KF Guide to Woke Games

[Asian tech support]

Addendum to Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth - woke in translation:

Going forward it'll be important to make note of what's provably the fault of localizers and what isn't.

 

[Activelo]

Has anyone experience with Guild Wars 2? Is it woke or is it safe to play?

I really enjoy the overall gameplay of Guild Wars 2. The story however has a nonbinary character in the End of Dragons expansion that goes by they/them, there's a lesbian couple that's shoved in your face for the majority of the story, and the entire Sylvari race is bisexual in the lore.

"To a sylvari, love is spiritual and eternal, regardless of physical form and contact, and sexuality is simply a natural part of life. So long as it is entered into with good will and joy, the gender doesn't make a difference." Source

The game also has pride holidays in it and the devs are obnoxiously gay. All of this is why I don't play the game anymore.

Just by going off of what people said, heavy on the wokeness scale easily.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GxTiwKvp348

People went into more detail about it here.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Just by going off of what people said, heavy on the wokeness scale easily.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GxTiwKvp348

People went into more detail about it here.

Oh hey, that's my old post on Icebrood! Glad to see it's of use.

Yeah, GW2 is one of the most pozzed games out there these days; it's not exactly subtle where the dev team's political allegiance lies, and it's honestly ruined a lot of interesting story bits and ideas. Case in point, there was an interview with one of the devs that outirght confirmed that they were using real-world politicians - i.e. Trump - to make strawmen characters for them to attack: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IN2-HFTlaAM (Credit to @Apex Ralphamale for the video)

Aside from that, though, there's a lot of wokeshit shoved into the game, especially in several of the expansions:

- Retconning the Searing from the first game - basically, the devs decided to retcon the event as a "justified" attack from the Charr, stating that the lands humanity had settled on were actually Charr lands, and that it was therefore justified to nuke to "colonizers" into oblivion.

- Destiny's Edge - a multicultural faction made up of members from all the different races, mostly women; @ZMOT had a pretty solid write-up:

Spoiler: ZMOT's post

then allegedly felicia day wanted more money, which made anusnet nuke all of destiny's edge and gave us diversity's edge, consisting of
- an oppressed crippled asura genius apprentice, because a race of hyperintelligent diminutive goblins is suddenly high on physical integrity.
- a pair of lesbian humans bridging the class divide, with one being a working class victorian-era private detective (of course) and the other being a disgraced noble (of course).
- an outcast charr with animu eyes, punished for not going full wehrmacht and following every order (and even her pet is a special snowflake, like fucking literally).
- a mutt nord with mommy issues and the son of THE eir stegalkin who of course hooked up with the only nord with dark skin to ever exist (and of course a legendary hero), because high melanin content in a race that literally translates NORTH makes sense.

the worst part I don't even mind the backgrounds in itself, but holy shit smut looney tunes fanfiction has probably better execution and character development.

- Roe vs. Wade - there was an entire in-game event dedicated to talking about the whole ordeal, with the devs sperging out on how the repealing of said decision was bad for women.

- Making all men characters into complete idiots and all women into unstoppable badasses that can't do anything wrong. It's particularly prevalent in the Icebrood Saga (which has every male Charr made to look like a complete idiot while the one female is implied to become the Khan Urr) and especially in the End of Dragons (which has a Tech Mogul Empress vs. EVIL NAZI SecDef)

- Icebrood Saga - the antagonists for the expansion, known as the Frost Legion, are a collection of Charr from all walks of life, including outcasts, that want to split away from the current conflict concerning the elder dragons and rebuild the Charr nation to its former glory. They ally with an elder dragon, Jormang, and use its ice-based abilities to transform the Charr into an all-white-colored Charr faction with ice abilities. Naturally, the expansion ends with you killing off the entire Frost Legion - minus a few renegades - and imprisoning/possibly executing their leader, all the while the game constantly hammers in the need for diversity. Oh, and the entire Flame Legion pulls a Face turn and now defects to the aforementioned "strong waman" Charr.

- End of Dragons - as mentioned above, the primary conflict about EoD is between the Cantha Empress (a clueless woman who's basically hording a shit-ton of valuable tech for herself and continuously neglects her own county's safety) vs. the Secretary of Defense Minister Li (a blatant right-wing caricature who's constantly working to protect Cantha from outsiders). The expansion repeatedly tries to portray the Empress's "open borders" policy in the positive; problem is, it also allowed a number of lunatics - including Scarlet Briar - into the country, which ends up causing a lot of otherwise avoidable chaos. The fact that the Empress continuously blocks Minister Li's attempts at conducting any form of investigation - which almost results in Cantha getting outright nuked by Briar and co. multiple times - also doesn't help. By the end of the expansion, Li is made out to be this "evil Nazi" at the last possible minute and is subsequently stripped of power and imprisoned, while the Empress is made out to be in the right on everything and is praised as this "glorious leader".

