WolfOD64
That Guy Who Hates Fox McCloud
I think the only way for me to properly answer this topic and address it effectively is to provide my own personal experience….in the form of an anecdote. Yes, I’m adding yet another entry to the never-ending storytime on this thread, but just remain in your pajamas for a little longer and bear with me.
During my reclining years of high school, I once knew a girl who, for the sake of moderation, will remain nameless. She constructed a rather prominent reputation around the premises as an “artsy” person. She dabbled in art classes, drama, poetry…if there was any kind of recreational activity, she’d be there. Now, how well she performed in each of those creative areas are up for debate…but then the fateful day arrived when she finally joined the local Writer’s Class, and that’s where we met. Now, everyone at this club would often talk and exchange work, granting each other feedback with sometimes a sizeable teaspoon of constructive criticism. And Little Miss Artist waltzes over to me and presents me her newly-finished story. She proceeds to tell me that her story is “mind-****ingly dark and intense”, and she wants my feedback on it. I eagerly accepted and prepared to have my brain peeled apart by whatever dark and twisted story lurked within her draft.
And what was the story? A nameless girl gets brutally raped by her father in an alleyway.
Sound vague and unimpressive? Well, guess what---I’ve literally told you everything I found out over the course of ten pages. There was nothing here: neither the girl nor her parent were given names or even a sentence of dialogue. There’s plenty of description on what’s going on---every bruise dealt, every carnal thrust, every disgusting, spine-twisting, stomach-turning action on the girl’s body was detailed in vivid and gruesome description. But that was all that was there---I knew nothing about her as a character. Now, you might be thinking: “Well, maybe there’s something to learn about the character through what’s going on...what they do, how they react, what runs through their thoughts.” And believe me, I was on the same line of thought, until I found out that none of those things were present in the slightest. I wasn’t given a single bit of information about the victim nor the rapist. I know nothing about who this character is. I don’t know her background, her way of thinking…I can’t even draw any conclusions about her personality because of her unwillingness to react to the ensuing rape thrust upon her. I don’t know how this character feels, what she thinks, how she copes, how she landed into this mess, her relationship with her father, her role or importance in the story…hell, for all I know, this might not be the first time she’s been violated in her life. I wouldn’t know…the story didn’t feel the need to enlighten me. It’s all action…and no substance.
I finally finish the last paragraph, where our heroine is left in the rainy alleyway as her dastardly father departs, and the girl next to me eagerly waits for my input…I can see her excitedly anticipating all the shocked praise she’s waiting to be thrust upon her.
She asked me what I thought about it, and I literally set the paper down, turned to her with a deadpan serious expression, and asked: “So…where did the ‘mind-****ingly dark and intense’ moment start, again?”
She seemed confused. She asked me why I wasn’t shocked or disturbed by the rape scene that had predominantly enveloped the entire story, and I simply told her: “I don’t care about the protagonist. I have no reason to be shocked.”
“But she got raped,” she insists.
“Yeah…and?” I ask. “Why should I care? I know nothing about her.”
In an angry huff, she sweeps the paper up and tells me that I can’t understand the tragic beauty and dark undertones that make her story a “traumatizing nightmare for the senses” (evidently, she used more dramatic and fulfilling phrases in real life than on paper). It had something to do with me “being a dispassionate, insensitive retard.” Her friends knew how talented she was…she didn’t need to hear this.
Or rather, she didn’t want to hear this…
So, I decided to prove my point by submitting my own story. The premise was simple---a man flipping burgers on a grill. I took pain-staking detail to describe every aspect of what was going on….the grill churning, the meat sizzling, the cheese rippling in a succulent melting bubble….but no information on anything else. My fellow writer gathers all of her friends to read my story, and all of them shoot bewildered expressions at me, demanding what was the point of my story. And that’s when I tell her that my inspiring epic about flipping burgers has exactly the kind of tension, significance, and narrative weight as her rape scene. Out of context, without any reason to exist in the plot, the scene itself is waste of paper and fulfills no narrative goal whatsoever.
Now, where does this come into discussion? Well, you see…novel and prose writing is just like all forms of fiction (movies, comics, and yes…our very own video games), and it’s always littered with people who are literally just there to dump all of their “creative scenarios and ideas” on paper without any rhyme or reason. No explanation, no development, no insight on the characters whatsoever…just one scenario after the other, just for the sake of it.
