As for the wider discussions of feminism and wokeness. I feel I see tons of sexually clad women in the trailers. Provocative potrayals of sex. Lucia herself, a main protagonist has got the entire bakery lol. Werent all gamers crying that women characters were being made desexual for pandering? Seems the team hasnt entirely forgotten its historical consumer base. So its clearly still being designed for a male consumer in mind at least in the asthetic department. I dont get what's the problem..
Reducing "woke" to women being "ugly" or being dressed up is missing the point. Though somehow it always gets reduced to that somehow.
Red Dead Redemption 2 for example, was insanely woke and Sadie Adler was just one problem. That character wasn't just the ultimate girl boss but her entire story is absurd, as she turned from a sobbing widow, whose skills were the kitchen and the farm, into basically the Terminator. Suddenly, within weeks (in game) she became into this ultra bad ass sniper shooter. Also, there's that one really bad scene with the camp cook, who dared to ask her if she could help out cooking and she went on this massive diatribe, insulting him, acting as if she was above cooking and that she was only asked because she was a woman. That was definitely a eye rolling moment, it was just so cringe.
But even that wasn't the woke problem. Remember: You were supposed to be this bad ass outlaw gunslinger.
But then you spend your time driving around a bunch of screeching women who want to vote. You're wanted for tons of crimes but here you happily drive them around slowly. Imagine if Billy the Kid or Butch Cassidy did that in real life...
There are also obvious pushes to a certain direction: You can not disagree with the suffragette town crier in Saint Denis. Even if you chose "antagonize", in the end, Arthur just agrees with her.
At the same time, you can't agree with the Eugenics guy. Even if you click on Agree, Morgan will just insult him. So...what's the point of giving you the options then?
That the Gang was ultra diverse is historically false. There was exactly one mixed gang in the "Wild West": The Rufus Buck Gang, they were blacks, mexicans and indians. All Gangs that were white, were white and wouldn't allow any non-white people in. But i mean we can let that slide for storyteling purposes.
The Indians are portrayed as modern storytelling does: The "noble savage", while in reality they were slavers, rapists, pedophiles, mass murderers and mostly responsible for the Bison being endangered (read some frontier diaries, the indians had this weird thing where they would attack a horde of bisons and drive them over a cliff to their death, then they take the prime meat parts and left everything else to rot), in game the narrative is always "Evil White Men drove poor native american from his land" and i guess there's a reason why their reservate is the only other place (outside of your own camp) where you can't draw a gun or weapon.
And of course there are more problems: The game is firmly anti capitalistic. It drives down the idiotic "Southerns are all inbred" stereotype, which to me is still funny as today there are still two states in the USA that allow incest, but they are the northern, deep blue liberal states of Rhode Island and New Jersey - not the dirty evil south.
And of course, the Ku Klux Klan. They didn't even exist when the game takes place (First Klan ended around 1871, the second only started in 1915), their depiction is based on the second klan and they are portrayed as bumbling fools. I mean you can tell this was put in by some far left activist with an agenda. No other reason, especially considering how "we want this game to be time period accurate!" Rockstar otherwise was.
And this continued with GTA Online. Rockstar caved in to some strange activist group and removed the transsexuals in GTA Online (which i don't get, i thought presenting them is diverse and good? isn't removing them worse than having them stand around their gay club?), removed a action figure and they then had returning characters toned down, most obvious are the changes with Gay Tony and Yusuf Amir. Just look how they were in GTA IV and compare them to now. It's different characters just sharing the name basically at this point. They were completely sanitized. No Edge, nothing. Same with Lester over the years and you can tell their direction: Women are powerful, strong (like Agatha Baker or that Asian ultra hacker), while white men are capitalistic pigs like Duggan or bumbling fools like the submarine captain.
As for the game: I played every
GTA Rockstar game since the first one came out (and i disliked the fact that the euro version of GTA 1 had the female characters removed, why even?) but i got zero hype for GTA VI. Rockstar is mostly stuck in a 90's design template. They still use time limits for no good reasons, their mandatory stealth sections haven't evolved gameplay wise and are still on the level of the first Metal Gear Solid, the mission design is uncreative (drive there, kill, drive back), everything is heavily scripted and mandated (it's not a Sandbox, in GTA Online most content limits you to pre-set weapons and pre-set vehicles unless you use glitches) and the difficulty by now is so low and non-existing that there's no challenge anymore either. I got zero interest in GTA VI after everything i saw and heard and how GTA Online and RDR2 turned out.
Also, i look at the sheer size of the map and i shudder, already knowing all to well that at least in GTA Online 2 Rockstar will make you drive from the southern most point to the farthest area and back multiple times in a slow mandatory vehicle like those horrendous Post Vans in GTA Online. And they already said that there won't be something like the Oppressor 2 to use it as a great shortcut for those boring 5-10 minute driving missions.
And lastly: Imran Sarwar was even kicked out because, as Rockstar stated, due to "toxic masculinity". Benzies was probably kicked out for that reason as was Houser, Unseld and Lazlow probably left for the same reason. That is the biggest red flag to me. From the old guard, pretty much only Rupert Humphries and the other Houser are left.
Sorry for the long rant
