Killing is Too Easy
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
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I don't think I agree
I've seen this attitude more and more of "Oh, why do games make me kill?" and I can never get behind it. Why? This is going to make me sound odd, but it's the gods honest truth. The folks over at Rage Select put it best: on some basic level, whether we like it or not, there is something intrinsically fun about killing in games. Maybe it's because we're used to it, but on some level there is some satisfaction in it. It's something that's easy to quantify as a measure of success, and easy to also understand the consequences of actions (not talking morally here, rather "What happens when I do X?") To me it's just something that I am willing to expect or accept if it is presented to me. You can have fun non-violent games, I'm not saying games are only fun when they're violent. I'm just saying that the intrinsic fun in killing in games is something of a shorthand for progression and success, sort of how a health-bar is a short hand for survival, even though in the context of the story it can seem ridiculous, even with in-cutscene deaths.
As for The Last of Us...I think this is because of the confusion as to what constitutes a regular protagonist. The folks over at Spill I think gave a good assessment in that "If you think of Joel as a traditional hero, you may feel off or angry during parts of the game. But if you view Joel not as a hero, not even as an anti-hero, but a borderline villain? That's where everything fits together." That's honestly how I look at The Last of Us. I understand Joel's situation, and I understand why he does the things he does. He's still a villain though, in so much as his intentions, while sound and understandable, are ultimately dark, and sometimes evil, in nature. I don't see the killings in The Last of Us as "Oh, in this world life is so cheap that you're lucky if you only get three near-death experiences a day." I see the killings as the means that Joel understands the world, and that for him it's not just what will you do to survive, but what will you do to live? The game has never been one about the survival of the human race for me, but rather an understanding of what one will pay in order to do more than just survive and actually live, to have a life, to feel alive.
At first I thought that the last Hospital section was your standard "Stealth game needs action section, RAWR!" but as I thought about it, I realized that maybe it's because it represents the very thing I was discussing, living over surviving. If all this ever was for Joel was a means to survive, he would've just left before starting shit, resigning himself to Ellie's fate. Let's say for arguments sake that he stays and wishes to save her, but is still concerned more on survival. His shoot-out sections would be considered reckless at best, suicidal at worst. I think, on some level, it sort of shows that for Joel he could simply sneak and survive, but it's no longer enough for him. If he does a shoot-out, he may be reckless, he may get hurt, he may even die, but at least he's living. I think, on some level, Joel enjoys the killing. I'm not saying he's a psychopath who gets a thrill from seeing people die, rather I think it helps him cope with the surviving/living conflict. I think when he's with people he cares for, whether it's Triss or Ellie, his purpose on living has to do with them, but when alone or his relationship with others starts to crumble, I feel that's when he becomes the most reckless and is more likely to kill, because for him, that's the only way he knows how to actually feel alive. It doesn't justify his actions, it doesn't make him sympathetic, and it doesn't serve to make him a hero. What it does do is show a villain that, on some level, disturbs us, and one we would be eager to call out on, if it weren't for the fact that, like Joel, things start to feel panicked, rushed, and tense when things get chaotic and we start having to kill. Like Joel, it can feel fun. Like Joel, we start to feel alive.
I've seen this attitude more and more of "Oh, why do games make me kill?" and I can never get behind it. Why? This is going to make me sound odd, but it's the gods honest truth. The folks over at Rage Select put it best: on some basic level, whether we like it or not, there is something intrinsically fun about killing in games. Maybe it's because we're used to it, but on some level there is some satisfaction in it. It's something that's easy to quantify as a measure of success, and easy to also understand the consequences of actions (not talking morally here, rather "What happens when I do X?") To me it's just something that I am willing to expect or accept if it is presented to me. You can have fun non-violent games, I'm not saying games are only fun when they're violent. I'm just saying that the intrinsic fun in killing in games is something of a shorthand for progression and success, sort of how a health-bar is a short hand for survival, even though in the context of the story it can seem ridiculous, even with in-cutscene deaths.
