Killing is Too Easy

[TheIronDuke]

I haven't played an FPS for a long time, except for Spec Ops to see what all the hype was about, and I definitely felt the disconnect about all the killing there. But for me, personally, I've almost always had this kind of feeling to some degree in games where we are killing people who aren't necessarily villains. I can't think of any specific FPS examples, though I remember vaguely playing games where I've just been expected to gun down the innocent police force/other 'good guys' or even morally-grey characters simply because they're the next obstacle to what my character wants to do, despite myself being able to see the less murderous alternatives.

As I play RTSs a lot more often, an example that immediately jumped out at me when I read this article was Warcraft 3, when Arthas starts killing everyone in his way on the way to the evil sword. I know he was basically possessed at the time, but his allies just went along with it with only a few grumbled complaints. I think some ended up leaving, but they would still go along with all the killing up until then.

It's kinda common in RTS story modes that I get to a point where I'm thinking, "The justification for me killing all my own faction in this mission is kinda flimsy and probably didn't need to involve all this violence to resolve."

 

[Animyr]

Sorry for the belated reply; I?ve been away for the week.

However, that characterization can be undermined by the gameplay.

That?s not really relevant to my point, but you said you weren?t interested so what ever.

I never said I agreed with Yahtzee's view of the game.

You implicitly did so by trying to rebut a detractor, and explicitly here.

(I actually wanted to kill Tess myself long before that to be honest. She was a pain). Then when our protagonists where threatened with death I was supposed to care? They killed people for just getting in their way(!) so I saw it as just deserts... Plus, the world is presented as a place where "kill or be killed" was the top law, so why should I care when the nature of the world temporarily turned against the protagonists? In a serious character drama when you hate every side it just doesn't work.

Most of that is closely paraphrased from the article, as I recall. So yes, I assumed that you either agreed with or accepted most of the rest of Yahtzee?s stance too, at least in regard to the characters. I thought it a fair assumption.

I then say my view on the main point (as described in the paragraph above) hasn't changed [i/]because no one has provided a counter-argument to it[/i].

Nor have I attempted to. I respect Yahtzee?s point about cheap death, and agree to a large extent. I already explained this. My problem is whether or not LOU is a good example of this. I happen to think, as you now seem to agree, that it is a poor example of the phenomenon in general, and a bafflingly bad choice to base the discussion around in particular. I also think that Yahtzee misrepresents the game, intentionally or not, to make it seem like a better example for his argument it actually is (especially in his assertion that Joel is an "everydude" hero). If that was truly unclear before, I apologize.

Not to say that LOU is perfect. Maybe it will look sloppy compared to more nuanced games of the future. But compared to its contemporaries, I have no idea why it is being singled out.

So to me, I never talked about anything else but the death topic.

Actually, both you and Yahtzee talked about two topics; violence cheapening death, and violence making characters unlikable. You guys have been using them kind of interchangeably, but I?d argue that they are not only distinct points, but mutually exclusive in a sense. If the violence is presented in a way that it can affect your perception of the characters for the worse or to question the character?s morality (as in Spec Ops), aren't the killings by definition worth at least something, story and characterwise? Isn?t the whole problem with Uncharted or Cod that the nature of the players? extensively violent actions in gameplay has no impact or weight at all in the story and characters?

Mind you, that doesn't mean that violence isn't overused in LOU (I already agreed with that), but I?d also argue that meaningless violence and overused violence, while often overlapping, are not the same thing. Most games have both; I think LOU only has the second.

This leaves us with the issue of protagonist not being likable, which the conversation has sometimes strayed to. Again, just I don't accept the premises that they strictly need to be, nor that the player needs to be told how to feel about them, as Yahtzee implied (though ironically he does think that's true here too; in his review, he shows Joel holding a sign that says "like me"). There are plenty of great stories in other mediums with such protagonists, and I don't see why games can't do it either. But I think we both agree that they at least tried to give Joel sympathetic traits to offset the rest.

 

[C14N]

I was very surprised at Yahtzee's opinions of this game. I remember playing it and thinking "well Yahtzee like Spec Ops for it's take on violence so he's bound to like this one too" but that wasn't how it worked out. I really can't help feeling like he has missed something about the game that made it work for me. I liked the game in the first place because it handles the violence so seriously. Killing in the game is usually not very pragmatic or fun at all (especially since ammo is fairly rare and stealth kills are agonisingly slow) and there are plenty of occasions when it's a lot easier to sneak by without harming anybody. I also liked the fact that the game does draw attention to the fact that you really aren't any better than your enemies (by the end it shows that you are in fact, worse).

The killing you actually do is pretty consistently shocking and unenjoyable. You see your enemies struggling desperately for their lives when you strangle them and even things like hearing how upset other enemies are at finding their friends' bodies is somewhat distressing. The body count is still higher than I would have personally liked but it's a hell of a lot lower than most AAA games and packs of human enemies usually don't come in groups bigger than 4 or 5 unless you're at their homebase.

Also, it's rather annoying to see the number of people criticising the game despite clearly never having played it. Saying things "I'm loving all the fanboy rage" (especially since I still haven't found a rage post in the thread but feel free to quote one for me), "oh great, more zombie apocalypses" or "I'm glad Yahtzee has put this game [that I haven't and won't ever play] into its place" don't contribute anything. If you haven't played the full game, don't think that you have a valid opinion on its plot, characters or depiction of violence.

Yes I agree. So Scarface, American Psycho, spec ops: the line are rubbish. Oh wait no...they're actually quite good and everyone is a bit of a douche in them

Not to mention things that are often considered amongst the pinnacle of their media like The Godfather or Breaking Bad or (for a totally different tone) Arrested Development.

The 'Last of Us' sure has a lot of defenders that come out of the wood work every which way when someone speaks ill of their game.

Gee, imagine that, a lot of people like X and then defend X in discussions criticizing X. That's just so unusual.

In order to disconnect from something you have to connect to it in the first place. Showing the protagonist as Joel is shown from the very start doesn't allow for a disconnect - it just shows them as an unrepentant sociopathic killer, a mindset most of us can't get into. Now if they had shown us Joel acting as a normal person would have been acting at the beginning, then giving us a situation so bad that Joel accepts that being a ruthless killer is really the only way to survive would have been better. In that case we get to relate to him, only to have that relationship disconnected - which is what Yahtzee means in that quote. Both Kratos and Walker are shown as normal(ish) people at the beginning of their stories; Joel isn't.

So a single dad who clearly loves his daughter isn't in any way likeable to you?

Also, Kratos is never likeable. The start of the first God of War has him in bed with two unknown women and straight away you're put onto a boat in a storm where you can mercilessly kill the crew members without any consequence. He's killed his wife and daughter already at this point. Sure you can say he was sort of "tricked" into doing it but he was only tricked because he thought he was killing someone else's family. There is no shred of likeability in Kratos at all.

The walking dead was better.

Now prove me wrong.

Are you deliberately using troll logic or do you genuinely think somebody can objectively "prove" on game is better than another?