Has anyone else grown weary of mindless killing being so prevalent in games?

[Maeshone]

But then you get games like Uncharted, Ninja Gaiden 3, etc, where the developers actually try (and in most cases, only try) to give the story prominence, and focus on characterisation, yet they still have you slaughtering enemies by the hundred. Nathan Drake terrifies the living shit out of me, simply because he's a charming, witty man who has no problem with slaughtering men whenever they cross his path- the very definition of a sociopath.

I have never understood this complaint about the Uncharted series. Uncharted quite obviously is not supposed to be a realistic depiction of violence or fighting. It exists in the same kind of reality that the Indiana Jones movies do, or the James Bond movies, and I've never heard this complaint aimed at either of those franchises. Not to mention Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, where the main character has no problems slaughtering hundres of enemies who were his friends just hours ago. Uncharted and other games/movies like it are only meant to be an escape. They aren't trying to make you think about deep meanings or reflect over how horrible war and murder is. You're a treasure hunter. You kill pirates/mercenaries who are blatantly trying to murder you every step of the way. The only civilians in the games are the security guards and villagers in Uncharted 2, neither of whom you can kill at all.

Nathan Drake is just one example of a long line of smartmouthed protagonists who exist in games or movies that choose to be a simple, entertaining, rather mindless escape from our reality. If you want main characters with issues or who break down after something horrible happens, then you have other franchises for that, like Spec Ops or Max Payne. Uncharted isn't trying to be that sort of game, and yet people somehow expect it to be? I just don't get that line of reasoning.

OT: No way in hell. The game needs to be able to justify it and have the violence make sense in it's own sort of reality, but as long as those simple guidelines are followed I have no problem with violence in games.

 

[Krantos]

*Raises hand*

Definitely. While I'm certainly not "done" with killing in games, and I even admit it can cathartic at times, a game gets serious brownie points for giving me the option to not kill things. Probably why Dishonored is one of my favorite games to come out recently. And Deus Ex of course.

 

[Dr.Panties]

The catalyst for this thread is that I've been playing Guild Wars 2, which is a really enjoyable game, but expects you to kill hundreds or thousands(or more if you keep playing, its a MMO) of sentient beings for little to no reason. Starting as an asura character made me really enjoy npc interactions with skritt (similar to gully dwarves) but elsewhere in the game they're enemies to be slaughtered wholesale and it really sits wrong with me.

The catalyst for this thread was GW2, an MMO? Wait, you mean that ONE game out of countless MMO's where you have the option to do level up without killing anything (if you were really determined), you get a ton of xp just for exploring/vistas. The devs really went out of their way to reward you xp for doing just about anything non-violent, at least half the hearts I've done offer an option to interact with stuff or collect stuff instead of killing anything. Come to think of it, GW2 is easily the most "pacifist" MMO I've played to date...talk about the wrong catalyst

Well, Guild Wars 1 was the only other MMO I've played and that felt more like a card game to me than a real combat game.

Providing the mechanics are tightly refined, I greatly enjoy killing my way through games. I get immense gratification from killing with skill and/or style, and will nearly always choose the lethal option, unless the target/npc happens to be an innocent or characterised in such a way as to elicit sympathy.

Killing is also often consistent with the protagonist's characterisation, moveset, and equipment. Take Corvo in Dishonored, for instance. There is no way in the world that I am going to refrain from killing with such an amazingly lethal toolset at my disposal. The guy is a master assassin, charged with assassinating fiends and taking revenge. A passive run in such a game seems boring and restrictive to me, not to mention in direct contradiction to his character and the overall tone of the game.

But...to each their own, I guess...ya bunch o' wet sissy fartin' blubbercunts. Aaargh!

Well, you touch on what I'm getting at without seeing it fully: I'm saying that it seems like in a lot of games the enemies are sometimes people that have been characterized sympthetically unintentionally, or the player character is portrayed as someone who wouldn't want to be killing so many people (GTA 4, Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire are all bad for this)

I'm not knocking games where you play someone with a legitimate reason to be killing people, be it Mark of the Ninja or Saints Row.

