![]() In Beyond: Two Souls, a whole segment of the game features a Native American family that’s being haunted by ancient spirits. At this point, it’s a pattern, one that plays out with other identities. In Beyond: Two Souls, the only black character ends up mind controlled by a white woman. In Heavy Rain, the only black character is an ex-criminal named “Mad Jack” that tries to murder one of the main characters. If Cage’s goal was comedy, the joke seems to be, “Hey this guy talks funny.”Ĭage’s later work suffered similar problems. After a certain point in the game, the voice actor switches to an equally hackneyed Brooklyn accent. Meanwhile, a Japanese character, voiced by a white man, uses a ludicrous and stereotypical Chinese accent. ![]() ![]() In 2005’s Indigo Prophecy, one of the playable characters is a black detective who loves basketball, collects Motown records, and walks like Rudy from Fat Albert, a set of painfully reductive attributes that make him stand out as a white man’s idea of what a black man is like. After four games that have failed to live up to the hype surrounding their “groundbreaking” narrative, I don’t trust him to not make it in the most ham-fisted way possible.ĭavid Cage doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to writing characters who aren’t white. It’s possible that Cage simply wishes to write a story that amounts to some feel-good, After School Special sentiment of “don’t treat people poorly just because they’re different from you.” But I don’t trust David Cage to make that point. Yet somehow, Cage doesn’t think his writing has anything to say. At one point, a half black man refers to the white androids as “masters,” while a female white android blithely refers to the other androids as being “sold like merchandise.” The game itself takes place in a city that is 82.7% black. It opens with a black male android singing the negro spiritual “Hold On Just A Little While Longer.” Several characters identify as slaves. ![]() It’s like if I were to cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner and say “I don’t want this food to feed people because I don’t see myself feeding people.”Ĭage’s words ring bizarrely false given the footage of his own trailer. It reminds me of that old quote: “Choosing to do nothing is a choice.” The audacity of Cage saying that his work doesn’t try to have a message, considering the melodramatic imagery strewn about in all of his games, is baffling. ![]() These are the words I’d expect out of a first year film student who doesn’t quite grasp symbolism yet, not an experienced writer with multiple projects and various awards under his belt. Our fears were realized during E3 2017 when, in an interview with Kotaku, Quantic Dream’s David Cage said, “The story I’m telling is really about androids,” adding “I don’t want the game to have something to say, because I don’t see myself delivering a message to people.” When the trailer for Detroit: Become Human, the next game by Quantic Dream, the studio that made Heavy Rain, was shown at Sony’s E3 conference in 2016, a low rumble of groans rippled out from my friends as we collectively had the same realization: “Oh lord, this game is an allegory for racism.” The game industry has never really had a subtle or sensitive approach to racism Bioshock Infinite and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided come to mind. ![]()
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