I don't like the fact that this person's all about realism and relevancy to real life problems when it comes to character motivations. But does a complete 180 when mentioning Marshall's laser rifles and flying bikes, as if it wasn't completely out of place and unrealistic.
Okay, this one is actually easy to explain. The key word is "character". This is an issue of people vs things, characters vs laser rifles and flying bikes.
When we create mass media works like movies or games, we have to be very careful about people. For example, if I have a XYZ motorcycle, and in my movie, it's p.o.s, no problem. It's just a thing. BUT ... if I call it a Harley Davidson Motorcycle and THEN disparage it, the people at HD are going to have a problem with how I portray their work, their brand, their business. Which is why, when we have a flattering portrayal, we can get money for product placement. But if, for example, I'm going to crash an airliner, no airline company wants to be associated with crashing, so I have to make up a company. People.
Now with street gangs, we get into a problem, because there are street gangs made of people, people are complicated, and if I don't really understand street gangs or who they are or how they act or what their motivations are or why they got into it, I run the danger of stereotyping people: dehumanizing them with caricatures. When I was kid, I didn't care if I offended other people. Now, I care.
Some of the people who want to play games are at a point in their life where they don't care if how a group in a movie or game is portrayed is offensive to the people being portrayed. I understand that. I've been there. I get it.
My guess, though, is that the devs are most likely younger than I am, but maybe they're simply getting into that age bracket where they're starting to think about these things.
Unfortunately, to people who don't care, it looks weak. They look like sellouts, they look like they're caving to "pressure", they look like they're trying to be "woke", they look like they're projecting their hipsterism into a game where it doesn't belong.
If it were me making the game though: again, I wouldn't want to have to be apologizing to people.
I'll give you great example: Freckle Bitches. When they did SR2, I'm sure they thought it was funny. Everybody knows they're poking fun at Wendy's. What's wrong with that, right? Except the owner named the restaurant after his daughter, and the image on the sign was based on his freckled red-headed daughter when she was still a pre-teen. And so basically, without any real harm to real person intended, they just called some guy's little daughter a bitch.
Again, when we're a certain age, we may not care, but when we get older, sometimes we do.