The Quiet Man Still Leaves a Lot of Questions
During Square Enix’s laughable E3 presentation the publisher announced a new game called “The Quiet Man” with a vaguely problematic and exceptionally generic trailer that left viewers wondering what the heck the game is actually about. Almost two months later, the developer has finally given us a glimpse into The Quiet Man’s gameplay.
Today’s Quiet Man livestream was entirely in Japanese so we’ll have to wait for just about all of it to be translated, but luckily a punch to the jaw sounds the same in every language. Gameplay starts off with a brief showing of how tutorials will play out, with a depiction of the controller and character in a suave neon-sign presentation introducing the game’s controls to the player.
The player then walks into a room where they fight more of the world’s most generic gangsters featuring some less-than-stellar animations of karate chops to the neck, followed by some bizarre live-action footage of a child weeping over what is likely the corpse of a loved one, and a latina gangster waving around a gun and acting big before his image fade cuts to what is clearly that same character as a grown man throwing up gang signs in a commissioned painting of himself. Another poorly animated fight with generic gangsters follows.
After that another live-action cutscene is shown, in which the Quiet Man meets up with what looks to be his own gangster bosses – a couple white men in suits – before the character gazes longingly at a portrait of a female musician – likely a love interest. He then walks into a room with one person counting a briefcase full of cash and hands the new character another briefcase the Quiet Man had acquired earlier in the demo.
At this point, it becomes abundantly clear that the developers have done little to no research on the disability their main character lives with – hearing impairment (which was seemingly displayed in the original trailer, when the Quiet Man points to his ear as generic gangsters tell him he’s in the wrong place, which is further displayed as he only speaks in sign language and visual cues). The character he’s interacting with uses very little sign language and continues to speak to him verbally, despite the character clearly being unable to hear him. It doesn’t take a whole lot of research to understand that deaf people cannot hear, and considering the gaming audience is very familiar with subtitles, it wouldn’t be particularly out of step to have characters speak entirely in sign language with subtitles translating information to hearing-enabled players.
All of this is in the first 15 minutes of the demo, and it goes on for another half hour that shows off all kinds of child abuse, generic gangsters, and the musical romantic interest whose presence only makes sense if you know that deaf people can still enjoy music via the vibrations of sound physically affecting their bodies.
The Quiet Man is expected to launch sometime next year for PC and PS4. Let us know what you think in the comments and stay tuned to COGconnected for all the latest gaming news.
SOURCE: YouTube