It's not just that. It's very noticeable when it's being forced in but doesn't actually add anything to the game, and then its highlighted in the marketing.
I'm seeing two women in the banner above me. What gives? This is medieval fantasy -- why the women in armor and not raising children and/or doing needlepoint? Why are they even wearing pants and not skirts? What does this add to game? Why are these images being forced upon me?
Did you notice? If this were, say, 1960 you would have.
Except no one is talking about 1960.
Let me use Star Wars as an example. The original trilogy was amazing, it took inspiration for real historical dictatorships for the Empire and what they did but did not mirror it or shove it in the audience members faces. When George Lucas and others working on it did interviews it was about the story, the characters and the universe of Star Wars itself. Then we go to the sequel trilogy. The movies themselves didn't push an agenda but they were written far more poorly than the original trilogy or even the prequel trilogy. During interviews Kathleen Kennedy and directors like Rian Johnson would talk about how they feel so great about making things better for women because they now had a strong woman that girls could look up to as a hero, they put together a story group that made it clear that they were more interested in incorporating today's social and political issues as part of the Star Wars legacy rather than build on what came before, wearing "The Force is Female" shirts and saying or saying that there are too many white men on camera, and off camera running the film crew and special effects.
For those paying attention it becomes very clear that those in charge are more interested in putting forward a message that ties into whatever social issues of the day are rather than write a story that fits those characters and the universe.
Let's look at The Last of Us 2 as another example. The first game focused on Ellie and Joel and how it built up their relationship, and it had to follow Ellie and Joel because she resparked his humanity and capacity to care about others and she was the only person who could potentially save humanity. Neil Druckman, head of Naughty Dog, has said he was greatly influenced by Anita Sarkeesian in the past and now wanted to tell a story about hate and make the players look at Joel and Ellie as the villains that you played as and felt justified doing until you went to another character. Neil made it clear that he's interested in preaching about morals in his game to the players in a story that didn't have to follow Joel or Ellie and could feasibly be done with any other character to match the themes they were going for.
Naughty Dog also copyright struck any and all videos they could discussing the leaks, whether or not they used footage from those leaks, even claiming ownership of memes on Twitter to get those taken down for a few weeks as well, pretty much breaking copyright and fair use law. This was the biggest issues people had with them far more than the so-called pandering that the leaks apparently tried to showcase.
All I'm saying is that it does happen. If game developers want their games to sell well they need to know their target audience and market appropriately to that audience. If they build up a fan-base who have come to have certain expectations of that company then it is on the company, whether through advertisements, gameplay reveals or interviews, to temper those expectations and let the audiences know what to expect moving forward.
Which is why I'm really happy with the gameplay reveal Larian did, playing live for everyone so everyone knows exactly what we're getting, compared to the cinematic movie that Bioware did with Anthem's gameplay reveal...which didn't show much gameplay.
"I used my last magic poo to check in on my daughter." Scanlan Shorthalt.
