When "Dark and Edgy" Goes Too Far

[FalloutJack]

Now, I haven't seen the latest game, of course, but if Yahtzee is stating that Twisted Metal as a whole (as in the series in its entirety) is not black comedy, then I simply must disagree. Twisted Metal defines laughter at the misfortune of others, either by way of your competitors or something that eventually happens to your own character. The real issue? Not everybody finds the same thing to be funny as others. Comedy is hit or miss. Again, I haven't played the latest game, but I get the impression that it simply missed him, which is a shame.

 

[Swifteye]

Funny thing about yathzee's realization over his dying interest in Dark and edginess is that it technically has nothing to do with age and everything to do with time. When he was young he had an inherent interest in such material. But it was similar to the way to where a child might laugh at the simple utterance of the word butt. It used to be funny but after changing over time the same material has a new context that no longer amuses him.

A shift of perspective one could say. Take me. When I was kid I was terrified of gore and violence. I remember being afraid of running into ghouls in kingdom hearts (yes I was a little dandy wasn't I?). For whatever reason I abhorred gore and was fearful of certain things related to it by proxy. As time passed I overcame that fear because despite that I really liked action and adventure. But I never really stopped hating gore. I detest Zombies and ghouls of it's like with a passion and find games like mortal kombat and twisted metal to be really awful on an aesthetic level and I'm genuinely afraid of anything that intentionally strives to be in the horror genre.
Time made me more favorable to certain things but it didn't change other feelings as well.

A third example just to grasp all the straws is Brad Jones AKA the Cinema Snob. He's a man who loves horror and gore. He's liked it since he was young and has gone so far as to add to the genre with his own spins. But he has standards. Namely He appreciates practical effects and detest most digital work. One could say time didn't change him at all. He became maybe a little pickier and harder to please but he's still the guy who's favorite movie is Caligula.

Time has made yahtzee a hard person to please. He wants a very particular type of execution. How he feels about this or that entirely depends on how that product presents itself and it can be in such a way to where he could contradict himself praising it or insulting when compared to his experience with past things. That's why he didn't like Twisted Metal. They didn't do it the way he liked for it to have been done.

 

[Kahani]

I'm going to be 29 this year, just under two months from the time of writing.

Wait, I'm going to be 29 this year, just under two months from the time of writing. My god! I'm Yahtzee!

But I think there's certainly a tendency for games (and films, and novels) who want to *appear* to be grown up, to throw in some swearing, violence and sex and think that's all there is to it, when of course true maturity is in the handling of the issues, not just their presence.

It's yet another classic example of cargo cult thinking. People see something mature that happens to have violence, nudity, or whatever. They then try to replicate it by simply giving it a similar appearance by including plenty of violence, etc., without ever understanding that that's not what actually made it mature in the first place.

Adults can make that distinction

Well, some adults can. Sadly, I'm not convinced it's even the majority.

 

[Smertnik]

blimey = blind me

say it out loud

Ooh, so that's what it stands for. I always assumed that it's just a made-up word without meaning.

 

[Seydaman]

I never understood the gore love either, I'm 15 and things like Saw and whatever just make me sick.

|:

 

[DeathQuaker]

What it comes down to is a noted difference between, "I am going to tell a story about dealing with a difficult, violent situation, and there will be some grim details to underline the setting" and "I am going to throw some blood and gore into this for no other reason than to make it look cool."

I remember playing Dragon Age Awakenings (the DLC to Origins) and finding not one but two quests where the main point was to discover some guy you didn't even know killed himself (over his girlfriend, in both cases). There was no point, no connection to the broader storyline, not even an opportunity for banter with party members, just--"hey, let's be depressing for no reason." Or "let's be depressing because I am a video game writer who clearly just went through a bad breakup" anyway. Actually, I hope that Bioware employee is in therapy now. Anyway. I've played games where things can be grim and even graphically violent, but it felt right as part of the story (various moments in the Fallout games, for example). But I've played more games (and watched more movies and read more comics) where they just add some kind of blood or death or depressingness just to be shocking. And that's just a version of big fat ol' lazy writer syndrome.

Kudos to the Daria link upthread. Says it all.

 

[nyysjan]

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Most "dark and edgy" entertainment may try to be grown up, yet is very childish in it's heart, and lacks depth beyond "hey, look, entrails/boobs/entrails covered in boobs(or was it the other way around?)/a dick joke", now, i like a good tragedy now and then, pathos and misery can be very entertaining when done well, but it usually is not.
These days, i prefer a nice happy ending and intelligent story that leads there as well as likeable protagonists.

