See, when Gray Matter portrayed Styles as objectifying his dead wife on some level, being vaguely dismissive of women, and so on...

I assumed these were supposed to be serious character flaws!

Like, he's totally delusional about his "scars", and he's involved in fringe research, so maybe his ideas about women are also supposed to be misguided?

But this new game by Jensen stars a character who's basically BBC Sherlock

and you have to go into DEDUCT-O-VISION mode to look at people and figure out their secrets.

And guess what? Just about every time he looks at a woman, he discovers that she's vain, insecure, needy, cruel, petty, or vindictive!

There's one exception, and she's given the personality of a lump of wood.

AND HE'S NEVER WRONG.

This strikes me as a step downhill from Gray Matter, where there was a female protagonist who was actually kind of awesome.

It also makes me wonder how conscious Jensen actually was about the flaws being written into Styles

I mean, the dickish protagonist of Moebius is beaten up early on, and from that point, suffers basically zero consequences for his dickisheness.

Just pure bullying, all the way through.

WHY, YES, GAME, IF YOU SEE A WOMAN WEARING FLASHY JEWELRY, THAT TOTALLY MEANS YOU CAN DEDUCE THAT SHE IS VAIN

LIKE EVERY OTHER WOMAN WE USED THE DEDUCE ICON ON

I'd say making the main character clearly bisexual - not ambiguously at all - was a step forward, except "gay/bisexual misogynist" is kind of an ugly stereotype in itself.

Damn it

all of that stuff in Gabriel Knight 2 where the gay flirty werewolf turns out to be decadent and evil PROBABLY should have tipped me off, huh?

Anyway, I used to feel bad about playing Styles in a way that emphasized his character flaws more than the game did.

NOT ANYMORE.

Oh that sucks

Well at least there's that?

I guess.

I mean... I know it's entitled to say "my favorite designer made a bad game, I feel so disappointed!"

but

this is actively, socially bad

And she made games with REALLY GOOD female characters before!

She CAN write interesting, likable, smart, sympathetic, non-generic female protagonists!

oh no

Sam from Gray Matter is great! She's a principled con artist, a magician who solves crimes with logic and skepticism.

Grace from Gabriel Knight is great, at least in the second and third games! She uses persistence and deduction and insight to figure out historical riddles.

Nobody in this game is great.

the main character is cold and distant and nasty and arrogant

because his mom was eaten by lions in front of him.

turns out he's reliving the life of a historical monk whose mom was eaten by bears.

I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP

The main character's sidekick/gay tension love interest has the personality of a Ken doll.

He is supposed to be Watson, I think, in that he is ex-military and protective of the lead.

He is not Watson.

He is not anyone.

He is totally, absolutely, utterly blank.

I sympathize with the author's stated desire, in interviews, to make a game where the heroes are "hot guys." But I start to side-eye when one of them has no personality BESIDES "hot guy"

Yeah that's disappointing