Oh, I do get what you're driving at, and consider such games to be yet another example of poor characterisation within this medium. It's nothing new, and, for me, certainly doesn't detract too much from the visceral joy of violent video games. I believe the issue is one of poor writing shoehorned into established mechanics, not vice versa.

I mean, I'd love to see a true survival/exploration action game with a Lara Croft at the helm who doesn't rapidly evolve (or devolve, if you prefer) into a super soldier. At the very least, extend her transition into Chuck Norris so that it takes up to half of the game before she even has to pick up a gun. That would be excellent. But, due to the inherent risk for AAA publishers, such games currently reside mainly within the indie realm.

This "dissonance" to which you refer goes waaaay back and, unfortunately, has become the norm. Now, I'm much more concerned with tight mechanics and replay value. If a game can deliver that, through violence or otherwise, well I can overlook what amounts to just another story/character failure in a veritable ocean thereof. Seriously, motive/story/character mean next to nothing to me these days, other than being a pleasantly surprising bonus when a game happens to pull it off well.

One thing on which we can both agree, is that change would be nice. I'm just having fun in the meantime.

 

[maninahat]

I'm sick of it being prerequisite to making a big budget, high quality, AAA title. IT was some other journalist who was talking about what Bioshock Infinite would have been like without being based around killing hundreds of people; all that nuance, culture and literature plays second fiddle to iron sights and blood spatter. Then there was Tomb Raider, a girl's bid for survival ruined by the requirement that it has to be a cover based shooter.


Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.

Yeah... There will always be games focused strictly on the shooting/multiplayer aspects, but it's when other unrelated titles are forced to accommodate for their success by imitating them that bothers me. What happened to niche genres?

I am optimistic it will change for the better though. The successes of Infinite, The Walking Dead, Journey, [or whatever game is contemptibly referred to as "high art"] proves to developers that you can trust a mainstream audience to buy smarter or more divergent titles. I liken it to 1900s movies, where directors haven't quite dared yet to use the medium for much other than replicating stage plays and vaudeville.

 

[Daft Time]

I really don't like killing to be the only way to achieve an objective. I find this particularly frustrating when there are other obvious method of completing the objective - that, most of the time, would be easier - but because the central mechanic is shooting you have to kill people. I also find it incredibly boring. I find sneaking or, even better, pulling a con to solve a problem so much more rewarding.

I'd like to see more games which make violence unpleasant. Make guns loud and deafening. Make the wounds horrific, show the personal cost of taking a life. Just don?t keep showing mass homicide to be so... mundane. With that said, I like to have the option to kill in scenarios where it makes sense. It feels important to me that I choose to stay my hand despite risk to myself.

 

[Vorpal_Smilodon]

snip

A change would be nice. Unfortunately the voices of gamers go largely unheard, it's coming to the point that I feel like I should take a crack a developing a game to show people the right way to do things.

Sadly I don't think a text-based adventure game about talking your way to freedom in a feudalistic vampire world would go over particularly well with today's market.

 

[FancyNick]

Well I can't say I am really all that tired of it. Been playing these sorts of games all my life so its kind of just there now. However, I tend to like games with a little more thought into it. One question though, are we talking about mindlessly killing for the sake of nothing better to do or the fact that most games involve violence as a staple to gameplay?

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

If there's a context for it then sure.
But if it's just mowing down thousands of enemies inbetween cutscenes because the developer thinks, quick throw in another combat section or the player will get bored... well that's when I start to get bored.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

I like playing a stone-cold killer of men. But knowing that the game I'm playing would allow for a different approach and then saying fuck that noise before wasting face like a stony-faced murder machine is extra special. It gives helps give the choice of using a violent method extra weight and meaning. Although it is frustrating when a game plays an active judgmental roll by penalizing the player for their style of play. Getting short changed on experience points just because I want to see Adam Jensen turn some random NPC into a half-crushed pretzel is just annoying.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Not so much growing weary, just getting bored.

LA Noire is the biggest warning light on this one.
It's a game about police procedure! Now Gun Down 30 people.

This should be a game where you can make arrests, but no just murder all the bad guys...
And it's boring.

