Anyone else feel like dbd's identity is all over the place right now?
I've been playing this game for around 3 years now, just after the Halloween DLC was added, and I strongly feel like identity of the game has been getting weaker over time. Let me explain what I mean by this.
Behold, Dwight. Just by looking at him you can tell his character architype is a nerdy, anti-social dweeb who has spent almost as much time inside lockers in highschool as he has inside the trials of the game. He has great, recognisable characterisation that you can pick up on just by looking at him. Several of his cosmetics also reflect this.
Because of how strong the characterization is in his default outfit, it's completely believable that someone like Dwight would take on a menial job like delivering pizza or being a mall elf. He isn't just wearing a neat looking outfit for the sake of it. His character is being respected and expanded without sacrificing the integrity of the game world. Even though Dwight probably would not wear the latter of the 2 outfits canonically, since it produces a lot of noise, it is believable that he would have worn it at some point in his life.
Which brings me to...Jane.
What can you tell about her character just by looking at her? What is her personality like? Is she social, popular, a loner? There's so little information you can get from her design compared to Dwight's. She has no clear architype, no obvious hints as to who she is as a person. You can assume what she's like based on your own personal experience with people. But that is not nearly as informative as knowing almost everything about her personality just from a glance. Jane suffers from a lack of intuitive character design and a lot her cosmetics are a perfect reflection of this.
The only information you get from any of these is that she likes to wear designer-brand clothing, a personality trait that is almost equally as exciting as inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.
Kate, Adam, Yui, Zarina, Felix and Elodie all suffer from this problem as well. The priority for their character designs was to look "attractive" and not like a carbon copy of another survivor, rather than to look unique and interesting. And just to prove that I'm not holding one group of survivors above another based on personal preference:
Jane actually has one cosmetic set that shows some character. That she's an enthusiastic painter. It's not much, but it shows that there was some squandered potential here. And I really wish it wasn't.
Now some of you might have read the lore of these characters and are wondering how the hell I want a character's entire personality just from their appearance alone. Well, that's because a character's visual design is far better at conveying ideas to a group of people, especially of none of them have played the game that character is in, than a written story. "Show don't tell", as the saying goes. And also because the archives are some of the worst attempts at writing I have ever seen. (Never mind the survivors being tortured for all eternity. This so called "Modern" style of writing needs to be stuck onto a rusty meat hook and beaten with blunt instruments until its windpipe collapses and ribcage is shattered) Apart from all of the unnecessary retcons and glaring plotholes, the archives so heavily distort the whole premise of the game that the entity turns from an incomprehensible eldritch threat that feeds of the hope of the people it tortures, to astral equivalent of a pot junkie throwing away people as if they were joints that is so shallow it even has its own fanclub.
But to stop this post from getting any longer I'm going to finish it off by switching to talking about the licensed killers. Some people have made the comparison that dbd is, "The Smash Bros of Horror Games", and I really can't help but find that insulting to Smash Bros. Every single character added into the SB's over the years and through various generations has been recreated extremely faithfully to how they are in their original game. I mean, just last year that added in Steve from Minecraft of all games and they somehow managed to incorporate the mining and crafting mechanics from Minecraft into his moveset and even tweaked every single map in the game so Steve could function on them.
Now look at every single licensed killer besides Michael Myers and tell me that their implementation into dbd is even close to faithful.
Pig is stuck with 1 trap to use out of the entire Saw franchise and is undone by bad rng, Demogorgon was gone from shrugging off small arms fire to getting stunned by planks of wood, Freddy is so disjointed that his power is just a mis-mash of other killer's powers, and Pyramid Head can be blinded by flashlights.
Pyramid Head. Pyramid. Head. Can be BLINDED. By. FLASHLIGHTS.
Do I even need to explain how stupid this is?
Dbd has gone from a game heavily based around the thrills and scares from classic slasher flics, into a mess of characters, ideas, with not even half as much identity as when it was first launched. Even though the balance issues back then were so much worse than they are now, and they are still really bad currently, dbd still had so much more personality and potential than it does now.
