neither interested in picking fights with the government or shilling for them, and both sides end up getting blown away by the end anyway.

Writing unironic dystopias is hard. Nineteen Eighty-Four works because it was the first to really put into writing what happens if you step out of line, you get black-bagged and tortured to death, and while it might be satisfying to watch the characters of Dustborn waterboarded and spend the rest of their lives wasting away in a supermax cell, it doesn't make for an interesting story. Either have your characters work in the shadow of a dystopia with the implications that a bunch of scrappy outcasts can ultimately inspire a change in the status quo, or just throw reality into the wind and go for the full "we'll overthrow the fun-hating government with THE POWER OF ROCK AND ROLL!" plot.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Akira—at least the 1989 film, there's clearly social unrest with the government and military, along with high crime, but ultimately Kaneda is neither interested in picking fights with the government or shilling for them, and both sides end up getting blown away by the end anyway.

I've read about half of the manga and can confirm the movie is a very good adaptation. The manga has a lot more running gun fights and Akira the kid does show up as a mute character. Have to check the movie again, but the manga has peacekeeper robots that will zap rioters if martial law is declared.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I'd also like to add that Fagnar is too much of a coward. Yes, the game is trying to be controversial. In a very stupid manner, but it's still an "attempt", but also: The setting is not HARSH enough. I'm going to bring up 1984 again: The book goes in detail about how miserable Oceania is, how Ingsoc -the totalitarian socialist party- controls everything by creating paranoia among the populace and breaking solidarity by pitying one against the other as part of a mass-surveillance plan, and how Winston's job is about controlling the news and changing history to fit the narrative of the party. It's hopeless from the start and good ol' Orwell makes sure to drive the point home.

I'll add that for the doublethink to work, the setting needs to be close enough to our reality, else people realize that things aren't nearly as bad as portrayed be the left.

Also 1984 was smart enough to be realistic, like the government not caring about the proles, most modern dystopias are grimderp.

 

[Whore of Babylon 69]

You can still have a dystopia that's still a shitty situation but your characters have to act accordingly. Brazil—the main character is content to live as a cog working away in bureaucracy and only "rebels" (by falsifying government records) for the sake of his girlfriend. One Piece—up until around 40% of the story in do they well and truly become enemies of the government and even then, it's not to overthrow the World Government as Luffy's father intends to do, it's because the World Government wants to imprison Nico Robin for knowing too much. Akira—at least the 1989 film, there's clearly social unrest with the government and military, along with high crime, but ultimately Kaneda is neither interested in picking fights with the government or shilling for them, and both sides end up getting blown away by the end anyway.

Fair enough. I keep mentioning 1984 because I've been reading it recently, but those're pretty good examples too.

Also 1984 was smart enough to be realistic, like the government not caring about the proles, most modern dystopias are grimderp.

Hunger Games and its consequences have been disastrous for the dystopia genre.