Patch 2.2 feels like an insult to us Brazilians.
I've never skipped any main story when playing R99, I've sit trough 9hrs+ reading chapter 7 which was an absolute masterpiece, and every single time they delivered, all the different places were properly represented to some accurate degree since this world is different because of the arcanists, and all VA's in English felt on point with their accents and characters speaking on their native languages.
So when I found out that the next chapter was gonna be in Brazil I was elated, so many "cool" moments in our history they could mention to add to the story, the dictatorship, slaves hijacking a battleship, the inflation, out little anecdote from ww2, the goddamn lobster war with france during the cold war, hell, even the mention of our very specific breed of street caramel dogs would get me excited at this point.
But this? I have so many issues with Chapter 8, so many issues that I can't even dismiss them with "but arcanists exist so a few things might be different!" by how glaringly wrong everything is, I even feel like the developers actually hate Brazil and were taking a piss at us by these points I'm going to mention:
Not a single native brazilian character, unlike other events/patches, this time the setting is in Brazil and we got 0 proper brazilian playable characters, the closest one is Duncan, but he's one of the veterans so he might as well be from Antartica, the only brazilian thing he's got is... nothing actually, he feels just like any other cool uncle type character like Shamane.
NOBODY SPEAKS PORTUGESE, with exception of one sentence from Lopera at the early chapters where she says "Hey guys!/Oi pessoal!", which was one of the best portugese pronounciations I've heard in a while, then, funnily enough, next part the reverend guy with the most spanish accent I've heard in my life tells that Lopera's accent doesn't feel local, I had no words to describe how weirded out I was by that... Not to mention that after that point, even the brazilian side-characters were speaking spanish with their "Señor" instead of "Senhor", "Favella" instead of "Favela", yes, with one L, non-native speakers might not notice the difference, but to us, the difference is screamingly high. I'm pretty sure they managed to piss off every single brazilian player with this nonsense because gringos mixing up spanish and portugese is a sureway to get yourself inside a car tire tower and get gasoline splashed at you and set on fire, microwave as cariocas call it.
What in T-posing Jesus is that Marcando guy? Why does he have a sombrero? This feels like an insult not only to Brazilians but to Mexicans as well by mixing up our cultures.
On that same minor note, why some of the enemies dress themselves like they're tourists in Hawaii and use bow and arrow? This is the 90's, we are civilized y'know, we use .38 revolvers, not AK-47's, which were held by another enemy dressed like a cowboy.
Who in City of God's name goes from Rio to São Paulo by BOAT? not only the Tiete river is a mess of feces, urine, garbage and whatever Chernobyl has it in the air, but its also GEOGRAPHICALLY MENTAL TO TRAVEL BETWEEN THESE PLACES BY BOAT
Look at this, doesn't make any goddamn sense.
The Favela... Look, I'm not complaining about a good part of the story being in the Favela, that's cool and all... but why is the favela on the Tiete river? Not even in Rio the favelas are like this, it looks closer to a poor coastal Cambodia neighborhood rather than a favela. And why is it built like they are on Venice, with boats and stuff?
The only good thing about all of these things is that they took the Storm and the "you are going to Brazil" meme and made it canon.
This post is mostly me getting all of this out of my chest, because I felt THAT frustrated from all of it, I'm currently on stage 9 and I can't even enjoy the story properly because of all these things that keep bothering me, I want to read it all because I love the characters, but every time I hear someone speak portugese and its just spanish I die a little on the inside.