AC4... Am I being overly sensitive?

[Gronk]

So i'm playing Assassins creed and really enjoying it, what can i say, it's pirates with broadsides and the works, really well made too. Yay.

But I just can't bring myself to do the animal hunting stuff. Shooting helpless deer or harpooning giant beautiful whales.. I just can't do it. It just feels so wrong!

Now I know there's a lot of killing people in the game, but somehow that's an entirely different matter to me. The people you kill have guns and attack you and everything. Shooting animals just feels like shooting fish in a barrel. Pointless, cruel and just.. unnecessary. I don't even know why anyone would even put it in a game?

Is it just me? Am I being overly sensitive here?

Just wondering 'cause i don't know really.

 

[hazabaza1]

People are sensitive to different things. Hunting animals and stuff is fun for a lot of people and adds a lot of content, but if you don't like it just stay away as much as you can.

 

[Eve Charm]

Heh well listen to jim's poem in this rhymedown
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jim-yahtzees-rhymedown-spectacular/8320-Lament-of-a-Murderer

But it's just morals people have where even if it's a video game people still don't feel right doing it.

But tokyo jungle was really fun

 

[Lieju]

Different people find different things disturbing, and you're well in your rights not to like it.

I personally dislike playing games that take place in actual conflicts and portray themselves as realistic while telling the story of a super-soldier running around single-handedly winning the war.

So playing games set in WW2, or modern military shooters just leave a bad taste in my mouth.

I don't enjoy killing humans in general, though. Or rather, I dislike the way killing humans tends to be presented; it's not given any weight, but the game wants to be taken seriously.
If it's purely over-the-top cartoonish, it's different.

EDIT: thinking about why many people find killing defenseless animals creepier, maybe for them the humans are more easily recognised as 'unreal', while realistically modeled animals look more real for people? It's harder to model a human to look 'real' for a human, than, say, a rabbit. Even easier is something that people don't pay much attention to.
So it feels like you're actually killing an animal?

For example a majority of people don't seem to know what spiders look like. Games have gotten better at it, but a lot of stuff still has spiders with their legs coming from their abdomen or something...

 

[synobal]

its got whale hunting? wow thats disturbing. think they just lost a sale with that

Ya I dunno why Ubi included it. You're playing as a pirate, shouldn't he be I dunno pirating? Attacking other whaling ships and stealing their valuable whale cargo? rather than going through the effort of actually doing the work himself? It just doesn't make a lot of sense for me.

 

[Soundwave]

Short of starving to death, I could never kill an animal. Having said that, murdering all the cute endangered species in Far Cry 3 was the most fun I had all summer.

 

[Eve Charm]

its got whale hunting? wow thats disturbing. think they just lost a sale with that

Ya I dunno why Ubi included it. You're playing as a pirate, shouldn't he be I dunno pirating? Attacking other whaling ships and stealing their valuable whale cargo? rather than going through the effort of actually doing the work himself? It just doesn't make a lot of sense for me.

Cause why not? If it's something that makes your character money that's in the world why shouldn't you be able to do it?

 

[RJ 17]

its got whale hunting? wow thats disturbing. think they just lost a sale with that

That was actually one of the first things that was found out about the game when it was announced. I'm pretty sure The Escapist did an article about it, think PETA got all pissy about it as well.

Edit: Yeah, here it is: PETA throws a fit about whaling being announced in ACIV at least as far back as March:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122523-PETA-Protests-Whaling-in-Assassins-Creed-IV End Edit.

OT: Seems like you've already got your answer from the other people commenting: different people are sensitive to different things. I doubt the makers of the game set out to be out-right offensive in this any more than they were trying to be out-right offensive with a lot of the "possibly offensive stuff" (including hunting, in your case) with ACIII.

Hell, that's the entire point of starting each game by SWEARING that "Assassin's Creed is developed by a multicultural team of different people with different religions yadda-yadda-yadda." The first thing every single game in the series tells you is "PLEASE DON'T BE OFFENDED!" So yeah, if you don't like the hunting or whaling, just stay away from the hunting and whaling. I haven't played the game (and don't intend to), but I can't imagine either of those will be necessary/mandatory to completing the game. They'll probably force you through a tutorial mission just to show you how it's done, but after that just forget it's in the game at all.

 

[Bertylicious]

its got whale hunting? wow thats disturbing. think they just lost a sale with that

Ya I dunno why Ubi included it. You're playing as a pirate, shouldn't he be I dunno pirating? Attacking other whaling ships and stealing their valuable whale cargo? rather than going through the effort of actually doing the work himself? It just doesn't make a lot of sense for me.

In fairness I think you've come up with a more entertaining game mechanic than hunting right there.

*thinks back to Independance Wars 2*

Hmmm... actually no. That would be most frustrating.

 

[GundamSentinel]

The whaling was the one part of the game that didn't really agree with me (and I had no problems sinking dozens of merchant ships).