As for The Last of Us...I think this is because of the confusion as to what constitutes a regular protagonist. The folks over at Spill I think gave a good assessment in that "If you think of Joel as a traditional hero, you may feel off or angry during parts of the game. But if you view Joel not as a hero, not even as an anti-hero, but a borderline villain? That's where everything fits together." That's honestly how I look at The Last of Us. I understand Joel's situation, and I understand why he does the things he does. He's still a villain though, in so much as his intentions, while sound and understandable, are ultimately dark, and sometimes evil, in nature. I don't see the killings in The Last of Us as "Oh, in this world life is so cheap that you're lucky if you only get three near-death experiences a day." I see the killings as the means that Joel understands the world, and that for him it's not just what will you do to survive, but what will you do to live? The game has never been one about the survival of the human race for me, but rather an understanding of what one will pay in order to do more than just survive and actually live, to have a life, to feel alive.
At first I thought that the last Hospital section was your standard "Stealth game needs action section, RAWR!" but as I thought about it, I realized that maybe it's because it represents the very thing I was discussing, living over surviving. If all this ever was for Joel was a means to survive, he would've just left before starting shit, resigning himself to Ellie's fate. Let's say for arguments sake that he stays and wishes to save her, but is still concerned more on survival. His shoot-out sections would be considered reckless at best, suicidal at worst. I think, on some level, it sort of shows that for Joel he could simply sneak and survive, but it's no longer enough for him. If he does a shoot-out, he may be reckless, he may get hurt, he may even die, but at least he's living. I think, on some level, Joel enjoys the killing. I'm not saying he's a psychopath who gets a thrill from seeing people die, rather I think it helps him cope with the surviving/living conflict. I think when he's with people he cares for, whether it's Triss or Ellie, his purpose on living has to do with them, but when alone or his relationship with others starts to crumble, I feel that's when he becomes the most reckless and is more likely to kill, because for him, that's the only way he knows how to actually feel alive. It doesn't justify his actions, it doesn't make him sympathetic, and it doesn't serve to make him a hero. What it does do is show a villain that, on some level, disturbs us, and one we would be eager to call out on, if it weren't for the fact that, like Joel, things start to feel panicked, rushed, and tense when things get chaotic and we start having to kill. Like Joel, it can feel fun. Like Joel, we start to feel alive.
Aw, Yahtzee!
That was a bit of a bummer!
Now, here's the thing:
I just can't have you pee all over my enjoyment of shooting at, whacking at, pummeling and pounding on, maybe even killing virtual people, the likenesses of breathing thingamabobs made out of pixels, bleeding red pixels all over my squeaky clean screen. That would be tantamount of siding up with all the censors, old farts, backwards bears of war and transforming forces all rolled into one. I don't want you to be part of the no-fun club.
Welcome to the thirties. If you feel existentialism and reality creeping up on you, don't you worry! It only goes downwards from here on out.
Everything.
No matter what the positivist braindead folks tell you. Eat less. Do more sports. Keep up a schedule and the most sincere OCD tabs on anything medical. Go see the nice lady that removes the gunk from your teeth. Drink less. Go have some kids, if you're so inclined. Enjoy more. Time is running out. Statistically speaking, you only have thirty to fifty years left. Then again, every day could be your last. Sucks, doesn't it. Well... time to ponder on things. AND WRITE ANOTHER BOOK YOU LAZY TWAT.
<youtube=5Fl1pCPb504>
Captcha: bangers and mash - awwwww captcha! So sweet of you! See? It's the little things that make life worth living!
That was a bit of a bummer!
Now, here's the thing:
I just can't have you pee all over my enjoyment of shooting at, whacking at, pummeling and pounding on, maybe even killing virtual people, the likenesses of breathing thingamabobs made out of pixels, bleeding red pixels all over my squeaky clean screen. That would be tantamount of siding up with all the censors, old farts, backwards bears of war and transforming forces all rolled into one. I don't want you to be part of the no-fun club.
Welcome to the thirties. If you feel existentialism and reality creeping up on you, don't you worry! It only goes downwards from here on out.
Everything.
No matter what the positivist braindead folks tell you. Eat less. Do more sports. Keep up a schedule and the most sincere OCD tabs on anything medical. Go see the nice lady that removes the gunk from your teeth. Drink less. Go have some kids, if you're so inclined. Enjoy more. Time is running out. Statistically speaking, you only have thirty to fifty years left. Then again, every day could be your last. Sucks, doesn't it. Well... time to ponder on things. AND WRITE ANOTHER BOOK YOU LAZY TWAT.
