A game I used to love became garbage

If the little red fingerprint looks familiar, it’s the logo for NetEase. They are the same developer for Marvel Rivals. 

To preface this, back in 2023 I was absolutely in LOVE Identity V. Every day I would play for hours on end and delved into the lore of my favorite characters within the game along with the main stories within the game. I used to read and make up my own analysis of characters. I could summarize character lore even now because I still enjoy it. The characters weren’t the only thing that had me attached to this mobile game. There were other players to engage with, and I had many online friend groups because of this game. A huge chunk of my money went to this game for merchandise and in-game currency. Earlier this year, I ended up selling my account that I spent close to one thousand on for two hundred dollars. Money’s money, but a little more would’ve been nice.

BASE GAME (basics)

Whenever thinking of the mechanics for this game, think of Dead by Daylight. Five ciphers need to be decoded to activate gates. Then you need to open the gate by decoding it. There are four survivors and one hunter, and the game happens on a randomized map. Instead of hyper realistic graphics and humanoid models which would be in DBD, you have Coraline looking dolls as survivors and a hunter who may either look human with slight abnormalities or something that barely resembles one. Even with non-human models for hunters, it isn’t scary because of the janky graphics. The survivor’s and hunter’s abilities differ from the ones you’d encounter in Dead By Daylight. There is a survivor who can destroy the chairs (hooks in DBD terms), a survivor who can disable your abilities as hunter, a survivor that can stun you for prolonged periods of time with a rocket, and way more. Hunters have abilities of the same level, if not better skillsets. There is a hunter that you cannot look at as a survivor, or you will get hit and placed on a rocket chair at five ciphers. Then your team is pinging “you’re on your own!” (basically telling you that you suck and need to delete the game). There is a hunter that can make duplicates of herself, and the clone can phase through obstacles while also being able to hit you. There is a hunter that launches cats at you, and she can either stun you or disable your abilities (this is an actual in-game mechanic I’m not joking).

 

There are skins for both factions. Now it’s all a fashion show for who has the better skin rather than eerie concepts prevalent in Identity V’s early days. To even get skins you have to do a gacha (gambling).  You either save a lot on in-game currency you get for free over long periods of time or get your debit card out and spend one hundred and get five duplicates of the same skin. You can also get skins within the in-game shop, but you would have to get that debit card ready as majority of them require it. I’ll give them credit where credit is due since a lot of skins are beautifully designed. Some of the designs gave me inspiration for my writings and artwork. The base character designs themselves are amazing as there is a lot of research done into the character’s background to render it cohesive with the time period (nineteenth century).

 

 

Where the issues arise

Now this is where my main issues of the game start. Within the game there are currently only THREE characters that are darker complexed out of at EIGTHY ONE playable characters. That’s way less than one percent people of color featured within the game. There are other characters that come from countries where citizens are generally tanned or darker but share complexions of those with fair skin. For example, there is a character who is from Nepal (an Asian country in-between China and India), but you cannot tell him apart from the European characters. Yes, there are more poc (people of color) characters within the game. Though, they are either mentioned in passing or served as stepping stools for the playable characters in their lore. All of the time they are side characters you never see. In some controversial skins in-game, there is straight up cultural appropriation.

 

In other skins and illustrations made by developers themselves, the only three poc featured in the game are whitewashed. The three characters shown, Ganji, Patricia, and William, birthday portraits compared to official artwork. Both are made by the same company by the way.

There also has been Generative Artificial Intelligence usage within the game and promotions of the game that started this year. It was first spotted in a promotion in their annual Call of Abyss tournament (Yes, the game has tournament aspects and esports teams that participate. There are opportunities to win cash prizes). NetEase also started to fire official artists for the game and replaced them with AI.

 

All in all, this game is bad like an open pizza box that’s a week old. I advise not to support this game or the developers because of the actions I stated prior. What are your thoughts on this? I’d love to hear your opinion ꉂ(˵˃ ᗜ ˂˵)