Bulletstorm Dev: Games be a-changin'

[CardinalPiggles]

In Bioshock Infinite's defense, Booker is a complete scumbag so the violence kind of makes sense because you can imagine Booker doing that stuff to get what he wants.

If Booker was a nice guy then I would have questioned the violence sure.

That disconnect is interesting though because some would argue 'it's just a game'. Tomb Raider had Lara killing many many people who are just desperate to get off the island. The game itself though was very enjoyable and that disconnect was eventually ignored.

 

[kajinking]

In open world games such things are unavoidable, players love to test the limits and if they want to try and drive a tank onto a subway and ride around the city using it as a improvised on the rail shooter they will. For that I can forgive Farcry 3 but for non-openworld games and games were you don't get a choice in how you do things at all, yeah that kinda doesn't make sense.

If you're gonna tell a story about a someone who's weak and hates violence (like the new Lara Croft) try and not make them kill as many people as Alex Mercer.

 

[sethisjimmy]

A lot of games heavily rely on the need to kill a lot of people, and I think it's getting to the point where it's just lazy.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with arcade-style-no-emotion-no-remorse type killing gameplay, I personally find it pretty annoying to see a ton of big AAA games being praised for their stories despite main characters nonchalantly killing off hundreds of people at a time between cut-scenes.

 

[Something Amyss]

I don't think it necessarily has to do with indie games in and of themselves. I think it has to do with every game being a shooter these days in the mainstream market. With thinner plots and more violence mechanics, people have more time to consider what they're doing.

It might also not help that the war on video games seems to be at its worst since at least Columbine. At a time where we're increasingly blamed for being murderers ready to blow, maybe we should question why almost every AAA title has us committing genocide.

Sounds more like we're actually going BACK to the old ways, before just "Shoot that guy" was enough to carry a game.(

Indeed. How do people not understand this is NOT a new thing?

I would totally accept a game where kill that guy is the reason provided you aren't trying to make it seem like my character isn't a murderous psychopath.

I'd settle for one where "kill the guy" didn't go completely against the cut scenes, even.

I think "gamers" are actually the biggest enemy in achieving a higher standard of writing and gameplay.
Whenever you see someone criticize a game for it's ludonarrative dissonance, you inevitably see flocks of people saying "You just don't like fun" "Stop trying to make me feel guilty about killing people" "Games are about gameplay, who cares about the story?"

Don't forget the word "pretentious."

 

[oldtaku]

Let's give Spec Ops: The Line here as the game that convincingly made the case that Nathan Drake (and rather specifically Nathan Drake, though by proxy other shooter protagonists) is a psychopathic mass murderer. Sales weren't great, but that seems to be the game that finally booted everyone in the ass.

 

[JLink]

One of the issues I see with trying to eliminate the phrase-of-the-day we've been presented with is that eliminating it in certain genres is a lot easier than eliminating it in others. In games that stress player choice and that those choices will affect the outcome, it becomes exponenentially more time consuming since the story would start brancing out. And then those branches have branches, and those branches have branches, etc. It's why the Mass Effect games didn't deliver on what was promised (at least in my opinion they didn't). And some games would need many completely different sets of gameplay types in order to accomodate all the different choices and styles of play in order for it to be appealing to all (there are some games where it is possible to do no kill or stealth runs, but doing so is rarely fun because the gameplay needed to accomplish it is not fun). Essentially, we would only be seeing a change in linear games with little option for player choice, while other genres are left untouched.

Now, developers could decide in the early stages of development to make a game like this and then budget their time and resources accordingly. And if devs actually delivered on having the drastic amounts of player choice that they advertise, then I am sure many would be fine with paying a higher premium for it and the increased budget wouldn't be a big issue (for example, end of Mass Effect 1: choosing to save the council results in Sovereign getting away and opening a whole new can of worms for the sequel, but the council gives you more assistance in the sequel. If you don't save the council, Sovereign dies but and the new council is still not friendly to you or humans as a whole). With all the extra horsepower the next gen would give having all these options would be much easier to achieve. But, the trends this industry has followed has made me cynical and leads me to believe most devs will continue making the same thing they do now and just spend extra development time on making the graphics better and charge gamers extra just for that.

 

[Callate]

It felt like Bioshock Infinite wanted its violence to have an impact- from the first, horrific act of violence Booker initiates in the midst of a carnival to the musical "sting" that's played every time one of your enemies is gunned down. But even more than, say, Spec Ops: The Line, BI never gave you the option of handling violent adversaries any other way, making the hints of moral disgust at all the carnage somewhat ridiculous.

With all the possibilities of multiple universes before you, the only solution is to kill the bastard. Kind of a sad commentary, if you think about it.

 

[Weaver]

So long as we DO still get the stupid action games, fine.

I agree that ludonarrative dissonance is a very real problem, but every so often, I want something that's just stupid fun. Action movies still sell and the main character is in a similar position; just blasting through waves and waves of guys without even a thought.

 

[duchaked]

I suppose we could get a Bioshock: Debate where we use Mass Effect-style dialogue trees to argue our way to "victory"? except twist! no one wins debates
until someone gets angry and whips out a beating cane lol

 

[Vigormortis]

So....the wealth of games we have today that feature gameplay and narratives that involve little to no violence at all just, what? Don't exist? Nor do the games that are built entirely around a marriage of gameplay and story?

Hell, even Portal 2, with it's 'portal gun', isn't about 'go and shoot that guy'. (portal gun is really a misnomer)

I don't know. While I agree there needs to be a change to the triple-A industry and it's design philosophies, some of this sounds like making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Especially when I hear people actually claim, "Yeah! I agree! I actually suffered real PTSD after playing Uncharted, because I had to senselessly kill so many people!"

