I don't know that gaming will ever move beyond violence as one of the common forms of gameplay to be honest, due to the easy to express nature of it - it has easily depicted consequences in terms of 'press button to do violence, enemy dies', compared to the depth of consequence emotional or artistic interactions could bring.
Thats not to say that those kinda of games can't, won't or don't exist, but just that in terms of complexity, it makes sense that a simple binary attack and enemy dies interaction is so common.
dsheinem wrote:Here's a 2003 game that has some pretty visceral stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0NQJSGavKg. Are you saying that the uptick in graphical fidelity makes things that much worse? I just don't see that argument at all: it is clearly not a real person being hurt in 2003 nor in 2018.
As someone who feels affected by the violence in the modern incarnation and not in the older one, I will say that I am absolutely making that argument - the uptick in graphical fidelity is absolutely what makes this a problem for me. In the 2003 game it feels like looking at a comic book, or a ragdoll - it didn't affect me at all.
In The Last of Us it looks like real people, and real gore, and it affects me a lot. I mentioned Mortal Kombat before. Yes, in reality they're not doing anything much worse in terms of what is being depicted between 1993, 2003 and 2013, but I can tell you for a fact that of those 3 eras, the ONLY one that I find uncomfortable and unpleasant to view is the more recent one.
ESauced wrote:Didn’t watch the Last of Us Part 2 trailer but I don’t need to. Maybe they highlight the violence but I’m confident there will be a great game around that violence. You kill people in droves in the entire Uncharted series and the original The Last of Us and those games are fantastic. I’m sure Part 2 will be one of the best PS4 games made. I just picked up a PS4 primarily for when it comes out.
I'm sure the game provides better context for this and it somehow feels less comfortable when you're engaged (it's a phenomenon I've experienced myself) but as a trailer, I found it's focus on gore exceedingly uncomfortable to watch. I said the same about E3 trailers a few years back when the Tomb Raider reboot was first shown - every single trailers that year seemed to feature someone being stabbed in the face.
Uncharted is a false equivolence. Yes, you murder lots of people. But there's a very different experience for me between the 'shoot someone and they fall down' or 'slice someone and they explode in a puff of smoke' of some games and the 'slice someones neck and watch the way blood spurts out of it' or 'watch someones stomach be sliced open and the entrails spill out' of that trailer. The more abstract, the more comfortable I feel. The more gorey and realistic, the less I enjoy it.
