Grasping At Immorality: A Tale of Two Games

[Skytorn]

Interesting opinions, but I think both RMX and Skytorn are the ones missing the point here.

Right, my bad, the refugee missions weren't done with conflict diamonds. I forgot, you straight up deliver passports to refugees, to help them leave the country, in exchange for malaria pills that keep your sickness at bay. That helps my point! If MW2 is about bad things for good reasons, then those missions (REQUIRED FOR PROGRESSION) are about good things (helping the African version of the underground railroad) for a natural reason (staying alive).

I approached Far Cry 2 like a role-playing game in the truest sense, and evidently the writers did too. Besides from your brief biography you are basically a blank slate, absent of any motivations or morality--

But just because the game fails to impose on you motivations doesn't mean those motivations are absent. They are present, they are YOURS and YOURS ALONE. Whether you blow up a water station or subvert the mission by striking a blow against the two factions, it is entirely up to you (unless all your buddies are dead and therefore unable to offer you option #2, but the game's reasoning is if you can't even spare the syrette to heal them you are unlikely to be a good enough guy to choose a second option). If you want to be the most monstrous mercenary that ever walked the earth, you are given that choice--or you can try to walk the line of a good guy caught in a bad place.

That's my point. IT'S ALL UP TO YOU. You have, as have Andy, confused "you can" with "you must". Every day, even in real life, we're given the option of just plain flipping out on our fellows, but even when there would be no significant consequences behind these actions (like, for example, the abuse or harassment a boss might sic on his subordinates) most of us choose not to, don't we? That's morality. That's a lot more real to me than MW2's "you're actually a good guy so don't worry about it".

Even in MW2, when roles are thrust upon you, you can still subvert the morality that was trying to be imposed--imagine people who gleefully mowed down the civvies in the airport (and they absolutely exist); sure, they're still playing a CIA agent but their actions are decidedly unheroic and in a real-life context would be considered downright monstrous, motivation.

If you had bothered to read the rest of my reply while your eyes were unglazed, you might've been able to comment on these points the first time I said them.

I'm sorry if this is starting to sound harsh, but you implied that I was hypocritical, stupid, or ignorant--and I think I've been tame in comparison.

 

[Tonimata]

"For what I'm pretty sure was the first time in my gaming life, I had actual moral qualms about what I was being asked to do."

Right, and condemning the whole innocent, miserable and disgruntled population of Megaton in Fallout 3 to destruction and radioactive death meant nothing?
Boy, gimme a piece of whatever it is you're on

 

[Andy Chalk]

Right, and condemning the whole innocent, miserable and disgruntled population of Megaton in Fallout 3 to destruction and radioactive death meant nothing?

Not if you didn't do it. Which I didn't. Fallout 3 gives the choice: "Blow up Megaton, or save it." Far Cry 2 gives you another kind of choice: "Do what you're told or turn off the game and play something else."

But just because the game fails to impose on you motivations doesn't mean those motivations are absent.

But the motivation is present: Money. That's it. It's not as though you have the option to ignore the missions you're given; your only choice is whether or not to pile some extra mayhem on top at the behest of one of your merc buddies.

Having genuine moral dilemmas in games is impossible, because there are no real consequences for anything. It's just a game, and you can always load a save or start over.

Absolutely true. Which is one of the things I found most interesting about Far Cry 2; instead of making some bullshit pretense about morality, it strips it from the equation completely and just makes you a douchebag.

 

[rmx687]

Absolutely true. Which is one of the things I found most interesting about Far Cry 2; instead of making some bullshit pretense about morality, it strips it from the equation completely and just makes you a douchebag.

That isn't true. What Skytorn is trying to get across, and I wholeheartedly agree, is that Far Cry 2 is more of an RPG than most actual RPG's that have come out recently. You have a choice on how to tackle missions and even the one where you kill the guy who sold one of your buddies a bad car, you don't have to do it. You can do other buddy missions or anything else and cancel it out. Your character is literally a blank slate, as Skytorn said, and the only impact the story forces on you are the feelings you get from the actions you take.

You still haven't explained how Modern Warfare 2 "portrays complex heroism".

 

[mechanixis]

Frankly, I'm amazed Prototype hasn't raised any eyebrows either. The words "civilian massacre" just do not do the game justice.

Amen to that. Prototype just sort of assumes you have no problem with curbstomping innocent bystanders so hard they explode and then consuming their bodies to sustain yourself. It all justifies itself with about one line of dialogue in which Alex Mercer says "Cuz I'm special."

 

[Terramax]

Yet compare that single scene - which is, I would hope, ultimately a look at the tangled web of higher causes - to the entirety of Far Cry 2, a game in which running people down and setting them on fire is something you do while driving yourself to other areas of the game, where you'll do the really bad stuff. Far Cry 2 is one of the most utterly amoral games I've ever played, yet it rated nary a wagging finger from anyone except dissatisfied game critics. Can someone explain this to me?

