No More Torture for Splinter Cell: Blacklist

[scrivello]

Silly, really.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Stupid Internet Explorer

There's your problem.

OT: Threads like this always make me die a little inside. Not because I necessarily care that torture was removed from the game but because there are people saying that they won't buy the game because it's gone. If getting to torture someone is what makes the game for you, you seriously need to rethink your life.

 

[Suave Charlie]

Drop down to their level? We're trying to kill them. We torture them and maybe they play nice. We lose nothing by following this and have potential to gain some level of civility for our people.

Prove it? How will torturing them create civility? Not sure what your angle here is.

I'm sure you lack the spine to do it yourself. Call it "morals", "ethics", or whatever else you want so you can pretend to be superior to other people. Fact is, you're able to cower underneath you covers every night because of the people who are willing to do what is needed to save your sorry life.

Yep, not wanting to torture someone means I'm spineless. Fucking genius. Having morals and ethics doesn't make you superior to other people.. it makes you people.
Again; Torture hasn't been proven to yield significantly positive or negative results. So I disagree it's "what's needed"
Also, what's this about saving my life? I know some areas of Manchester can be sketchy but I've never seen a terrorist jump out to attack me only to be stopped by a soldier with a pair of pliers and a scalpel.

You weep for the terrorists and you curse the Americans. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that torture, while tragic, probably saves lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth, because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want them to torture. You need them to torture.

Here's me, sat in England just weeping for all dem turrists. I don't massively care about about terrorists or americans, doesn't affect me, but doens't mean I'll support something that hasn't been proven to work and is so barbaric. You yourself have said "it works" and now "probably saves lives"
Need them to torture? LOLWUT.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain this to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom America provides, then questions the manner in which it provides it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a car battery and work over a terrorist. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!

Not american by the way. Never understood this, what freedom is being provided? Who would actually come and take away the average american's freedom? A group of men in the mountains thousands of miles away have scared the country into willingly giving up freedoms.. but that's irrelevant I suppose.

I don't give a damn about stuff either?

My house, whenever you like.

Welp, that's me intimidated!

You could if you're a big sloppy mess about it. Why do you think that anyone torturing someone will wield it like a salami? It's a scalpel. You can break someone to the point where they think that you are their God and they will do anything for you. You just have to apply the right... pressure.

Seriously, what are you talking about? Am I talking to SLJ in unthinkable?

I'm gonna say right now; you're gonna have a hard time intimidating me on a forum on a gaming website, halfway across the world.
I disagree with the wars but don't hold that against the soldiers there, but that doesn't mean I'll blindly support any and all actions they'll commit there. There's a reason there's laws against it, this is 2013, not 1200.

Also, why are you acting as if you're some big bad american torturer?

 

[SonicWaffle]

Stupid Internet Explorer

There's your problem.

My workplace's problem, really. If I were at home I'd avoid the thing like the plague.

OT: Threads like this always make me die a little inside. Not because I necessarily care that torture was removed from the game but because there are people saying that they won't buy the game because it's gone. If getting to torture someone is what makes the game for you, you seriously need to rethink your life.

I see it more like the uproar when Skyrim wouldn't allow players to kill children. Nobody wants to kill children (I hope) but when the game was advertised in a certain way - in that case it was almost total freedom - people resented having moral guardians limit that freedom.

Sam Fisher is a dirty scumbag, and as time wears by he's getting more and more like the kind of bastard who'd think nothing of torturing people for information. By removing it, people are annoyed that A) developers caved to what they perceive as pressure from the aforementioned moral guardians and B) that an intended part of the story cannot be used because of said pressure. I haven't been getting the impression that anyone just really, really wants to torture someone and was going to buy this game as an outlet for those urges.

 

[SonicWaffle]

...you realise you're coming off as more than a little bit crazy, right?

 

[Xan Krieger]

Mass Effect 2 had some light torture in which you can punch (and I mean really hard punch) a prisoner to get information out of him. Don't recall that causing an issue even though the guy was human and suffered visible damage. You hear a guy getting tortured in Spec Ops: The Line though you never actually see it. Personally I have no problem with torture in a game, especially if it has positive results (the guy in Mass Effect 2 telling me what I needed to hear for example).

