#“you should've known with the card art” well nobody knew kleinhammer heathcliff would include the bit about brainwashing!

[rimeiii]

I hate beating up a dead horse (and in fear of incurring the wrath of the fandom once more) but the way WHB handles content warnings is just...

Where are the detailed content warnings? Not just for the angels, but for everything? Because honestly, I think the game would've garnered less backlash for having them - a "this game is made for mature audiences, viewer discretion is advised" screen before logging in would be the bare minimum honestly.

Say what you want about the angel cards including dub/non-con content and the cards themselves veering towards that sort of territory but at least give a fucking warning about it? I've always criticized the devs for not having 18+ rating all across the board when clearly mature games like Limbus Company get the 18+ rating. If WHB is NSFW because of the sex and kinky stuff, Limbus is NSFW because of the immense amount of gore and dark content.

"But they have content warnings-" ONLY FOR SEX. AND PAIRED WITH 16+.

It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that, for people who played this game without following any of the pre-release contents, with this combination THERE WON'T BE ANY DETAILED DUB/NON-CON.

This is in Indonesia's Google Play Store, and if it's different in other regions, then it also begs the question - why the FUCK is it not just rated 18+ across the board?!

Limbus Company, the closest comparison I can think of being with their devs (Project Moon) also being a Korean indie company that created a gacha with mature content that has a staff team the size of a high school class (in fact I wager Limbus has less staff working on the game because around half of their staff works almost exclusively at their merch café), only had warnings for extreme violence and strong language, but at least they had the decency to put more warnings in their earliest trailers and the game website - and it's always common courtesy in the fandom to warn potential players with one particular image I'll show down below, containing a list of the game's content warnings.

Oh, and they're rated 18+ across the board, including a Mature Content Description on Steam.

And sure, you can make the argument of "well you know what you're getting into upon looking at the card art", but therein lies the issue of not warning at the very start of the game - nobody knew for sure what triggers would be in the game upon startup.

Whatever way you slice it, dub/non-con is a genuine trigger for other people despite it also being a kink (I personally don't get it and it's a no-no for me even in fiction, but you do you). Adding clear content warnings would literally harm no one and helps people avoid things they know they don't want to consume. Yes, despite the in-game context clues providing hints, a clear indicator is still preferable.

Take, for example, the Lobelia summer skin controversy in Granblue Fantasy. People already know Lobelia as the twisted Evoker who not only murdered his own parents but recorded their dying screams of pain in his conch shells, doing the same thing to his countless victims afterwards. All of this is mentioned during the Fate Episodes to recruit him. You want to know the problem with his summer skin, Danger Beckons by the Shore, though?

There's a home screen voiceline where he offers one of his conch shells for the player to listen to, wherein you will hear the pained and tortured screams of one of his victims as she's attacked and later on eaten alive by a shark. Keep in mind, this sort of voiceline wasn't even in his base art, and while his Fate Episodes had tortured screams it wasn't even half as bad as this particular voiceline.

It's even given a content warning in the wiki.

For a rather significant amount of players who bought the skin, the inclusion of this voiceline despite the subtle warning in the skin blurb (which, fyi, is only accessible AFTER you bought the skin) hampers their enjoyment of the skin when they put it on their home screens then tap Lobelia - which many people who get character skins do. Mostly because there wasn't any clear indicator of the scream and a lot of people never appreciated the sudden jumpscare scream. The fact that Lobelia is a psychopath and doing this shit is in character for him should also be able to stand together with the fact that including a scream out of nowhere is pretty scummy and not a good time. Especially for non-JP speaking players, who essentially got jumpscared by a scream out of nowhere, as they never understood the fact that Lobelia was offering one of his conch shells.

Back to the rating issue, though. Why not rate WHB as 18+ if you're going to include content that could very much be considered controversial, like non-con? Like, say, Limbus Company (which I hate bringing up again bc fuck kjh)? Which not only has the warnings in the app store but plastered in the earliest trailers (still viewable on Steam and Project Moon's YouTube channel but not on the Google Play Store) and the official game website?

And sure. Some of these trigger warnings sound silly (reference to traffic accidents is more or less Charon driving Mephi like a maniac iirc based on the content we already have in the game). But I did genuinely appreciate the warning because let's talk about the first three Cantos after the prologue, hmm?

Canto 1 already includes cannibalism, war, torture, and body modifications, among other things! Canto 2 has references to alcohol and gambling, as well as mentions of homicide - despite being a lighter Canto overall! And in Canto 3, we experienced discriminatory violence, more body modifications, enforced ideologies and/or actions, and religious torture and violence among other things!

I can stomach gore easier compared to non-con and even I appreciate the warning, particularly with regards to Canto 3. Kromer's fascination with everything pure (i.e. no body modifications), all stemming from seeing...something...in the basement of Sinclair's old mansion, the cult behaviour that led to mass murder and torture by the faction she leads (up to and including brainwashing as detailed by Kleinhammer Heathcliff's Identity story) Kromer's obssession with Sinclair and him standing beside her as an ally...it's all genuinely so unnerving, and are story beats the game handles really well despite how disturbing it all really is when you stop and think about it.

"But you should've known considering the game's aesthetics-"

Maybe, especially considering one of Gregor's launch cards is literally this, and most if not all Uptie II arts are gory at the very least.

However, again, I have to underline the importance of content warnings - this time with an irl example.

I have a friend who was interested in Limbus Company. I've talked extensively about Gregor and how much I love him, and it started because I have a drawing I made of him in the back of my phone case and Liu Gregor's Uptie II art as my phone background at the time. They said they were interested, then I had to explain the sorts of contents she would encounter in my native language, Indonesian.

"Blood and gore, violence, a lot of mental health issues - Gregor has PTSD and his chapter depicted it pretty well, human experimentation, homicide, so Nagel und Hammer is basically the Inquisition and kills people to 'purify' them, oh yeah cannibalism is also a thing-"

"Stop, stop, I'm not playing if that's the content I'm going to see. I don't think I can handle it."

This same friend was also interested in playing If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers - a free point-and-click adventure game that deals with themes like depression, homophobia, racism, and suicide. She was willing to try that game out because it wasn't as gory as Limbus Company. For context, the Mature Content Description for this game on Steam:

In both cases, I had to personally explain the content warnings in Indonesian since my friend isn't the most fluent in English and she has a far lower limit for dark content compared to me, but I did send that image of content warnings for Limbus Company and urged people to read the Mature Content Descriptions on Steam for anyone who wanted to try any of the two games and is fluent in English. Why?

Because it's basic human decency to try and keep people informed of any potential triggers and content they might not be comfortable seeing.

Either way, main takeaway from this issue:

Dub/non-con might be your kink, but it might not be for others - it might be uncomfortable or downright triggering as all hell for others, in fact. So, clear content warnings (in particular for any and all triggering content) harm nobody, especially as it helps people avoid story beats where their turn-offs and, more importantly, their triggers.

#what in hell is bad #i don't get why people are actively fighting against a more accessible gameplay experience #“you should've known with the card art” well nobody knew kleinhammer heathcliff would include the bit about brainwashing! #and i get that the dark content for limbus spans the entire overarching plot #but do we need a repetition of the lobelia issue in another game #“paywalling this content is a safety net” doesn't really matter at the end of the day because #1. some people got lucky and got the angel cards through the free seals #2. you're now under a heavier moral obligation to be clear about what you're providing/selling #christ y'all content warnings is just basic human decency #especially for a game that deals with mature topics #and for dub/noncon? yeah i would love clear content warnings for that so i can steer clear of the chapter/story segment in question!