Metal Gear/ Metal Gear Solid

MGSV is basically, "Do this however you want, you are still the bad guy, but have fun" from what I see.

As for Spec Ops the Line and MGS 4, that just leads me to wondering, why is a common theme among video games deconstructing their elements and going "you bastard" to players whenever we do something bastardish?

Perhaps:

• In Take That! to the parents/news reporters who would claim that video games were destroying young minds.
• As a genuine attempt to influence troubled gamers and remind them that they're committing wanton acts of violence.
• Because Postmodernism has been in vogue ever since Bio Shock 1.

edited 16th Apr '16 11:57:00 AM by Soble

In part, it's because video games are the only real way to express that kind of idea, since a film about a Villain Protagonist might not have a lead the audience identifies with, wheres a video game where you play a bastard almost always does if the player can be bothered to get that far along.

edited 16th Apr '16 12:17:29 PM by Pulse

I don't see it as a big problem, because thankfully it isn't all games yet. Just wondering, and hoping the next big hit "follow the leader" for video games isn't this post modern "you bastard"

It seems like it's all just a matter of innovating:

• Resident Evil 4 made the "third person, turn and run" camera popular.
• Halo made LAN parties/competitive shooters/teabagging popular.
• Dark Souls made frustrating roguelikes popular.

So on and so forth.

edited 16th Apr '16 1:11:08 PM by Soble

I don't really get why games like Spec Ops The Line have the gall to tell you "How dare you have no choice but to unleash the White Phosphorus you bastard!" since in game there's no other way to progress but to use the White Phosphorus. Someone must have watched the second Matrix film one too many times and got hooked on Neo's line "Choice. The problem is choice." and thus made it so that players had no choice but to do The Bad Thing ...and then get victim blamed for it anyway even when it makes little sense.

I hate to be "that guy" but Undertale did the "how dare you be a violent bastard" thing better because it actually did give you a choice between violence and non violence. You have the power and the opportunity to choose your actions in that game hence why it feels more sensibly done in that game when Sans tells you off for being a brother murderer at best, and attempts to do you in himself at worst.

Eh, I dunno about Undertale. There's something that rubs me the wrong way about a game calling you out for playing it in a way that it was meant to be played. I mean, if Toby Fox didn't want you to go and genocide everyone, why would he reward the player for it with an entire route and ending based on it?

Then again, I haven't exactly played the game- its general design repulses me- so I'm probably talking out of my own ass. Maybe there's a recurring theme where characters curse the fact that their existence is limited to whatever some random nobody they'll never even meet coded for them or something. I dunno.

[/rant about games I don't play]

To use another example of doing You Bastard! in a far better way that doesn't smack of hypocrisy, Dishonored lets you choose whether to kill enemies or your assassination targets. With the former you're welcome to just sneak past them or knock them out just as you are free to kill them and your assassination targets can be removed in nonviolent but just as satisfyingly justice ways as just shiving them with Corvo's magic switchblade sword.

Dishonored also doesn't rubbish you for killing people since, well, you are still removing those who would potentially bring ruin to Dunwall so the end justifies the means I guess (well okay not exactly in the High Chaos ending but still)

edited 17th Apr '16 10:20:14 AM by MightyKombat

Well you did have a choice in Spec Ops. You could have put the controller down and walked away.

It's as much about calling you the player out on playing as a scruffy white American mowing down brown people with abandon as part of a power fantasy as anything else.

But you just had to keep going because you wanted to be a hero.

You "choice" was made when you first bought the game. The message is a bit spoiled now but remember that when the game first came out it was literally impossible to know it was anything but a generic third person shooter set in the middle east and starring Americans who do nothing but violate the Geneva Convention and rules of engagement and shoot brown people.

And you have to wonder what sort of person buys a game when that's all they could possibly know going in.

edited 17th Apr '16 10:26:25 AM by LeGarcon

To be fair, though, most buyers actually parents whose kids said, "It's a cool game!", with both parties actually doesn't know much about game content, let alone stuff like Plausible Deniability and The Laws and Customs of War.

Then what kind of parent buys their kid a game where literally the only thing they could know about it is that it involves you slaughtering tons of middle eastern people as a white American?

edited 17th Apr '16 10:42:09 AM by LeGarcon

You'll kill me for this, but I said it anyway: American.

"Parents" who don't give a shit about what their kids are playing. Like the kind I see at Target who say "whatever" in the middle of the employees explaining what the game they're buying for their eight old year kid who brought it up to the counter is. In this specific case it was GTA 4

edited 17th Apr '16 11:28:30 AM by TheAirman

It's technically Metal Gear Related.

Yet further evidence that everything is improved with the MGRR soundtrack

I do like the Metal Gear Solid V Approach on Morality systems, even if it is basically a traditional video game morality system.

The traditional systems seem to work the best despite being Abstract.

I think the Playing The Player thing done properly is much more interesting than a game that just props you up all the time. It's an interesting idea that wouldn't really work in a medium that wasn't as interactive as videogames are.

I find the choice of "putting the controller down and stop playing" presented in games like Spec Ops to be a bit dubious, since you basically paid for a game only to not play it.

A bit. But buying the game itself is a choice. If you didn't wanna get yelled at for buying a game where you do nothing but kill brown people as part of a power fantasy you shouldn't have bought a game where you do nothing but kill brown people as part of a power fantasy.

It's not like Undertale where it's billed as an RPG and you have choices to make and people to befriend but you decide to kill them anyway.

Nothing about the game or it's marketing could have told you that Spec Ops: The Line was anything but an arab slaughter simulator and yet you made the decision to buy it and play it anyway. That says a lot about you.

Now admittedly this message is somewhat lost now that the big secret of what the game is really about is known but still.

edited 17th Apr '16 1:34:50 PM by LeGarcon

What about Dishonored? I think that was just billed as a game where revenge solves everything but it never said anything about leaving mooks alive and getting rid of baddies in nonviolent but just as cruel ways.

So basically, one shouldn't buy the game that the developers made and put funds into in order to the make the game, or else you will be called a terrible person for buying a game you thought sounded interesting, all while they profit from it.

Why does a game where you play as an American killing brown people on their own soil for reasons that don't really pan out sound interesting? Don't you think that it's a bit of a problem that you find the idea appealing? That's the entire message of the game.

And as for the devs, they didn't want to make any money. It won't be a franchise, there won't be DLC, it wasn't made to turn a profit.

It's an art piece made to send a message. And the devs were more than happy to eat the cost to deliver it.

edited 17th Apr '16 1:55:52 PM by LeGarcon

Enh. If that's what they want, that's fine then.

I won't buy it, or pay it any real mind. I'll continue to grab the games I wanna play and support them with cash.

I've decided that when I get a new computer I'm gonna get MGSV as well. Because ever Metal Gear Game I have played has turned out to be pretty fun actually while still delivering in it's own unique way.

God, it makes me so depressed that TPP was the send off to this series.

I feel like I would have enjoyed the game a lot more if it was a new franchise.

You can still sell a You Bastard! without the game necessarily pointing out that you had a choice. Even something done in ignorance and the best of intentions can have terrible consequences.