 

[JudgeGame]

I think a huge problem with that scene is that after the torture which you perform yourself, you get the choice to kill them or just knock them out. Keeping a moral choice aspect in a game where torture is obligatory is a very difficult decision to defend. It sends a very strange message to the audience and indicates the creators have very little understanding of the real implications of torture. I'm glad they decided to address that and removing the scene entirely is probably the easiest way to solve the issue.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Stupid Internet Explorer

There's your problem.

My workplace's problem, really. If I were at home I'd avoid the thing like the plague.

OT: Threads like this always make me die a little inside. Not because I necessarily care that torture was removed from the game but because there are people saying that they won't buy the game because it's gone. If getting to torture someone is what makes the game for you, you seriously need to rethink your life.

I see it more like the uproar when Skyrim wouldn't allow players to kill children. Nobody wants to kill children (I hope) but when the game was advertised in a certain way - in that case it was almost total freedom - people resented having moral guardians limit that freedom.

Sam Fisher is a dirty scumbag, and as time wears by he's getting more and more like the kind of bastard who'd think nothing of torturing people for information. By removing it, people are annoyed that A) developers caved to what they perceive as pressure from the aforementioned moral guardians and B) that an intended part of the story cannot be used because of said pressure. I haven't been getting the impression that anyone just really, really wants to torture someone and was going to buy this game as an outlet for those urges.

All of this I agree with. However, the very first guy to post a response said that he LOVES torture and won't be buying the game. I wasn't getting at the people with legitimate arguments (I agree with most of them) I was aiming my statement at the few people who think the highlight of the game is getting to torture someone.

 

[mateushac]

massive snip

All of this I agree with. However, the very first guy to post a response said that he LOVES torture and won't be buying the game. I wasn't getting at the people with legitimate arguments (I agree with most of them) I was aiming my statement at the few people who think the highlight of the game is getting to torture someone.

I'm pretty sure his "I love torture" thing was a comic response aimed at the developers who said something along the lines of "nobody ever said they loved the torture scene, so we cut it out".

 

[RedDeadFred]

massive snip

All of this I agree with. However, the very first guy to post a response said that he LOVES torture and won't be buying the game. I wasn't getting at the people with legitimate arguments (I agree with most of them) I was aiming my statement at the few people who think the highlight of the game is getting to torture someone.

I'm pretty sure his "I love torture" thing was a comic response aimed at the developers who said something along the lines of "nobody ever said they loved the torture scene, so we cut it out".

See I'd believe that if it weren't for the fact that he follows that remark by saying that because of this, he will not buy the game.

 

[mateushac]

See I'd believe that if it weren't for the fact that he follows that remark by saying that because of this, he will not buy the game.

Well, I like to believe that people I deal with have a minimum amount of sanity.

 

[RedDeadFred]

See I'd believe that if it weren't for the fact that he follows that remark by saying that because of this, he will not buy the game.

Well, I like to believe that people I deal with have a minimum amount of sanity.

Haha, fair enough. You're probably right.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Well Conviction was a 15 and you did some pretty brutal things in that game that could be constituted as torture, like impaling a guys hand to a pick up truck with a blade, the aforementioned urinals or stabbing with bits of glass. I was actually looking forward to more of that, what Conviction lacked a "true" Splinter Cell game it made up for in visceral, gritty and downright dark "info extraction". I loved those bits.

Maybe they'll put it back in... Maybe they could just re-skin the scene and use it Manhunt 3 which Ubisoft secretly bought the rights to and are making. *sniff* One day there'll be another Manhunt... One day... *cries one single tear, shoots self"

 

[Lugbzurg]

Whether the use of torture was optional or not is irrelevant. The issue is propagating the lie that torture is effective and justifiable tactic.

You know, as a story device it can be used, to demonstrate the unreliability of the extracted information. Say Fisher interrogates tortures some NPC, and the information is not only inaccurate, but sends Fisher on a wild goose chase that eventually results in serious consequences for Fisher. In this context, torture is a narrative tool for the writer. So in a meta-textual sense, it can work.

Our minds are in sync, it is uncanny...I was thinking if you stealth it up and observe action and conversations in a level you get solid intelligence if you torture you have say 15-20% chance of getting solid intelligence, with bad intelligence making the game harder and harder. Or even bad intelligence results in more QTEs?

This all sounds genius!

In any case, if there was in fact no point to this torture other than "it looks cool", then it should be taken out. But if there's some sort of context to to add to the story like a lot of the things in Spec Ops: The Line (such as the aforementioned white phosphorous scene) or what TheRussian and Octafish mentioned to start screwing up the game itself, it would be brilliant.