<youtube=5Fl1pCPb504>
Captcha: bangers and mash - awwwww captcha! So sweet of you! See? It's the little things that make life worth living!
TloU is a game that wants to have its cake and eat it. It really wants you to identify with Joel and sympathize with him, ultimately he's really just a douchebag lunatic no better than the people he's killing. And before anyone says "that's the point" I'm just gonna say this: NO. Anyone with ANY writing experience will tell you that most of the time when a protagonist comes off as more of an asshole than the people he's against then it's mostly because someone screwed up. Instead of getting a complex protagonist we really just get an incongruous one. The "it's supposed to be like that" argument is one used as a last resort by people who realize that they've made an asshole protagonist
I absolutely agree, whenever I would go to my friends place and play gta vice city I'd just go on a killing spree, because I wasn't in the mood for missions, now I bought GTA IV which is trying to be realistic and all and you know what? I just can't kill people! When I have to kill cops I shoot them in the legs on purpose.
I felt super guilty after doing this actually! I wanted to be like a wasteland badguy, so I took all kinds of evil choises with my character, but after nuking Megaton I felt so bad about it that I spent the rest of the game trying to make up for it by making the kindest decisions, always helping out and sparing even a bandits life if I could help it, and the strangest part is I didn't even notice this change until I talked about the game with a friend weeks later! Very strange... In Fallout New Vegas I immediately went for the life-loving diplomat, and only took a life when it was absolutely necessary.wombat_of_war said:
I guess this is why I'm enjoying Deus Ex: Human Revolution quite a bit right now, bought it a few days ago... I am disapointed that there is a bunch of people you can't avoid killing though, even though I have taken some lifes on purpose... Some of those badguys are just too evil to let live!
Glad to see I wasn't the only person who thought of Btongue here.IronMit said:
But I do kinda agree with yahtzee here. If we're meant to side with a character, they kinda need to not like a villain.
Well said Yahtzee. From the standpoint of storytelling there is really no excuse for casually killing people and letting the characters deal with it in an easy come/easy go fashion. I can understand this from a gameplay standpoint -as players need enemies and obstacles in their path- but have not we already explored that area to death with the Modern Warfare craze, and all the way back to games like Contra?
In order to justify mass slaughter, you either need to show the player-character as an unreliable source, or at the very least weigh the lives that are taken against those that are saved, with the characters feeling the weight of these choices throughout the narrative. No one likes a sociopath, and they make for poor, transparent and boring characters when you get right down to it.
This brings me to one of my biggest disagreements with Yahtzee though, the Metal Gear games. I always liked that for the most part, especially from MGS2 onwards, the player had the choice to kill or not to kill their enemies. Often times, killing is the easier option, but I find the added challenge rewarding on a gameplay level, not just on the moral or storytelling level. While the stories are silly, and gleefully break the fourth wall, I find this keeps Snake from becoming a sociopath like so many other long-running heroes, and ironically makes him so mouch more human and "real to me, rather than some grizzled soldier just killing because he was told to by the brass.
The real artistry lies in games that confront killing and death head on, and do not hide behind excuses like gameplay.
In order to justify mass slaughter, you either need to show the player-character as an unreliable source, or at the very least weigh the lives that are taken against those that are saved, with the characters feeling the weight of these choices throughout the narrative. No one likes a sociopath, and they make for poor, transparent and boring characters when you get right down to it.
This brings me to one of my biggest disagreements with Yahtzee though, the Metal Gear games. I always liked that for the most part, especially from MGS2 onwards, the player had the choice to kill or not to kill their enemies. Often times, killing is the easier option, but I find the added challenge rewarding on a gameplay level, not just on the moral or storytelling level. While the stories are silly, and gleefully break the fourth wall, I find this keeps Snake from becoming a sociopath like so many other long-running heroes, and ironically makes him so mouch more human and "real to me, rather than some grizzled soldier just killing because he was told to by the brass.
The real artistry lies in games that confront killing and death head on, and do not hide behind excuses like gameplay.
