The Law Enforcement Officer Thread

That's why I loved the Police Quest series. You had role call, reports, research, walking the beat...and it was still fun!

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

That's what I love about L.A. Noir. Very little of the game involves discharging your weapon. Most of it is criminal investigation. Finding clues, interrogating suspects, examining crime scenes, etc.

There are a lot of different ways to tackle policework in a video game, but I think most of us can agree that "Shoot 'Em Up" is a bad genre to approach it from.

edited 17th Mar '15 8:38:04 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I can see a Tom Clancy Rainbow Six-style game that could work for a police (specifically, SWAT) game.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

Especially if it's a Multinational Team — could have some interesting clashes of Police cultures...

Keep Rolling On

What's that one new Tom Clancy title coming out soon? The Division?

Also because I'm a Battlefield fan boy and because I'm not too smart I'm gonna buy Hardline and see how it is

Oh really when?

We have a hardliner in this party! Woohoo!

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Rainbow Six...ah...such a delightful game!

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

I bought Hardline and only played the prologue because that's all I can play because install times.

So the entire story mode is set up in episodes and treated almost like it's a cop show. Even has this neat little opening where all the characters flash by and credited as stars. Kinda cool. Multiplayer is just your normal cops and robbers with no real narrative whatsoever.

Anyway, the main character is a Cuban American named Nicholas Mendoza and it opens up with him on a prison bus in an orange jumpsuit and cuffs. There's this one officer, who is white by the way, casually brandishing a shotgun at the other prisoners and is pretty clearly on a power trip. He then singles out Mendoza and tells him he loves seeing dirty cops on his bus because to him it means the system is working. Mendoza just calmly tells him to be more careful with his weapon because it'd be easy for someone to take it from him. Also for whatever it's worth the other prisoners on the bus are almost all minorities.

It then cuts to 3 years earlier and Mendoza is with another cop who is named Travis according to the TV show opening. Also Travis is white. They're in some seedy apartment complex and are about to kick a door in and make a bust. Travis mentions getting lunch afterwards and Mendoza says he knows this great Cuban place. At which point Travis says he doesn't like beans and rice and Mendoza points out that's not what Cuban food is and they get into a brief discussion outside the door and it ends with Travis saying he picks where they eat and that Mendoza is Miami Vice now and that he's "better than eating plantains all day.". Mendoza is pretty clearly offended but keeps his mouth shut as Travis is obviously the boss here.

With the racist food thing over they kick in the door and there are 4 baddies playing cards. And they're all as diverse as a school textbook. You start arresting them for something or other, it's never said but there's drugs scattered around the room and several handguns laying around. Once you get the second one a woman bursts out of the bathroom door with a shotgun and opens fire at which point you have a quick shootout. All the crims end up dead, including the ones on the floor in cuffs as they were caught in the shotgun blasts. You find the woman's wallet which has her ID and talk with Travis about how neither of you recognize her.

At this point a 6th baddie comes in with food for everyone and is talking about how he had to go to this Cuban place since the burger joint was closed. He opens the door and sees the police and the carnage and immediately starts running. You chase him down some hallways until he jumps out a window and into his car.

At this point you run outside and have an old fashioned Hollywood style car chase complete with train dodging, drifting, and nitrous all set to Welcome to the Terrordome.

Travis eventually leans out the window and shoots his tires out causing the baddie to roll several times at least 15 feet in the air and someone land back on all four wheels. The scene ends with you dragging him out of his totaled car and making the arrest, the guy having somehow only gotten a bloodied up nose.

---

And that's all I got so far. Doesn't feel too bad. The only two cops you see are some real assholes and the crims don't sound like cartoonish villains and are diverse.

I mention race because it feels pretty relevant to the game and to the whole law enforcement thing in general.

I'll see how the rest of it is later.

Also holy shit I didn't mean to leave that big a post.

edited 17th Mar '15 1:47:52 PM by LeGarcon

Oh really when?

Why is it good that the only two cops you meet are assholes?

___ @Greenmantle A Multinational Team for Police would be hard (but probably not impossible) to justify.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

Multinational police force? Easy. UN peacekeepers.

Seriously. My dad's partner volunteered to go and spent a tour in Bosnia as a peacekeeper after leaving SWAT. He is on patrol now.

Cops from all over the world are recruited to help in missions like that.

Or how Indonesian female officers were called into Haiti to help there.

We have plenty of real life examples to model from.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Because at the very least the game isn't doing the whole white authority figure gunning down the foreign hordes kinda thing that most of the other shooters have been doing lately.

Oh really when?

Interpol is about as close as you guys are going to get to International Police.

Who watches the watchmen?

Since Rainbow Six was mentioned, I remember hearing that the original game was originally planned to be a simulator of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. That said, Siege appears to be quite similar to that, sans arresting non-fatally incapacitated suspects.

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot

Interpol Special Agent isn't a thing; they exist to facilitate communication, not to do any investigation themselves.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

And again that is about as close are you going to get. UN Peace Keepers powers are limited to a mission. Interpol at least gets the various countries with differing laws talking and even working together.

Who watches the watchmen?

Some kind of future EU wide version of the FBI might work.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

You know, this whole morality and points system reminds me of Dishonored.

You have all the wonderful toys and abilities....most of which you can't use if you are trying to be a "good guy", like summoning a swarm of rats to devour your enemies, just to name one.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

(Damn you, edit button why are you not working! )

I'm talking about Battlefield: Hardline, by the way.

That reminds me, I wonder what police officers think about GTA games.

It would be hilarious for someone to be a very by the book and nice cop in real life, but ice cold rampaging murderer when playing GTA or other action games. XD I think it doesn't sound too unlikely, really.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

I beat the campaign on Hardline by the by. Halfway through it stops being a cop show and starts being a big hollywood heist/revenge thriller and it turns out every cop you meet is corrupt as balls and are working directly with the gangs and helping them expand. And then your old police chief goes on and privatizes law enforcement so every cop you kill is really just a scumbag merc and yeah.

Not entirely as relevant as I thought it'd be to the whole law enforcement thing.

Oh really when?

And Battlefield fans mock COD fans for having bad story....

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

I wouldn't say bad because Hardline very much knows it's a big Hollywood-esque spectacle in the end and doesn't pretend to be anything else. It has fun with it and just treats it like a pantomime.

Still, I was sorta hoping for something a bit more relevant to current events or something but it was fun anyway.

Oh really when?

dRoy: It would be a pretty safe bet that if the cop plays GTA they don't care and they know they are playing a game. Just like folks in the military play COD and Battlefield games and joke about them being unrealistic. The Terminal Lance web comic covered that at one point.

Does anyone know of a good LEO oriented web comics? We seem to have webcomics for pretty much everything these days.

Who watches the watchmen?

That, my friend, is what we call Debate and Switch, and it's the standard Hollywood tactic. Make something topical and provocative, then throw the discussion out the window by making the villains unambiguous bad guys.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Nebraska state Senator Ernie Chambers (I-11) is under fire for comparing police to Islamic State at a public hearing for a bill concerning concealed handguns.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

Oh Ernie Chambers there you go again. Rustling people's Jimmies.

Who watches the watchmen?