REPORT: Kill.Die.Reflect.Repeat.

[PsychicTaco115]

[Img_Inline width="250" height="300" Caption="Your face when this isn't a satire article c:"]http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/hotline-miami/images/5/5d/274170_screenshots_2015-03-12_00004.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150316215709
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Everything that made the first Hotline Miami game great revolves around one central question: Do you like hurting others? This question worked because for the majority of the game, you played as one character with almost no mental characteristics other than that he is very, VERY good at killing. Even the name given to him, Jacket, is based off his physical attributes. Even though the game switches characters for an alternate timeline scenario for the last three chapters, the primary question is aimed at Jacket himself.

However, with the sequel, the very thing that made the first game work cannot be used here for two reasons. The fact is that Wrong Number has 9 playable characters this time instead of just the two from the first game. With such a larger roster, the personal connotation that the question poses is lost. It asks if YOU like hurting others, not if THEY like to. This shift in perspective justifies the need to deviate from the core question from the first, other than the common sense need to be different from the first in a more meaningful way.

What Wrong Number instead asks is WHY do people hurt other people? This has been looked at from various other points before but only in recent years has video games attempted to do ask the same of the player. While it has been discussed in other works, that question still does not have a set answer that satisfies everyone. From ideological reasons (Beard in Hawaii) to the desire for respect (Son) to just wanting to do it (the Fans), the wide spectrum of possible reasons is explored throughout the game.

This nihilistic violence almost directly conflicts with who I am as a person. In real life, I absolutely abhor violence and am a self-professed pacifist. While I can absolutely recognize the need for it at times of great distress, I feel the need to try and live to that ideal in hopes in one day it is no longer necessary. From my standpoint, I cannot fathom why it would be in someone's best interests to break open the door and smash someone's face in with a baseball bat until they're nothing more than a sack of flesh writhing and bleeding on the floor as they let out a final gasp for breath. At least to a real thing.

This is the greatest strength of the Hotline Miami series. It allows for the deep, piercing look at violence while letting the player commit it. A book can tell you about the horrors of violence and film can show it to you. A game, however, lets you perform it.

<a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ZqFlw6hYg>Source

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<color=darkred>Older News: <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.872902-REPORT-Duck-Man-Pwns-Athiests>Duck Man "Pwns" Atheists
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[Skatologist]

Great OP Taco, now if only you were official content and could get paid for being awesome at everything.

 

[FPLOON]

I... was not expecting this...
http://www.uwosh.edu/deptblogs/admissions/files/My-emotions.gif
What are these feeling I'm feeling right now? I NEED ANSWERS! I NEED THE RIGHT NUMBER!!

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

People get fixed on that one question, "Do you like hurting people" and they forget that Richard actually asks you 4 questions during that scene:

Do you like hurting people?
Who is leaving messages on your answering machine?
Where are you right now?
Why are we having this conversation?

The game isn't a deconstruction of violence and the reasons behind hurting people. It's a deconstruction of the 4th wall, and how a story can be told without an actual story or any real incentive to play outside of the game's mechanics. For more than half the game the player is given no clue about what's happening, just given missions to kill others with absolutely no context and no story and you continue to play because of the fast paced, frantic, and ultimately satisfying gameplay. It's a game that shows all the greatest strengths of video games and derides games that attempt to be "cinematic."

What was the point of playing Hotline Miami? It was just fun.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

People get fixed on that one question, "Do you like hurting people" and they forget that Richard actually asks you 4 questions during that scene:

Do you like hurting people?
Who is leaving messages on your answering machine?
Where are you right now?
Why are we having this conversation?

The game isn't a deconstruction of violence and the reasons behind hurting people.

The last three questions CAN be answered though. The first one is pretty much the only one left to interpretation for the player

*The janitors are leaving them
*Its a hallucination in Jacket's mind from being in the coma
*While this is the most open question, it can be assumed Purgatory in some sense

I don't see why the game can't be both a deconstruction of violence AND the 4th wall. There's room in a game for both

I specifically used the violence part to focus on this piece so that's why I left out the other questions

Still, quite an interesting thesis on both sides c:

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

This is the greatest strength of the Hotline Miami series. It allows for the deep, piercing look at violence while letting the player commit it. A book can tell you about the horrors of violence and film can show it to you. A game, however, lets you perform it.

