Hypocrite's Haunt

So. Battlefield 2042 . So many terrible things to say, so few things that haven’t already been said thousands of times on Reddit. Everything from the gunplay to the bugs to the lack of a campaign – there are plenty of things to hate here. So, am I here to contribute to this unending flood of criticism? Well, yes, a little, but perhaps with a little bit of a different perspective. See, I didn’t play the game. Nor do I play many Battlefield games (the last one I appreciated must have been the Bad Company 2 , which is positively ancient at this point). Why am I writing about it then, you might ask? Well, I think as a bit of an outsider, I am uniquely positioned to simply not care about much of the more minute details of actually playing the game. After watching a few reviews (and more than a few angry rants on Reddit), I believe I understand where Dice, the studio behind the series, is coming from, and how they failed so miserably. So, here I go: the core issue behind Battlefield 2042 i...

I usually don't enjoy isekais. For those who aren't otaku or weaboos, "isekai" roughly translates to "different world," and it has become a metonym for stories that involve being transported or reborn into a different world - usually either a swords-and-magic fantasy world or a video-game. This has become a standard within the anime/manga/light novel world, with each iteration relying on increasingly ridiculous gimmicks and becoming unbelievably more generic than the last. I do enjoy isekai when it's done well - the first arc of Sword Art Online is iconic as a genre-defining anime; KonoSuba was a satire that came out right as the market was being saturated by isekais and mocked them with acerbic wit. But as they keep flooding out each season, with each of them vying of the prize of best power fantasy, I've lost any desire to consume any more. It gets to a point where the the cliches are so tired, the tropes recycled one too many time, that all of t...