The Clash Between Story And Violence In Games

Does it bother you when a game’s narrative paints the protagonist as a morally conscious or vulnerable character, but they dish out excessive, contradictive violence during gameplay? I think that games like Tomb Raider do overdo it at times, especially with those brutal stealth kills.

Her first kill is in self-defense. The gun goes off in the middle of a hand-to-hand struggle. It takes her aggressor’s life. The death weighs heavily on the 21-year-old, who recoils, shudderingly, from the mess. The writing team, however, is unable to reconcile their character’s fragility with the pressing requirements of the design team, who clearly need a parade of bullet-sponge enemy soldiers to stand in the archeologist’s path as obstacles. Five minutes after her first kill, Croft is firing off rounds, seemingly without a moment’s thought.

Doesn't bother me, heh, anything is possible.

Megalith said:

Does it bother you when a game’s narrative paints the protagonist as a morally conscious or vulnerable character, but they dish out excessive, contradictive violence during gameplay?

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If it's portrayed as a 'coming to terms with killing' then I have no problem with it. Note that it can also go the other way: in the TV film Sharpe's Waterloo, one of the villains, Rossendale, is portrayed as a coward, but once on the battlefield finds he is indeed capable of killing, but is quickly himself killed.

I've always felt that games do not need to be entirely based in reality. There comes a point when a game needs to just be a game.

I mean, if we were going to go into the psychological ramifications of a video game character's actions, do we really want to delve into what's going on in Mario or Luigi's head after all that they've done?

SamuraiInBlack said:

I've always felt that games do not need to be entirely based in reality. There comes a point when a game needs to just be a game.

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Tetris is a game.

Halo is an escape from reality.

While we classify them both as "games", we do need to understand that they are serving different purposes. Video games are becoming what the book and movie of the past were, and that is mechanisms for us to do something we never could in real life.

And this mechanism will get more advanced. The Oculus Rift and similar devices I believe are the next step in this progression. The eventual goal is to be completely in an alternate reality.

For most of human existence, human life has been uneventful. First we came up with religion to give some meaning to our life. But as the "civilized" world becomes more godless, people are again seeing there is no point to all of this. We need something to make it interesting again, and anything that allows that escape will be very popular.

The human mind is a complete cluster fuck. And it's stuck in an even less capable vehicle.