The yearly spectacle is here. Consider this an open thread for discussing this year’s barrage of manshoots, and maybe some other stuff that could come up. Ubisoft’s press conference is in 20 minutes, and I’d love to hear about Beyond Good and Evil 2, but I won’t hold my breath.
Any particularly terrible news? Any pleasant surprises? Any important non-E3 news that might get buried? Talk about it!
I hope this is allowed – I’m liveblogging the conferences on my website. So far Ubisoft seemed the most intent on diversity, the presenter (Aisha Tyler!!!) even said out loud that Ubisoft was focusing on diversity… Some of the supposedly humorous banter really rubbed me the wrong way and I wouldn’t give a free pass to all the Ubisoft games either.
I loved, loved, loved that Aisha Tyler was there, doing Ubisoft, but I refuse to give any free passes either. I was rubbed the wrong way too.
Is anyone else a little disturbed by the new Tomb Raider footage. Whatever sense of empowerment the player is suppose to feel (heck, she’s practically impervious to gunfire) is quickly lost whenever a scripted event or cuts-scene takes control. In them, we’re forced to watch Laura squirm and cry out in pain again and again.
I get it. She’s out of her element. They’ve made their point enough times. I don’t see why we have to constantly be reminded that she’s somehow weak, fragile or inferior. It’s beginning to creep me out.
I haven’t watched the Tomb Raider trailer myself, but a lot of folks on my Twitter feed were also quite disturbed by it. It’s a shame, an actual survivalist sort of game would have been cool…
In a shocking twist that no one saw coming, Penny Arcade (the PA Report) has a post up defending the attempted rape/torture porn in Tomb Raider.
Ben Kuchera is terrible.
Truly, that is an understatement. In some ways, many ways actually, I think he’s far worse than Brian Ashcraft even.
Bashcraft! Ugh… let’s put them all on a special shelf and call it a day.
I missed about half of the Tomb Raider footage due to my feed going offline, but from what I saw, it really reminded me of Uncharted and Drake gets pretty beat up in Uncharted too. I guess I should rewatch it, but after having watched all press conferences so far, I want it to STOP, no more derivative action games, AUGH I’m fed up.
To be honest Tomb Raider was a positive surprise for me because I expected that game to be especially bad, with squiggly Gainax breasts in HD and all. And that was not what I got.
There was a lot of racism, misogyny etc. in game trailers (or in the presenters’ behavior) that struck me as much worse. For example how Aisha was treated in the name of “fun banter”. “If the boys’ team beats the girls’ team, I get to host the event instead of you”? WTF?!
Oh god, the Far Cry 3 demo was THE WORST. What the heck???
Far Cry 3 claims its attempting to be a wild ride that ultimately skewers FPS games. This could be potentially interesting or very wince-worthy.
http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/05/methodical-madness-why-far-cry-3s-smarter-than-you-think/
It’s cool that they are trying commentary on FPSes… the way he says it’s “a game about games” makes me think they’re going for a Tarantino sort of thing.
But jeez, it takes cues from Avatar? The racist white-savior-but-with-blue-aliens movie? This is going to be a trainwreck.
“But jeez, it takes cues from Avatar? The racist white-savior-but-with-blue-aliens movie? This is going to be a trainwreck.”
I loved the part where he’s screaming about how he’ll lead [insert tribe (?)'s name here] to glory because it felt like the protagonist was utterly losing it – and the game knew it – instead of an Avatar White Man’s Burden moment. We’ll see where it ends up though.
I suppose I am extra cynical about this, as I think this is more about spin and trying to be use this as an excuse to be as over the top offensive, gratuitous sexualization of women-y, and bloodily violent — basically take all the extreme/gratuitous elements that inhibit shooter genres and push them to the limit. And just claim it is under the flag of trying to be a commentary on the state of shooters, and trying to be ‘subversive’ about it.
I watched two of the features on Tomb Raider. A trailer and an interview + gameplay/game stuff. Both left me feeling empty. It feels like much of the same from last year, and does nothing to make me feel empowered or make me feel like this isn’t more than just torture porn for a lady protagonist. The special treatment only ladies get when they’re given an action narrative where they must fight. That a woman needs to be ‘broken’ before she becomes strong, or that she needs to be victimized and traumatized and assaulted before she learns to fight/fight back, etc. It upsets me to no end.
Drake may get hurt in his games, but he’s not shown as a neonate. He is not shown as a pure victim that has no skill or abilities or action-fu merit badges to get through the day. He’s not shown beaten, tied up, bloodied, screaming and crying out in pain and horror at every turn, shivering and crying, mewling in the darkness dirtied and bloodied, and without any capabilities and weapons at his disposal. Even Drake’s origin story, touched upon in Uncharted 3, has him as a very capable parkouring thief of competency and action hero feats. He’s never a victim, even as a child.