I really wish the devs could see this. Because they don't. Dbd has no viable competition and probably isn't going to get any for as long as it keeps getting updated. It's problems aren't going to be fixed. Ideas never going to be fully realised. Because there's no incentives for the devs to try anymore. They've gone from a genuinely passionate group of people that wanted to bring a truly unique idea to life, to people that looked at the most recent hallowed blight update, the Twins, the cosmetic store prices, and the upcoming UI and thought, "Yes. People would like this."
I don't. I just want the game to be interesting again.
Comments
killers are not scary in this game because they are weak.... only am scared as a noob survivor... unfortunately this doesnt look like it will change anytime soon, so us veterans get mild thrills
I mean Jane isn't blond but she isn't small breasted either.
As soon as the Trapper lore released in the rift, I immediately realized that they have no idea what they're doing when it comes to telling a story.
Their writing suuuuuuuucks.
So, yes, I agree with you.
Those are small to me. Certainly not stereotype worthy.
Jane got a phat ass. That's her character
But seriously, I think Yui and Felix they did a pretty good job on. Also worth mentioning is the paragraph long bios of the first survivors vs the novels that are the later ones. No room for imagination
Ganondorf is the most fateful of all Smash Bros representations
That is true, but you forget that The Observer, Felix and Elodie's lore make clear there are people who investigate on the matter. That is what makes me think the Entity didn't really care and wasn't careful in its kindappings.
Besides, if the Entity was really interested only in lone people whose disappearance wouldn't be noticed, it would have a buffet made of the countless homeless people in the world. But as far as we know there aren't homeless people in the Realms, because they don't fit the Entity's strict requirements.
omg yes, PvZ 2 is another great example of the quality of storytelling dropping like a lead weight. I hadn't seen your comment before, but after I had, I realized I needed to respond.
Have you seen Stromae's video that helped inspire the Entity? It's insightful as to what the devs intended for their creation to be. (I've linked it below if you haven't and were interested.)
https://youtu.be/8aJw4chksqMI'm still upset over Kate's Tome lore. Ooh she was almost kidnapped by the Entity once before but escaped. Nice, but...that's it? Pretty lackluster.
I’d take more characters like Jane than Dwight. Having too many stereotypes isn’t good as well. You come into different games but are bombarded with same types of people all the time.
And tbh I just don’t get what freaking stereotypes have to do with DbD’s identity. It’s identity is a horror cat-amd-mouse game, a collaboration of different horrors.
This forum really surprises me sometimes with stupid things like this. I get that there’s a lot of things there can be improved but saying the game doesn’t have an identity because you are too bothered with characters and their skins. Skins that are meant to be just that, skins. That explore different fantasies.
And you go on a rant about killers and them not being a perfect representation. What? Maybe Pyramidhead doesn’t work exactly like in SH games but he definitely takes traits from there. And do you know that there’s plenty of pyramidhead variations in SH as well?
Ofc a character like that which is gonna be carried over to a whole other game will need to be changed a bit. Damn
Wow. The resemblance is uncanny. I had no idea this video was a thing! Thanks for mentioning it to me. The themes that it expresses are almost an exact copy of the original entity.
In the video the monster that, is a clear inspiration for the entity, is cancer. It is capable of taking anyone it chooses, seemingly at random. And is extremely hard to fight back against. Especially people who are caught in the addictive grasp of cigarettes. Most people that smoke know the health risks but do it anyway, giving up hope for a longer, potentially happier life in exchange for momentary stress relief. Almost exactly like how a killer in dbd has given up hope for escape and sacrifices others for a brief end to their suffering until another hunt begins.
Really highlights how promising the original vision for the game was.
The people who investigate only exist as a shallow replacement for Benedict Baker. They serve the exact same narrative purpose as he did, (before he was most likely forgotten about) but instead of having the relatability of a single person stumbling across a threat bigger than they can deal with and understand, they're an entire organisation devoted to investigating the entity. Severally removing the "unseen and lurking threat" trait that the entity had before their inclusion.
There's no evidence to suggest it hasn't made a habit of stealing away the homeless. They would probably be the first to be taken out of a society because no one would miss or look for them. And just the thought of that, of being taken away to a dimension of horrors forever without any soul still in reality caring, is far more terrifying than the entity we have now, that has started collecting celebrities like they were limited edition barbie dolls.