More than ever games are trying to have their cake and eat it too, where IT'S A GAME ABOUT STUFF!!!!!!! AND YOU GET TO KILL EVERYTHING THAT MOVES!!!!!!

Mass Effect 3's another one where 80% of the combat serves NO PURPOSE! It's just there because EMOTIONALLY MOVING CONVERSATIONS ARE FOR FAGS!!!!!! (I'm pretty sure an EA executive said that and everyone at Bioware believed them)

Or the Modern Warfare games and all their bastard offspring. No military campaign is like that. Any believable military game would have 1/1000 the combat that game does

A game with a reasonable body count would be nice from time to time.
Like The Walking Dead! Let's sing it's praises
Journey (What? An actual factual non combat game that is fun as hell!)
Or even Arkham City, loads of combat, but nonlethal take-downs. Functionally no different but still.


Oh, PS.
I'll just leave this here

 

[Tom_green_day]

Fallout New Vegas

There are no games that have such mental slaughter as the most recent Fallout games. Bloody mess anyone? I know it's not mindless as most of the people you kill are evil and you do it for a reason, and the kills are all stylised to add to the aesthetic and feel of a post-law and post-morality world. Don't get me wrong, I love them both to bits, but I wouldn't say that they're my first choice for pacifist runs.
I think some games, violence is acceptable. Like Far Cry, Borderlands, Assassin's Creed etc where it fits in with the narrative, gives depth to a character or just works in the world or stylistically. I don't like games that are just done FOR the killing, such as CoD or Battlefield (single player, I think that the multiplayer is fine and fun). It just gets tedious when they go out of their way to kill extra people, or insane amounts of 1-hit-kill enemies are dumped in front of you. If the killing is meaningless, I grow weary of it and find it unnecessary.
EDIT: I'll just add to my list of games where I think the killing is effective in some way: Mass Effect, Brutal Legend, TES, the aforementioned Fallout, GTA and Red Dead, XCOM, hell even Minecraft.

 

[imperialwar]

I look forward to an RPG / MMo where i get just as much exp from helping NPCs build buildings to recover from the many wars these places seem to be victim of. Hunting food to feed the starving would be my only sort of killing I'd be interested in instead of kill 50 orcs coz i say so quests. How about i go in and negotiate and find out what the orcs want ( food ? ) and maybe even teach them a thing or two to help them be self sufficient ( based on character skills etc )

 

[Zipa]

Yeah, wholesale slaughter really wears thin for me in a lot of games. In Jedi Academy you can use level 3 force choke (hilariously, a dark side power)to disarm opponents easily. They drop their gun, you run up and grab it, and then they don't have a weapon and are harmless. This allowed the player to spare a lot of storomtrooper deaths, which seemed liek a noble jedi sort of thing to do.

For an example that irritated me, Temple of elemental evil has a mechanic for allowign you to do nonlethal damage to opponents, just like in D&D, but it is completely useless. I actually knocked out a boss, striped his unconcious body of armor/weapons and quest items, only to find out that in order to unlock the next area, I had to actually kill him. What started out as an act of mercy turned to one of sadism as I was essentially forced by the game to shank a defenseless naked guy to continue the plot.

You mentioned Guild Wars, and MMO. Another point of irritation for me is how absolutely bloodthirsty even Federation captians are forced to be in that game (and in a lot of Star Trek games in general, for that matter). It seems strange to me that starfleet would willingly trash so many ships with no quarter given and no attempts at disabling enemy ships, talking your way out of conflicts, or evading combat. If anything, Star Trek games should reward avoiding destroying entire squadrons of enemy ships crewed with hundreds of people each, rather than congragulating it. (unless you are playing Klingon, and even in the case of the Cardassians or Romulans I can imagine them trying to take prisoners) In the average Star Trek game the player almsot invariably racks up a kill count in the tens of thousands, which is a bit silly, IMO.

Isntead of developing more ways to kill and destroy your enemies,games should be thinking of more innovative ways to resolve things peacefully. I want to be able to talk my way out of conflicts, disarm and disable opponents 9without having them come at me with their bare fists) take captives etc. How many times have you had an enemy lieutennent in some rpg attack you only to die on your sword? It would be an interesting mechanic if you could have the opportunity to capture and interrogate them for the information instead of having to kill everyone you meet who so much as throws a rock at you.

