Jimquisition: Lugoscababib Discobiscuits

[mjharper]

Still disagree on Bioshock: Infinite, and it's not because I'm opposed to violence in games per se. I have no problem with Dead Space, for example, and Isaac's deaths are arguably far worse than anything in Infinite.

But Infinite crossed a perhaps indefinable line for me, where the violence was somehow not wholly justified by the story it was trying to tell. Maybe that's also an issue with the combat, which I found clunky, and the shoe-horning of Vigors into the game. Maybe the problem was I didn't enjoy those sections of the game, and so am trying to rationalise the distance I felt between combat and story. Yet that's not to say there wasn't such a distance, and that we aren't right to be discussing it.

For what it's worth, I found Tomb Raider far less dissonant than Bioshock: Infinite, even if I wished Lara's arc had spanned the whole game, rather than half of it.

 

[Clovus]

Ludonarrative Dissonance is not about gameplay contradicting story. By that notion any FPS were a character is injured or killed in a cutscene also suffers from LD because they can soak bullets in gameplay.

That's actually much how it was introduced into usage, so to argue it's wrong is folly.

Besides, your examples are not offering a significant distinction. Gameplay in the above examples distinctly violates the themes given.

The example he gave was actually the example given by the creator of the phrase, Clint Hocking. I think the clearest example is Niko Belic. Niko is portayed as a violent man in the narrative, but not a completely insane psychopath. However, the gameplay allows the player to drive down the sidewalk running over people. There's no way to square those gameplay scenes with what happens in the cutscenes or narrative.

Soaking up bullets only becomes ludonarrative dissonance if the game shows the PC as getting severely injured or almost killed by getting shot once. Usually the narrative in an FPS is that the player is basically some kind of Super Soldier. In Half-Life this is specifically addressed by giving you the suit that repairs your injuries.

Ludonarrative dissonance is not generally created because the game world differs from the real world. It's created when the game world as shown in the narrative differs from the gameworld in the actual gameplay.

 

[Penitent]

There's more to it than that, Jim. The thing is that the violence in Bioshock Infinite, in my opinion, is ramped up too high. Killing people takes too much of the game's attention, and that's harmful because it desensitises the player too much to violence.

Booker is a man who's surrounded himself with violence and has made an occupation out of hurting people. We're meant to be intimidated by that, but how can we feel bad about it when it's always the right thing or the only thing to do? Likewise, the people of Columbia we fight aren't Splicers who are mentally broken and desperate on a drug: they're people. Religious extremists and excessively nationalistic, but still people. Yet gunning them down doesn't illicit any sympathy or thought on my end because I do it so very often in the game. The fact that I have killed a human being is trivialised.

It worked fine in Bioshock because the game was constantly aware of how deranged it was, but in Infinite I get the subtle feeling that something is being glossed over. The only time I feel like it worked was in the Hall of Heroes, and that's because we're both exploring the protagonist's violent past and because every enemy we meet is a death seeker.

This is what I feel people mean when they say ludonarrative divebirhence. Sure, the cutscenes are about violence, but are they really about this much violence? I wouldn't say so; Infinite tried being a sincere story about Booker and Elizabeth, about a city with American virtues taken to an extreme, all with a tinge of sci-fi and early 20th century aesthetics. I enjoyed the lulls before the storm in each level when Infinite, because they embodied what the game was trying to be about far more than the constant combat ever did.

 

[Seneschal]

I don't think the violence in TR, Bioshock or TLoU was too intense (well, Lara could have done with a few less spikes through the head); I think the problem is that it's ceaseless. You continually kill logistically impossible numbers of people. It leaps over the ridiculous and lands into the implausible, as repetition turns a life-or-death struggle into an obstacle course.

Rote combat gameplay could probably make some point about violence, but I can't imagine it would be easy (and I've only ever seen Spec Ops try to do it). For most action games, ceaseless violence seems to be the objective - if it's fun, original, challenging and well-balanced, the game shines even if the story is an afterthought. But when action games become heavily character- and narrative-driven (as many recent action titles have been), much like RPGs, then players start to demand that the themes and conventions of the narrative be reflected in the gameplay. And ceaseless combat cannot do that. It's like playing Beethoven's 5th on just a cowbell.

