No More Torture for Splinter Cell: Blacklist

[BloodRed Pixel]

I really wish the game industry would more focus us good story instead of such cheap thrills.

So IF the toture is NECESSARY for driving the story it's ok but should NOT be acted out.

No One Lives Forever 1 also had a torture scene in it. which in the end turned out to be necessary to get the info.
And NOLF1/2 are among my AllTimeFav.

 

[Dogstile]

That's a shame. They really showed how far Fisher was willing to go to get the information and showed how ruthless he is becoming as a character.

 

[Subscriptism]

Don't like the mechanic? Don't buy the game, don't ruin it for the rest of us.

 

[Balkan]

Imagine if the white phosphore scene was removed from Spec Ops. No one "loved" the scene, but it was a part of what made the game so interesting.
So, if the torture scenes were part of the context of blacklist, than removing them would leave an empty space. The other option is that the scenes were there to be enjoyable, and since they aren't, removing them wouldn't effect the product.
Time will tell.

 

[VanQ]

When did video games become the biggest sissy on the entertainment media playground?

 

[5-0]

If TV and films can do it, then games should be able to. This is not cool.

 

[Doom972]

This series has been dead to me ever since I finished the poorly ported PC version of Double Agent. Blacklist might've changed my mind, but I definitely don't want a censored game.

One thing I liked about gaming in the 90s and early 2000s was that developers seemed to do what seemed right to them, instead of taking into account stupid comments about the game being offensive in some manner. Games were able to be challenging both in gameplay and in story. I wish developers would stop caring about what random people on the Internet think, and just make the games that they want to make.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Plus, torture is a very valid way to get info when one is 100% sure that the bastard/subject carries the information, I also believe it should be used as punishment for certain crimes, death is way to fast for some people. It falls short, and is actually absurd, when it is used at random to obtain information, because, heck, it's just fruitless, and might result in misinformation. However, as far as i remember, Sam always got the right people for info Just like Batman hahah

That would be because - say it with me now - they are fictional characters who are acting out a story.

Of course they go to the right people for info, because if they don't then the plot doesn't advance. It's easy to do awful, morally reprehensible things as a fictional character because nobody is judging you. Batman can torture whoever he likes, and everyone is fine with it, but if one of the real-life superheroes started doing it we'd throw them in jail.

What the whole debate boils down to, particularly in regards to recent Middle Eastern wars, is that in the real world you cannot do bad things while claiming to be the good guy. If the United States wants to use drone strikes and torture, there's nobody who can stop them, but they ought to drop the act of painting it as a 'war on terror' and just admit that they're doing exactly what the enemy would do in the same situation. Be honest about the rapidly shrinking moral difference between the two sides. One side leaves a car bomb in the middle of a village, the other hits the village with a drone. One side takes hostages, the other side takes prisoners, both sides torture the captive for information. The effects are the same, but at least one group is honest about being bad guys.

 

[Slash2x]

Well good I am glad we will have a nice friendly conflict now. None of that hurting people stuff... Wait you still have guns in the game? And you can still kill people? hmmm..... But no one get threatened right? Ok that is good then better to shoot them in the head then hurt them.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Boyo, you messed up your quotes so bad I have no idea how you even managed to do that...

I'm special. They call me specialist.

You have me saying something belonging to a completely different person, you might wanna fix that.

Weird. Stupid Internet Explorer text-selector that keeps stopping in random places...

 

[You Can't Take the Sky From Me]

You know what they should do? Present it like Frederick Forsyth would. No glamor, no appeal, but present it (from the point of view of the character) as merely part of what they must do. It would be horrible and inhuman, but it would be real. That would be a a scene that could be respected.

 

[Biodeamon]

aaaaaw, but that was favourite part of conviction

 

[FoolKiller]

Sam Fisher has always had the option to torture/use coercion to get information. That is what makes him a splinter cell. He can do whatever he feels he needs to do to extract information from the bad guys. This just seems like another step back for the series in its continuing deterioration towards mindless 3rd person action game.

To play devil's advocate: he tortured in Conviction since he was on a mission to get his daughter back. Anyone would go to that length (if they could) to get their child home safely.

