Kahl me brother

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Some spoilers for the "online" game Warframe's newer storylines follow.

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I got back into League of Legends a couple months back, not that I'd recommend it. Still absolutely full of griefing little walking shitstains that the developers refuse to exterminate. But, sadly, the current multiplayer scene is so uninviting as to make a top choice of a game tailored to 12-year-olds fighting their own teammates more than the enemy. At least as a point of curiousity, it lets me see what gender roles the game industry's currently marketing to impressionable youngsters.

Unsurprisingly, the hero roster's now full of superpowered little girls, all spouting lines along some variation of "you got beat up by a girl" or extoling the superiority of girliness, or how the only person she respects in the whole world is <female name> or how she utterly disdains those losers <male name> and <male name> and <male name> etc. etc. etc. Nothing new there, just reiterating the entirety of contemporary culture. I was surprised at seeing some blurb about one of the male heroes "continuing his quest to find his father" or somesuch, which initially sounded like a nice counterpoint, not only two men interacting outside a woman's control but a father being presented as maybe worthy of being sought out. Well... you can probably guess how that eventually shook out:

Man bad, woman good. Repeat the mantra.

 

You can pretty much call this shit before it even starts, can't you? My mother, knowing I used to like Star Trek, tried to tell my about Ted Danson's new series, which is sort of like it, except it's very cute and funny, see, he's a captain that screws everything up and -

- hold it. I interrupted her, gritting my teeth. Let me take a stab at this. Does he have a hypercompetent female second-in-command who counterbalances his incompetence? Oh... well, yeah, my mother admits.

Yeah. Man bad, woman good. Repeat the mantra.

Warframe is another of my guilty pleasures. For the most part, just an idiotic Diablo-style endless loot grind, but with some talented visual artists, decent music and enough customization options to keep me occasionally interested. Again, largely banking on the younger audience, to the point when they ran some storyline about a heroine going rogue a few years ago, I had to wearily explain to some naive youngsters they needn't worry about the outcome. Her redemption was a foregone conclusion, as any writer/director/developer would only dare tease you with a female doing anything wrong these days for the sole purpose of revealing she (having a heart of gold by virtue of her sex) was merely forced into evil by an evil, evil man. Aaaand, cue the inevitable denouement:

She was only being driven to evil by an abusive husband, y'see.

Man bad, woman good. Repeat the mantra.

Warframe's past few years were filled with misconceived attempts at expanding gameplay beyond its basic routine of breathlessly bouncing off the walls effortlessly mowing down endlessly spawning enemies. Most failed, due to attempting to build up a hated alternate game mode or forcing you to trudge through found object minigames or other nonsense. Some time this past year they released a new patch in which they make you play as some mooks from your normally opposing factions. Notably Kahl-175.

Kahl's a basic grunt from a very grunty faction. He and his "brothers" are clones, tube-grown as cannon fodder. He doesn't glide effortlessly through the air or teleport or turn invisible for risk-free kills. Kahl shoots, and grunts, and talks in third person, mostly shouting "for the queens!" as his faction's standard battle cry, as his adventure becomes more and more of a suicide mission. With his final action, pulling the pin on a point-blank grenade he wryly changes that to "for my brothers!" - and I don't mind admitting my jaw dropped in surprise. You meet Kahl again later, having survived his kamikaze run, and though he's now given a new queen in the form of a condescending female as the brains of his operation, constantly bashing him as she grudgingly babysits you-as-him during fights, I'm nevertheless doubly surprised at his return as the focus of a whole new expansion, saving more and more "brothers" to join him. Apparently the audience liked Kahl.

But why shouldn't they? Even the slightest, hedged, most bashful and meekest break from absolute female supremacy now stands out as utter novelty, a shocking crack in an otherwise unassailable, government and corporate-backed propaganda system spanning all modern media.

 

Man 99% bad, woman 99% good? Avaunt ye, vile heresy!

 

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P.S.:

As a bonus, I have to note storytelling creativity goes hand in hand with improved gameplay. See, Warframe may be a mindless twitch-fest now, but its oldest playable characters were based on a slower, more careful, stealth-based, puzzle-interspersed, action-and-reaction dueling gameplay. By focusing on a less inherently superpowered hero, Kahl's missions, while not too much of a throwback, seem a welcome reminiscence of Warframe's long-forgotten basics.

P.P.S.:

Kahl being helped by la blue girl has not escaped me.