But somehow Lara has to be the victim in order to get strong, to learn to fight, to get the ‘steel’ and resolve and motivation to survive. She has to be broken in order for people to get the Lara they want to see. We’re constantly reminded, even in interviews (by the devs) of how weak she is, how fragile she is, how inept she is. That just really bothers me. Dude heroes are never given this treatment in power fantasy games. Drake may take steps in the direction, but never even gets close to this stuff.
It’s some seriously messed-up shit. I too am tired of the prevalence of abusive backgrounds for female characters. It feels like the writers are trying to have their cake and eat it, too: enjoy the degradation and torture of a woman but somehow it’s okay because she comes out stronger in the end. What sort of message is that? “Line up to be brutalized, girls, and be grateful for it because it’s the only way you can learn to kick ass!”
And I agree that I cannot imagine a male character being treated that way. That’s not to say that male character backgrounds can’t be thoroughly messed up, too, but it doesn’t seem to be almost the default, and it isn’t dwelled on in such a graphic, full-on “torture porn” manner as it often is for women.
Yes, and all too often rape as a backstory or motivating factor is something special only given to women characters (not just in video games but in general media across the board). Again, no dude hero would ever get that kind of backstory or motivating factor or biography filled with sexual assault. There is nothing wrong or negative about a woman overcoming really terrible trauma and not letting that define who she is, and all those many positive things such stories can offer, but depth is not something these characters tend to explore. Rarely ever. It’s shallow frosting on a cake of moronic thinking. ‘This is how a strong lady character is made!’ No, it’s not.
Maybe I have a lower threshold for character abuse, because the only thing that stayed with me from Uncharted 2 was Drake getting brutalized, and again, and again.
Otherwise I agree, this is problematic and plays into gender stereotypes.
I feel like Tomb Raider has a consistency problem. You’re in a mildly, although not completely, stable environment during game play. Once the cut-scenes start the world falls apart around her and we’re forced into a minute of seeing ragdoll physics punctuated with quicktime events (oh boy!).
It seems strange how dramatically the stability of the world, and by extension how powerful Lara is, changes during the game. I guess that’s the point of the game, but it still doesn’t sit completely well with me.
This game is going to be the poster-child for the gritty reboot trope.
Everything I heard about the trailer (didn’t watch it myself because friends found it pretty upsetting) just killed my interest in the game and I’m bummed about it.
I posted this in the comments on the Liberation post, but I’ll stick it here too: IGN has the announcement trailer from Sony’s press conference: http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/06/04/assassins-creed-3-liberation-debut-trailer-e3-2012 And also it’s going to be bundled with the new white Vita: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/04/assassins-creed-3-liberation-confirmed-for-vita-launches-octo/
ETA: Trailer on youtube + a look at Aveline’s weapons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54TnbR4Uni4&feature=youtu.be&a
I tried the first Assassin’s Creed game but only got a few hours into it. This is making me want to buy a Vita just to support that character design!
The gaming landscape’s lineup in terms of diversity? Pretty depressing. Aside from Aveline (Vita AC game), Quantic Dreams’ new Beyond with Ellen Page, and the Lara Croft reboot, I did not see any women protagonists out there. The only time I saw women were when they were victims, damsels, or speaking to the hero over comms. And really, Lara could be lumped into the victimization damsel category since she is essentially that for the first 1/3 of the game (or so the dev said in an interview ‘that it is just about Lara surviving and she doesn’t get a weapon until much later’).
I saw one dude PoC in the Splinter Cell: Blacklist trailer that went from hostage to arse-kicker.
But aside from that? Nothing else. Just white dude (hetero) protagonists saving everything and killing everyone as far as the eye could see.
The best thing I’ve seen so far wasn’t even mentioned on the TV shows – it just ran on the ticker. Epic bought Big Huge Games & is making it Epic Baltimore. Saving the jobs of almost the entire staff. Hope good fortune finds the Rhode Island employees of 38 as well.
The new God of War game’s multiplayer mode won’t have female character options. God of War ain’t exactly known for being feminist, but it’s still very disappointing, especially because the sole reason for this only seems to be that they couldn’t make them “look pretty”. Quote comes from a Game Informer article. Seriously? I mean…seriously? THAT’S the reason?
John Walker on RPS nailed nicely how I mostly feel about E3. Nothing interesting or new, boring “men shot men”, incredible amount of violence everywhere, nothing to get excited about or to get even slightly interested (oh and titles that looks a bit promising like new SimCity gets obnoxious DRM). If E3 represents state of video game industry, then it looks really sad and blank.
