LeathermanKick25 said:
Because rape is some horrible thing that shows the bad guy doing bad things makes its unimaginative?
No, because rape surely needs to be handled with a modicum of intelligence, maturity, and sensitivity. It's cheap as a narrative trick - the violence is almost always against women, coincidentally/suspiciously enough - because it's using a very serious subject in a rather offhand manner. Kojima's scene is exploitative, tacky, crass, cringe worthy (I'm trying to think of a scene in a videogame where rape is handled 'well', but I'm struggling. history will show Kojima's fumbled scene won't be one of them).
It's unimaginative because he's tried to justify the content in the context that it'll make players want to go get the mean ol' baddy more... How do we motivate a male PC and, most likely, a male player? Why, violate and torture a female character, of course! That's pathetic of Kojima. Perhaps if Paz was found in a fridge instead of strung up, he could trot out the line that he was being 'subversive'.
It's not the forefront of anything unless you actively seek out the cassette tape or stumble on it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the video I watched a tape falls out of the chopper after extracting Chico, where Snake picks it up and is pretty much told to listen to it for clues about Paz's location. Is that the tape in question?
Even if it's not, the tapes are presented as a means of exposition, I assume for plot (be it as details or just texture) and character. Ergo that's very much to the forefront of the gameplay experience.
[edit] (apparently tape 4's found mid mission)
It was shown in a disturbing way that didn't feel forced or over the top.
Hah, really?! I suppose you're more conditioned to Kojima's cartoon worlds, psychology, and characters than I, then.
If this happened 5 years ago no one would of given two shits. But now simply showing a female in any way other than absolute perfect is some sexist bullshit.
That kinda makes you seem rather insecure. Perhaps a videogame writer lazily exploiting sexual violence wouldn't have caused a fuss five years ago, but I see that change as progress. The medium's maturing, and with that process comes more attention and more criticism of what's created.
Apologies to BarryMcCociner for this reverting to a thread about MGS, btw. But to me it also illustrates that whilst both companies deserve a few raised eyebrows with their content, I don't think CDPR have done anything as dense or awkwardly misjudged as the Paz/Chico scene. In that sense, Kojima simply deserves more stick (Quiet still looks like a BS design, but I'll wait til her arc's revealed to judge her, as Kojima's asked). And I don't believe either can be defended on the grounds of 'portrayals of heterosexuality'.