The world is a-whirl with opinions. It didn't used to be that way. Sometimes when I get overwhelmed with the speed of society and my lack of a place within it I like to ground myself with the memory that everything we know of the modern world is exceedingly new. Here in England, the Middle Class didn't even exist five generations back; and the working class couldn't even dream of being educated enough to have working opinions on how the world around them worked. That's probably where all those aspersions and prejudices arose conflating the upper class as some sort of 'superior human'. What's that? A working class actor just happened to pen a slate of the most influential plays in the entire history of England? Impossible, he must have been the front man for some other, more blue-blooded, script write. (As though a noble would hide behind a commoner. Speak sense!)
It is in the spirit of 'opinions' and those that have them that I have tried my hardest, time and time again, to come aboard the love train that all the gaming world seems to harbour for one Ubisoft game- Blood Dragon. If you don't know, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon was a spin-off title to the Far Cry franchise that took the recently 'perfected' Far Cry formula and removed it from the harrowing tale of jungle survival- instead transporting everyone to a neon-drenched 80's-action-movie styled parody of action movies, gaming culture and just about everything that the writers could get their hands on. It was fuelled up by the power of satire and over-the-top laser-breathing-dragon action and non-sensical chaos- and it has never been serialised like everything else that Ubisoft owns. And people loved it.
Not just 'love'- they idolise 'Blood Dragon'. It's irreverence, it's action, it's jokes, it's carnage, the fact it doesn't outstay it's welcome like every other Ubisoft game since Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. People consider Blood Dragon to the best Far Cry game Ubisoft ever made. And I don't understand it. I'll be honest, I think Blood Dragon is boring. I think it's gameplay is repetitive and dull, I think it's neon-night aesthetic is puke worthy and unappealing, I think it's creativity rivals that of a sheltered twelve-year old designing what they think is cool with crayon, I think the satire is obvious and devoid of bite and the jokes are lame and too drawn out. I think Blood Dragon is honestly my least favourite Far Cry game in a franchise I find increasingly bland with each entry. But I am the minority.
So much so, in fact, that there is currently in air an adult cartoon based on the Blood Dragon licence which people, actual living humans, are excited for: and I don't know why. Even when I pretend to see what people like about the game by reading their seemingly deluded praises and projecting them upon an imaginary canvass which I 'play act' is the game- people praise it's difference from the main game, the Family Guy level reference humour, nothing about the paper thin and groan worthy story with it's painfully excessive ropiness that the writers confused with being a 'loving send up of the action movie genre'. (A clever parody would have played upon those expectations in a way that acknowledges and heightens the material. But we are talking Ubisoft writers here...)
So the Blood Dragon cartoon certainly looks... loud. In all honesty there's a definite degree of quality animation work and excessively bloody action, scenes of wanton excess and just a bunch of the stuff any lovers of juvenile adult animation could wish for. Not to be dismissive, I'm a huge fan of juvenile adult animation myself- (Heck, I'm a 'Helluva Boss' fan afterall...) Yet there's something... Ubisoft, about it all. That is to say; 'Mediocre'. I fully accept that this may be my prejudice against the source material manifesting, but everytime I want to try and get excited about what I'm seeing I spot a Frog in Assassin's Clothing and realise- oh right, that's supposed to be the funny 'oh so random' character, and I sigh. Seems like Sam Fisher is going to be in this show too, or some approximation of him, presumably so everyone can point at the screen like a seal and scream about how they recognise him.
It seems almost strange that I'm looking for some vague hint of 'substance' in what is designed to be the least serious and put together Ubisoft franchise, but I can't help but look for it somewhere. Playing Far Cry 6 recently for the first time has really nailed home just how vapid Ubisoft's worlds are at their heart, to the point where even in a game where you work with Guerrillas to overthrow a tyrannical government the Ubisoft team can't for the life of them manage to create a believable character to make you care. Everyone are just 'personality traits' placed to look like people. Angry girl with machete, zany man with dog, grumpy old soul who doesn't like outsiders- it's like a cake made out of a thin layer of icing over a cardboard cutout. Disappointing and tasteless. I worry that we're going to get very much the same disappointment out of Blood Dragon.
When it comes to shows like Helluva Boss, which are very much in the same emotional vein as what the Blood Dragon cartoon is going for, I approach them looking for something. I want the excitement, the insanity, the gore, the 'I can't believe they just did that' moments- but I want all of that to underpin substance. Characters who feel, at least somewhat, real with ultimately realistic purposes and desires. Sure I'm looking at an Imp from Hell who makes a living travelling to the human world to perform contract hits, but that doesn't mean I can't connect with his struggle to emotionally connect through his own toxic self-sabotage traits which drive him deeper into loneliness and bitterness. I cheer at his steady steps of reform as much as I cheer when watching a government agent be cleaved clean in two by a battleaxe- because both sides of my soul, the animal side and the human side, are satiated by the content.
Now the show is already out by now, but this is not a review of it. It's more an excuse for why I might not be able to work up the courage to trust it, even when that might ultimately not be fair. As far as I know the writers of the show are their own entity, and the show is mercifully not an adaptation of the game's storyline. (or even really it's setting from the look of things.) But it does seem like an orgy of Ubisoft, and given that Ubisoft are the most milquetoast, passionless, dregs upon the entertainment world- that sounds like attending a strictly heterosexual swingers party attended only by men- an exercise in boredom. I hope I'm wrong, but unfortunately given that all the world seems blinded by the words 'Blood Dragon' for some reason, I can't trust anyone else's review but my own. >Gulp< Guess I might just have to bite that bullet afterall. (Or just fire it through the roof of my mouth in mercy.)
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