RPGs deal with this in several ways. Combat may occur inside a bubble-verse, with entirely different (often abstract) mechanics and presentation from the rest of the game. Tactical or turn-based mechanics make even a small enemy group take a lot longer than shooting a terrorist in an FPS. There are often several ways of interacting with the world (Suikoden II had three combat systems--party turn-based, strategic army clashes, and personal duels--and a heap of other activities like investigation, castle renovation, gardening, dancing lessons, dramatic martial-arts cooking duels...), and several layers on which the world can be explored. Even in the most seamless RPGs like Bethesda's, there's often a "click" when the world switches gears from interaction to combat.

I'm not saying modern action games need several other mechanics in addition to combat. I like ceaseless-violence-obstacle-courses. But they are being stretched at the seams by narrative-driven games, because their core mechanics simply lack the range to transmit all the nuances of a well-crafted story. The game ends up looking like it's ignoring the narrative or distracting you from it, which is what most of the Bioshock-griping was about - wanting to spend more time with the characters and the general population, and not in obviously limited combat arenas.

 

[Erttheking]

So are you just ignoring the fact that the whole "eating from trashcans" thing HAS in fact been brought up several times by several different people?

Your statement that "Nobody spent any time on this" is flat out false.

Bioshock Infinite is rife with Lubosnasra whatever, and much of it IS related to the violence.

One example is the fact that despite Elizabeth being aghast at the first murder spree of yours she witnesses, she never seems to care after that, not even when you break into the home of some innocent housewife and tear her fucking face off with your hook, Elizabeth just doesn't give a shit.

Well if that's the case, I'd have to ask if immersion is so important to you, why did you jam your hook into the face of an innocent housewife? To me it sounds like a person giving a second person a glass cup, where upon the second person smashes it with a hammer and shatters it before complaining to the first person about it being broken. If you didn't want it to be broken, then why did you try and break it in the first place?

So you're telling me, that a game being non-reactive and poorly thought out is my fault because I could just stay on the linear path and never interact with anything?

Sounds like a super cool story bro.

Your analogy is garbage and completely inapplicable.

I didn't "break" the game.

I did something within the games world which the devs clearly must have intended to be possible, if not then why is there a nice little custom animation for when you tear her face off?

Try to grasp this concept: Just because you like a game, doesn't mean you have to rush to it's defense whenever someone says something mean about it, it can still be a good game. It's not gonna run away and cry if I tell it that it did something poorly, and if you want to ignore it's faults all you have to do is close the tab and go play it again.

What I'm trying to say is that there is never ever going to be a game where the immersion never gets broken because of the interactive element. When I was playing my friend's copy of Tomb Raider, the first thing I did was start jumping around like a mad man screaming "I'M BREAKING THE IMMERSION" because gamers will always, ALWAYS do things like that. Frankly the only way to make it so that immersion never gets broken is to make the game linear as Hell, and I think we don't want that. People in games will never react to you jumping up and down in front of them randomly, they'll never react to your kleptomania, I'm with Jim in that I don't see why violence gets singled out.

I'm not quite sure where you're getting the impression that I'm the type of person that can't that my favorite game being criticized. I personally think the ending to Bioshock Infinite was kinda iffy. I just disagree with your criticisms and I am pointing out why.

 

[mada7]

The word is definitely being misused particularly in the cases of last of us and bioshock infinite which both have different problems neither of which relates to violence. The flaw undermining bioshock infinite is that it feels the need to keep reminding us that we are playing a bioshock game particularly with the scavenging and vigors. Bioshock had a scavenging mechanic that made sense for a city that is in shambles like rapture but doesn't make sense for a thriving city like Columbia. Bioshock had plasmids which were both a great defining gameplay feature and central to the downfall of the city as a whole whereas in infinite the vigors are just sorta there and no one uses them other than booker. The problem with the last of us, aside from the combat being extremely dull and repetitive, is that enemies would never attack your allies even while they are standing up in the middle of a battlefield talking to you

 

[immortalfrieza]

Bioshock Infinite is rife with Lubosnasra whatever, and much of it IS related to the violence.

One example is the fact that despite Elizabeth being aghast at the first murder spree of yours she witnesses, she never seems to care after that, not even when you break into the home of some innocent housewife and tear her fucking face off with your hook, Elizabeth just doesn't give a shit.

Aside from your one example there of killing an innocent person (though I don't recall this happening aside from my ending up in some woman's home with police in there ready to kill me and having to fight them when they saw me), it's easily, and quite rationally, explained by the fact that if they don't fight these people and find a way out of the city, Booker will die and Elizabeth is going back to her tower for the rest of her life.

