"He's not just a regular moron. He's the product of the greatest minds of a generation working together with the express purpose of building the dumbest moron who ever lived. And you just put him in charge of the entire facility."

Polygon reviewer has not just proved to be an ordinary hypocritical moron and asshole, he, in fact, proved to be absolute, narrow-minded incompetent ignoramus, blinded by what he thinks to be his morale superiority, while just being myopic.
No, I don't mind when people have different opinion, variety is the spice of life, and having more viewpoints on the subject is better, because it helps to look at subject from different angle. But this is true only when it is backed up by common sense, which appears to be very rare (so rare some developers even name their DLCs to honour it), knowledge on the subject (which reviewer just proved he has none), but not just desire to force others to follow his vision of world order, ignoring everything that is outside if that vision.
Maybe it's good for media to have these shit magnets to generate traffic, I have no idea how they generate income, but what I do not get, is why those media representatives are so surprised, when such behaviour leads to distrust, and creates precedent, where any random Jack Keane 2 review here seems to be more trustworthy, solid, and founded.

I'm not going to force my viewpoint on Witcher universe on you, as some of you may have plans to read books to learn world better and make your own mind, but I do think that CDPR should not just heave game copies all over world media, but carefully select person who is going to review it, so at least an RPG reviewer wouldn't blame and RPG for ability to role-play. Having an author who, while may not be a fan of your series, but competent and studious on the subject, so he could learn the background and do some fact-checking. Otherwise it would remind giving a hard-core simulator to someone who doesn't have a wheel and doesn't really knows the genre. Otherwise we have more polygate bullshit, when author blames developers for miso.. hatred for women and racism, while being extraordinary stupid and lazy. Okay, books may be too difficult to read for him, but for fuck sake, replay previous games, they do tell short version of a story, maybe then you'll realize that game has different races, and Geralt himself actually died, while trying to protect non-humans during uprising (and you have a chance to participate again), and that in "misogynist" world sorceresses were spinning everyone on their dicks, despite having none - they were practically ruling the world, and only in Nilfgaard they were put into servitude position.

Blaming Witcher, probably the only series that raises real adult questions (and none of them really easy) and problems (i.e. not nekkid bewbies), while being basically an allusion on real world with all its problems, including racist, gender, and violence, to name a few, and does that masterfully, through eyes of a person who supposed to remain neutral, but nearly always forced to make a choice, is probably the best sign of entire polygon incompetence, starting from author, to his superiors, who keep them there. Also it could be a sign of author's personal running grudge against CDPR, but I vote for incompetence. And to think some people thought polygon is about to be the best media out there.
Dixi.

"art critic" => I was waiting for this one....

I love art in general but his text (and the same kind of "professional reviews") are totally irrelevant from an academic point of view. There is no difference between his review and an IMDB text from a random viewer expressing his/her disagreement with the movie POV (just check some movies about sex or religion to see the various opinions in comments).

The guy could be called a real critic if he was able to produce a real essay on the world of the witcher, Slavic fantasy and its roots, comparisons with modern world, etc in more than 100 pages (yeah, the real ones on paper like the books I read). That would be real work, not just some clickbaiting stating its plain opinion (coz in itself the article is useless, good critic sparks thoughts, dialogs and new insights).

Good point, that may well happen. The middle-ground will vanish, and mainly the games which are offensive for the sake of being offensive (Hatred, Muslim Massacre, Kill That Homo (ok I made up that last one)) remain.

Was it really that the female SJWs felt the (failed) witch hanging in the TW3 trailer was a gang rape?

Change the last word of that third "made-up" game to something even more offensive, and that game exists and was recently banned from Steam. Which does enhance your point...

lol Polygon.... Storm in Tea Cup should be their subheading.

Already done (sadly....)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-p7mOl1xDE

Notice how it was made for the reason depicted by you and Klumpen..... :(

Hey here's a kickstarter that should suite your taste, vote with your wallet instead of throwing terms like "exploitation", "horrible", "Problematic" around the forums. They get mention enough in the internet.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/235466673/elsinore-a-time-looping-adventure-game

Games that appeal to your taste will not get made if you just talk but do not vote with your wallet.

How dare the reviewer mention something that affected his impression of the game!!

I was particularly annoyed when he mentioned he found the combat a bit repetitive after a while. GET YOUR OPINION OUT OF MY REVIEW!!!

How am I supposed to be able to read the review and work out whether the things that affected his enjoyment of the game, might also affect my enjoyment of the game, if he put in all these subjective personal opinions?

So much corruptions.

That reviewer should write a review of Finland. There's so many white people living there, that's so racist!

The goal of any review is to inform the reader about the quality of a product. For a reviewer to spout his sensationalized opinions and make ridiculous claims about "misogyny" and "racism" and sway the readership to his "causes" is out of place. Most reasonable people see this. Most reasonable people think its off. No surprise that the only two defending the reviewer's right to spout any shit that comes to mind are HTown1980 and Gilozard. The same two people who don't believe reviews are supposed to be objective, nor reporters for that matter despite "objectivity" being part of any journalistic code of ethics.

I wish I had the PC to run it and the money for it. I would do exactly the same...

*dingdingding* We have a winner! For saying problematic you have won a free privilege-check, please face towards San Francisco while you keep flagellating yourself for oppressing everyone around you.

Here is a question: why should anyone care whether some university professor, who has never seen anything outside of his/her/xir campus, approves of our video games? What gives something validity is money. Why is it that basketball players are not ashamed of playing with a ball (a toy) all day? Because money gives validity to their profession. Video games do not need to be accepted as art, they need to be accepted as consumer products.

People don't have to produce academic research to do valid art criticism. Se: movies, music, TV show critics, etc.

+1

I LOL'd.

I'll bite.

Because these same professors are the ones teaching and putting the same ideals into people that then go out and spread it further into society. If people being shown as nutty and nit-picky leads to less proliferation of outrage culture, I'm for that.

Good try at setting up a strawperson to argue against and telling me to shut up, but no dice.

How about accepting that I mean what I say when I say? Video games tend to use fairly stagnant and cliche stories/characters/settings, and the people who are trying to change that are being screamed at and shut down, much like how you tried to shut me down.

If everyone could accept that different perspectives are valid, just like in practically all other art forms, it would be great. Bach, Michael Jackson, Yes and Led Zepplin are/were successful musicians of wildly different genres. Books range from academic archeology to by-the-numbers romances to sci-fi shoot-ups and all varieties in between. There's so many ways to make pictures/paintings/visual art they can't be listed.

But in video games, people start raging at the mere suggestion that others might not like their favorite genre/game. C'mon guys, this is getting old.