Because who gives a monkey's anus about Africa?

/sarcasm

Indeed, this guy raises some good points. But despite enjoying every second of Far Cry 2 through the 2 playthroughs I did of it, I never once cared for what I was doing. I'm guessing in all seriousness it's partly because it was set in Africa.

Here in the western world we're more likely to be uproared by a scene that shows civilians from our culture being brutaly tortured and murdered than in Africa. In fact, Far Cry 2 might as we'll have been set in middle earth.

Also, rarely do you ever see innocent civilians in FC2. If you ever do, they're cowering in their homes and you cannot kill them under any circumstance. Had you been given the choice to shoot them in the face in the middle of a field then perhaps it would've been a different story.

Frankly, I'm amazed Prototype hasn't raised any eyebrows either. The words "civilian massacre" just do not do the game justice.

Amen to that. Prototype just sort of assumes you have no problem with curbstomping innocent bystanders so hard they explode and then consuming their bodies to sustain yourself. It all justifies itself with about one line of dialogue in which Alex Mercer says "Cuz I'm special."

I've only watched videos of it, but perhaps it's because it's so ludicrously over-the-top and fantasie it would be impossible for anyone to take it seriously or act out any of what happens in that game... unless you're a real life sorcerer?

 

[Andy Chalk]

Far Cry 2 is more of an RPG than most actual RPG's that have come out recently.

What? Is this a serious statement?

I think we're done here.

 

[Skytorn]

Far Cry 2 is more of an RPG than most actual RPG's that have come out recently.

What? Is this a serious statement?

I think we're done here.

I know exactly what he means. Far Cry 2 is a role-playing game in the truest sense because, Christ, just go read my previous posts.

But the motivation is present: Money. That's it. It's not as though you have the option to ignore the missions you're given; your only choice is whether or not to pile some extra mayhem on top at the behest of one of your merc buddies.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that your memory is failing, rather than it just being you lying through your teeth, or not knowing what the word "extra" means--but you can ABSOLUTELY ignore the missions you were given, BY SUBVERTING IT WITH ONE OF YOUR MERC BUDDIES. You don't blow up the water station AND the opposing faction trying to take it out! You CHOOSE one of the two! That's the point! Choice!

Money's everywhere. You can get the conflict diamonds that get you guns by doing any number of other missions with more morally justifiable underpinnings--hell, if you really don't want to, you can just pick these diamonds up in scavenger quests.

But what puts a gigantic, tree-sized stake through the heart of your argument is that this money, for which you ostensibly are doing atrocities for, are paid to you by your employer BEFORE YOU ACTUALLY DO THEM. From there, you can team with your merc buddy or be a complete monster--which goes back to the moral choice that I'm talking about.

The only time when your point is valid is the arms dealer missions, which I addressed in my post via Joker's speech about the "plan"--at this point you're just holding fingers in your ear and singing "lalala" now. Pathetic.

If you played the game like a douchebag, Malygris, that's all you. That's not your character. The choice to blow up a water station was your choice, no one said "but thou must" to you. MW2 would be analogous if they gave you the choice of mowing down Makarov instead, but you don't, do you? You gotta do it, and that takes out the morality of the situation entirely.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that your memory is failing, rather than it just being you lying through your teeth, or not knowing what the word "extra" means--but you can ABSOLUTELY ignore the missions you were given, BY SUBVERTING IT WITH ONE OF YOUR MERC BUDDIES. You don't blow up the water station AND the opposing faction trying to take it out! You CHOOSE one of the two! That's the point! Choice!

You're obviously getting pretty worked up over this. You're completely off-base and the point that I think you're trying to make isn't particularly relevant to the original article anyway, but before I attempt to drop this completely I think we should look at this "water station" you're yelling about.

You have two choices: One, blow up the pipeline to deny fresh water to the people of neighbouring countries, or two, disable an automatic cutoff system, THEN blow up the pipeline, denying fresh water to the people of neighbouring countries and also flooding the UFLL's diamond mine and clearing the general area of troops.

So you can blow shit up, or you can blow shit up and flood shit. It's great that you can enjoy it at that level but personally, I'm not seeing a lot of either choice or role-playing opportunities there. And now I think we should move on.

 

[Tonimata]

Right, and condemning the whole innocent, miserable and disgruntled population of Megaton in Fallout 3 to destruction and radioactive death meant nothing?

Not if you didn't do it. Which I didn't. Fallout 3 gives the choice: "Blow up Megaton, or save it." Far Cry 2 gives you another kind of choice: "Do what you're told or turn off the game and play something else."

