Ebert: A Quick Thought
There are many, many replies to Roger Ebert's reeking ejaculate, from measured Judo-inspired reversals of momentum to primal shrieks which communicate rage in a harrowing, proto-linguistic state. Thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago chose to respond to him, which gave the whole thing a kind of symmetry, seeing as it was her TED speech that drove that wretched, ancient warlock into his original spasm.
That was very polite of her, behaving as though she were one side of a conversation. For what it's worth. Which isn't much, honestly, because this weren't never a dialogue. He is not talking to you, he is just talking. And he's arguing
1. in bad faith,
2. in an internally contradictory way,
3. with nebulously defined terms,so there's nothing here to discuss. You can if you want to, and people certainly do, but there's no profit in it. Nobody's going to hold their blade aloft at the end of this thing and found a kingdom. It's just something to fill the hours.
Also, do we win something if we defeat him? Does he drop a good helm? Because I can't for the life of me figure out why we give a shit what that creature says. He doesn't operate under some divine shroud that lets him determine what is or is not valid culture. He cannot rob you, retroactively, of wholly valid experiences; he cannot transform them into worthless things.
He's simply a man determined to be on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the human drive to create, and dreadfully so; a monument to the same generational bullshit that says because something has not been, it must not and could never be.
(CW)TB out.
I couldn't have put it better myself. Ebert is a fuddy duddy. At one point he compares video games to mahjong and chess. He CLEARLY has no understanding of the subject he's talking about. If he wants to voice an uninformed and foolish opinion, based on nothing but assumption (since he's never played any of the games he turns his nose up at), then so be it. Just because he's a movie reviewer doesn't mean he actually knows about anything outside of his world. If anything, he should be ashamed that he doesn't, because that is of course the natural assumption. Nothing he's said will erase any of the memories I've had, or prevent me from making new ones. I wrote a 15 page, 7,154 word article critique on Mass Effect 2. I guarantee I could easily write twice as much in praise of the writing and characters alone. So at the end of the day, I can care about what a doddering old fool thinks, or, just as cinema did with theater, sit back and watch time prove I'm right.
He also didn't like Kick Ass, so why would I respect his opinion even inside his own field?
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