alienjesus wrote:
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.
So at what point is it "too close to life" for you? If games from the PS2 era or before didn't cause this kind of repulsion, did the first HD game systems from the last gen do this? Is it something that only happened in the past few years with the arrival of 4K capable systems? Do you think that a certain game engine's way of handling resolution or lighting or textures or animations (or something else) somehow made that distinction disappear? I still see modern games as looking very comic book/ragdoll (and plastic like) in their presentation...and today's graphics still lag behind the kinds of computer generated graphics that we see in modern film (which also is typically/clearly not real people). I am curious what the "line" is for you (and perhaps others). I also know that a lot of people were repulsed by Manhunt's violence in 2003 and made the same arguments about it being too visceral and life-like...did you think that those claims were unfair?
I am not trying to be antagonistic, I am genuinely interested in the question of "When did games achieve enough graphical fidelity to ___ [realism, photorealism, or whatever term you'd like here] to accomplish repulsion?" for you (and others). On a related note, at what point does the violence depicted switch from being something you feel like you can play through (e.g. Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance) to being something that keeps you away (e.g. Mortal Kombat X)? Is it about the type of violence (e.g. a quick decapitation is ok, a slow one is not), the context for the violence (a story driven game or not a story driven game), the graphics (Unreal Engine 3 is ok, Unreal Engine 4 is not), or something else?