 

[Zing]

Who cares. They destroyed Splinter Cell with conviction. It's now an "action 3rd person shooter" with watered down, non-innovative "stealth", emphasis on the quotation here, gameplay.

 

[Anti-American Eagle]

But you could torture people in conviction and nobody had a problem with it then... has so much changed since then?
Are they really saying Sam suddenly isn't into torturing people for intel?
In fact I think he'd find it hilarious to see bad people suffer.

Captcha: that escalated quickly

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I honestly don't care. But it would be nice if they returned NPC interrogations from old SC games.

 

[WindKnight]

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.

the primary problems were -

(1) the torture was interactive. a little 'rotate your thumbstick' prompt comes up, and yes, its the player doing the torturing

(2) once the guy your torturing passes out, the game presents you a moral choice over whether or not to kill them.

you the player, have just tortured someone, and the game is saying 'yeah, we're only going to judge you a Bad Person if you shoot this unconscious, defenseless person. That torture was totally ok.'

 

[ShirowShirow]

This was probably a good call. I'm not a fan of Splinter Cell, but if I was encouraged to twist a knife into a helpless prisoner in, say, Metal Gear Solid I'd be pretty damn disgusted. That's the sort of things you see villains do so you know it's OK to murderize the shit out of them.

There are things that you just shouldn't do.

 

[1337mokro]

Imagine if the white phosphore scene was removed from Spec Ops. No one "loved" the scene, but it was a part of what made the game so interesting.
So, if the torture scenes were part of the context of blacklist, than removing them would leave an empty space. The other option is that the scenes were there to be enjoyable, and since they aren't, removing them wouldn't effect the product.
Time will tell.

What did the white phosphorus scene have as intention though?

Discomfort, realization that you had done something terrible.

Now did it have that effect? Not really because it is a forced sequence and so you are basically absolved of the entire feeling of guilt because the game strong armed you into doing it. However the resulting feelings and the intent are the same. You are supposed to not feel good.

Now what is the intent of the torture scene? Suspense and thrill.

Not really the same thing right? They actually did have a torture scene in Spec Ops to. It was short but it wasn't offensive you know why? Because the depiction of that torture wasn't the same. It was a man wanting information and a man who had information whilst you stood by the sideline unable to interfere or change his faith.

It wasn't about the torture it was about the inability to save the man.

In Splinter Cell it is about sticking knives in brown people because they are the bad guys. Did Sam Fisher employ these methods when fucking Japan was planning a world invasion? No. He snuck in the shadows and got his information from hacking computers, use of an intensive network of intelligence and of course little snippets of conversation between guards.

So on the brink of a world war he didn't resort to torture, but now all of a sudden you are telling me he has to? He is unable to use spydrones, wiretapping, regular old infiltration, spies, tracking devices, regular old searching through documents, eavesdropping etc. Which are also all much more reliable methods than torture.

The first thing I expect from a terrorist leader who is zealously religious when tortured is False information and that is what he got! The entire torture was POINTLESS! It had no emotional weight and the entire thing was basically Sam getting off on his anger and venting it.


Now on Ubisoft retracting the scene though. Why? Because people whines about it? Fucking seriously? If you want to put that torture scene in there, put that fucking torture scene in there. It's nothing but cheap exploitation but it is YOUR cheap exploitation of violence. If you think that the story benefits from it then leave it in. Why did you put it there in the first place if it wasn't a part of the story or character arc?

 

[redknightalex]

Unless I'm mistaken from years of not playing the games, didn't Sam Fisher "extract" information from NPCs at gunpoint to further his objective? I'm finding it hard to believe that stabbing someone with a knife is worse than holding a gun to someone's head, with the option to shoot this NPC afterward, for information.

This sounds like politics getting its dirty hands into the video game industry yet again. If we don't want to touch these issue because the might be "too sensitive" then I worry about where this industry is going and if we'll ever evolve as a format. For crying out loud, Harry Potter gets tortured in a children's book, not even for information, and still no one seems to care! Oh well, lets all be hypocrites.