Now maybe you missed the fact that she really, really, wanted to get away from there, but it's not something that was exactly subtly hinted at during the game. So no, I don't agree with the idea that this is dissonant at all. You can quibble as much as you want over the whole thing being a bit rushed, and maybe they didn't spend enough time showing her getting over her initial disgust to ensure their survival, but the reality is that the explanation for why she would continue on with Booker and actively help him is readily explained by information contained within the games narrative.

On a side note, it's kind of funny that Jim can do a whole episode dedicated to why these arguments are wrong, and people are still trying to make the same arguments.

^This. That, and it's wrong that Elizabeth suddenly stops being disgusted by violence, she doesn't. Elizabeth is disgusted about the violence throughout pretty much the entire game, she just doesn't voice it incessantly at every available opportunity. I'd say probably the most obvious example is the disgust quotes she throws out during the fights, especially when the player does something excessively violent like using finishers.

Oh, and Booker scrounging for ammo, food or whatever isn't Ludonarrative Dissonance, he has perfectly good reason to do this that's justified in the narrative. Namely, he's an enemy of the state that's being actively searched for, it would be ridiculous of him to walk up to any old person and buy or beg for the crap he needs from them since they might raise the alarm. This is most effectively shown during the scene where he's trying to get a ticket for transportation and the guy will STAB him and hit the alarm if he just tries to play it cool. Early on it's understandable that people wouldn't recognize Booker and might be willing to give or sell him stuff, but why take the chance? Later in the game everybody knows his face so it's even more justified.

 

[Amir Kondori]

A LOT of people brought up the oddity of Booker eating out of garbage cans, in fact every other web comic about Bioshock Infinite seems to be about that very subject.
When it comes to the violence I think a lot of people were thrown off not by Booker's violence, but how easily Elizabeth overcomes her horror and distaste of the violence she sees him commit and starts throwing him ammo so he can blow some more heads off.

 

[kmg90]

*Citizen Kane clap*

I agree 100%!

I remember hearing and reading glimpses of discussion around the over-the-top violence a few weeks after Bioshock Infinite came out and how the game play, more specifically the violence, didn't flow with the overall story and narrative of the game, same for Last of Us both before (the E3 demo with the guy getting his head blown off after pleading for mercy having lost the struggle of the main character) and after release both times annoyed me as the violence seemed appropriate given the settings.

I mostly ignored it as non-core gamers that are not as accustomed to games that feature such brutality featured in both previously mentioned games.

Tomb Raider's story and game play however more appropriately deserved it's uncanny valley lugoscabib discobiscuts and that it was clearly 2 different tones of "emotion" during cut-scenes and gameplay. One example springs to mind is hunting the deer in the first "area" of the game and how the game points out how grossed out Lara is about having to kill and mane a deer and then from then on NOTHING, skinning deer or other animals doesn't feature an spec of emotion or distaste for any actions performed in game.

Tomb Raider is what started the charade of discobicuts lugoscabib in games that were doing gameplay-styles in context with story fine...

I also find it crazier that I can think of examples of games that have more severe laguoscabiib discobicuts....

 

[Britpoint]

I disagree with Jim on his points about Infinite on this one. Although his core point is fine, in that it's wrong to claim luconarcissist distynance just because a game is violent, to use that to defend Bioshock is a bit of a strawman. Nobody I saw that used that criticism of Infinite claimed it was the violence alone that caused a problem, but that it was the reduction of an entire complex world to one of hyper-violence and mindless slaughter.

The problem with Bioshock is that once you got out of the touristy areas with interesting events occurring, you found yourself in entire blocks of the city with naught to do but murder everyone in sight. All of a sudden the seemingly kind on the surface but evidently misguided racists are nowhere to be found, and all that are left are brutal psychopaths with no agenda but to murder you. Infinite shows you two sides of a world, but almost never allows the two to mix and gives you a single, bloody, way to interact with that world.

That, along with other examples such as Elizabeth happily opening up tears to machine gun turrets after that time she gets disgusted with you for all the murder, makes the lurgynanative disconance complaint a valid one. Sure, you can argue that this criticism is incorrect as you do in the video, but to reduce the criticism simply to people crying that they don't like violence in a game is oversimplifying it.

 

[Goliath100]

I want direct examples!! For all the alleged criticism of Bioshock and The Last of Us.