FYI Level 3 force pull did the same thing in the JK games so you could be a total lightside good jedi and disarm the troopers.

OT: Violence in games is likely so popular because it lets us virtually do something we are not allowed to do in life which can be both a novel and fun thing and a way to blow off steam safely.
That and humans are inherently a violent species, just look at any of our history if you actually doubt it, most humans will take some form of fun or pleasure out of killing. We can't help it necessarily its just wired into our brains. Video games can give us a outlet for such things.

 

[Luca72]

Try running this one through your noggins and see if it checks out. It's just a thought I've been bouncing around this morning.

In Braid and Lone Survivor, you're playing a game about one thing, but part of a story about something slightly different. In Braid, you're playing a puzzle-platformer based on time elements. But the story is about how time lets us willingly alter our memories. In Lone Survivor, the gameplay is based on familiar survival horror concepts, but the story is about something totally different.

Take a game like Final Fantasy VII. There's the main story, obviously. But then there's all the stuff you do in between. The literally thousands of monsters you kill. Some of which are really bizarre and don't particularly fit into the story (like an angry house that shoots rockets - really). In my mind, the turn based battles basically took place in a universe separate from the one where the story happens.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Jumping from platform to platform or breaking blocks to increase your score are familiar gameplay elements that find themselves in plenty of games even if they don't make that much contextual sense. Violence in games is the same way. Sometimes the shooting sections in a game don't even feel like they take place within the same game that the story does - even in Half Life 2 there were certain parts where it's obvious that the enemies in front of you are simply obstacles between you and the next area - no different than the seesaw puzzle that you have to stack bricks on.

I'm not against violence in games at all, I just think it should have some meaning. Or at least make sense in context. And I don't mean Bioshock Infinites' "I just killed a bunch of people. Let me take a moment to think about how bad I should feel about killing people. Hey, more people to kill!". Two good examples to me are System Shock 2 and Bioshock 1. In those games, you felt just as haggard and desperate as the people you're fighting. And there was nothing "stylish" about the combat in either. Both games made combat feel like a dirty, scuffling life and death struggle. No stylish neck stabs. No slow motion sword flourish. If games are going to be as violent as they are, I'd prefer it to mean something.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I am getting kind of bored of it. The biggest reasons games keep getting set up around combat scenarios are simple:

It's far easier than a lot of other things: Setting a game around combat is WAY simpler than platforming, puzzles, and conversational consequences. Unlike the former two there are a TON of shortcuts for combat which is why so many devs just fall back on shooting or beating the crap out of things. Level design takes a LOT of talent and just grinding away at what works and what doesn't. Puzzles need to be fair but challenging, something that takes a lot of testing to do and most devs are terrified of how hard that is. It's just a matter of what's easy and what's hard.

Uncharted for instance should have been about swashbuckling adventure and ACTUALLY exploring places. Instead, it's just a shooter going from locale to locale. There's no sense of wonderment, exploration, or adventure. It doesn't feel like going to an exotic, forgotten temple or castle, it just feels like those places are merely pretty wallpaper for shooting more people.

However, combat is also starting to strain on people. A lot of shooters just have the same sort of AI enemies with little intelligence and action games in general are lacking when it comes to imaginative enemies who are legitimately smart and challenging with interesting tactics. And don't even get me started on the lack of imagination when it comes to weapons. All in all, it's just starting to bore me. Maybe if someone LEGITIMATELY went all in on combat mechanics like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry (DMC4 being the benchmark) then it wouldn't be so bad, but it's hard to use combat exclusively when it isn't very deep and the level design isn't helping much. Even Bioshock Infinite couldn't avoid this curse with its ENDLESS shootouts.

But then you get games like Uncharted, Ninja Gaiden 3, etc, where the developers actually try (and in most cases, only try) to give the story prominence, and focus on characterisation, yet they still have you slaughtering enemies by the hundred. Nathan Drake terrifies the living shit out of me, simply because he's a charming, witty man who has no problem with slaughtering men whenever they cross his path- the very definition of a sociopath.

