I won't. Nobody is able to define what "wokeness" really means to them because it's mostly code for "subset of people I don't want to exist around me".

Surprisingly, that doesn't sound very good when said out loud.

You suddenly made it clear in my mind that most talk about hormones and other "gym biochem" reeks of body horror.

Geralt could go on a Gwent tour.. but what's this? Upon entering this new land of Walachia, some bandits stole his Gwent deck while he was asleep in his camp. And he had the ultra rare nude Triss card in it, too! Open, The Witcher 4: a quest for cards and vengeance.

Many diverse characters all fighting back against their unfair economic situation.

"... and that's terrible."

I also remember Portal 2 being on that list for "Most male characters are being depicted as incompetent compared to female characters" or something.

Dude. There are 4 characters in the whole game, counting one that's dead but probably has the most characterization. Two are male. One guy is definitely a moron by design, but the other was definitely not incompetent. Mad, evil, sure. But he certainly achieved stuff.

All of those games' characters are essentially just mascots though (other than samus). So they're not really an applicable comparison for continuing a character long term in a story focused world that tries to be somewhat grounded in terms of consequences and passage of time.

i love woke, keep it coming

The first trailer of Breath of the Wild had a lot of people literally wondering whether that Link was a girl. I didn't see a lot of complaining about it, I wasn't looking for some though.

Also, Gerudo town. I'm not sure what kind of mental gymnastics you'd need to shit on "wokeness" and somehow filter out BotW completely from it.

I'd be down for Witcher 4: Winedew Valley

Wrong way round. The unironic woke is the BLM socially aware activist.

It's since around 2020 woke is mostly used as an insult by douche canoes.

Someone who can tame unicorns and jump through time and space is much more interesting than a berserker monster slayer.

Woke means being aware that an interaction with a cop is a life or death situation. Cops aren't your friends, they're not here to protect you. They're a threat, motivated by cruelty and love of power. When dealing with a cop, you have to speak gently, keep your hands visible at all times, and declare your intentions for every action. Or you could die. You could still die even if you do all that.

This is understandable if someone has a strong gender identity. Most people don't have much of a gender so it's less important to them.

anyone who has read the books was likely surprised that ciri wasn't the main character of any of the games when they first started coming out :::especially since geralt dies at the end of the books :::

ciri was more the mc than geralt for most of the books. she's the child of destiny. she's the young character that grows up as we follow their journey. she's the one that finds herself and shows major character development throughout the books. the only character development geralt goes through is accepting his bond with ciri.

the first two games never mentioning ciri was outright bizarre tbh. only even remotely possibly because geralt lost his memory. like, with where geralt as at by the end of the books the only thing you could possibly expect him to do on regaining his memory is frantically search for signs of his adopted daughter

to a longtime book reader my reaction to ciri being the protag of the next game was "FINALLY"

my only curiosity at this point is how much she'll be like book ciri. does she know magic? in the books ciri goes to sorceress school and then gets trained in primal magic by unicorns and immortal space elves. can you fuck a horse? that was one of the more... questionable scenes in the book.

tangent: sapkowski's politics occasionally bleed through in weird ways in the books. like three's a scene where a woman finds out she's pregnant mid way through a literal war that our band wades through on their journey to save the world. the party basically needs the woman to proceed. she does not want the child. i believe it was the product of rape. yet for some reason geralt and a literal fucking vampire convince her that abortion is wrong and she should keep it instead of drinking a potion about it. it was so randomly out of character for everyone involved. but hey, that's catholics for you i guess...
/tangent

i think they generally said that ciri lost her elder blood powers after the king of the hunt was killed right? otherwise I'm gonna be really curious how handle that as well. she should be sort of the world's greatest sorceress otherwise. ooh, i wonder if she'll make quips about cyberpunk and/or other worlds she's traveled to. like, she spent Decent bit of time in Arthurian legend. she shows up briefly in Victorian London.

also, what will the world at large look like? they can't do it like the last time where your previous save could alter the new game based on your decisions. you were simply able to do too much. they'd need to make like 3 entirely separate stories at the very least. like, who rules the north? are you the empress of nilfguard? is the church burning all the nonhumans at record pace? you can basically decide the entire fate of the northern realms and all of its people in multiple ways... unless it just takes place elsewhere. maybe we'll be in zerrikania this time or some shit. there are many distant lands that the games never take us. it would be much more doable that way. then you'd just have to change dialogue and maybe swap out a few characters.

aaaanyway... yeah, anyone mad about her being the mc is a dumbass that doesn't know shit about the story.

Half the things those idiots like would be 'woke' if they came out today. Any movie/videogame/(I would include books but these chuds don't read) including a female lead, a non-white person, or a disabled individual is doing virtue signalling and pandering to minorities. But back then, chuds didn't have the internet to tell them what to hate.

There are tons of things that nobody cared about years ago that wouldn't fly today. Fairy Oddparents having a male individual become pregnant. LOTR's Éowyn killing the witch king on her own. Avatar: TLA has a few 'woke' episodes as well - for example, one where the male leads learns how to fight from a woman, and another where the female lead needs to convince a male wizard to teach her magic, which was a man-only practice.

If they were released today, you'd find them in thumbnails on YT with "cringe", "woke" or "DEI" written in CAPS all over the place.

Absolutely. Also Power Rangers for having a diverse cast that includes girls who kick ass too, and Captain Planet for having both a diverse cast and ecological consciousness. And X-Men for the same reasons they shat on X-Men '97. And Sonic the Hedgehog for being anti-authoritarian and having little PSAs about tolerance and being a good person. And Justice League Unlimited for showcasing female heroes just as much as male heroes. Powerpuff Girls for obvious reasons.

Back then they called everything they didn't like "satanic" or "evil" anyway. Before they realised they could trick idiot kids into joining their cause by calling it "woke" and packaging it as rebellion instead of pearl clutching and puritanical nonsense.

I 100% did, as the weird torture porn-esque deaths bothered me. I could've played if that questionable design choice wasn't made...

Don't let the alt-right dictate what "woke" means

I mean, I prayed to the nether gods that we'd get a Letho game. He's the perfect protagonist if they wanted to move away from the books and more firmly into their own OC. Always had huge main character energy, and would be perfectly suited for exploring the morally grey areas of the Witcher world.

It's about time women got more accurate representation in games. How many games have you play as a man compared to playing as a woman? Technically it should be 50/50 to more accurately represent the real world.

I think that ship has sailed. That word is at the moment a clear sign the person using it is an asshole. It can be reclaimed, but right now I don't see that happening.