Fully agree. Death is a hardball endzone that you cannot reverse. In the context of a serious game with a serious protagonist it should be treated, well, seriously.
This made me think about Planescape: Torment (which is always a good thing). I think you can actually finish that game without killing anyone (not just humans, but also other sentient creatures). I can only think of two mandatory fights where you have to 'kill' someone: one is a zombie (an animated corpse, therefore already dead) and the other is someone whom you kill in self-defense and who later turns out to have been playing dead.
Well, there's a few angles to approach the issue of death in video games from..
As a gameplay mechanic, violence is the easiest method of establishing conflict, with death being a very easy outcome to implement. Even better, death and violence are universally understood concepts, even when scaled up in explicitness (Condemned springs to mind) or down in abstraction (strategy games; even plain chess is often used as an abstraction of a war game).
Unfortunately, this also means that combat and death are the central focus of conflict resolution for an incredible sum of games; easily the majority of those that make it to market. Outside of puzzle and stealth games, it's very difficult to find examples where the player is not required or encouraged to employ violence, and I find it morbidly funny that discussing problems rationally is considered the gimmicky or novelty method of conflict resolution in games just because violence is the standard by plurality.
(Though that could also be due to the fact that discussion is inherently more complicated in design than just shooting your problem in the head.)
In this, violence killing and death are overused as conflict establishment-resolution methods, never-mind the fantastical setting. Every victim is fake, whether they be human, robot, zombie, monster, demon, goomba...Of course the player isn't going to treat fake life-and-death as seriously as real life (barring insanity), though a good game can convince albeit temporarily.
The biggest problem, is that older gamers (or at least those who have lived and played games for a substantially long period of time) have seen every flavor of violence out there; to the point where it stops being cool or novel and starts to tire.
This is a total shot in the dark on my part, but I think that's really the "problem" Yahtzee is dealing with:
Violence isn't as interesting a gameplay concept anymore. Death as a gimmick is so overdone, it's cheap, and shocking for the sake of being shocking isn't edgy, it's just exploitative and cliche (possibly to an insulting level).
If that be the case, he's not alone in thinking that.
ASIDE: As for any "artistic" merits of the interpretation/implementation of death in games; gaming is overwhelmingly fictional even in most "realistic" settings. (go ahead and list those games that are "based on a true story". I'll wait.)
To be blunt and keep this short: "Universal Logic" is self-contained and arbitrary. Because of that you can spin death in any way you want from the simplest, forgettable applications to the positively absurd (even romanticized and/or comedic, ala Grim Fandango).
Whether or not death should be given moral weight is up to its implementation in the work (in ANY medium); and not some catch-all "based on real life" rule.
As a gameplay mechanic, violence is the easiest method of establishing conflict, with death being a very easy outcome to implement. Even better, death and violence are universally understood concepts, even when scaled up in explicitness (Condemned springs to mind) or down in abstraction (strategy games; even plain chess is often used as an abstraction of a war game).
Unfortunately, this also means that combat and death are the central focus of conflict resolution for an incredible sum of games; easily the majority of those that make it to market. Outside of puzzle and stealth games, it's very difficult to find examples where the player is not required or encouraged to employ violence, and I find it morbidly funny that discussing problems rationally is considered the gimmicky or novelty method of conflict resolution in games just because violence is the standard by plurality.
(Though that could also be due to the fact that discussion is inherently more complicated in design than just shooting your problem in the head.)
In this, violence killing and death are overused as conflict establishment-resolution methods, never-mind the fantastical setting. Every victim is fake, whether they be human, robot, zombie, monster, demon, goomba...Of course the player isn't going to treat fake life-and-death as seriously as real life (barring insanity), though a good game can convince albeit temporarily.
The biggest problem, is that older gamers (or at least those who have lived and played games for a substantially long period of time) have seen every flavor of violence out there; to the point where it stops being cool or novel and starts to tire.
This is a total shot in the dark on my part, but I think that's really the "problem" Yahtzee is dealing with:
Violence isn't as interesting a gameplay concept anymore. Death as a gimmick is so overdone, it's cheap, and shocking for the sake of being shocking isn't edgy, it's just exploitative and cliche (possibly to an insulting level).
If that be the case, he's not alone in thinking that.