Yeah, mental disconnects like that are always interesting. It's why in the FF games most of time you are either fighting A) monsters and animals or B) fighting LEGITIMATELY evil people.

 

[Malkav]

Depends on the tone of the game. Take Just Cause 2.

The game centers around ridiculous action and destruction. You?ll accidentally kill countless civilians, but if their orphaned kids asked you why you squashed their parents with a tank, you can point at that fat disgusting dictator you were fighting. Or say "they didn't have the common sense not to drive into an oncoming speeding tank"
You help guerilla revolutionaries, religious extremists and an equally fat disgusting drug baron to rule the country. You can stand on cars and planes and pull out their drivers/pilots at full speed, just to crash their vehicle. You're being a terrorist, and your "just cause" is a shitty excuse when you think about it too much.

But where would all the fun go if you tied a soldier to a jet to fly up 4km and eject yourself, and the game reminded you that this soldier was a father with four kids and a deep personality? Which half of that sentence sounded more awesome? It's an action fest just like Die Hard. Shut up and grab some popcorn.


It hit me when I finished JC2?s story: You can keep playing, you?re only missing the main story missions. The dictator (spoilerz!) is gone. You wouldn?t notice it, but storywise, it makes a world of a difference. Your "just cause" is over. You?re now terrorizing and ruining the innocent population for no reason, and you still help these bloodlusting gangs who are no longer the lesser evils. I enjoyed "Destroy All Humans", but JC2 wasn?t fun for me after this. No goal, no enemy, no Schadenfreude.


That's where Tomb Raider or Bioshock Infinite showed so much promise. But nope. Right after Elizabeth freaked out about the shootout, my finger slipped and I accidentally shot a peaceful civilian. Elizabeth?s reaction was to give me ammo right after I shot the guy, no shit!
With many recent games, yes, I'm sick of mowing down the armies of the faceless. If it's mature, realistic gritty games, killing without emotional impact just doesn't fit the picture. But for any other games, no, it would ruin the fun, even if that sounds sick.

 

[GodzillaGuy92]

This bothered me when I played The Walking Dead, actually, given that it's the type of game that normally treats life and death with the proper gravitas. I mean, I know they're bandits and they're shooting at us, but can't I just incapacitate them by aiming for their shoulder or something? Why must the game require me to headshot them? I'd accept the risk that leaving them alive poses me (and yes, even my group) if it means I don't have to descend to murder, especially in a situation where the value of human life is at a premium.

 

[Mikejames]

I am optimistic it will change for the better though. The successes of Infinite, The Walking Dead, Journey, [or whatever game is contemptibly referred to as "high art"] proves to developers that you can trust a mainstream audience to buy smarter or more divergent titles. I liken it to 1900s movies, where directors haven't quite dared yet to use the medium for much other than replicating stage plays and vaudeville.

Fair point, fair point. The industry certainly has its issues right now, but that doesn't mean that there aren't good titles doing well. So hopefully more publishers can take the initiative to break the mold.

 

[Dr.Panties]

Although it is frustrating when a game plays an active judgmental roll by penalizing the player for their style of play. Getting short changed on experience points just because I want to see Adam Jensen turn some random NPC into a half-crushed pretzel is just annoying.

This, so much. It pissed me off SO much in Deus Ex:HR. I mean, I never chose to to go lethal on NPCs or cops, but the others I'm fighting are basically terrorists, prepared to slaughter innocents on a whim. And I have blades built into my fucking arms, but the game is going to penalise me for using them on an arsehole?

Games should never, ever penalise the player for using the provided mechanics in a consistent and logical manner. Mark of the Ninja is an excellent example of flexibility in both approach and reward. You can be a ghost or a wraith, and feel justly rewarded for either choice.

Interesting to note: In Deus Ex: HR, I decided that I could first knock out enemy soldiers, and then double tap them in the head when they were down, thus retaining the non-lethal bonus whilst ensuring that they wouldn't get up. WRONG. The game only registered that the enemy combatant had first been knocked out. Imagine my surprise, and annoyance, when "Private Doubletap" was revived by his pal, and started complaining about his "killer headache". Boo!