There might be some argument to that being a crippling weakness, as well. Making social commentary on distant, self-indulgent violence via ultra violence played straight doesn't really address the point. It's commentary by example, I suppose, but it lacks the nuance or depth to say much on it beyond pointing out that its there. Lampshade hanging is all fine and good, but if the creator doesn't do anything significant with it, it's only really acknowledging there is a problem without addressing it.

Given that, I'd have liked to have seen a little bit of fiddling with the formula. Hotline Miami managed to tease the potential for a story throughout, and ultimately left the player grasping at straws and didn't really validate the behavior. It was messy, confusing, violent, but unfulfilled. It didn't really mean anything, and by putting that unresolved confusion as the capstone to a short game did a great deal to say, rather directly, "The reason for doing it was less important than the act of doing it."

However, that isn't a field of discussion, or topic, that manages to translate well into a sequel. Having not played Wrong Number, when I read things like this, I have to wonder where they went? If they couldn't pursue the violence for the sake of indulgence line further, then what did they do? In the context of this article, it seems like they didn't.

Although perhaps I'm just misreading intent. Having familiarity with Wrong Number only secondhand in musings like these, I do wonder what I'm missing. Given that I wasn't enamored with the first, I can't imagine the second will do anything for me.

 

[AT God]

Ok, I have no idea where I was going with the following text, I think I originally started writing about my understanding of the game but it went to a weird place. Instead of deleting this and moving on, I'll post it because, while not much of a response to the OP, it isn't exactly irrelevant, it is basically my experience with the game. Just fair warning that it is weird, its late and I'm tired and apparently feeling poetic. Also, I added spoiler brackets to most of it, they will prevent spoiling Hotline Miami 2's ending.


A lot of people took Hotline Miami 1 to be asking the player directly if they liked hurting people, they saw those interactions with the 3 personas as being a direct break in the fourth wall and a discussion with the player themself. I personally never agreed with that and assumed there was a logical explanation for everything, that Jacket was being forced into his encounters against his will and was seeking to find the way out, only to unknowingly spoil the chance by defeating Biker at PhoneHom.

All through Hotline Miami 2 I was constantly waiting for it to all snap into place, waiting for some support of my belief that Jacket wasn't acting purposefully or intentionally; and that the game wasn't trying to contact me, the player, specifically. As Richard started reappearing to every other playable character, and again speaking in riddles that seem to make more sense from the perspective of the player than the character in the game, I became more nervous about my previous stance, but also started to think that was the point, the game was deliberately misleading me, to make me doubt my beliefs only to switch back on me at the very end and make me feel foolish.

[Putting the rest of this post in a spoiler thingy because I am gonna discuss the end of Hotline Miami 2 now.]

Spoiler

As Beard/Soldier's missions concluded, I became even more distraught, as I realized the one soldier that didn't speak was Jacket, and the events of this war explains Jacket's motive for killing the mobsters in the first game. The bombing of San Francisco that killed Beard/Soldier furthered this belief, which made me even more uncomfortable as I began to start to believe that Jacket's actions were not in anyway defensible, he was just seeking revenge on 'innocent' mobsters who merely shared the same ethnicity as the country that caused him so much distress.

I began to shift back to my original stance during the Richter and The Son missions, starting to think that it would still somehow tie everything together and me feel right in believing Jacket was merely a pawn. Then, as Richard spoke with Richter for the last time, ever the announcement that 50 Blessings had succeeded in their plan, I realized I was at the end of the game and became really angry that I could possibly be wrong. During the long credit sequence, watching my impressions be literally obliterated, I started to think that maybe, just like Hotline Miami 1, the secret answers were actually a part of some post credit sequence. And then the game dumped me back to the main menu. I frantically clicked New Game and selected hard mode, planning on pulling an all-nighter in some vague hope that despite all the evidence, I was still right. And then I saw them all sitting around that table, with Richard once again speaking in riddles to them.

