- Jan 10, 2021
- 55
- 74
You're not wrong that people are applying modern standards and values to a setting in which humans are unequivocally different in fundamental ways to us. That said, we can also look at the world and view it through its own standards as well, and find it falls short from the perspective of its own denizens, because the game gives plenty of examples of how ultimately self-destructive and self-sabotaging many of the motives and actions of every species in the setting can end up being. So naturally, people will end up comparing and contrasting their modern sensibilities with those presented in the fictional one and find it wanting, and thus render a judgment on that makes us view their ways as inferior and undesirable to abide under.
And that's natural, if we didn't think our way of thinking and doings things was better, we'd replace them with better ones. The fact that the MGQ world is so divergent and warped in sensibilities and values from my perspective is part of the reason why the closest equivalent I can compare it to for understanding it is to refer it to as something from another fictional setting. It's practically a Warhammer 40k Slaanesh chaos world in my eyes, and no one sane would ever willingly want to be a part of one.
As for Luka's only real two final solutions for humanity to survive in... My problem isn't that the only realistic outcomes are genocide or co-existence, it's that the one making the ultimate decision is a retard. But that's just about every character in the setting anyway, motivations and the actions taken based on them break down under deep scrutiny real quick. Add in the fact that the setting has got the whole parody and hentai aspect to fall back on to dampen major criticisms of the plot under the idea of it not needing to be taken seriously in the first place, and you've got something that ranges from being hailed as a masterpiece of storytelling to being denigrated as a mind numbingly dumb plot with awful narrative choices, and the perspective you land on is dependent on which parts of the story the person in question is actually absorbing and which ones they discard. I tend to take the good and bad and ultimately landed on the story being average at best, which for a porn game is pretty damn high in comparison to other porn games.
But outside of the hentai genre? The porn genre? Or even just removing any kind of smut at all and judging it as a story amongst other stories that exist? It's unique for what it is in the genre it is a part of, that it has a story at all that we can discuss is a mark of that. That's all that really sets it apart from the other games in the genre though, and I kept up with it this far because I once had optimism that writers can improve over time with lessons they learned from their first crack at a story. The best I can say for the quality of writing from OG to Paradox is that it is a very mixed bag, but I ultimately preferred the relatively simplistic and straightforward narrative of the original compared to what we got in Paradox.