PS. While I am happy for new protagonist in AC: Liberation and still think she should be in main ACIII game, shown gameplay certainly doesn’t deliver (same as ACIII), it’s the same old: run, jump, stab, I mean there are 4 games of that already, and now come another 2 with new reskins…
PSS. I mean, it certainly looks like industry seeing their income and market declining, called for an emergency and decide to go for only solution they know: violence, “gritty” violence everywhere but seriously: Tomb Raider and couple this with Hitman trailer, this goes far beyond troubling, this is sick.
What types of games do you want that break that mold? I know Beyond seems to break that mold. What kind of suggestions do you have? You could try submitting them to forums like the PlayStation Blog.
I know I try to do that for LGBT-focused content. Given that gaming is a business, I focus on the aspect that they are leaving money on the table.
You forgot Fat Princess kicking butt in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. I realize the rest of the roster so far is a sausage fest, but I would expect a few more female characters on the 24+ roster as the game’s release approaches.
I think having Fat Princess in a game is worse than not having any female representation at all. In the original title, she was the objectified woman if there ever was one.
It was amusing and faintly subversive to see her win the match though.
…and Beyond had the whole “spirituality is the domain of passive, vulnerable women” shtick in the presented footage, which I find objectionable on multiple levels.
prezzey, I understand your reasoning in the original title, but in Battle Royale, she doesn’t play the damsel in distress. She kicks butt on her own in this game’s premise. They didn’t redesign her a la Mortal Kombat style to make her hypersexualized.
My problem is that this perpetuates the franchise. When Fat Princess came out, I thought it would be a one-off, especially as it was just a PSN game and not too well-received at that. Then came the PSP version, and now this. Clearly Sony is committed to this IP, and I find that saddening. (Are they so short on women protagonists?)
My problem is that this perpetuates the franchise…Clearly Sony is committed to this IP, and I find that saddening.
Agreed. I’d much rather it just went away and never came back.
I saw the Tomb Raider trailer and it feels a lot like uncharted (as someone above already mentioned, Nathan Drake gets pretty hurt too). I will give it the gift of the doubt for now and I wouldn’t put Lara Croft in the damsel in distress category yet, unless she requires a male savior to build her character and strength.
Beyond Two Souls is the only other game that has attracted my attention. Shame there isn’t enough female protagonists.
I played ACII and Brotherhood, so I decided that it doesn’t matter how nice any AC game looks, the gameplay bores me, same old, same old, after the novelty runs out.
I’m pretty meh about everything E3′s shown so far. Disappointed that Sony completely dropped the ball on the Vita at their presser. Still have my hopes up for Nintendo’s 3DS conference tomorrow (Fire Emblem PLEASE), but otherwise there’s not much that I’m looking forward to (unless Square Enix magically announces FF Type-0 localization which…not holding my breath anymore).
Fire Emblem! Goodness, yes! I’d be over the moon for a new FE game, especially if it also had a console port. Insert sigh here. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn on the Wii is still one of my favorite games.
Oh shit! https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/210557046637072384
Why couldn’t they reveal that information DURING the 3DS showcase as opposed to after? Regardless, I am very happy right now.
Oh my lawd! Thanks for posting that! I am super excited!
*BIG sigh of relief*
*goes back to being bitter about Vita*
I just watched the Square Enix tech demo, “Agni’s Philosophy”. Not only is it beautiful, but I like that Square didn’t just update an older game (FFVIII for PS2 & VII for PS3) as they have in the past. I’m hoping it means SE is looking ahead in the FF series rather than looking back – which is what I think has been Square’s biggest problem this gen. They’ve been so occupied with making the next VII, they forgot how that happened to begin with – being innovative & original!
It looks mindblowingly awesome, but why o why does it have to feature faux-Middle-Eastern terrorists? :X (I’m kind of bitter…)
I found The Last of Us video disturbing. It had such gorgeous detail and drew me into the world. But then the violence was so brutal and detailed, that I just cannot imagine myself ever playing the game. I understand they may be doing that so the violence has more impact, but it just turned me off entirely. How did others feel about that game?
I think, for the sake of actually making the violence as realistic possible, it actually adds to the atmosphere. It will definitely NOT be a game for everyone, but what they’re trying to do feels many, many times more sincere and sophisticated than what you would normally expect of a horror-action type of game.
The biggest misgiving I have, though, is the way it looks to be received by much of the mainstream gaming press and audience. Despite so many assertions that gaming has “grown up”, the culture sure as hell hasn’t. Nuance and subtlety seems utterly lost on a group cultivated to crave however-many achievement points for scoring a headshot, to whom games are reduced to nothing more than a yearly dose of flash and fanfare to be forgotten as soon as the next big-budget shooter comes out.