What you want is more graphic gore and explicit scenes for the sake of yanking the sheltered, unscathed, mainstream masses out of their metaphorical comfort zones. You say you want a scene where Ellie gets raped in The Last of Us, and all I can hear from that statement is the deluded voice of that one girl I knew in the Writing Class. If that rape scene would ever make it into the game…what purpose would it serve? How would the characters react to it? What would it add to the plot? Would it cast a larger shadow than the actual crisis present in the game’s overall story arc? How would Ellie cope with it? What would it add to her character? Would it serve any purpose down the road as a narrative tool or life-changing event to develop her as a character?
Having explicit scenes just for the sake of shocking the audience, without any kind of purpose or narrative contextual importance, is a pointless and shallow attempt to make the audience care about the characters. It’s like having gratuitous sex scenes in a movie to add appeal to a female character, or dumping some two-second backstory on the dark, brooding anti-hero to make him seem “cool” to the audience. Without any development, relating to other characters, or reason to care about the character to begin with, you can expect all the emotional stimulation of an political science lecture by the time the rape or violence arrives.
One of my favorite mangas, Berserk, was and is notorious for its use of mind-bending ultra-violence and grotesque scenes of brutal sexual abuse. But none of that was shoe-horned into the story just for the sake of being shocking… every character in Berserk is developed, explained, put through multiple scenarios to display their personalities and mindsets before anything happens to them. One of the most disturbing scenes in the story unfolds with one of the major characters, and it involves violence and rape. Does the rape and violence make the scene shocking? No. It’s rape and violence happening to a character we care about and are 100% invested in that we care about. That’s what makes the journey taken by the characters in Berserk a haunting and traumatizing epic…and what’s probably going to end up missing in whatever shameless shockbait Hideo Kojima’s going to conjure up to illustrate the “horrors of war” in Metal Gear Solid 5.
In a more condensed and less wordy answer, my response is the following:
No, I wouldn’t object to more graphic scenes in video games…but not for the reason you think they should be included. A good story and characters makes explicit imagery meaningful in fiction, not the other way around. Without importance to the story or substantial narrative context, they’re just as shallow, useless, and worthless as every living, breathing waste of human flesh occupying the Kardashian residence.
Taking inspiration from anime or manga isn't a problem in the slightest---even taking predominant Japanese influences isn't a problem. But making games from the most uninspired, rancid corners of the anime medium is what leads to games like the abhorrent dating sim-spawn Catherine, and the drooling Toonami enthusiast's wet dream, Asura's Wrath. If you're going to take influences from ANY anime or manga, take it from something with even a shred of artistic integrity, like Vagabond, or Ghost in the Shell, or Trigun...there have been promising results before. From Software took a lot of influence from a dark fantasy epic like Berserk, and the end result we got was Dark Souls.
To me, being handed the anime-inspired influences in Devil May Cry is like being handed an unsavory heap of ice-cream. I'm not going to say no to complementary ice-cream, I think it's God's greatest gift to man...but I think I'm entitled to the odd complaint when the Developer decides to harness the dairy products from the worst cow on the field.
This is a direct result of the media failing deliver a proper and accurate interpretation of a vampire in such a long time. In the one modern instance that vampires aren't portrayed as morally-conscious, oversensitive, glittering disgraces with diets reserved to animals in order to "preserve their humanity", a vampire is shown indulging in the most basic practice---attacking and slaughtering its prey to sustain its immortality---.and it's labeled as "sexual imagery" by the cushioned, Tumblr-tier "social warriors" that see rape everywhere they look.
You play as a vampire. Vampires suck humans dry. This isn't rape, or dominance over a helpless individual...this is the equivalent of a predator devouring its primary source of food. Is a cluster of lionesses circling proceeding to slaughter a zebra a form of rape too? Well, actually, if we're going by this journalist's mindset, it would be considered gang-rape, since it's a group of them.
I can't face-palm myself any harder without fracturing my own skull---hell, not even that. I might just face-palm myself into oblivion.
