Steven Seagal has done a number of hasty, ill-advised commercials that were not a good match for his brand, which is something along the lines of “Internet Tough Guy Without the Internet.” But his appearance as a playable character in World of Warships, one of those exploitative freemium wargames, fit him worse than his poorly-tailored, mildly offensive jackets. The official commercial announcement opens on the mountain temple where Steven Seagal dwells:
Like he’s not living in a sprawling ranch-style McMansion in whatever Russia’s Florida is. Haha, who am I kidding? It’s Primorsky. We all know it. Let’s just finally say it! Primorsky, you are the leopard print jetski of Krais.
Imagine the disappointment you’d feel after trekking to the roof of the world and entering this sacred mountaintop temple… only to find the “monk” is a shitty proto-weeb who looks like somebody Magic Markered hair on a thumb.
You already know how the rest of this “funny” ad goes: The default white guy from every character creation screen enters into a training montage with Steven Seagal, the white guy you get after hammering random. Seagal spouts uninspired “Asian sounding” advice like “strength is not enough, use your mind,” and the director cut out the part where everyone giggles except Steven Seagal. Seagal has one extremely brief martial arts scene in the entire two minute commercial, and that bit has seen more doctoring than… probably Steven Seagal. Buddy, you do not look good. You look like somebody put Steven Seagal in the microwave and forgot to poke holes.
Wait, here comes the comic turn! You’ll never see it coming!
After all this time, Inadequate White Dude #32 explains that he’s not here for wisdom, he just wanted to use the wifi! To play World of Warships! You know — World of Tanks for people without the personal mobility to click that fast!
Side note: Every time Steven Seagal looks at a computer, you can see the most hardcore Asian-fetish pornography reflected in his little glasses. Doesn’t matter what he’s actually looking at — the reflection shows you what he sees.
The ad unwisely closes on Seagal’s bloated head floating over a white-flecked, vaguely oceanic background. It looks like he died masturbating in a sensory-deprivation tank and the spa forgot to check before the holiday weekend.
Of course the cowards didn’t put him in the game looking like that. Instead he got this extremely generous portrait, back from that golden era when he looked like a figurative asshole instead of a literal one, and you could still pay him not to dress like the waiters at an early ‘90s P.F. Chang’s.
But oh man, World Of Warships were so excited for this promo! Or at least they tried to be! It was so sweet of them to go all out here, like they hadn’t just settled for Seagal after realizing that Bob Denver was dead, the surviving Village People wouldn’t work for scale, and the boat from Miami Vice had too much dignity.
“Fire Down Below! The Glimmer Man is coming to World of Warships! We did not have Maximum Conviction in this choice, but were worn down by Attrition. We know he’s not A Good Man, and The Asian Connection is unfortunate, but it’s too late now. We’re in the Belly of the Beast. Uh… fucking The Onion Movie. That’s one.”
World of Warships gave him captaincy of the USS Missouri, the ship from Under Siege.
Which was a very appropriate choice… in that the ship is also a relic that used to be famous for fighting but now just sits around posturing because it hasn’t moved under its own power since the ‘90s.
Seagal’s character even came with special “Seagal Skills”:
Could you click to make his boat slowly list to one side while all surrounding boats pretended to take damage? What was his ult? Betraying his own ship and suddenly appearing on the enemy destroyer? Could he combo that into shilling for the korporatsiya that made their cut-price artillery?
God, World of Warships really wanted to make this into a something. They even had Seagal pay a visit to their headquarters, where he stood around looking like a big penis caught in a little fingertrap:
Why does nothing fit him? Do they not make frog-closure jackets for Weebles? He looks like somebody’s squeezing a tube of shithead toothpaste.
They cut to clips from an aggressively apathetic interview wherein he begrudgingly admits that it “sounds like a good game.” They vigorously assure him that he is “a very powerful ship.” To be fair, only after he first says “it sounds like I’m the best ship. I’m the best ship, right?”
There are way too many closeups (one) on his gross long thumbnail that he tells people is for “picking” and hopes they assume ‘guitar’ instead of ‘coagulated coke blockages.’
Because he’s Steven Seagal and he must belittle everything he cannot fairly beat, from opponents to video games to women, he can’t even pretend to play this game he is being paid to like without lapsing into critique of its realism. He very plainly memorized up to two naval gibberishes and wanted to use them as many times as he could in a sort of conversational Aikido. Here’s how that plays out.
Here’s Steven Seagal with a group of people who don’t understand or like him almost as hard as he doesn’t understand or like them.
I promise that if he’s not groping that woman, it’s only because his right brachial artery is jammed with Steak’umms and he has limited mobility.
PC Gamer covered this hilariously obvious disaster of a promotion by saying it was a “less divisive” move than prior events.
Hmm, let’s see what the very next major story involving Steven Seagal has to say about that:
And so he was quickly pulled from a game that even Sonic would be embarrassed to cameo in. Though the developers very obviously didn’t want to say why…
Everyone understood that it was really because nobody wants this slow-motion rapist blood-pudding to captain their imaginary fight-boat. Nobody, that is, except for the entire fanbase of this shitty freemium game:
Huh. So the kind of person that lives in the intersectionality between ‘free online multiplayer war game enthusiast’ and ‘avid forum user’ and ‘Steven Seagal fan’ also dabbles in ‘knee jerk rape defender.’ I am so shocked by this revelation that my tiny sunglasses have popped straight off of my bloated head and landed in my tea, embarrassing everyone that won’t make eye contact with me at this traditional Japanese ceremony that I was not invited to. It has absolutely ruined the Burmese silk slacks that I had personally tailored to the dimensions of ‘much extra belly, four times’ and ‘not so much crotch, not so much.’
