The kid became Ronald McDonald...
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Media targeted at a large audience tends to dumb moral and philosophical conundrums down to the simplest possible gesture instead of taking the ideas seriously.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]deleted by creator
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I really like this game, but... yeah
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Spec Ops the Line is art. You don’t have a “choice” to not use the white phosphorus if you are going to play - but just like Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now - no one needs to be there/participating to begin with.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]As much a commentary on the complicity if the general culture and specific medium it comes from as the military type guy you're playing.
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I have no idea why Jedi Survivor decided to do that with one random empire guy.
Everybody else got their fucking arms and legs cut off.
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I feed these bugs tasty stuff that makes them grow big and strong and how do they thank me!? They break the machines that make them the stuff.
So what if I burned their forests to the ground, built autoturrets right outside their homes, ran them over with tanks and rained hellfire down on them just to test my fancy new artillery?
They're the real monsters here
If they're r strategists, that was just good neitzschean nurturing.
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As much a commentary on the complicity if the general culture and specific medium it comes from as the military type guy you're playing.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]One of my favorite aspects is the way the ludonarrative/gameplay ties with the story.
::: spoiler spoiler
The enemies start showing up in unrealistic numbers, one of your dead squad mates shows up as some kind of mutated monster - it feels like the classic escalation in difficulty because you are playing a video game. But this is happening because your character is delusional and perceives it that way.
:::I’ve always wanted to teach a high school/community college elective where we read Heart of Darkness, watched Apocalypse Now and played Spec Ops - to see how the same narratives in themes are used in entirely different settings and with different methods of storytelling, but how ultimately they all reach towards the same message about humanity and war and cruelty.
The older Call of Duty’s (maybe the newer ones, haven’t played since Black Ops one) often had messages/quotes that were pretty anti war when you died, but were ultimately sabotaged by the story. Spec Ops is probably the best game at understanding how to use the FPS mechanics as part of its storytelling.
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"You're still a good person."
I feel like the questions you have about my loading screen text are all answered by my loading screen text.
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I get the vague impression that this is meant to subtly influence western society into believing that the masses aren’t truly people, that only the ones steering our collective wheels are actually human. Green arrow basically said as much for like… 5 seasons. Then it got weirder.
Nah it's just shit writing. Occam's razor and all that.
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You might not have played the game but you are spot on. No other piece of media is as guilty of this as TLOU2. Ellie literally travels hundreds of miles and kills hundreds of people on her path to revenge, then I'm supposed to believe she has some epiphany during the final fight and she decides to not kill her target??? That target being the whole reason the game exists??? Totally ruined it for me.
You might be sympathetic to a recent video essay from Door Monster's Kyle who definitely has a bone to pick with TLOU2 (and other recentish pop culture hits)
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To be fair, if my kill count was at 69420, I'd need a REALLY good reason to kill one more
If I were at 69419, he'd be dead without a second thought
If you missed 69420, don't worry about it, because 69422 is 69420, too.
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I get the vague impression that this is meant to subtly influence western society into believing that the masses aren’t truly people, that only the ones steering our collective wheels are actually human. Green arrow basically said as much for like… 5 seasons. Then it got weirder.
I get the vague impression that this is meant to subtly influence western society into believing that the masses aren’t truly people,
Well, people can think two things at once. And whilst people may think that non-fleshed out nameless movie henchmen "aren't truly people", I don't think they apply the same standard to random people irl.
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You might not have played the game but you are spot on. No other piece of media is as guilty of this as TLOU2. Ellie literally travels hundreds of miles and kills hundreds of people on her path to revenge, then I'm supposed to believe she has some epiphany during the final fight and she decides to not kill her target??? That target being the whole reason the game exists??? Totally ruined it for me.
"Some epiphany" is a brilliant way of indicating you had no idea what the fuck was going on.
Let me ask a different question: How does letting Ellie kill her improve the story?
So, hour zero: Ellie says "I'm gonna kill that bitch."
Hour 40: Ellie says "I have killed that bitch. Damn, that was tight. Like a cold Pepsi, that was hella refreshing."What message is this communicating to you? What can we learn from such a story?
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One of my favorite aspects is the way the ludonarrative/gameplay ties with the story.
::: spoiler spoiler
The enemies start showing up in unrealistic numbers, one of your dead squad mates shows up as some kind of mutated monster - it feels like the classic escalation in difficulty because you are playing a video game. But this is happening because your character is delusional and perceives it that way.
:::I’ve always wanted to teach a high school/community college elective where we read Heart of Darkness, watched Apocalypse Now and played Spec Ops - to see how the same narratives in themes are used in entirely different settings and with different methods of storytelling, but how ultimately they all reach towards the same message about humanity and war and cruelty.
The older Call of Duty’s (maybe the newer ones, haven’t played since Black Ops one) often had messages/quotes that were pretty anti war when you died, but were ultimately sabotaged by the story. Spec Ops is probably the best game at understanding how to use the FPS mechanics as part of its storytelling.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Sooooort of. I read 'heart of darkness' when i was way too young, but 'apocalypse now' and 'spec ops: the line', while similar, are clearly biting at different targets.