Killing the other animals didn't really bother me, as it was mostly relatively humane one-shot killing. On top of that, often those animals attacked me first, plus I hate monkeys D:<. But the whaling was nasty business. Thankfully it's not necessary to complete the game. And I think you can buy anything you gain from it in stores as well.

But yeah, it really didn't have to be in there.

 

[BoogieManFL]

I'd feel the same way, I often still carry some of my own personal morals even when trying to play a bad guy in games. I often avoid hurting animals when possible myself. I'm often using the animal soothe shout in Skyrim to get past animals without killing them, similar things when playing D&D games like Neverwinter Nights series. Even when playing sociopaths in GTA5 and Saints Row I avoid killing/running over/beating up female NPCs. I like running around starting fist fights with random pedestrians in GTAV but I always do my best to avoid the ladies.

 

[MysticSlayer]

But I just can't bring myself to do the animal hunting stuff. Shooting helpless deer or harpooning giant beautiful whales.. I just can't do it. It just feels so wrong!

Now I know there's a lot of killing people in the game, but somehow that's an entirely different matter to me. The people you kill have guns and attack you and everything. Shooting animals just feels like shooting fish in a barrel. Pointless, cruel and just.. unnecessary. I don't even know why anyone would even put it in a game?

Is it just me? Am I being overly sensitive here?

Well, you don't have to do the hunting if you don't want to, and I don't see any problem with avoiding it.

However, the part in bold is what really gets to me. There is absolutely nothing real about the animals in the game, and there is therefore nothing ethically wrong with killing them. I can feel bad about something I did in a game, or I can choose not to engage in something because it makes me uncomfortable, but there is absolutely no reason why I should want to have it removed simply because I find myself uncomfortable with it, especially when so many other people enjoy it. So long as they don't start leading a mass slaughter of animals in real life, I don't see any reason to complain about it being in the game. Maybe you have issues with the design of it, but sympathy for pixels hardly counts as a problem with the actual design.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

its got whale hunting? wow thats disturbing. think they just lost a sale with that

Ya know that is what people did back then, for lamp oil.

Sides I've seen that freaking Blackfish CNN Documentary so many times, I'm perfectly okay with chucking a spear into Tilikum's brain.

 

[The Scythian]

Try doing some of the shipwreck missions. You will be begging to hunt sharks.

 

[SpartanBlackman]

So you're fine with playing a game which is literally about murdering people as an assassin, but you find it hard to play because the Whales?
What about the people you kill?

 

[SanguiniusMagnificum]

So you're fine with playing a game which is literally about murdering people as an assassin, but you find it hard to play because the Whales?
What about the people you kill?

I guess it's because we're kind of...used to killing people or seeing people die in video games and movies. They'll show the villain burning down villages, shooting his mooks for insubordination but you what really gets the emotional juices flowing? Kicking a dog. Just show the villain (or antagonist, whatever) hurting an animal and most of the audience will immediately lose all sympathy for him.

It's kind of a double standard, really...

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

I'll just very quickly point you to the response Ubisoft made to PETA calling their game "disgraceful" due to whaling activities, etc:

History is our playground in Assassin?s Creed. Assassin?s Creed IV: Black Flag is a work of fiction that depicts the real events during the Golden Era of Pirates. We do not condone illegal whaling, just as we don?t condone a pirate lifestyle of poor hygiene, plundering, hijacking ships, and over-the-legal-limit drunken debauchery.

If you don't like what the game contains, you can simply not buy it.

Unless out of necessity, I would never kill an animal in real life, the same with a real human being. And yet I did the hunting missions in AC3, and play many modern military shooters. Games are a fantasy land, a break from reality, where you, as a character in another world, can do the things you in real life would not.

 

[Stu35]

Why are you people so against clean burning lamp oil? (first person to get the reference without google wins).



More seriously: It's a video game, I'd happily massacre every pixelated thing ever and never understand why some people are so against video game violence, but that's just me.

I wonder how many people who've said they're uncomfortable with Whaling in AC4 have previously defended violence in video games when presented with the screaming hysteria of Fox news and the like... That said, and with a re-read of what people have posted: From what I've seen in this thread, none of those individuals uncomfortable with Whaling have gone as far as that screaming hysteria, and no one seems to have called for it to be banned in the game - simply that they're uncomfortable with it (and in one case, if I'm reading it right, that they don't intend to buy the game because of it), all of which is okay.

 

[Bug MuIdoon]

I'm vegan, have been for 10 years. Was vegetarian for about 12+ years before that. Whales are one of my favorite species too, I even traveled to Alaska (from the UK) just to watch them. This premise in a game still seems fun to me. Farcry 3 was heaps of fun hunting down those endangered species also.

It's a game set, albeit loosely, in a period where this stuff actually happened.

If you don't like it, don't play that section. And to be honest, I have no idea why people need to ask for clarification over their gaming habits on a forum.