Uh, yeah. Bullshit. And, though I agree violence for the sake of violence (as we so often see in many of todays games) is being over-done, there are still plenty of other non-violent options out there.

I wonder: How long into this 'design shift of non-violence' before people start complaining to developers that the guns need to go back in. Saying things like, "This scene was boring and the game is stupid for not giving me the option to just shoot that guy so he'd shut up."

 

[PeterMerkin69]

No one would have bitched about the combat in Uncharted if it was fun or good. It wasn't. Neither was the platforming. If you remove the mass murder, people will, one hopes, rightfully move on to bitching about that part of the "game."

It doesn't have to be fun in the sophomoric "light-hearted pastel" definition of fun, but it absolutely has to be good to be called, well, good. No one seems to understand that. Or they do and they don't care because the sky's already shitting green back stacks. Heh, artists.

I don't want ignorant entertainers/captains of industry preaching morality lessons to me anyway. I want to have fun blazing people down because I've had it up to here with traffic today and doing what I really want to do in real life would get me a free ticket to the rape train.

Although I really could go for a fresh, quivering inmate right about now.

 

[health-bar]

I'll say the same thing i've been saying about infinite and these complaints over too much violence

Conversation between Booker and Elizabeth after killing Slate:

"Do you ever get used to it"
"To what?"
"The killing."
"Faster than you could imagine."

In the beginning of the game I felt the weight of every kill, but eventually the enemies are dehumanized into pointless meatbags. If this meatbagification is intentional, I can see it becoming a really powerful tool.

In uncharted 2, Lazarevich actually lampshades this idea when he tells off Drake's heroics by mentioning that Drake has killed hundreds of his men. (can't find the scene on youtube but meh)

But the fact that such matters are even being addressed, where games like Bioshock, Uncharted, and Spec ops actually tell the player that they really are monsters for killing all these people, is a really interesting narrative step in the whole of gaming that I would like to see developed.

 

[Marik2]

I think the MGS series does this well with putting the gameplay and story working in harmony. You can either kill when necessary or just not kill anyone and only subdue people.

It lets the player decide while Snake can easily be both sides of the spectrum

 

[Slayer_2]

Spec Ops: The Line was a good example of this I think. Mindless killing and gameplay ripped straight from Gears of War, then a cutscene commenting on the horrors of war. It was kind of disconnected. In fact even some of the Gears of War games felt like that. The problem is, how do you revolutionize and completely change gameplay to reflect an emphasis on NOT solving issues with a gun without making people hate the gameplay, ya know, the core of a game.

 

[viggih7]

Spec Ops: The Line was a good example of this I think. Mindless killing and gameplay ripped straight from Gears of War, then a cutscene commenting on the horrors of war. It was kind of disconnected. In fact even some of the Gears of War games felt like that. The problem is, how do you revolutionize and completely change gameplay to reflect an emphasis on NOT solving issues with a gun without making people hate the gameplay, ya know, the core of a game.

I actually agree with you but for another reason. Spec ops is weird in the way that it suffers from no ludonarrative dissonance at all, what you were however feeling was Cognitive Dissonance (and make no mistake, this was intentional on the developers part since the line "Cognitive Dissonance is caused by holding two different beliefs simultaneously" is in the games loading screen tips) from what you described.

What the article says is that when the story and gameplay don't match up for example Max Payne 3(whose story is about an alcoholics mid life crisis and the gameplay is about shooting dudes) which cause said feelings.

 

[Vorpal_Smilodon]

To all those people who don't want this thought process to destroy the gameplay they like, that's not the issue. The issue is that for games with gameplay that includes a lot of killing, gamers are going to start demanding narrative elements that co-exist with that, and it's something that some games already do very well: Serious Sam, Saints Row, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Bulletstorm obviously, Prototype (the first one, the second one lets a very moral protagonist be made to kill indiscriminately by the player) - these over-the-top action games have over-the-top action heroes and narratives. I don't doubt these characters in these settings can one-man-army a literal army, and there's no dissonance in the fact that they happily would. Conversely you look at something like the Tomb Raider reboot that is aiming for 'realism' and yet you have a lone hero shooting dozens and dozens of people in a minutes long battle, which strains credulity in the world the narrative tries to create, and also clearly goes against the character of a woman who was reluctant to kill a deer.


side note: I would like to play a stealth game (stealth-shooter or otherwise) where each enemy had a name and biography to personalize them. Even more interesting would be if there was a sanity metric and killing in cold-blood or avoidable combat came with penalties.

 

[strumbore]

What are "they" talking about, exactly? What needs to change? I always assumed the reason Nathan Drake had to kill 400 men by the end of the game was that 400 men tried to kill him. The only thing I ever questioned about the Uncharted series was how a treasure hunter, a "UN-thinks-he's-dead" warlord, and a secret society, managed to recruit 400 mercenaries in the first place.

...

Also, how did Nathan Drake learn to kill 400 men so easily?

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Talk is cheap. Let him put his money where his mouth is and then we'll get to see whether or not he ends up choking on it or not.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Personally I thought Bulletstorm had a really generic plot and was sincere about it to sell to people who want that sort of thing, but claimed irony when you called it out on it.

 

[Korten12]

What are "they" talking about, exactly? What needs to change? I always assumed the reason Nathan Drake had to kill 400 men by the end of the game was that 400 men tried to kill him. The only thing I ever questioned about the Uncharted series was how a treasure hunter, a "UN-thinks-he's-dead" warlord, and a secret society, managed to recruit 400 mercenaries in the first place.

...

Also, how did Nathan Drake learn to kill 400 men so easily?

Well even aside from that, he doesn't go around killing them for the sake of killing them. In each game he was attacked first and he defends himself.

Also I think people forget it's a shooter, a shooter with not much shooting kind of misses the point...