ASIDE: As for any "artistic" merits of the interpretation/implementation of death in games; gaming is overwhelmingly fictional even in most "realistic" settings. (go ahead and list those games that are "based on a true story". I'll wait.)
To be blunt and keep this short: "Universal Logic" is self-contained and arbitrary. Because of that you can spin death in any way you want from the simplest, forgettable applications to the positively absurd (even romanticized and/or comedic, ala Grim Fandango).
Whether or not death should be given moral weight is up to its implementation in the work (in ANY medium); and not some catch-all "based on real life" rule.
Dude, no one has a problem with self defense. Yahtzee specifically said he had no problem with it and really I think it's safe to assume that no one has a problem with it unless they say otherwise. Greedo was an immediate, right now I shoot or I die threat.IronMit said:
Cutscene vs gameplay killing is irrelevant, it's why they're killing that matters.If you are killing someone who is unarmed and begging for mercy, you are not killing for self defense, that's the difference. Like jesus christ, why do I have to explain this?
No, the protagonist is allowed to be an asshole, but the portrayal needs to fit the character. Anti-heroes are allowed to exist, of course they are, if you're arguing that the Protagonist of TLOU is an anti-hero than fine, but don't act like the protagonist could be the ultimate dickhole and be portrayed as a genuinely good guy and there not be a problem. Scarface isn't portrayed as a good guy all the way through because he's not.
Well first of all, great article.
I mostly agree with your observations (although I have a particularly pragmatic stance towards death penalty). As you, I don't enjoy the gratuitous violence in movies (Quentin tarantino really annoys me), nor in games, nor in any sort of fiction honestly.
So I honestly don't understand how you can put into perspective God of War, (maybe just the first one) a game that has currently degraded into: lets smash everything into a bloody pulp while still trying to humanize kratos and show him in a somewhat heroic light. BUT find TLoU objectionable.
God of War 3 literally sickened me, not because it was too graphic or disgusting, but because of the degree of unwarranted wanton grotesque violence, coupled with the clear intention to somewhat justify this character, while additionally doing things as displaying how AWESOME my 400 bloodbath kill streak was (yeah, rip that dude's spine out!). In contrast, although it was harsh I felt TLoU was simply setting a scene for the characters. As many people have expressed, you find Joel as a hardened, hopeless, lost smuggler. The game overtly displays him as a lost soul, just surviving. There is no glorification, there is just showing how low Joel and Tess are willing to go.
They have managed to live in the sidelines of functioning society, but the requirement to escort Ellie subverts the whole system that they have become accustomed to function with. They transverse the re-established equilibrium that the new societies have settled, and it is this transgression that triggers the paranoid defensiveness of that particular reality. It is not just a free for all everyone killing everyone plot.
However in contrast with the conflict that the mission causes, for Joel, the encounter with Ellie serves in fact as a hopeful saving grace. It is HER that begrudgingly gives him a reason to live again. She gives him an opportunity to atone for his failure as a father and in his mind undo all the wrongness and pain that has happened.
At this point in the game, he starts making plans for the future, he dreams, he projects his life as something more than the "shitty people" that Tess describes them as.
Joel arguably finds his highest point of humanity a bit past the middle of the game, although it is still contrasted with brutal violence, now he has a mission that he wants to fulfill.
The tragedy is that this new reason for him to live is also the curse for humanity, hes incapable of sacrificing his new found hope for the grater good, he is incapable of letting go. He remains a traumatized man, his nature remains broken, and as hopeful as we are about him really finding grace, he simply can't find any other solutions.
Now if this was all inferred and absolutely abstract, I suppose you could say I was reading too much into it, but most of this points are quite literally exposed: His violence is not what we look forward to (partly the reason why it is such a viable option to avoid it). Joel is fighting his darker nature, fighting to bring back his dead daughter, to preserve innocence, but in reality, and in the viewer's eyes, only digging himself deeper.
On a Gameplay level, when Joel performs a brutal kill Ellie never cheers for him, in fact she even sounds slightly scared and disgusted. You as a player might feel well for completing a section, but the game starkly refuses to give you any sort of congratulatory pat in the back. In fact more than once, even after surviving a particularly challenging section with combat, I didn't feel satisfied, I felt bad and slightly guilty, partly because of how many resources I had squandered, and partly because it was simply horrible... I looked back and I thought: "fuck.. I made a mess here... I should have avoided this."