I don't remember seeing blood for the sake of blood.

I mean one of the main characters is a serial killer but he's been in the series since the start and it'd piss off a lot of fans if he wasn't in it.

There's a story about a guy who's stuntman dad died in a horrible crash while trying to do a huge jump on a motorcycle. You see the helmet flying through the air all beat up and cracked but never see the body.

ummmm, what?

I am not talking about twisted metal, or any other specific game/movie/tv series/comic/book/cartoon/other, but the more general trend of some parts of entertainment industry (especially so comic books and computer/console games) trying to be "gritty" and "mature" and "dark and edgy", and doing so by being as juvenile as possible.

Anytime you buy a product that has "mature" rating on it, i'd give you good odds that the content will be pretty juvenile (but it will probably contain blood, boobs or swearing).

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

What it comes down to is a noted difference between, "I am going to tell a story about dealing with a difficult, violent situation, and there will be some grim details to underline the setting" and "I am going to throw some blood and gore into this for no other reason than to make it look cool."

I remember playing Dragon Age Awakenings (the DLC to Origins) and finding not one but two quests where the main point was to discover some guy you didn't even know killed himself (over his girlfriend, in both cases). There was no point, no connection to the broader storyline, not even an opportunity for banter with party members, just--"hey, let's be depressing for no reason." Or "let's be depressing because I am a video game writer who clearly just went through a bad breakup" anyway. Actually, I hope that Bioware employee is in therapy now. Anyway. I've played games where things can be grim and even graphically violent, but it felt right as part of the story (various moments in the Fallout games, for example). But I've played more games (and watched more movies and read more comics) where they just add some kind of blood or death or depressingness just to be shocking. And that's just a version of big fat ol' lazy writer syndrome.

Kudos to the Daria link upthread. Says it all.

Bioware has long abandoned the days of light heartedness. No one wants to play JRPGs precisely for that reason. That and because JRPGs keeps blueballing it's gamers

 

[deadish]

Well, it can't be helped.

The market has spoken, it wants dark, grim and edgy. It wants war, death and violence. [1]

The lighter and more hopeful tone that you find in games like JRPGs just isn't hitting it off with the masses anymore - part of the reason for it's decline IMO. Dark fantasy is the in-thing now. [2]

[1] I swear games like CoD, BattleField and Gears of War are "militarising" the youths of the US.

[2] Got me thinking about what astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said, that the US isn't dreaming (of a better tomorrow) anymore. From the looks of it, it doesn't even what to "escape" into "dreams of a better world". War and fighting is now the order of the day.

PS: It really saddens me that I'm actually older than Yahtzee - 30 here going to be 31 this year. I'm so used to writers of articles I read being my seniors. It just feels weird when I find out I'm older than them.

Please don't remind me.

Ironically, out of all of the things that try to be 'edgy' and 'dark to capitalize on an audience, some of my favorites are from Japan, the same place that simply won't go that route with their JRPGs (although Versus XIII does look to be going down that route, and if it's about as mediocre as FFXIII, then I'm ready to say that FF is dead). An anime, Mirai Nikki, is possibly one of the 'darkest' and 'edgiest' things I've seen, and the way the story is structured makes it... um... good. Like... really good. It's one of the best things I've seen this year. (To any Escapist anime fans out there, seriously, go find and watch Mirai Nikki. It is amazing.)

But, seriously, stuff like Mirai Nikki and Bokurano are only good because of the way they're presented, the stories that they're telling, and the fact that they are genuinely good at telling, in the end, A DARK AND DEPRESSING STORY.

Because apparently people try to continually mix 'dark and edgy' with 'humor' or 'badassery', and most writers are... very, very poor at doing that. Listen, either hire a decent storywriter and write a dark and edgy story about the human condition and some kind of deep, complex, moral issue and give us some kind of insight, or embrace the 'action movie popcorn' of most summer blockbusters or the 'dark comedy' of many successful games such as GTA, Saints Row, and MadWorld. But, for the love of god, don't mix the two. THEY. DON'T. GO. TOGETHER.

AT ALL.

(Especially given some of the things that have 'tried' to be this and failed. I'm sorry, writers of CoD and Battlefield, but you aren't winning some kind of award for impressive and captivating story. In fact, it's kinda saddening when I can safely say that Halo: CE had a more coherent and interesting plot than you had.)

As a niche product, I don't mind so much.

And it's not really the "dark and depressing" that gets me, although personally I won't want to watch too much of it, it's the consequence-free "aggression and violence" these games seem to promote.