During my reclining years of high school, I once knew a girl who, for the sake of moderation, will remain nameless. She constructed a rather prominent reputation around the premises as an “artsy” person. She dabbled in art classes, drama, poetry…if there was any kind of recreational activity, she’d be there. Now, how well she performed in each of those creative areas are up for debate…but then the fateful day arrived when she finally joined the local Writer’s Class, and that’s where we met. Now, everyone at this club would often talk and exchange work, granting each other feedback with sometimes a sizeable teaspoon of constructive criticism. And Little Miss Artist waltzes over to me and presents me her newly-finished story. She proceeds to tell me that her story is “mind-****ingly dark and intense”, and she wants my feedback on it. I eagerly accepted and prepared to have my brain peeled apart by whatever dark and twisted story lurked within her draft.
And what was the story? A nameless girl gets brutally raped by her father in an alleyway.
Sound vague and unimpressive? Well, guess what---I’ve literally told you everything I found out over the course of ten pages. There was nothing here: neither the girl nor her parent were given names or even a sentence of dialogue. There’s plenty of description on what’s going on---every bruise dealt, every carnal thrust, every disgusting, spine-twisting, stomach-turning action on the girl’s body was detailed in vivid and gruesome description. But that was all that was there---I knew nothing about her as a character. Now, you might be thinking: “Well, maybe there’s something to learn about the character through what’s going on...what they do, how they react, what runs through their thoughts.” And believe me, I was on the same line of thought, until I found out that none of those things were present in the slightest. I wasn’t given a single bit of information about the victim nor the rapist. I know nothing about who this character is. I don’t know her background, her way of thinking…I can’t even draw any conclusions about her personality because of her unwillingness to react to the ensuing rape thrust upon her. I don’t know how this character feels, what she thinks, how she copes, how she landed into this mess, her relationship with her father, her role or importance in the story…hell, for all I know, this might not be the first time she’s been violated in her life. I wouldn’t know…the story didn’t feel the need to enlighten me. It’s all action…and no substance.
I finally finish the last paragraph, where our heroine is left in the rainy alleyway as her dastardly father departs, and the girl next to me eagerly waits for my input…I can see her excitedly anticipating all the shocked praise she’s waiting to be thrust upon her.
She asked me what I thought about it, and I literally set the paper down, turned to her with a deadpan serious expression, and asked: “So…where did the ‘mind-****ingly dark and intense’ moment start, again?”
She seemed confused. She asked me why I wasn’t shocked or disturbed by the rape scene that had predominantly enveloped the entire story, and I simply told her: “I don’t care about the protagonist. I have no reason to be shocked.”
“But she got raped,” she insists.
“Yeah…and?” I ask. “Why should I care? I know nothing about her.”
In an angry huff, she sweeps the paper up and tells me that I can’t understand the tragic beauty and dark undertones that make her story a “traumatizing nightmare for the senses” (evidently, she used more dramatic and fulfilling phrases in real life than on paper). It had something to do with me “being a dispassionate, insensitive retard.” Her friends knew how talented she was…she didn’t need to hear this.
Or rather, she didn’t want to hear this…
So, I decided to prove my point by submitting my own story. The premise was simple---a man flipping burgers on a grill. I took pain-staking detail to describe every aspect of what was going on….the grill churning, the meat sizzling, the cheese rippling in a succulent melting bubble….but no information on anything else. My fellow writer gathers all of her friends to read my story, and all of them shoot bewildered expressions at me, demanding what was the point of my story. And that’s when I tell her that my inspiring epic about flipping burgers has exactly the kind of tension, significance, and narrative weight as her rape scene. Out of context, without any reason to exist in the plot, the scene itself is waste of paper and fulfills no narrative goal whatsoever.
Now, where does this come into discussion? Well, you see…novel and prose writing is just like all forms of fiction (movies, comics, and yes…our very own video games), and it’s always littered with people who are literally just there to dump all of their “creative scenarios and ideas” on paper without any rhyme or reason. No explanation, no development, no insight on the characters whatsoever…just one scenario after the other, just for the sake of it.
What you want is more graphic gore and explicit scenes for the sake of yanking the sheltered, unscathed, mainstream masses out of their metaphorical comfort zones. You say you want a scene where Ellie gets raped in The Last of Us, and all I can hear from that statement is the deluded voice of that one girl I knew in the Writing Class. If that rape scene would ever make it into the game…what purpose would it serve? How would the characters react to it? What would it add to the plot? Would it cast a larger shadow than the actual crisis present in the game’s overall story arc? How would Ellie cope with it? What would it add to her character? Would it serve any purpose down the road as a narrative tool or life-changing event to develop her as a character?
