CONTEXT:

https://www.eurog*mer.net/dragon-age-the-veilguard-wont-have-an-arachnophobia-mode-because-it-doesnt-have-a-single-spider

Apparently the uber soys working on DA4 deliberately avoided the use of spiders as enemies, in order to avoid offending the sensibilities of those with arachnophobia.

The news of this going along the grapevine is just many tiny titbits of news, making even the most braindead slopconsuming DA fans hesitant about being excited regarding the upcoming Dragon Age 4 in less than a month - especially since 3 months ago, Bioware had released a trailer which garnered a large amount of dislikes from people for a myriad of reasons.

The reason for the backlash or dislike or lack of positive feedback are many, including the great fracturing of the fanbase - but most of it was also to due with the context within which the DA4 trailer was released. For the past 2 years gaming has seen spectacular mega-blockbuster game failures from AAA developers and publishers, stuff like Redfall and GOllum, Forspoken and Suicide Squad and Skull and Bones, Saits Row 2022 reboot and so on.

ALL of these uber AAA games had immediate uncertainty and pushback upon their trailers, Saints Row 2022 reboot's trailers back in 2020 & 2021, had immediate backlash from the core Saints Row fanbase, whom had gotten used to the dark humor and morally abhorrent but likeable protagonists of the series.

The student soyboys protagonists of the reboot, left many with uncertainty as to the quality of the rest of the game, if the developers could seemingly miss the previous tone of the series so badly to SUCH an extent. Even Saints Row 4, the batshit insane matrix alien invasion parody title, held the dark humor and moral abhorrence of the protagonists to old standard, even if Saints Row 2 fans hated the zany story.

Instead it gave the fanbase a fear that the developers of the Saints Row 2022 Reboot legitimately hadn't actually played the games, or legitimately didn't comprehend them and their themes.

In the ensuing months past its release in 2022, the /r/saintsrow sub was a perpetual battleground, where shitlibs wokes and soys tried to gaslamp everyone into believing the game was good or even of acceptable quality - yet this time, the spectacular critical and financial failure vindicated the detractors of the Reboot, in that their fears all the way back in 2020 were well founded - in that if the developers could not even hold the same writing tone of the previous titles, whether through incompetence or agenda pushing, then there was very little chance that the other aspects of the game would be up to par.

A similar phenomenon had occurred in the trailers, and pre-release period of many uber high profile failures. Forspoken to Gollum, to Redfall. And although a bad trailer is never a guarantee of a predictor of the quality of a game, these specific high profile failures, each so close to each other, each vindicating detractors from teh moment the trailers dropped, demonstrated that much could be inferred by veteran gaymers or even normies ESPECIALLY negatively if the writing tone of specific series was different, if woke girlboss or woke seeming modern contemporary politics were present within the trailer, like a canary in the coalmine,

or just corpospeak and obvious trendchasing. The now infamous Concord failure was another such prediction by detractors as much as 2 years ago, since many Hero Shooter genre corposhit trendchaser soulless games have already lost millions for their demented out-of-touch CEOs. In fact Concord WILDLY exceeded even the worst predictions of failure as we now in the present know with hindsight.

I had an exchange with @Losercel 3 months back (can't remember the comments) where he exclaimed it was foolish for dramatards and other detractors to already be so negative with regards to a game still 4 months away, and I espoused that in isolation this might be true, but within the context of so many high profile failures, the negativity was warrented.

ON SPECIFICALLY THE PUSHBACK ON THE DA4 BIOWARE TRAILER:

Again many reasons for the negativity, but basically 3 months ago, the pushback could be boiled down to 2 main factors.

Many peeps immediately despised the artstyle of the trailer, declaring it too be "too cartoony", and appearing to be targeting the zoomer or Fortnite or Hero Shooter fandom.

With an additional 15 years worth of build up disdain for Marvelesque dialogue and writing

Additionally peeps decried the tone for being waaaaaay offbeat, too similar to Disney/Marvel or too light hearted, in comparison to the previous entries of the series having been relatively grimdark in tone type Dark Fantasy, with certain portions of of ALL 3 games having had sections which were borderline horror in tone and theme. (The Broodmother quests in Origins, the female Frankenstein quests in DA2, and the MINDRAPE quest or Fade in Inquisition) Even inquisition could have many dark moments despite its more colourful palette compared to its progenitors

"This is what Tevinter Magisters saw in Golden City."

Anyways it's just a whole comment section meming and lamenting the fear that the feel of the game was too different from its predecessors.

Additionally since 2019-2024, another phenomena had occurred, a relative mainstreamification of chudtubers and anti-woke media critics on Youtube, for example the most infamous currently being guys like the Critical Drinker.

Born from many chuds, to eventually even normies having had no outlet to voice their discontent of modern Hollyweird woke slop from both Disney and Hollywood greater, in which race-bending of white european characters from traditional medieval periods, to disliked girlboss chars, to the perception that modern contemporary politics had found its way into escapism fiction.

These anti-woke critics/youtubers still wouldn't sway any liberally minded peeps, and their reach was still only a fraction of normies, but even IRL in my real world experiences, around the office water cooler, or worksites or between trusted friends or family, I have noticed explicit anti-woke sentiment or talking points espoused by peeps i would consider super normie and apolitical, with regards to modern Hollywood media

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/star-wars-lord-of-the-rings-bridgerton-toxic-fans-hollywood-response-1236166736/

Even Hollywood writers have actively written that detractor fandoms have started to have an actual word-of-mouth effects upon their bottom lines! With many blame being laid upon the feet of the myriad of anti-woke or chudtubers which had sprung up.

This exchange between @SpookNarca and @eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee best sums it up.

https://rdrama.net/h/vidya/post/307335/sweet-baby-inc-purged-its-client/7151111#context

https://rdrama.net/h/vidya/post/307335/sweet-baby-inc-purged-its-client/7151188#context

NO SPIDERS!

Back to the no Arachnophobia thing

Basically in the past 3 days Biowarefans have been slapping about how this is totally a non issue maaaaaaaaaaan, to this is another straw on the camel's back in terms of redflags

"On it's own, the lack of spiders is not an issue. The problem is quickly becoming all these small things that wouldn't really be an issue "on their own", they add up. No more spiders, only 3 choices (this is an issue on its own), only 2 companions, can't control your companions etc etc etc... DAV is quickly becoming unrecognizable."

"It's a sign that this game is going to have no teeth to it; it's going to be modern Marvel levels of Slop"

"Exactly, people like this would piss and shit themselves if Sten was a companion, or other character like Javik or Regill"

"I'm scared of spiders like most people but this is weird. This reminds me of a mod that replaced spiders with mabari. But they still spawned in by coming down from a web which is way FRICKING scarier than a spider doing that lmao"

<insert eyerolls="" here=""> </insert>

"I'm afraid of water. REMOVE THE OCEANS!!"

"To me this sort of thing raises concerns. These sort of changes feel more like "what we can do to appease the audience" whereas I don't think anyone who is creating a very good story would be worried about that because they know the game/story itself is enough that people will be a part of it and enjoy it regardless. Or it's just one less piece of art they have to design which would be in line with the Keep changes and scaling back scope."

This is especially noticable as ingame characters have joked at the amount of ingame spider enemies killed!