Did we actually reach the peak of videogame violence at some point?

[Bartholen]

I'll take it back even further. Since the infamous controversy surrounding Mortal Kombat in the '90s, I think the world has just accepted that video game violence was just going to be a thing, and any levels beyond ripping a person's head off, spine attached, were inevitable.

Not advocating anything further, but at this point, I think we'll need outright porn in AAA gaming before we hear any more fuss about gaming pushing the envelope and stepping out of bounds. And yes, I'm aware pornographic games exist, but I'm talking about the next Call of Duty having hardcore, graphic sex before the pearl-clutchers come out of the woodwork to protect the innocence of "the chir'rens."

I do recall a certain level of general discomfort with GTA V and Rockstar surrounding the scene in which Trevor tortures a guy (pulling a tooth out with pliers, IIRC,) but even that was just an eyeroll that people had feelings about before moving on in the same breath.

"The peak of videogame violence?" We've been here for decades.

I wasn't even talking about the controversy angle, but purely of what videogames can show. The evolution of videogame violence was for a long time a race for ever more detail: we started with pixelated blood in Doom, then gibbing in Quake, then locational damage in games like Postal, physics simulations, limbs blowing off, ever more realistic-looking blood, x-ray kills etc. Nowadays if a game wants to shock with its violence I feel it's more often about the context than the violence itself (see The Last of Us 2 for an example).

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

You can always get more disturbing with enough creativity and lack of moral boundaries. Like, even in film, there's examples of merely a change of direction and editing that can make the difference between an attack looking flimsy, dumb and harmless or terrifyingly brutal, like the beating in Killing Them Softly, or an indie film I forgotten the name of where someone is shot in the head near the end and their girlfriend is crying while picking up his brains as it all got too real without any soundtrack. There are ways to press buttons that mere visions of gore won't achieve on their own. Sexual violence also is not easy to endure when given appropriate weight, like Casey Affleck's character in The Killer Inside Me, and the deeply unsettling A Young Man With High Potential that focuses on a certain type of real world creepazoid murder. Games are still relatively cartoonish and softened in comparison, perhaps for good reason. I have no personal desire to see such things in 4K 60fps with quick time events and button mash sequences tbh.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

The Brutalities did show up in the arcade version of MK3 first. Then the console versions came later.

I don’t recall ever doing them in the arcade, but looked it up to confirm and it appears they actually did start in the SNES/Genesis home console ports -

Brutality

A Brutality is a finisher that debuted in the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo home ports of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. A Brutality allowed a player to pull off an extraordinarily long and rapid combo to kill an opponent. These combos appeared in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy...

mortalkombat.fandom.com

I remember it being a new thing to try there but being like they said, not worth the effort. MKX changed that though. I forgot they were in Shaolin Monks. Would be cool to see a remaster of that game.

 

[BrawlMan]

I don’t recall ever doing them in the arcade, but looked it up to confirm and it appears they actually did start in the SNES/Genesis home console ports -

Brutality

A Brutality is a finisher that debuted in the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo home ports of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. A Brutality allowed a player to pull off an extraordinarily long and rapid combo to kill an opponent. These combos appeared in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy...

mortalkombat.fandom.com

I remember it being a new thing to try there but being like they said, not worth the effort. MKX changed that though. I forgot they were in Shaolin Monks. Would be cool to see a remaster of that game.

You know what Ultimate MK3 have them. But you are correct, they're appeared in the consoles first.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I think in terms of gore the first two Soldier of Fortune games have never really been surpassed. Last of Us 2 and to a lesser extent the newer Wolfenstein games are really the only modern games that stick out in that regar.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I would say we haven't really touched on actual disturbing violence since Manhunt. The more over the top the violence, the less it actually feels violent. Real disturbing violence isn't ripping someone's spine out and beating them to death with it but simply taking a plastic bag and wrapping it over a person's face until they stop moving.

In that respect I don't think we've actually reached "peak" violence. Peak violence isn't the kind of thing that makes for funny reaction videos but something that makes you feel gross.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I would say we haven't really touched on actual disturbing violence since Manhunt. The more over the top the violence, the less it actually feels violent. Real disturbing violence isn't ripping someone's spine out and beating them to death with it but simply taking a plastic bag and wrapping it over a person's face until they stop moving.

In that respect I don't think we've actually reached "peak" violence. Peak violence isn't the kind of thing that makes for funny reaction videos but something that makes you feel gross.

You’ve made an astute distinction, but it’s also partly relative to the viewer. Some are grossed out by sheer gore factors, while others find it silly and the more dramatic stuff like suffocation is more disturbing. Ultimately, like someone mentioned above I think what we’ve been more desensitized to also plays a big part in our perceptions.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

You’ve made an astute distinction, but it’s also partly relative to the viewer. Some are grossed out by sheer gore factors, while others find it silly and the more dramatic stuff like suffocation is more disturbing. Ultimately, like someone mentioned above I think what we’ve been more desensitized to also plays a big part in our perceptions.

That is true.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

There's only so many ways to watch a body get gibbed and it loses a lot of impact when immediately afterwards you walk through them and they flop around in a hilarious approximation of a rag doll as envisioned by aliens.

You can still do good, dramatic violence by setting up specific scenarios and getting the player emotionally involved, but games in their current form are really bad at that. At best they get the TLoU2 problem of "oh no, what am I doing with all this violence, let me brutally murder 30 more people while thinking on it"