I still did it to see if the game really was serious. Damn my curiosity. Although we have to bear in mind that there's other games that pose ammorality in a much more aceeptable way than Far Cry 2 (Quote [PROTOTYPE]). Maybe it's because you're playing the role of a pseudo-God, and even get named as one, but the amoral things you get to do in it simply don't seem to have the same weight as being a mortal and rather fragile human. Like humans tend to be.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I still did it to see if the game really was serious. Damn my curiosity. Although we have to bear in mind that there's other games that pose ammorality in a much more aceeptable way than Far Cry 2 (Quote [PROTOTYPE]). Maybe it's because you're playing the role of a pseudo-God, and even get named as one, but the amoral things you get to do in it simply don't seem to have the same weight as being a mortal and rather fragile human. Like humans tend to be.

This may be true (never played Prototype) but the point, which I think we've long left behind, isn't whether any one game is more or less "moral" than another, but that MW2 is far from the worst, yet it's the one generating all the OH NOES MAKING KIDS TERRISTS uproar. Far Cry 2 has players doing far worse things, yet Ubi can slap an "M" on it and throw it out the door, and nobody raises an eyebrow. Does that make sense to you?

 

[CD-R]

A lot of people keep bringing up Prototype. I guess the reason why there was no real emphasis on the whole killing civilian was because the way I saw it they were doomed anyway. The bridge is the only way out of the city. The militarty set up turrets on it that shoot anything that tries to cross including civilians. So if the military doesn't kill the people the ever growing horde of infected will. Sure you can not kill people but they're pretty much dead anyway was the way I saw it.

 

[Sneaklemming]

Very funny article. Gotta love the irony!

 

[13752]

a very interesting article. i won't repeat the posts you made near the end about it's popularity or setting.

A lot of your argument is based on the context of a game. IE: the THOUGHT of cutting off malaria medication to an african village. But there's a whole new plateau we judge games by. and that's CONTENT

in far cry 2 you never saw the repercussions of your actions. You never saw the africans dying of malaria or the family of the truck driver you just IED'd. And even if you did, why would you care? EVERYONE WANTS TO KILL YOU. There are no civilians (except the ones hiding in houses waiting for passports). Enemies don't behave in a very immersive way. They scratch their heads and grunt, occasionally making conversation about how beating babies to death in front of their raped mothers is funny. You couldn't sympathise with them.

Now Modern Warfare 2. I watched the mission on youtube. HOLY FUCK. It was just WRONG ON EVERY LEVEL. First of all, you've seen people queueing up at airports just like you see on your holidays in everyday life. It's a realistic setting, not fantasy post-apocolypse. We can imagine ourselves being in the queue waiting.

The gameplay is fucking disgraceful! You've got men crying holding their guts in crawling along the floor, people dragging their dead friends away from the gunfight. People screaming and running for their lives whilst you emrcilessly run down trembling guards with an LMG laughing. And the graphics and animation of these civilians were ALMOST PERFECT. You really do feel like you're a mass murdering terrorist, unlike GTA where you're a young MC hammer in a mad cartoon world.

I'm a very logical thinker, and have thought a lot of about this so I'm not jumping the bandwagon, but this level is fucking shocking. and the fact it's skippable doesn't mask the fact the developers created a game with civilian-slaughtering mechanics. And let's face it; WHO is actually going to skip the level? Unless you've actually seen how horrendous the level is the curiosity is going to get to you. It's like they've wrapped a present, left it in front of you and said "You probably shouldn't open this if you're a pussy"

This is crossing the line, by far. It's disgusting and morally depraved. Video game or not, they've crossed the line.

 

[Tonimata]

I still did it to see if the game really was serious. Damn my curiosity. Although we have to bear in mind that there's other games that pose ammorality in a much more aceeptable way than Far Cry 2 (Quote [PROTOTYPE]). Maybe it's because you're playing the role of a pseudo-God, and even get named as one, but the amoral things you get to do in it simply don't seem to have the same weight as being a mortal and rather fragile human. Like humans tend to be.

This may be true (never played Prototype) but the point, which I think we've long left behind, isn't whether any one game is more or less "moral" than another, but that MW2 is far from the worst, yet it's the one generating all the OH NOES MAKING KIDS TERRISTS uproar. Far Cry 2 has players doing far worse things, yet Ubi can slap an "M" on it and throw it out the door, and nobody raises an eyebrow. Does that make sense to you?

In a normal day, I'd have to say no, but after being exposed to a reduced, yet irreductible group of the most despicable, spoilt and disgusting little brats I've ever seen in my life, and considering that I've been working in my mother's summer school for a while now, I have to say HELL no. I'm honestly worried about the fact that not many, way too many crimes and the corruption of our future generations are blamed on our culture and method of escapism, but after seeing the results, I can't deny that there might be some truth in it. After all, children are, if anything, impressionable, and it's undeniable that they are in constant search for attitudes to copy and values to adopt. Although it's always the parents fault for letting them buy these games (The other day I went to buy Modern Warfare 2 and a kid not far past his 8 years of age couldn't decide if he should get Assassin's creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, or Gears of War 2), it's revolting to see the effects of such carelessness on these poor, innocent souls, corrupted by circumstances.

