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| Spoon 2178th Post
  
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|  "Re(5):New Tomb Raider feels like exploitation" , posted Fri 17 Jun 10:18  
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well, I mean, it is kind of torture porn. I would find it very hard to enjoy playing this, with the hero getting so constantly mangled (whilst also not dying, which makes no sense). certainly it's intense, but I'm not sure I feel it's a good thing.
If they're going gritty, how far will they go? will she be raped?
Is this a quest for survival, or an adventure? seems more the former.
I can't really judge it yet, but it definitely makes me a bit ill already.
I always wonder just how hurt should video game characters be before it's "too much".
In MK9, the x-ray views of people getting their bones broken/teeth knocked out/organs ruptured I can easily stomach because the view is just so clinical. Sure the animations are violent, the models detailed, and the timing such that it maximizes the sense of what is going on, but in the end it's still about as gritty as seeing the biology lab dummy get beat up. Never mind the characters getting up right away afterwards as if nothing had happened, some of the stuff plain doesn't make sense (like how the teeth of mask wearing ninjas manage to fly out in the cutscene). The representation of the damage on the characters afterwards is largely textural (no bones jutting out or heads caved in once we go out of x-ray view).
Still, when Kitana does her winpose afterwards and I see her all bloodied (and not just with her opponent's blood), it makes me a little uneasy. Now, if she smiled her smile and I could see all the missing teeth from when her opponent x-ray'd her complete with all the oozing that accompanies that (I've had enough teeth removed to know!) I'd start reaching for the eject button.
Pretty much every violent action game that depicts damage on the characters has too look at that, though. The representation of damage greatly enhances the sense of power and destruction and realism and whatever else, but I'm not sure at what point does the vicarious power fantasy of video games start turning into something more disturbing (some will say that the concept of violent video games is disturbing enough already). Remember all the ways in which Leon could gruesomely die in RE4? I remember being morbidly interested in seeing them all (youtube has them collected for us). It is within the horror millieu, and it certainly drives home the "You Are Dead" screen, but it's pretty nasty stuff. Gears of War 2 is one of the games to me where the violence really felt violent; especially in Horde mode, where you and your team are desperately struggling to survive, the brutal kill animations from head stomps and chainsaw duels felt really intense.
What if the next game in the Total War series accurately depicted not only the gory slaughter of combat, but also the results of pillaging (the slaughter and rape of civilians, the plundering and burning of buildings, etc.)?
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| Ishmael 4126th Post
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| "Re(6):New Tomb Raider feels like exploitation" , posted Sat 18 Jun 03:14
quote:
it's a problem when you pair "gritty realism" with lara's "survival vision" which allows her to easily see whatever will help her escape. I have more problems with it thematically and tonally than just the moaning.
The survival vision reminded me more of the Bat-sight from Arkham Asylum than anything else. It made sense in AA since it's an adventure title and you would expect Batman to have some sort of gizmo like that. In TR, however, it feels like a catch-all trick that is being used so that the programmers don't have to think up more subtle clues for the puzzles and navigation. Nobody likes to get stuck in a game but if Lara has to solve yet another block puzzle I would hope she would have to do more problem solving than simply looking at it intensely.
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I always wonder just how hurt should video game characters be before it's "too much".
MK makes a good case study since it has such a wide range of violence in it. Like you, the X-ray attacks don't bother me in the least. Sure, there's some horrific damage, but when a character gets stabbed straight through the head and then hops back up like it's no big whoop it only registers as a bit of garnish to the action than anything else. Instead, it's the little bits of damage that bother me. The torn skin or the old injury to the eye motif that show up after a few hits is a lot more relatable and is much more disturbing to me as a consequence.
On one hand a game wants to show enough of the consequences of violence to get the correct emotional response from the player. However, it doesn't want to go too far and pull the player out of the game. Finding that balance must be tricky. So far it looks like TR is finding the right path for what it wants to do and isn't going to stumble off into Duke Nukem Forever territory. Still, I do suspect that this topic will be discussed a great deal both before and after TR is released for the sole reason that it stars a female protagonist. At the moment I feel that a lot of the talk about the presentation of the violence is tied into sexual politics. Would there be such scrutiny of Lara's trials if it was Leon Kennedy, Isaac Clarke or some other male protagonist in the same scenerio? I don't know, but it will be interesting to see how this all plays out as the game gets closer to its release date.
At this point I not only am looking forward to playing the new Tomb Raider but I want to see what sort of thesis topics it generates.
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"Re(1):New Tomb Raider feels like exploitation" , posted Fri 10 Jun 05:28