The Tomb Raider one wasn't enough?

Howabout Final Fantasy VII's big spoiler, where even the most devastating move in the game is only a KO, but a single sword is an instant permanent kill because ponies. Hell, most JRPGs do things in the cut-scenes that are impossible(in gameplay) at best, and often fit into this trend because they contradict the gameplay. Or vice versa.

I know what LD is. I want a example of someone saying the B:I was too violent. Because I suspect Jimmy is using a straw figure. You see, there is a problem with violence in B:I: The NPC no not react to it in any real way.

 

[Hargrimm]

Errant Signal did a pretty good video highlighting Infinite's flaws.
To add my own two cents (spoilers and lots of ranting):

Spoiler

I haven't played the game myself, but watched a longplay of it, I got the impression that I was supposed to emphasize with Booker and Elisabeth.
At the star of the game, we get told that Booker is supposed to bring Elisabeth to the surface to pay off a debt. That seems plausible until you start to think about it for a bit.
So, Booker gets sent into a nigh utopian citystate in the sky(for white people, anyway), that can only be reached via rocket that has space for only one person, that you have to know a code for you to be able use it, located on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere.

Why doesn't he just drop the job and forget about his debt? I mean, what are his debtors gonna do about it? Send some people after him to collect? They'd have to send them one at time. However, Columbia is a sovereign nation that doesn't seem to have much in the way of foreign politics, so I doubt these collectors could count on the authorities to assist them collecting their debts that are in a currency Columbia doesn't use and maybe doesn't even recognize, so they'd be on their own. They'd also have to find him first. Furthermore, Booker is a war veteran, who has no qualms about killing hundreds of policemen, revolutionaries and even some innocents, so I doubt he'd have problems killing some thugs who are after his head.

Later he comes across a poster that pretty much tells him that he is the devil for this nation. Instead of maybe covering his hand or otherwise trying to hide something like that, like any sane person would do, you know, just in case that he runs into the people who put up these posters or avoiding the hassle of having to explain to people that he just happens to have the mark of the devil on his hand.
Instead of doing this, he just gives a "what?" and moves on as if nothing happened, cementing my opinion of him as a collossal idiot.

Later, after he finds Elisabeth, they try to escape the city. Now, instead of taking one of the hundreds of different airships they come across, a lot of which are even flown straight to them by their enemies and which Booker has to board to dispatch these enemies, or simply look for a parachute, they murder their way across the city to get one very specific airship for no reason at all(at leat not one that I remember).
Later, when that same ship is stolen from them by some revolutionaries, they agree to further murder their way across the city to do a job for them in exchange for the ship, instead of just doing the obvious and killing the guys who took their ship. They didn't have any qualms about killing anyone else they came across, after all.

After the revolution started I sorta forgot if they were still trying to escape the city or not, but suffice it to say, by that point Booker was already a retard and an irredeemable monster in my book, sob story or not, so I kinda lost interest.

 

[Quiotu]

While I don't think that the "score" (whatever that's worth) should've been lowered for that (raised maybe), I am glad it was brought up in the review. At least now I know I wont be playing as 3 tortured souls who shed a tear every time I run over some random slob on the sidewalk.
And as annoying as that was in GTA4, I wouldn't accuse that game of having ludoscaboobidibob discobiscuits because you could play the character that way; try to control yourself so it seems like Niko has a new found respect for life. But really, who wants to do that in a gta game?

You are correct that GTA4 didn't have to have LD, because you could play it the way Nico wanted to and just not kill that much. But no matter which path you take, in the end you do have to kill a lot of people to get to the end. Greg also apparently doesn't understand that one of the biggest criticisms GTA4 had was that the game wasn't as much of a parody as the others in the series. Nico was one of the first MCs in GTA you were really supposed to sympathize with, and people didn't like that, because up until then you were playing some of the more amoral protagonists in gaming.

GTA4 I believe showed Rockstar that people don't want a serious story in that series; they want to beat hookers and steal ambulances. But it's hard to do that and still have a story where the character isn't a raging psychopath. So, Rockstar seems to have found a happy medium, and give people three people to play and revolve the story around... one of which just happens to be a raging psychopath. So now all your violent urges can be released on Trevor, while the more cerebral gaming can be done with one of the other two characters, and now there's no LD and everyone can be happy.

