No Civilians Will Die in Battlefield 3

[ViciousTide]

I liked Halo 1's approach. If you kill two or more civilians/ good guys, they start trying to kill you! Then of course, you have to kill them all because they are rioting, hehehe.

Also fantasy sex sells and so does porn. Both of which are legal in the US. So I want my alien character sex back Bioware!

 

[FrostyCoolSlug]

Remember MW2? Ever played it? Go ahead, I'll wait. Stop after the "No Russian" mission.
...
...
Finished that mission? How did it make you feel? It hit you like a brick wall, didn't it? A really hard brick wall.

That's the thing, it didn't. When playing, it came off as a very simple publicity attempt, a poor attempt to 'shock' players and cause controversy, if anything, it DETACHED me from the storyline because it was completely unnecessary.

Me, like probably most people who played, just killed civilians because there was *NOTHING ELSE TO DO*, as a person, I know the difference between digital entertainment and the real world, did Activision feel that they would illicit sympathy from me to the plight of the people I'm killing? Should I care that I'm killing pixels, vertices and skins in which I have no personal attachment too in a hypothetical situation?

Here's the thing, video games have taught us that a reckless disregard for "life" is required to play them, and while I understand the "this is war" concept, you can't force someone to change their general feelings about a medium because 'OH NOES, A FAKE CIVILIAN WAS CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE!'. Adding a 'punishment' doesn't help either, I *STILL* wont feel bad that I killed a civ, I'd just be frustrated that I've had to go back to a save point, or some other event happened because of it.

If a game wants to illicit an emotional response, it needs a really good storyline that builds up to it. If the death of someone is important, the player has to already have an emotional investment in that entity (Think Eli from HL2:Ep2, or to a lesser extent, the companion cube from Portal), the death can't just be some faceless entity which has no real impact on anything as a whole, otherwise the entire thing is meaningless.

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

Yes, because questionable material must be censored and sanitized for the masses. All ugliness must be removed or the illusion of beauty will be destroyed. Choice shall not factor into this as choice is offensive in a simulated environment. Youtube must be sanitized because it has videos that offend people. Our games must have no real drama or relevance as those are offensive.

*sigh* That is pretty much what I just read and I am not getting the intellectual progressiveness of it.

 

[Snotnarok]

Very much losing interest in BF3 with every post about it. Wanting more blood is childish? And no civilians because they want a mature experience? Well then someone should get over to the middle east where they're blowing up lots of civilians and tell them that's too gory.

It's real bloody life, no one is saying make you shoot civilians but maybe you could have to get them out and as they get hurt your troops have to carry them out slowing you guys down. It could have been a cool story event even

 

[Frostbite3789]

so you want realistic war but won't allow for a player to accidentally kill a civilian and get reprimanded for it? Yeah i expected a little too much from them with that statement but i expect too much fro everyone nowadays.

Yeah! I want a video game where I get court marshaled and dishonorably discharged from the military! This is total horseshit!

Oh wait, did you mean like losing points, or failing the mission? That's stupid. That's not being reprimanded. It sounds a lot like you don't actually want realism.

It's the opposite of progressive. It's basically taking a step back and saying, "You know what? We really need to hold their hands through this moral ground and censor it, rather than treat them as if they were mature themselves."

The industry can't grow and mature if you pretend the audience is anything but.

Are we really pretending things like 'No Russian' are progressive and mature? That didn't show the horrors of war. It was a publicity stunt. I knew all about that mission months before the game came out. It wasn't about furthering the medium. It was about generating shock value.

I'd preferred they didn't make the announcement, because nobody would've noticed or cared if civilians were around.

In all of MW3's promotional material, I haven't seen one civilian. Or are civilian's in 3rd world countries/Russia ok, but not in the US? And not a single American civilian showed up in the MW2 campaign, despite a good amount of it taking place on American soil.

I'd prefer no civilians to just "ONLY OUR ENEMY HAS CIVILIANS."

 

[GWarface]

So, the civilians are safe from being shot, but EA will still watch them in their sleep..?

ZING!

OT: Doesnt bother me much.. As long as there is no reason for civilians to die in the game, i cant see the problem..

 

[Laser Priest]

We're being mature by totally avoiding something edgy.

That's maturity.

 

[Frostbite3789]

We're being mature by totally avoiding something edgy.

That's maturity.

Oh, so you prefer the Dead Space 2 approach? "THIS IS SHOCKING. SO SHOCKING. LOOK HOW SHOCKING THIS IS. LOOK HOW SHOCKED THESE MOMS ARE. THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW THIS GAME IS MATURE, ADULTS THINK IT'S SHOCKING!!!1!!!"

I'd prefer them just avoid the issue if they didn't think it'd be able to be handled in a mature, and tasteful manner. They chose their battles, and this wasn't one of them.

 

[Wicky_42]

Here's the thing regular Battlefield games didn't even have single player campaigns. They were never about trying to tell a story, or make a statement, or anything like that. They were online multiplayer first person shooters were everyone got together and attempted to blow the crap out of each other with tanks and jets. It was never explained why the European Union was fighting the Chinese, who or what exactly the Middle East Coalition is, or why the Russians are fighting the Americans, because they didn't need to.

Even the Bad Company games didn't have anything like that. Bad Company 1's single player campaign was a character driven story about four misfit soldiers, done in the style of a buddy action comedy. You drove tanks on golf courses and flew gold plated helicopters through hostile territory. You didn't experience the harsh realities of war you did stuff like this.