On the other hand, I still cannot understand how on Earth do the parents always manage to point out the negative part of the argument when it comes to games and the influence these have on their children. It is true that Modern Warfare touches some very delicate aspects of human society and, more importantly, human psyche, which, like I said before, can be influential on their children, but indeed so does Far Cry 2. In fact, I can't remember there being so much hatred towards Far Cry 2 as there was towards Resident Evil 5. At least all you did in the latter was shoot African zombies, whereas in the prior you could, and quoting you, deny a whole village its water supply, THEN kill 'em all.

My opinion is, and regardless that it has been said before, that games that can sell so much as MW2 are not only always going to be an easier target due to their size for unfair, baseless criticism than a less hyped game. It's also rather notorious how everyone completely overlooked the fact that Infinity Ward is trying to implement a message in their games. Maybe it wasn't so clear in the first one, and with the terrifyingly breathtaking final scene, were you see the characters you've gone through a whole game and way too many bloody battles fall like leaves to Russian gunfire, you'd think the message "War is bad" is clear enough, but when the main campaign of the second game calls itself "For the Record", you immediately know they're up to something. When the campaign portrays some of the most gruesome, mind-numbing aspects of war and the extents some people are ready to reach to in it, the message is made clear. When you, as the main character, go through constant near-death experiences, perhaps as many as a real soldier (a really lucky soldier) could go through in his life, specially the last one, then the message buries itself deep inside you.

It's sad that there's so many thick heads out there. And of course, a message cannot compete with bullets. Something terribly shameful

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

You don't get the point here. It's not about killing innocents. It's about the fact that there are actually NO such thing as a Russian terrorist (except the times when Tsar/Emperor ruled Russia).
MW2: They shown Russian terrorists and offended us, Russians, because there's no Russian terrorists exist now.
Far Cry 2: Can't see what's so wrong with it.

 

[Kelethor]

Iv played both games. I did not finish Farcry, because it broke half way through. quite the piss off that was. Cod 4(2) "No Russian" mission was a bit...un nerving to say the least. the elevator doors opended and then it was just a mess of bodies. but really...there might have been like what, 5 security guards there in that airport? (not counting the riot shield equipped Swat teams that show up later). with all the airport scares in the past 10 years, you would think Russia, a country that isn't afraid to flex its military muscles, could have more than guys with pistols?. and another thing, couldn't Joseph Alen (that's you by the way) Blow down Makarov with the machine gun the game gave us? end the game right there.

On the other hand, Far cry was a game about 2 sides of heartless, Gun totting mercs and bandits duking it out in Africa, with you thrown there, starting it out with a nice set of morals. kill the bad guy who gives bad gun to the bad people. however, as the game goes on, we see just how far we, the player, are willing to go to finish the job. as one mission plays out (assuming you subvert to your buddies) we kill the former king of Africa, the only man who has ANY interest in the safety of the people of this warzone we call a nation, rip the signet ring of his cold dead hand, and hand it over to his European playboy Son so he can inherit daddies bank account. Missions like these made me realize...am I a bad person? and yet, I pushed onward, with police officer I killed, every medicinal producing planet I blew up, I justified it by saying "it all be worth it when I stop the war" but was it? I don't know, I didn't finish the game. it made me realize just how far we, as a society could go to justify our means. sadly, to answer your question Andy, no one cares about Africa. its far away, its dirty, and as I butcher the opening scenes quote "everyone just planned there next tax-deductible donation and forgot about the place", people just throw money at the country to make them feel better about themselves for living in a three story house and stuffing big macs down our throats. sad, but true

 

[Gigano]

Aside from the fact that Modern Warfare 2 deals with terrorism detrimental to Westerners, and Far Cry 2 deals with slaughtering Africans (a nasty and extremely hypocritical distinction which is nonetheless being made by decision-makers everywhere), it probably has something to do with the actuality of the issue: terrorism is the hot-button issue of the decade, despite it causing minimal deaths outside already destabilized states, while mercenaries slaughtering Africans indiscriminately is old news - and criticizing a game about it might bring focus to the uncomfortable fact that nothing is done about it in real life either.

A human rights analysis of Far Cry 2 (and some other well-known games) has actually been made (!), and can be seen here:

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/11/20/fighting-fair-international-humanitarian-law-applied-games

Apparently, it is quite concerned with shooting at a church-building, and not so much about denying fresh water to civilians...