The Absurdity of Feminism as Shown by Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn is a Great Game, but it's main character doesn't really live up to the feminist hype. Unless, of course, feminists just want women to be shallow, generic, and lacking anything resembling femininity.

[axiomofgray]

Let me know what everyone (if anyone lol) thinks!

[RyanBrentDraws]

It gets much worse in Horizon Forbidden West.

[joenathan]

Alloy felt more like a teenage boy than a woman. I hated how the developers made every male character either weak, feminine, or a jerk.

[dan_irl]

Just finished this and had to come on to see if anyone else noticed that all the male characters were comically flawed; either cowards, creeps, brawlers or drunks while all the female characters were strong, logical, calm, compassionate, etc. It got a bit too much with the misandry. It makes sense for Aloy to be a Mary Sue - she’s you, after all, and you have to win in the end. Strong female characters working together makes sense in the Nora tribe, but the farther away you go from your home, the more likely female characters will behave like any other character, i.e. have moral weaknesses and issues of their own. That being said, the back story all falls into place; it is amazing and tragic, and I loved it.

[dontworryimamedic]

"...men and women are different." Amen brother!

[Butmunch]

At a certain point in the game I noticed something that just ruined everything for me.

Besides I think like 2/3 men in the game. Every single man you interact with in the story, is fundamentally a bad person. They will either be violent, cruel, duplicitous, vicious, neglectful, cowardly, cruel, have substance abuse issues and will generally be overshadowed by the women in their lives. Any good men in the story get killed. This is basically without exception.

It is so constant that it made the story very predictable. If I found a man who had a quest I could tell it was going to be one variation of those above. Even when you find a man in the game that seems like he has good motivations, as in his daughter is missing you later find out that he was neglectful and didn't pay attention to her issues. It made every quest just tedious as I just waited for how the man was somehow bad and then I can fix it.

This IS NOT GOOD WRITING. It's just ridiculous.

Find me more than 2/3 men in the entire game who are actually good people, but not just good people. Like the sun king for example, finally a good ruler, why was he a good ruler, why because his mother raised him right off course and his father was a religious psychopath that liked to sacrifice people to the sun god...can...can...can we just not for one fucking person.

The fact that I automatically have expectations regarding the character of a person just because they are a woman or a man is just ridiculous.

If I meet a woman in this game, I can automatically tell that she was most likely some virtuous person that was in some way hurt by some evil man.

Allthough when I met Sylens I was like...ok, he's black, so the SJW's that made this game most likely won't make him evil. Allthough he is still a man, so it could happen. Was pleasantly surprised they actually made him a pretty complex character that was great to interact with. And then just at the end...bam...evil.

Its just so stupid. It is so fucking grating its unbelievable.

[fpsqt]

As Bill Burr put perfectly in a Conan interview ...

"They don't want their shit. They want OUR shit. I think it's because we're happy, we're just sitting there enjoying ourselves, having a good time without them, it drives them nuts, and they just gotta go in there and ruin it."

[Spextrication]

I never ever comment on YouTube videos but I wanted to thank you for making this video. I get shamed by women all the time for not having typical "feminist" views, especially about family, and you really hit the nail on the head here.

I couldn't agree more. I think a lot of the male characters are portrayed as fools in the game as well, while Aloy (a typical male personality) is applauded time and time again for her bravery and perseverance when most of her achievements don't feel genuine (i.e., getting inside the door in the mountain at Mother's Heart via DNA match).

[Nothingity]

As I played the game until the end one thing got more and more obvious: while all the female characters are strong and capable, almost all men and boys are either weak, pussies, evil, assholes, or downright useless. Yes, there is an exception, and that's Rost, but he plays the father role so he gets a free pass out of this but that's about it. Probably every other male character I can encounter in the main quest line is one of the things I mentioned above... and I repeat: weak, pussies, evil, assholes, or useless.

There are bad female bandits, yes, but that could hardly compare to the ubiquitous "badness" and uselessness of men and boys. It's too obvious not to notice so don't pretend like you didn't. They basically hammer you in the face with it.

I don't care that they made the females strong and good and capable, because females CAN be strong and capable. But they just HAD to make the men and boys so disappointing or despicable.