I was not enjoying the killing of humans... but I had to survive.
( as a random note, the only section where Ellie gives you a HI-5 is in a light puzzling section completely devoid of any violence )
So, I can't agree with you. I think you simply are blaming the Last of us for not addressing certain concerns the way you wished them to be addressed, pointing some complaints that it is rarely guilty of ( ok, that small sniping section felt a bit offbeat ). Anyway, the gist of it is that the game makes a very noticeable tonal, thematic, and narrative effort to implement the discussed character conflict into every aspect of the experience, and it very strange that you have not observed what it so thoughtfully weaves into the final product.
Of course your experience is your experience, everyone is biased, and I'd encourage you to try to observe the game without this preconceptions, even if it is very unlikely that you would change your mind.
In any case I think it's definitely not the reason to justify your contempt for it, nor is it the game to prove your point about violence.
I mostly agree with your observations (although I have a particularly pragmatic stance towards death penalty). As you, I don't enjoy the gratuitous violence in movies (Quentin tarantino really annoys me), nor in games, nor in any sort of fiction honestly.
So I honestly don't understand how you can put into perspective God of War, (maybe just the first one) a game that has currently degraded into: lets smash everything into a bloody pulp while still trying to humanize kratos and show him in a somewhat heroic light. BUT find TLoU objectionable.
God of War 3 literally sickened me, not because it was too graphic or disgusting, but because of the degree of unwarranted wanton grotesque violence, coupled with the clear intention to somewhat justify this character, while additionally doing things as displaying how AWESOME my 400 bloodbath kill streak was (yeah, rip that dude's spine out!). In contrast, although it was harsh I felt TLoU was simply setting a scene for the characters. As many people have expressed, you find Joel as a hardened, hopeless, lost smuggler. The game overtly displays him as a lost soul, just surviving. There is no glorification, there is just showing how low Joel and Tess are willing to go.
They have managed to live in the sidelines of functioning society, but the requirement to escort Ellie subverts the whole system that they have become accustomed to function with. They transverse the re-established equilibrium that the new societies have settled, and it is this transgression that triggers the paranoid defensiveness of that particular reality. It is not just a free for all everyone killing everyone plot.
However in contrast with the conflict that the mission causes, for Joel, the encounter with Ellie serves in fact as a hopeful saving grace. It is HER that begrudgingly gives him a reason to live again. She gives him an opportunity to atone for his failure as a father and in his mind undo all the wrongness and pain that has happened.
At this point in the game, he starts making plans for the future, he dreams, he projects his life as something more than the "shitty people" that Tess describes them as.
Joel arguably finds his highest point of humanity a bit past the middle of the game, although it is still contrasted with brutal violence, now he has a mission that he wants to fulfill.
The tragedy is that this new reason for him to live is also the curse for humanity, hes incapable of sacrificing his new found hope for the grater good, he is incapable of letting go. He remains a traumatized man, his nature remains broken, and as hopeful as we are about him really finding grace, he simply can't find any other solutions.
Now if this was all inferred and absolutely abstract, I suppose you could say I was reading too much into it, but most of this points are quite literally exposed: His violence is not what we look forward to (partly the reason why it is such a viable option to avoid it). Joel is fighting his darker nature, fighting to bring back his dead daughter, to preserve innocence, but in reality, and in the viewer's eyes, only digging himself deeper.
Masterfully, the game asks if his redemption is worth potentially damning the whole human race. What would Jesus do? lolz
On a Gameplay level, when Joel performs a brutal kill Ellie never cheers for him, in fact she even sounds slightly scared and disgusted. You as a player might feel well for completing a section, but the game starkly refuses to give you any sort of congratulatory pat in the back. In fact more than once, even after surviving a particularly challenging section with combat, I didn't feel satisfied, I felt bad and slightly guilty, partly because of how many resources I had squandered, and partly because it was simply horrible... I looked back and I thought: "fuck.. I made a mess here... I should have avoided this."
I was not enjoying the killing of humans... but I had to survive.