There's probably a whole bunch of other shit that I'm missing right now, but I think I got most of the more blatant stuff currently. If anyone has anything else, let me know.

 

[A Humble Moose]

Just by going off of what people said, heavy on the wokeness scale easily.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GxTiwKvp348

People went into more detail about it here.

Here's a local archive of the video:

"End of Dragons, Start of ArenaNet Politics"

Yeah, GW2 is one of the most pozzed games out there these days; it's not exactly subtle where the dev team's political allegiance lies, and it's honestly ruined a lot of interesting story bits and ideas.

Yeah in retrospect it really is a complete rainbow shitshow. I guess I'd somehow blocked the majority of the story out of my head at some point and now see why. It really does seem like every single MMO going right now is compromised. That was one of my favorite genres, too. Fuck.

 

[Maude Snew]

I'd update Warframe to mid frankly as it now has time traveling homos.

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Loid_(Original)

• While not explicitly stated, Loid is heavily implied to have romantic feelings for Albrecht Entrati. Albrecht's videos and final page of the Grimoire similarly imply that he returned those feelings but was unable to express them at the time. The two very likely had a romantic partnership before his disappearance.

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Albrecht_Entrati

Albrecht Entrati is pretty much the guy, he's the one who discovered what ultimately powers the players and fucked up the system.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

I recently finished the point and click horror puzzle game called Stasis Bone Totem and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There's no hint of woke in the game that I noticed and the central theme that drives the characters is very touching. You play as a married couple who work as ocean going scavengers in a future version of our world. The couple recently lost their daughter in a terrible accident and are going on a mission sometime after that event to help pay for their debt, since in this world corporations have taken the role of governments and have even supplanted Christianity as the main western religion. I can't give away too much more since that would ruin the story.

The setting and world building is scattered throughout the game and the tone is very grim. It feels like a HR Giger inspired Indiana Jones adventure with a lot of grotesque and mesmerizing art. The voice acting is also superb. The game runs perfectly in Linux too through proton ge.

 

[Activelo]

Games list has been updated once again.

 

[Mojo Thief]

So I recently got into Helldivers II (and promptly lost my entire weekend to it), and despite it being developed by Swedes and published by Soyny in the year of our Lord 2024, I'm honestly astonished to report it has practically NO WOKENESS.

Yes, some people doomed about how the opening cinematic features a white man, his black wife, and their mutt son, but the latter two promptly get mauled to death by alien bugs while the father immediately starts propagandizing about joining THE HELLDIVERS in a darkly humorous fashion. Race and sex is never brought up and largely meaningless in the game, since the Helldivers count men and women of all races among their ranks, but the character models all look the same (given how they all wear bulky armor that covers every inch of skin) and the game doesn't hide the fact that you're all cannon fodder anyway.

The game's presentation of Super Earth is undoubtedly satirical, given it's a thinly-veiled fascist, warmongering dictatorship with a seemingly endless supply of brainwashed bodies to throw at its problems, but going along with the over-the-top jingoism of the Helldivers is part of the fun (and this applies to the official forums). If this game were woke, the writing would have hammered "FASCISM IS...LE BAD" into your skull and admonished the player for sympathizing with Super Earth, likely forcing you to team up with a group of "rebels" who would teamed up with the Automatons (cause they're communists) or something and overthrown Super Earth's government.

Speaking of the official forums, they have a strict no-politics rule (aside from praising Super Earth, of course). This led the unbelievable situation where trannies who complained about the lack of pride flags got banned from THE OFFICIAL DISCORD for breaking the no politics rule. Again, a modern Sony game, made by Swedes, banned troons from its forums who complained about "muh representation". If that's not a testament to its lack of wokeness, I don't know what is.

 

[Baraadmirer]

Was going to suggest Hogwarts Legacy, but saw it's already added to the list. Could it be organised alphabetically in some way?

This is a really hard one to defend, but I swear this isn't woke in context. It's just fuckin' gay as hell, is all. But not in the "We're coming to molest your kids" kind of way.

Lol these guys have been around since I believe Dragon Quest II.

 

[Activelo]

Was going to suggest Hogwarts Legacy, but saw it's already added to the list. Could it be organised alphabetically in some way?

Lol these guys have been around since I believe Dragon Quest II.

Alphabetically by developer or by games?

 

[Baraadmirer]

Alphabetically by developer or by games?

My preference would be by game as that's what your guide's focusing on. Alternatively you could convert your living document into a spreadsheet so that it's easier to insert new items.

 

[moocow]

Why do all NPCs pretend to think woke can't be defined? You guys actually think it's some kind of gotcha lmfao

Yeah, I've got two coworkers who hide behind that bullshit too. "Yeah whenever someone says 'woke' I just tune out because whatever they're about to say is just bullshit." So instead of just saying "woke" when I discuss games with them, I just explicitly list the specific woke things about a game that bother me, like hideously ugly characters, feminist bullshit, trannies and endless virtue signaling, pandering, etc. I don't use the word "woke," so they have to begrudgingly listen to me eviscerate their beloved woke trash without being able to instantly dismiss it. They at least have to wait a few seconds first

 

[Robot Gentleman]

Adding some indie games to the list.

Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Studios): Mild
Character customization has separate options for "Body Type" (Brawny/Lean) and "Voice Pack" instead of Male/Female options. Aside from that, no significant woke elements.



Pacific Drive (Ironwood Studios): Medium
Story prominently features a gay male couple. A very large selection of pride stickers (and a BLM sticker) are available for use on the player's car.



Fear & Hunger 2: Termina (Miro Haverinen): Medium
Game set in 1942 "Europe" that includes a black character, a transgender character, a disabled character, a lesbian antagonist, and somebody's furry OC. Avoids being ranked higher because most of these elements are not shoved in your face.



Among Us (Innersloth): Mild
Update added LGBT+ pride flag banners, which are visible both to the player using them and to other players in their lobby.



Hardspace: Shipbreaker (Blackbird Interactive): Heavy
Entire game's story is nonsensical pro-union propaganda. Major "good" character is a black lesbian who directs an anti-corporate union. The other characters include a token white man, a Hispanic woman and an Asian guy. Main antagonist is a fat white hick who is a city liberal's idea of a Trump voter.



Dredge (Black Salt Games): Mild
Characters include some "strong female" NPCs, including a black female mechanic with frizzy hair. No LGBT+ references.



Risk of Rain / Risk of Rain 2 / Risk of Rain Returns (Hopoo Games): None
No LGBT+ references, preset characters with hidden appearances.

Lethal Company (Zeekerss): None
No "woke" references. Only issue of note is that the developer is a furry.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

a transgender character,

Not really. As far as I know it's just the old "boy was raised as a girl because [insert reasons]" trope.

 

[Dysnomia]

All the characters look terrible, gay, and genderless.

This so much. The musician trainer type looks like a tranny. There's no way that's actually a woman with that build. All the senior citizen trainers look like geriatric enby genderblobs. I can't tell who is an old man or old woman. The hikers are built like skinny teen girls. I find that hilarious compared to the musicians looking like troons.

The notable exceptions are the models and the dragon trainers, who are actually sexy ladies. I was astounded when I saw how obviously feminine they were.

I actually liked the old lady rapper. She reminded me of Rappin' Granny. I thought it was funny. Dreads were way overdesigned. But at least she looked like a woman.

The gender neutral uniforms though were disappointing. No skirts or more feminine ties and blouses. There's a lot of nice accessories. Yet other than stockings and a few bags nothing comes across as particularly feminine. I get that it's easier to not have to animate a ton of clothes. But there's no hair ribbons or barrettes. They need to stop making things comfy for genderblobs. It's stupid. I know Pokemon is not a dress up game. But Sword/Shield had a lot of cute clothes and if you are going to sell wearable items in a game at least make more gender specific items for those of us who aren't alphabet soup.

The ice gym leader threw me for a loop. I thought it was a woman at first. I mean, there's bishounen and then there's straight up genderbent. I still can't see him as a biological male.

I assume the next set of games will be even worse. Everyone a genderblob. Maybe they'll even let you choose pronouns to go with the choose your body type nonsense. I can't see them doing the flags though. Might cause issues in some countries when you do multiplayer stuff. But who knows at this point.

 

[PunkinMan]

is terraria woke? Im having a sense that its going to at least get a mild rank because of the furry npc, who we later find out is a black lady during the ending cutscene but thats about it I think, also the nurse cant live with her because she hates her, fitting because shes a blonde white woman, someone could probably add to this more im just asking.

 

[Level99Manchild]

I assume the next set of games will be even worse. Everyone a genderblob. Maybe they'll even let you choose pronouns to go with the choose your body type nonsense. I can't see them doing the flags though. Might cause issues in some countries when you do multiplayer stuff. But who knows at this point.

I guarantee you TPC will throw in pronoun shit in the upcoming Legends game. It's gonna be pretty woke with or without Sweet Baby's help (there are other firms out there).

 

[Activelo]

Updated the list once again. I alphabetized the list while adding a few more games and either updated or added links to some of the existing ones, assuming you're viewing it in LibreOffice.

Editing the OP still gets me the "10 images or less" error, so I'm attaching it to this post again.

 

[Varis]

Call of the Wild: The Angler (Expansive Worlds) - Mild
Body types A and B. Both get the same hair and facial hair.

 

[Jason Wynn]

Solasta: Crown of the Magister has some mild to medium examples.

Pronouns in character creation, which includes “they/them”

You now choose “ancestries” instead of choosing a race.

Hamfisted gay characters that feel shoved into the game purely for virtue points. Very much the “have I mentioned I’m gay lately?” trope.