And it was at that moment I realized I was wrong, Richard foreshadowed the real plot the entire time, speaking cryptically both to the player and the character he was speaking with. Just like everyone said he did in Hotline Miami 1. I realized there was no justification for any of it, Richard spoke clearly throughout, telling me exactly what I didn't want to believe, that this was the end of the game and that I would not like how it all ends. That Jacket was not some tragic figure, being manipulated into murdering people for some evil organization; he was merely a murderer, lashing out at the closest thing to the enemy he once knew, the enemy that took his friends and his sanity away. He liked killing people all along, there was no secret motive, the Janitors thought they had him scared but he wanted their calls. That's why Jacket surrendered to the police after killing the Boss, he had sated his need for revenge against the wrong target.

What was so heart breaking at the time was how Dennaton expected this reaction from me, they knew that some people wouldn't want to believe it was all over and would immediately start Hard mode in hopes that it would have some secret ending. They put in a cutscene just to twist the knife, having Richard speak to all of the people we controlled and again provide none of the answers I wanted, only to show me one by one how every single person that could possibly provide closure is dead, not because I failed to hurt other people, but because I succeeded. My actions in Hotline Miami 1 allowed 50 Blessings to gain their foothold, my actions in Hotline Miami 2 allowed them to execute their plan. Jacket wasn't the pawn, I was the pawn. And now it is all over.

Ultimately, the game was never about Jacket/Biker/Beard/Richter/whomever. The entire game was merely an exercise in denying the obvious. It took me a few days to realize that despite this being incredibly crushing, it ultimately makes Hotline Miami 2 one of the smartest games I have ever played. It got me to deny information it constantly fed to me, blatantly spoiling it's own end without me believing it. It is truly brilliant.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

Hotline Snipami

I'm curious, what made you not want to believe that the game was 4th wall-breaking in the scene?

Hotline Snipami 2: Wrong Snip

Yeah, if you weren't enthralled with the first game then the second game won't change your mind. They did actually incorporate more of a narrative element but still

Maybe they purposely left things unresolved to try and let the players/community figure out and talk about? If Five Night's at Freddy's taught us anything, it's that the things that aren't directly explained gets our full attention

 

[AT God]

I'm curious, what made you not want to believe that the game was 4th wall-breaking in the scene?

I generally like the idea that the game was about playing as someone who was being manipulated, I felt that in itself was fairly fourth-wall breaking since every player character is being manipulated by the player, to have that be a key part of the plot was interesting enough. Also, I generally feel some people "read too much" into things, in an attempt to feel superior/intellectual people see symbolism where there is none. South Park's episode about when the kids right a really obscene book and everyone thinks it is some political satire is kinda how I feel about a lot of artworks. That's my own bias and because I didn't see that sort of message in Hotline 1 I was vehemently stuck to the idea in the sequel. That's kind of what makes the game so great for me though, the entire game was an exercise in denial for me, I really wanted there to be some real-world explanation.

It's illogical for me, you mention Five Nights at Freddy's, I really like the lore/story of that series, never gonna play the games but I follow the plots and theories of that game. And even though I am perfectly aware that the game will immediately cease to be interesting if it is ever clearly stated who the killer is/what happened/etc., I really wanted FNaF3 to contain that info because I for some reason really desire closure. If FNaF3 is the end of the series I will probably continually check for new info over the next few years because despite it technically ruining the fun, I do want to know the truth. And Hotline Miami 2, especially Richard's scenes, were basically a direct statement at me to "Get over it," which I found very endearing and interesting. Its like how Hamlets monologue about "to be or not to be," Shakespeare wrote a massive soliloquy about suicide without ever directly mentioning it. I find that brilliant. I get that not everyone had that experience with Hotline, but I honestly hope I wasn't the only one who got that sort of feeling from the game.