The Right Is Attacking a Franchise It Once Loved. The Reason Why Is Laughable.

A new video game sparked fury and accusations of wokeness in entertainment. But we've played this game before--and it's boring. Back in the summer of 2020, during the first year of COVID lockdowns, two first-party PlayStation games were released back-to-back, just a month apart: and . Upon release, was pretty beloved by a specific right-wing culture-war gamer crowd, who placed it on a pedestal specifically as a way to directly attack . While is far from perfect (for example, Neil Druckmann, the game's creator and co-director, took inspiration from the Israel-Palestine conflict that was criticized for both-sidesism), but the game's sin on release for many on the political right was that it took a series whose lead was previously a man and continued its story with one lead who was a lesbian and another whose appearance was deemed too masculine for these players to be attracted to her.