I'm for freedom of speech and all, but it kinds of depresses me at how popular (unrealistic) "war simulator" games are. Maybe I'm just getting old.

 

[deadish]

Well, it can't be helped.

The market has spoken, it wants dark, grim and edgy. It wants war, death and violence. [1]

The lighter and more hopeful tone that you find in games like JRPGs just isn't hitting it off with the masses anymore - part of the reason for it's decline IMO. Dark fantasy is the in-thing now. [2]

[1] I swear games like CoD, BattleField and Gears of War are "militarising" the youths of the US.

[2] Got me thinking about what astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said, that the US isn't dreaming (of a better tomorrow) anymore. From the looks of it, it doesn't even what to "escape" into "dreams of a better world". War and fighting is now the order of the day.

PS: It really saddens me that I'm actually older than Yahtzee - 30 here going to be 31 this year. I'm so used to writers of articles I read being my seniors. It just feels weird when I find out I'm older than them.

The situation was the complete opposite back then. Remember Valkyrie Profile, Parasite Eve, Ogre Battle and FFT? Dark Fantasy, the quality of the JRPGs declined when they made the switch so to speak. If they go back to the Dark Fantasy roots, the JRPG Genre may still redeem itself.

And part of the reason why Americans are less optimistic I'd call this 'The Burden of Enlightenment'. It's not that the world actually is getting worse, it's that as the sum total of human experience and knowledge grows we as a (western) culture become more aware of the flaws in the world around us and cast our view backwards through lenses rose-tinted by our past blissful ignorance.. and so we come to the conclusion that things Were very much better in the past and the future is an inexorable slide into shit.

The ironic thing here is, for me, is that it's because of 'The Burden of Enlightenment' that makes me uneasy at some of the more popular games today - particularly shooters.

I find it odd we can make games about WWII (and war in general) where the main objective is to gun down anything that moves. WWII was literally hell on earth. The horror and suffering of those years ... War brings out the fucking worst in EVERYONE.

And to be exact, it's not really "dark and edgy" that gets me (although I won't want to consume too much of such media, life is depressing enough as it is), it's the "celebration", "acceptance" and "indulgence" of it.

 

[LordFisheh]

As a niche product, I don't mind so much.

And it's not really the "dark and depressing" that gets me, although personally I won't want to watch too much of it, it's the consequence-free "aggression and violence" these games seem to promote.

I'm for freedom of speech and all, but it kinds of depresses me at how popular (unrealistic) "war simulator" games are. Maybe I'm just getting old.

People just want immersive adventure, same as they always have, and sticking it in a modern war scenario is the most 'realistic' way they can do it immersively enough for most people. No different from playing with wooden swords or telling sagas of violent heroes in a longhouse.

Of course, because everything is dark and mature and gritty now, developers like to throw in dead civilians and torture and Modern Warfare's mandatory-one-per-game 'shocking' scene, because that's what everyone else is doing and because they think it makes them deep and meaningful.

And at least for me, it's far easier to go along with all the grit rammed down my throat and incorporate it into the adventures of Sgt. Awesome than it is to pretend it's not there. Hence why the trend will probably continue until people have really had enough, then slingshot back into Lord Perfect fights the ebil demons in time for the next cold war.

 

[McMarbles]

Games that have broad appeal? That anyone can play?

I wish there was a company that based their whole business model on that.

*Captcha: "stinking rich". Strangely appropos for the money-printers.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

As a niche product, I don't mind so much.

And it's not really the "dark and depressing" that gets me, although personally I won't want to watch too much of it, it's the consequence-free "aggression and violence" these games seem to promote.

I'm for freedom of speech and all, but it kinds of depresses me at how popular (unrealistic) "war simulator" games are. Maybe I'm just getting old.

People just want immersive adventure, same as they always have, and sticking it in a modern war scenario is the most 'realistic' way they can do it immersively enough for most people. No different from playing with wooden swords or telling sagas of violent heroes in a longhouse.

Of course, because everything is dark and mature and gritty now, developers like to throw in dead civilians and torture and Modern Warfare's mandatory-one-per-game 'shocking' scene, because that's what everyone else is doing and because they think it makes them deep and meaningful.

And at least for me, it's far easier to go along with all the grit rammed down my throat and incorporate it into the adventures of Sgt. Awesome than it is to pretend it's not there. Hence why the trend will probably continue until people have really had enough, then slingshot back into Lord Perfect fights the ebil demons in time for the next cold war.

