Was considering giving this one a try after seeing it recommended by a few people on here who have shown great taste already in other games and when I saw the unique renders I was even more enthused (and it's rare for me to feel enthusiastic about a male mc game). I still had one reservation however and had to trawl through several pages of comments before I found what I was concerned with and that was whether the male mc was only fighting other males, or if he was fighting women (it seemed obvious from the screenshots but I wanted to be certain). I know it's 'just a story' but I can't get behind anything that depicts/glorifies male on female violence, whether it be in the name of sport or otherwise. If a female mc is ever added, I'd love to play this but as it stands, it's sadly just not for me.
That's a really interesting criticism (you have a real knack for tough but very thoughtful analysis). I hadn't thought of it exactly the same way as you did, but I also would've liked to see the MC fighting other males rather than women though in my case I had realism more in mind. The thing is I don't think Alpha, Omega is meant to take place in a world that's exactly like our own. It's in my opinion quite like Summer's Gone (which has mixed gender basketball squads as part of its plot) in the way it takes a more fanciful approach to its world building while still trying to realistically and vividly depict genuine human emotion.
In the world of the game, any biological strength gap between men and women that might theoretically exist is muted and deemphasized while combat and strength training is deemed preeminent. For instance, even someone who doesn't have bulging muscles like Liliana is more than capable of taking on much heavier and chiseled male opponents because she is an absolute master of her craft. Nat, on the other hand, is not just a skilled fighter but also straight up bigger and much more muscular than a lot of the guys in the game.
Of course, you're not wrong to take one look at the game and say, "I don't want to play this because I don't want to see men inflicting violence on women." That might be the most valid take in the history of takes, honestly -- there's most definitely far, far too much of that kind of violence in the real world. And the game actually has a rather brutal scene of sexual violence as well so male on female violence is a recurring theme and isn't limited to a sports context. While you don't have to see the scene and it is there for story-based reasons, it's definitely potentially triggering and is at the least intentionally very upsetting.
We all run into great art that just isn't for us for one reason or another. Alpha, Omega might be an example of that for you.