Spoiler

I thought it worked very well. Not sure why they decided to deviate from that formula in Bad Company 2. I just hope if they ever make Bad Company 3 they retcon out all that nonsense about secret WWII EMP super weapons and South America.

tl:dr

You were expecting a deep and compelling story from a Battlefield game?

This. I don't really understand the point of this announcement other than to confuse people. Remember all those civilians populating the cities in BF2's single player? Remember BF2's single player? Huh... me neither.

Such a deal breaker though, not having cities populated by civilians, what with that being the case in all other games. It's not a real shooter if there aren't innocent bystanders, is it?

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

Great problem solving. People might do something bad in games, so we're just going to remove the opportunity and pretend that it doesn't exist because realistic war games are much more fun with less realism.

Implying that BF3 is a realistic war game.

These are video games we're talking about. If it doesn't have a jetpack and raygun it's realistic in my book.

 

[Blind Sight]

Better idea: when you shoot a civilian, your comrades express horror at what you've done. Then footage of it is released by Wikileaks and your character is put on trial for war crimes. Game over.

Guys, relax. Battlefield never had civilians. This is just a jab at No Russian.

 

[Laser Priest]

We're being mature by totally avoiding something edgy.

That's maturity.

Oh, so you prefer the Dead Space 2 approach? "THIS IS SHOCKING. SO SHOCKING. LOOK HOW SHOCKING THIS IS. LOOK HOW SHOCKED THESE MOMS ARE. THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW THIS GAME IS MATURE, ADULTS THINK IT'S SHOCKING!!!1!!!"

I'd prefer them just avoid the issue if they didn't think it'd be able to be handled in a mature, and tasteful manner. They chose their battles, and this wasn't one of them.

Strawmanning is pretty rad.

But there is a difference between idiotic marketing and idiotic development.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Snip

No...it's much more about the marketing and not the development, because if they had never said a word about it, and civilians hadn't appeared, nobody would care or say a thing.

And what about it is idiotic development? "We don't think we can handle this in a mature and respectful manner. Lets just not do it." So dumb, right?

 

[Blind Sight]

Snip

No...it's much more about the marketing and not the development, because if they had never said a word about it, and civilians hadn't appeared, nobody would care or say a thing.

And what about it is idiotic development? "We don't think we can handle this in a mature and respectful manner. Lets just not do it." So dumb, right?

Good point. I'm starting to think developers should just start keeping concepts and ideas to themselves rather then release them early because the internet rises in a tsunami of bitching. Bet most wouldn't even notice if they just had it in the game and didn't make any press statements.

 

[Dissentient]

These are video games we're talking about. If it doesn't have a jetpack and raygun it's realistic in my book.

Realistic - Arma. Battlefield has nothing realistic about it except looks. It's game that is balanced to be fun and has nothing to do with real combat.

 

[Vigormortis]

Does nobody else get the feeling that this is just yet another jab at Activision from EA's PR? I mean, as far as I'm aware, no Battlefield game has had any civilians from the beginning. So they're basically saying "Hey, you know how those other guys added this controversial thing that made people actually feel a bit of emotion instead of just 'Rawr kill enemy!'? You know how we've never done that? Yeah, we're just going to keep not doing that, but we're going to make a statement about how we're still not doing it so we can make the other guys look bad again."

Now, I'm not a fan of Activision's business practices, but at least they're not spending all of their damn time just mudslinging instead of actually publicizing their own game and showing people what it's going to be like, like any company ought to.

I can tell you I do. It's the first thing I thought when I read the announcement. Beyond the trailers they show off at conferences and shows, the only "announcements" about this game have been one of three things.

1: Statements meant to make Call of Duty/Activision look bad.
2: Statements meant to make Steam/Valve look bad.
3: Announcements of yet another "feature" or "requirement" that end up just being a new, deceptive layer of DRM.

Frankly? This crap is getting old. Really old, really fast. I've seen less mud-slinging from political campaigns.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Or if we REALLY want realism we can base it off the actual US actions and make it so when a civilian is shot the CO covers it up and at the end(or close to it) a scandal is released to the US media causing an uproar from the home-front. You get your court Martialing in an after credits cinematic, show newspapers about how it was covered up during the credits.

But its too much to ask them to make a dig at the USA's corruption.

I'm an ass today; thought about quarantining myself but i decided not to. Cuz i r asshole.

Or if we want SUPER MONDO ULTRA REALISM you have to take the entrance exam for the military before hand and since you're a nerd, you probably place into intel! So after boot camp you're sent somewhere like KOREA, ENGLAND or GERMANY! Where you will almost guaranteed never discharge a weapon in actual combat!

But such a game would never sell with the 'bro' crowd.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Ah, even war has to be sanitised. Wouldn't want our little adults learning that guns kill people, would we?

Are they specifically trying to destroy Battlefield?

Yeah, remember the civies in...

Oh, yeah. This has never been in Battlefield. Why do people want this, exactly? It would add nothing.

The reaction to this is ridiculous. Also, no one goes to the bathroom and you can't have sex. Why must you gloss over reality, battlefield?

 

[JoesshittyOs]

They are seriously giving the middle finger to Call of Duty now, no doubt about it.

Seriously... EA is being a douchebag.