Where the central theme of 'apocalypse now' might read as 'there is no civilized war, it is only ever madness, and to believe otherwise is not only madness, but incompetence. You play as children at heroism, and it is a lie. There are no heroes here. Not on your side, at least.'
'Spec ops: the line' could be read as 'what the fuck is erong with you people? Why do you even do this? What the fuck is even in it for you?' With literally the first scene being the implicit 'you've heard this story before, we both know you have, no part of this is new to you. so why the fuck are you so god damn stubborn about not fucking getting it?' Scolding less the pissed off 19 year olds who do the atrocities, and more the entire society that keeps allowing them to be so staggeringly violently stupid.
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"You should feel bad for utilizing these gameplay mechanics we designed the game around. You monster!"
wrote on last edited by [email protected]That quote reminded me heavily of Dishonored. As much as I love the game, they punish you with a bad ending for killing people and using all the cool powers provided to you (most of which are lethal), which I can concede that it is kinda dumb.
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Sure, there is that difference. But the series doesn't even address the fact that he's already killed hundreds of people. Intentionally or not, it's still absurd to hand wring about killing when you've already killed hundreds of people, accidentally or not, and the one person you're worrying about taking down is literal genocidal maniac. To me that just sounds like not being willing to take responsibility for your own actions. Intentionally or not, Aang killed hundreds of people. And it's not like he never went into the Avatar state again after taking out the Northern fleet. Hell, he fought Ozai while in the Avatar state. Maybe he should have just "accidentally" killed Ozai while in the Avatar state and just washed his hands of moral culpability, just like he did all the other people he killed before then.
Regardless, Aang found a way to make peace with the fact that he had taken hundreds of lives. But when the person in question is someone of power and renown? Then it becomes something to fret over.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Hell, he fought Ozai while in the Avatar state. Maybe he should have just “accidentally” killed Ozai while in the Avatar state
Remember that he didn't just enter the avatar state during the northern water tribe attack, he spiritually fused with the raging ocean spirit. I feel like that gives him a bit more moral innocence than just straight up killing people on his own. It's also worth noting he almost did exactly this. After smacking his back on the rock and reawakening his avatar state, he barely regained control before straight up killing Ozai.
That said... I actually hate the way he solved his unwillingness to kill the fire lord. An entire season of struggling over it and then suddenly some deus ex machina lion turtle pops up out of nowhere with no foreshadowing and just gives him the answer right before the final fight. Super lame and unearned ending to his moral struggle imo.
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It is so insidious when they do that with any piece of media. Use minority groups as a shield against well deserved criticism. It'd just been a thing in entertainment for so long that I kinda ended up tapping out and focusing on indie stuff more.
I literally cannot imagine creating something that is so incompetent, so shit and then using trans people as a shield to avoid taking responsibility for me delivering a shitty product.
Worst part is that I think it was almost deliberate. It just felt so hateful and like every decision was crafted to specifically hurt the fans and, as you say, gaslight them by accusing them of hating minority groups. So fucking disgusting. If you look at the teaser scene that was published way back before the game's release, where Abby is getting hanged, she is suspiciously more feminine looking. Why did they change that? To piss off the gamers.
They also made every single ad seem like Ellie was on a revenge rampage because of Dina's murder and that Joel was either going to join her or that his "ghost" would be by her side as her mental health tanks.
My friend and I had a lot of theories about the story of the game back when those teasers came out.
And then they go and create the most cruel, mean spirited murder scene of a beloved character that everybody already expected to get a send off in this game and afterwards they act smug and/or like victims when the fan reactions roll in.
They knew what they were doing. It was so gross. Joel's murder was probably one of the most physically disturbed reactions I have jhad to a piece of media because it felt like personal hatred directed against the player. Like, where the fuck did that come from, asshole? All I ever did was enjoy your game.
Are there some asshole fans out there who fit the stereotype of a sexist gamer? Of course there are, but the vast majority of fans are just normal people whose only crime was to get invested in a story, a world and its characters and we all got punished for it.
To me, that is behavior from a creator that I will never support and too many creators in the hollywood/LA sphere have had this gross attitude towards fans for too long. When you treat an entire fan base with disgust because of what a small minority does, you are no longer a professional who deserves their time and money. It literally is the equivalent of going to a restaurant and the chef going up to your table and spitting in your food because he had a few shitty customers the other day. Like good fucking luck bringing new customers to your restaurant in the future.
I'm really excited for The Last of Us 3, whenever that finally happens. For a while, I didn't think a Part III could even happen, but luckily Druckmann said some time ago he'd actually come up with a concept for what a Part III might even be, and I'm just so ready for whatever exciting, messed up stuff he's got in store for us!
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Plus I thought Avatar Yang Chen's argument was amazing. She told Aang that his duties to protect people as the Avatar outweighed his spiritual need to be a pacifist.
Yeah, but she's forgetting about Aang's cultural duty to his people. He's the last Air Nomad. If Aang intentionally takes a life, then that cultural aspect of the Air Nomads is dead forever in his eyes.
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Did Elon make this meme?
Needs not cringe -
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Batman is super full of shit in this department