 

[Worgen]

I get the feeling that Jim didn't actually understand the argument. From my perspective the claim of dissidence for Bioshock infinite isn't because its violent, its because that's the only option and your not fighting zombie analogs, your fighting cops and protesters. They made a world that feels lived in but for the most part your only interaction with it is with bullets. Its one thing when you mow down 20 zombies and see more coming, its another when you shoot 20 cops and they just keep coming and don't react at all to seeing their comrades casually killed. Also, I have seen people talking about running around eating shit out of the trash in infinite, so I don't see how that's a good example to toss in peoples faces.

I get the feeling you didn't research this much, Jim.

 

[Quiotu]

You know, I just realized that Rockstar may have just created the embodiments of the psyche's three parts in GTA5. Franklin is the Ego, Michael is the Super-Ego, and Trevor is the awesome Id. Which character you want to play is very much dependent on what part of your brain you want to listen to at the time, but one of them will always work. That's rather ingenious of them.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

I happen to actually like the term ludo-narrative dissonance. I used it quite vehemently to describe Tomb Raider, a game that suffered overall for it.

I did not use it in any way shape or form to describe The Last of Us or Bioshock: Infinite, two games that most certainly did have cause for hyper violence. In both games there are characters that react negatively when the player character kills someone in a particularly brutal way. No one challenges Lara, nor do they find it odd that she's so proficient with a weapon or can survive in the region of 500 blunt force traumas.

/rant

Don't hate the word, hate the people who misuse it.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Does Elizabeth ever question whether her wanting to escape is worth all these people being killed or worry about how safe she'll be with a man who's killed hundreds of people?

Probably, it's been a long while since I've played Infinite, but even if she doesn't, why would she? People are TRYING TO KILL THE TWO OF THEM pretty much constantly throughout the game, why would she possibly question that doing whatever is necessary to get away from these people and her psychotic father is justified?

Scavenging makes sense after Booker is a wanted criminals and everyone knows his face. Before this it makes no sense and I found myself wondering why he doesn't just cover up the mark on his hand when he tries to buy things.

Uh... maybe it's because he just doesn't think of it? With a lot of fiction I've noticed that people like to say they would have done something the character doesn't, but it's always bunk. It's easy to CLAIM you would have done something, but you are not them, you aren't really in their situation and you do not think like that person, so there is no one that can honestly say they would have done differently.

 

[SlightlyEvil]

I think the problem I had with the violence in Bioshock Infinite is that it was a little too gruesome for the general swashbuckling action feel of the rest of the combat. But that's just gameplay design choices conflicting with other gameplay design choices. It's worth thinking about, but it's not ludoflaraniv skiptlefliss.

 

[grumpymooselion]

Fun episode Jim. I rather agree with everything but the trash cans, but only on the grounds that I have, in fact, seen people talk about it before. You're right in noting that the people ranting about the violence 'issue' did seem to be there, in louder and greater number, though.

I did something within the games world which the devs clearly must have intended to be possible, if not then why is there a nice little custom animation for when you tear her face off?

So, you take all the dark side options in Star Wars games just because they're there then? They're possible, and thus clearly intended so you're obviously supposed to take them even though you have the option to not.

I think the problem I had with the violence in Bioshock Infinite is that it was a little too gruesome for the general swashbuckling action feel of the rest of the combat. But that's just gameplay design choices conflicting with other gameplay design choices. It's worth thinking about, but it's not ludoflaraniv skiptlefliss.

It didn't have a swashbuckling action feel though. The feel of the city was one where people had their nasty, dirty and quite violent nature under a nice shiny coat of paint. They were there to hide what was always there, and that Booker, a violent man by nature, simply brought out of the city that . . . was run by an equally violent man. Anyone that's finished the game understands the true depths of that parallel, as well as the contrast of a version of a violent man that hides it under a veil versus one whose nature washes across the streets.

People can make the claim he's fighting cops, for instance, but these aren't actual real life cops put on the street to protect you. These are fictional cops whose purposes, on the surface, are similar but are actually brainwashed fanatics, and extreme racists. It's also notable that Booker doesn't throw the first stone, he's attacked, and by one of these cops, before he raises a hand to anyone in Columbia.

Not the only themes in Infinite, by far, mind you, there's more going on that that.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Man, you kinda said everything I could possibly have said about the subject. I do get annoyed that so many games go straight for the violence instead of exploring what other things you can do with games, but if you're going to criticize a game (or book, or movie, or whatever), then at least use the proper terms for it.