Having explicit scenes just for the sake of shocking the audience, without any kind of purpose or narrative contextual importance, is a pointless and shallow attempt to make the audience care about the characters. It’s like having gratuitous sex scenes in a movie to add appeal to a female character, or dumping some two-second backstory on the dark, brooding anti-hero to make him seem “cool” to the audience. Without any development, relating to other characters, or reason to care about the character to begin with, you can expect all the emotional stimulation of an political science lecture by the time the rape or violence arrives.
One of my favorite mangas, Berserk, was and is notorious for its use of mind-bending ultra-violence and grotesque scenes of brutal sexual abuse. But none of that was shoe-horned into the story just for the sake of being shocking… every character in Berserk is developed, explained, put through multiple scenarios to display their personalities and mindsets before anything happens to them. One of the most disturbing scenes in the story unfolds with one of the major characters, and it involves violence and rape. Does the rape and violence make the scene shocking? No. It’s rape and violence happening to a character we care about and are 100% invested in that we care about. That’s what makes the journey taken by the characters in Berserk a haunting and traumatizing epic…and what’s probably going to end up missing in whatever shameless shockbait Hideo Kojima’s going to conjure up to illustrate the “horrors of war” in Metal Gear Solid 5.
In a more condensed and less wordy answer, my response is the following:
No, I wouldn’t object to more graphic scenes in video games…but not for the reason you think they should be included. A good story and characters makes explicit imagery meaningful in fiction, not the other way around. Without importance to the story or substantial narrative context, they’re just as shallow, useless, and worthless as every living, breathing waste of human flesh occupying the Kardashian residence.
The more I hear that complaint, the more it seems that people aren't leveling complaints at Devil May Cry's habit of taking influences from anime tropes. People complain about Devil May Cry utilizing bad anime tropes. It's taking lessons from quite literally the worst Japanese animation has to offer: shonen-style caricatures for characters, uninspired relationships and plots, half-explained lore and mythos, and dialogue that sounded like it was written and recorded in a 4Kids booth.
Taking inspiration from anime or manga isn't a problem in the slightest---even taking predominant Japanese influences isn't a problem. But making games from the most uninspired, rancid corners of the anime medium is what leads to games like the abhorrent dating sim-spawn Catherine, and the drooling Toonami enthusiast's wet dream, Asura's Wrath. If you're going to take influences from ANY anime or manga, take it from something with even a shred of artistic integrity, like Vagabond, or Ghost in the Shell, or Trigun...there have been promising results before. From Software took a lot of influence from a dark fantasy epic like Berserk, and the end result we got was Dark Souls.
To me, being handed the anime-inspired influences in Devil May Cry is like being handed an unsavory heap of ice-cream. I'm not going to say no to complementary ice-cream, I think it's God's greatest gift to man...but I think I'm entitled to the odd complaint when the Developer decides to harness the dairy products from the worst cow on the field.
A vampire---a nightmarish, feral force of darkness and hunger in the shroud of night---feeding on its prey while they're cornered and helpless in front of him. Where exactly is the problem, here? A vampire feeds on human blood to keep itself alive.
This is a direct result of the media failing deliver a proper and accurate interpretation of a vampire in such a long time. In the one modern instance that vampires aren't portrayed as morally-conscious, oversensitive, glittering disgraces with diets reserved to animals in order to "preserve their humanity", a vampire is shown indulging in the most basic practice---attacking and slaughtering its prey to sustain its immortality---.and it's labeled as "sexual imagery" by the cushioned, Tumblr-tier "social warriors" that see rape everywhere they look.
You play as a vampire. Vampires suck humans dry. This isn't rape, or dominance over a helpless individual...this is the equivalent of a predator devouring its primary source of food. Is a cluster of lionesses circling proceeding to slaughter a zebra a form of rape too? Well, actually, if we're going by this journalist's mindset, it would be considered gang-rape, since it's a group of them.
I can't face-palm myself any harder without fracturing my own skull---hell, not even that. I might just face-palm myself into oblivion.
