I am surprised so far nobody has started a discussion over this! It came to my attention that Akil’zon, the loa of victory, has a poke line: “Apparently I am a very popular symbol in some place called the United States.”
Now we aren’t unfamiliar with real-life references in the game, but they are usually a lot more subtle, apolitical and considerate.
Making an in-game character reference a real-world country is plainly unnecessary and silly, especially when said character is built on Meso-American and Caribbean cultural traits.
Why isn’t she mentioning Mexico, rather than the US, which has an eagle on its flag and culturally much closer to the loa as they are represented in game?!
What is next, the loa will brandish two boomsticks, it is claws, while screeching in front of a flag? We don’t need this sort of blatant propaganda, thank you!
Sure, it may give some ego boost to the US player base, but even many of them have expressed their disdain with this choice on other social media platforms.
I personally would like Blizzard to remove the line from the game as soon as possible.
Or—reasonably—because it’s an American company, with its headquarters located in the United States?
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California, and a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. Originally founded in 1991, the company is best known for producing the highly influential massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (2004) as well as the multi million-selling video game franchises Diablo, StarCraft, and Overwatch.
Captain Obvious. Who cares? The game’s player base is worldwide. One can imagine how well something will resonate with the Chinese or Russian gamers. Or anyone who can point at their own country on the map.
I’m more so arguing that it makes sense the developers of an American company [and that I wager includes a mostly American workforce] probably got a few kicks out of using Akil’zon, being the eagle loa, having and utilizing a reference to the bald eagle—their national bird and national symbol.
Getting hung up when a joke fails to land and making a stink about it is a good way to make them do nothing but the safest, blandest content. So I’d rather topics like this vanish than the voiceline. Being offended by irrelevant stuff is an unhealthy choice. Making it someone else’s problem another.
i really loathe this sort of immersion breaking content, so for that reason alone i’d be fine with it going away
i’d be much more willing to overlook it if there weren’t jarring, glaring issues with midnight’s story across the board in terms of tone, story beats and retcons