Bobby Kotick wanted an industry of fear and pessemism and it is channeled into the creativity of the creators who have been making nothing but depressing stuff.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

As a niche product, I don't mind so much.

And it's not really the "dark and depressing" that gets me, although personally I won't want to watch too much of it, it's the consequence-free "aggression and violence" these games seem to promote.

I'm for freedom of speech and all, but it kinds of depresses me at how popular (unrealistic) "war simulator" games are. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Video games have always been 'consequence-free aggression and violence'. Do you think that those spectacle-wearing goons of N. Cortex or the koopas under the command of Bowser deserved to be slingshot to oblivion or stomped underfoot? Think of the families or the loved ones they leave behind in memor-- OK, I can't type that with a straight face. ^_^

But yeah, the FPS 'war simulator' genre isn't going away any time now. It's been profitable, lucrative, and most notably, reliable for turning a profit since Modern Warfare came out years back, so I don't see why EA and Activision would put their gambit into a new project that might siphon away their profits.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

The difference is that back then FPS at least had some sense of Rambo Style Heroism. In the new age FPS, everyone around you dies, your friends, your enemies, innocent people. No one will survive by the end of the MW era of FPS and you will probably die too. But that may be part of the Noughties train of thought which have been pretty bleak as a whole.

 

[deadish]

As a niche product, I don't mind so much.

And it's not really the "dark and depressing" that gets me, although personally I won't want to watch too much of it, it's the consequence-free "aggression and violence" these games seem to promote.

I'm for freedom of speech and all, but it kinds of depresses me at how popular (unrealistic) "war simulator" games are. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Video games have always been 'consequence-free aggression and violence'. Do you think that those spectacle-wearing goons of N. Cortex or the koopas under the command of Bowser deserved to be slingshot to oblivion or stomped underfoot? Think of the families or the loved ones they leave behind in memor-- OK, I can't type that with a straight face. ^_^

But yeah, the FPS 'war simulator' genre isn't going away any time now. It's been profitable, lucrative, and most notably, reliable for turning a profit since Modern Warfare came out years back, so I don't see why EA and Activision would put their gambit into a new project that might siphon away their profits.

Those aren't fellow humans though - and really, you just bob them on the noggy. Not to mention, the main goal isn't the stomping koopas, it's to navigate and make it to the end of the level.

I suppose it's the "celebration" of the war (which in reality is a horrifying event for all) that makes me uneasy.

 

[deadish]

People just want immersive adventure, same as they always have, and sticking it in a modern war scenario is the most 'realistic' way they can do it immersively enough for most people. No different from playing with wooden swords or telling sagas of violent heroes in a longhouse.

But does it HAVE TO involve war, conflict and the killing of people. Don't tell you there aren't other forms of adventure.

This is the thing that depresses me, it seem to be that "war, conflict and the killing of people" is all people can think about these days and how enamored people are with it.

 

[DeathQuaker]

What it comes down to is a noted difference between, "I am going to tell a story about dealing with a difficult, violent situation, and there will be some grim details to underline the setting" and "I am going to throw some blood and gore into this for no other reason than to make it look cool."

I remember playing Dragon Age Awakenings (the DLC to Origins) and finding not one but two quests where the main point was to discover some guy you didn't even know killed himself (over his girlfriend, in both cases). There was no point, no connection to the broader storyline, not even an opportunity for banter with party members, just--"hey, let's be depressing for no reason." Or "let's be depressing because I am a video game writer who clearly just went through a bad breakup" anyway. Actually, I hope that Bioware employee is in therapy now. Anyway. I've played games where things can be grim and even graphically violent, but it felt right as part of the story (various moments in the Fallout games, for example). But I've played more games (and watched more movies and read more comics) where they just add some kind of blood or death or depressingness just to be shocking. And that's just a version of big fat ol' lazy writer syndrome.

Kudos to the Daria link upthread. Says it all.

Bioware has long abandoned the days of light heartedness.

I don't ever remember Bioware being "light hearted." They've always consistently had humor in their games, but were never afraid to go dark. But there is a world of difference between, say, Imoen trying to deal with her torture at the hands of Jon Irenicus in Baldur's Gate 2 (an interesting and important part of the story, which happens to be dark), and crazy and constant pools of blood and blood spurts and graphic of a guy hanging from a homemade noose and so on and so forth in Dragon Age (largely nothing to do with the story, just gratuitous dedgyarkness)

No one wants to play JRPGs precisely for that reason. That and because JRPGs keeps blueballing it's gamers

That's why the only Japanese fantasy game series I play any more is Rune Factory.