Ah yes, how stupid of me. Thinking that in dbd, a game that I have mentioned multiple times now is directly inspired by classic slasher films which are know for their character architypes and villain designs that making character personalities recognisable just at a glance would be important. Like say, having characters wear different skins that express their personality in different ways, rather than take away from the horror atmosphere for the sake of cheap fan fare?
Or how about me having the sheer GALL to suggest that (Giant Metal) Pyramid (On) Head shouldn't be capable of being blinded because of basic logic, or expecting killers like Demogorgon to not use the one thing they were known for in their only iteration before being added to the game?
Clearly, you have the true master of the forums. And have graciously taught uneducated peasants, such as myself, that logic and reasoning aren't necessary to be proven correct.
The entire lore of dbd summarised
While I love Jane your point makes a lot of sense.
This is also why I love Jeff so much. When you look at him you think “Some kind of biker or metal head?” And you’d be right. All his cosmetic show him at different points in his life from his roadie days to him being a biker. This really adds to his story imo
I appreciate you considering my arguments despite my criticisms against a character you like.
I really wish more people had your attitude.
Because you’re nitpicking the things that don’t need to be nitpicked.
Your complaining about PH being able to be blinded is similiar to people being able to withstand jumps from idk how many feet in the air, or people in shooters getting healed right back up after being shot at.
sometimes you have to suspend your disbelief to make things work. This after all is a horror game with fictional killers and a lot of logic thrown out the window. And right so. Because as soon as you’d put too much realism in, it wouldn’t be the same game.
It revolves around cat and mouse chase and there need to be some rules put into place to make that work.
There is zero logic in your arugments.
PH being blinded makes no sense because it heavily conflicts with his design. "Blinded" implies something that obscures sight and unless PH's eyes are his entire head there's no reason to assume that flashlights would affect him in any way. Survivors falling from great heights unscathed do make sense because there wasn't a single point in dbd's development where fall damage was a thing.
What on earth makes you think any of my problems with the game would just vanish if I chose to not believe in them? Shall I cease to believe in the game's rampant balance issues and bugs to make them disappear too? Believe it or not, a lot of movies and games disavow most of traditional logic so their stories can be told and instead follow their own logic so the story is still believable within the confines of the fictional the world the players/viewers are entering. Dbd's internal logic has grown so nonsensical it's starting to unravel itself and the flaws I mentioned with the killers are just the tip of the iceberg.
What you falsely label as "nitpicking" are legitimate problems with the game that you're choosing to ignore or simply don't care enough about to bother complaining. I, as someone who plans to actually make a game some day, am very critical of design and feel a need to point out flaws and mistakes so even if the devs don't fix them I can remember what not to do.
I find your contentment disturbing. It encourages complacency in developers and leads to boring updates within games, and boring games themselves.
Most of Jane’s outfits are just “Jane on the beach” “Jane in designer clothes” “Jane in designer clothes again”. That’s why I love her painter outfit the most
pretty disgusting how you just assume all this stuff based on someone's look tbh.
Way to judge a book by its cover.....
I do feel like it’s a bit unfair to compare this game to Smash Bros.
while yes, both have crossovers with other brands, smash bros is a fighting game. With that you can do literally anything with a character because as long as it lets them hit someone or move around the map it works.
Whereas DBD has strict rules that must apply to all killers. Chases cannot be too short, you must loop or mind game around loops, etc etc; you can’t have a killer who flies because that would be unfair.
Pyramid Head being blindable would make sense, but would be a pointless buff to an already strong killer. Even smash bros doesn’t have characters who are passively immune to certain attacks, I don’t see why this game should either.
How dare I judge fictional characters by their looks. It's not some of the best characters that are celebrated and remembered for years after their creation have a unique look that accurately displays their personality-
It's extremely uncanny. You can even see the sacrifice animation almost frame for frame at 2:00 (The stab, the removal of a white silhouette from the chest, the camera pan up into a spiral of black, expansive protrusions, etc.) -- it's pretty wild.
I mean you can literally tell that just by the different cosmetics, balance changes, and survey's that word for word ask "What genre of game do you like?"
True.