If every character in the game was gender-swapped, I GUARANTEE you there would be outrage, particularly among feminists.

[Simon-oykf]

It's a fantastic game but the feminism is really cringy and annoying everytime I get to choose what to say I can never say something nice because alloy always has to be incredibly defensive and acts like she knows everything and is better than the rest

[Syrussk]

My immersion was broken the minute I started noticing all of this.

[donaltdak]

Same thing with me - just finished the game and wtf EVERY SINGLE male character in the game is weak, evil and stupid as fuck. Every single one. It got to a point where I just started skipping all dialogues because I knew male character will be evil or stupid.
Bad and absurd writing. This was discusting.

[iandavidsson]

Also, saying "it's nice to see a strong female character" carries with it the implication that there aren't strong female characters in gaming, or hasn't been for decades, which isn't true.

[terrylandess]

Aloy seems uncomfortable with anything resembling gender difference. When one of the few sexual innuendos come up - she is quick to dismiss them, even showing signs of annoyance. She seems reluctant to call weapons 'she', although goes along with it when upgrading them in the DLC. I tend to see the feminist angle more with the supporting characters - women being competent, while the men are mostly oafish. This begins to grate after awhile and made me long to get back to killing machines alone - away from the thinly veiled politics.

[Serlixe]

I loved the game.. However I was very turned off by how sexist she was towards men. My fiancé completed it after I put it down. Her demeanour really put me off. If I play it again I will skip the dialog. At one point a guy asked for her help and she says "not my problem", this is after he helped her! Beautiful game, I like the story, *hate* the main characters attitude. She isn't strong she is self absorbed.. Thinking about her as you say behaving like a man? Yea I can stand behind that theory, a man in a woman's body sprinkled with a tad testrone filled sass.

[skyfox]

I honestly never even realised this, because coming out of the Nora lands, the feminist tones seemed well explained so I guess I just kind of kept that "yeah that checks out" attitude even to the west where its maybe not so realistic to happen.

However I disagree that Aloy is a shallow character. I can get behind her working as either gender, that's completely true. But I think she is a great character, if a little mary sue-ish, not without explanation tho. She has decisive development, an alright sprinkling of personality 'flaws', although they are rather subtle and could have been expanded upon further, and she has some really powerful narrative moments.

[IamGamer]

I was almost finished with the game when I finally realized that the npcs I talked too were 90% female and minorities. This in itself isn't a bad thing but once you learn the meat of the story and how things were supposed to be in the future its just points to the sjw bullshits infused into this game. That took away from the story for me as well.

[plutoburn]

The first part of the game, I didn't notice anything out of ordinary. Aloy being the way she is made sense for me, as an outcast, she'd always rebel against authority, have a chip on her shoulder, and have some edge in her attitude. She can also be very principled because she was raised by Rost, a very moral person. At first, I thought Nora was suppose to be a matriarchal tribe, so their portrayal of strong women such as the original war chief and the matriarchs, even at the expense of portraying weak/bad men was ok if this wasn't omnipresent in the game. But problem was obvious once my game progressed to the Sundom/Carja territory, because it was still like this everywhere. The hunter lodge, the towns, the priests, etc... I don't have problem with strong women, but I just don't understand why that has to come at the expense of portraying most of the incompetent/weak/evil characters as men, even the scientists during Project Zero Dawn.

[edroseptic]

I just picked this up on sale last week because ... yeah... the gender of the lead character doesn’t and never has really mattered to me. The trailer looked cool so I bought it.
And yes.. it is a very good game. Great story. Great gameplay.... but the more I played I noticed how every man in the game is portrayed as a total pussy and all the most brave and formidable characters are women.
So I decided to search to see if this was discussed.
It’s as you say. They just gender swapped every character. It’s comedic once you realize it.
Either way... the money is spent. I’ll finish it,
It is a good game after all but not because of how woke it is.

[Planterobeets]

Dude Zero Dawn is at least a bit more subtle about it, Forbidden West doubles down and in the DLC they triple down on making 99% of men Bad, Weak, Narcissistic or useless and is women who have the solution and men are in their way.