( as a random note, the only section where Ellie gives you a HI-5 is in a light puzzling section completely devoid of any violence )
So, I can't agree with you. I think you simply are blaming the Last of us for not addressing certain concerns the way you wished them to be addressed, pointing some complaints that it is rarely guilty of ( ok, that small sniping section felt a bit offbeat ). Anyway, the gist of it is that the game makes a very noticeable tonal, thematic, and narrative effort to implement the discussed character conflict into every aspect of the experience, and it very strange that you have not observed what it so thoughtfully weaves into the final product.
Of course your experience is your experience, everyone is biased, and I'd encourage you to try to observe the game without this preconceptions, even if it is very unlikely that you would change your mind.
In any case I think it's definitely not the reason to justify your contempt for it, nor is it the game to prove your point about violence.
A favorite tale of mine (which was rather upsetting at the time, so I'm eager to tell it) is when I played Star Wars: Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, and was going through Bespin much the same way that I went through later levels in Star Wars: Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight[footnote]Yes. It was during the golden age of colon stacks.[/footnote], which is to say I was yanking everyone's guns away and letting them stand there and look stupid. In Outcast, they even knew to raise their arms in the air.[footnote]The Stormtroopers in DF2 would run around like headless chickens yelling "Stand at your post! Stand at your post!" It was hillarious. Good times.[/footnote] Non-aggression. It was the Jedi way. I was so proud.
And then, play just stopped. I plum ran out of bad guys. Things weren't progressing. I searched for the next place to go thoroughly and there was none.
In time I figured out what happened: when you get to this courtyard and defeat all the enemies, this Sith-dude (hardly a Sith Lord) would pop out and fight you, and the path would open up again. But the Sith-Dude event wouldn't trigger until all the previous enemies were defeated.
Defeated as in: not moving. Deader than a doornail. Posthumous. Ex-parrot. To continue the game, I had to go back and execute all the guys whose lives I had previously and cleverly spared. Some of them were still raising their arms in surrender when I got near. Gaaah!
I still haven't forgiven Raven Software for that. in Jedi Academy they'd specify in the mission parameters whether or not you needed to kill all the bad-guys, so I got to disarm them when I could.[footnote]Which I did. My first investment would be into Grip 3, which would cause most baddies to drop their weapons.[/footnote] And most critical event-driving baddies couldn't be disarmed.
238U
And then, play just stopped. I plum ran out of bad guys. Things weren't progressing. I searched for the next place to go thoroughly and there was none.
In time I figured out what happened: when you get to this courtyard and defeat all the enemies, this Sith-dude (hardly a Sith Lord) would pop out and fight you, and the path would open up again. But the Sith-Dude event wouldn't trigger until all the previous enemies were defeated.
Defeated as in: not moving. Deader than a doornail. Posthumous. Ex-parrot. To continue the game, I had to go back and execute all the guys whose lives I had previously and cleverly spared. Some of them were still raising their arms in surrender when I got near. Gaaah!
I still haven't forgiven Raven Software for that. in Jedi Academy they'd specify in the mission parameters whether or not you needed to kill all the bad-guys, so I got to disarm them when I could.[footnote]Which I did. My first investment would be into Grip 3, which would cause most baddies to drop their weapons.[/footnote] And most critical event-driving baddies couldn't be disarmed.
238U
"But you're still trying to create drama that appeals to an audience that does not live in that world."
They are trying to immerse us into this world. Every game is a work of fiction, no matter how realistic and gritty it is.
The Last of us never tried to excuse Joel's murderous nature and that's what I really liked about it. In a game like Tomb Raider(2013) the story will go out of it's way to show how evil the badies are while still trying to tell a realistic story about a sympathetic protagonist and that just doesn't work. Its just wrong to complain about a narrative problem that is addressed in the story.
They are trying to immerse us into this world. Every game is a work of fiction, no matter how realistic and gritty it is.
The Last of us never tried to excuse Joel's murderous nature and that's what I really liked about it. In a game like Tomb Raider(2013) the story will go out of it's way to show how evil the badies are while still trying to tell a realistic story about a sympathetic protagonist and that just doesn't work. Its just wrong to complain about a narrative problem that is addressed in the story.