You can take a concept like this and carry it as far as your abilities to create a deep experience will go…and all of that is lost when you throw in a competitive multiplayer mode all about scores and fancy kills when market analysts proclaim it mandatory.
The violence was a bit too realistic and human for my liking. Characters cowering and begging before they’re killed. Detailed gore and kill shots. I’ll say again (as I have said elsewhere in discussions) that I am not averse to combat violence and the usually cartoony blood fountain violence in our games, but when it gets that more intimate human treatment, it gets very uncomfortable. Especially a game designed where you do need to kill/disable people to get through the story. If there were other ways to deal with opponents, then that may bring different depth to things. At least by comparison to the violent path.
How these things also affect the protagonists is important, too. How they react and how human they feel as well through these atrocious times and situations. If they’re just killing people brutally left and right, even for survival, without ever showing the impact or weight or remorse or any human residual effect from these things, then it’ll have even less impact, imo, beyond ‘it’s just there to be realistic for people to make bloody patterns on walls with!’
In many games, you’re just mowing down random mooks and faceless/nameless thugs and never consider them again. Nor does the character think twice about them. But here, it’s more up-close, intimate, facial and emotional reactions, brutality of ‘gritty realism.’ Except we don’t know how the characters react to these things, if at all. I hope they do and that there is depth. Otherwise, like I said, it will mean little beyond how realistic you can kill someone.
Also, I have issues with the set-up with the characters. We have the burly dude, who is some kind of trained military Sam Fisher dude. (Who couldn’t see that coming as a protagonist?) And then we have a young-looking, tiny-bodied girl/young woman as a sidekick. Well, she is more like an escort mission or background NPC from everything they’ve shown so far. She’s less situated in combat than Elena and Chloe and company. All she uses is a little dinky pen-knife as protection…? And just throws rocks/bricks at enemies to distract them? Really? Especially in this kind of world, where you have uber-trained Sam Fisher as your partner? Shouldn’t he be focused on training her in self-defense and offense, and weapon play, and so forth? I’m not a fan of this set-up. The girl is the potential damsel/sidekick spiel. A trained black woman with young boy/young man as sidekick would’ve at least been something more interesting, something not generic-white-dude-soldier, imo.
I agree and it also strangely disturbing in this type of games i.e. Uncharted or even Mass Effect that protagonist is supposed to be a “good” where that’s the person that is committing most atrocities visible on screen. I was feeling really strange playing ME3 with my FemShep paragon when in the wake of Reaper invasion I was killing humans in dozens (I know that even Bioware felt that was a bit weird so they decide to “husk” Cerberus soldiers). Especially since Shepard is suppose to be soldier but sure as hell she isn’t like act one, no talking, no trying to resolve, no asking for surrender, no taking prisoners, just killing every one last of them, even where there is only one opponent left. The Last of Us also follows this, when protagonists meet some random looters, he engages them and gruesomely kills all of them.
Agreed as well, with both of you. I wouldn’t mind realistic depictions of violence if that was actually the intention: to show what it’s really like, including the effects it has on the one pulling the trigger and kicking in faces with his boot. If that isn’t the case, if the “hero” remains an oh-so-cool untouchable god (read: utter sociopath), then I honestly cannot see such violence as anything but an ever more obscene ego-wanking for the player. You don’t just mow over people by the hundreds, you get to sneer and laugh as they grovel and cry and beg before you, too.
For that reason I’ve become very, very cynical when a game claims to be “realistic” about violence, not “just” killing but also degrading or abusive treatments and depictions of women and “minorities”. It’s usually only ever the Other who suffers the effects of such “realism”, not the he-man macho hero.
I wouldn’t mind realistic depictions of violence if that was actually the intention: to show what it’s really like, including the effects it has on the one pulling the trigger and kicking in faces with his boot. If that isn’t the case, if the “hero” remains an oh-so-cool untouchable god (read: utter sociopath), then I honestly cannot see such violence as anything but an ever more obscene ego-wanking for the player.
Honestly, I think M-rated man-shooters are at an inherent disadvantage when it comes to making violence meaningful, because anyone who reacts to committing violence in the way a normal human being would is going to have severe trouble keeping their sanity if forced to kill hundreds of mooks like the protagonists of those games do.
It’s kind of strange, but an E-10 series like Kingdom Hearts is probably better suited to showing the emotional consequences of violence on the hero – since there are no cannon-fodder human enemies, it isn’t strange at all for a protagonist to emotionally freeze up after realizing he permanently injured someone even if he needs to be fighting mooks again shortly thereafter.
And then, on the other hand, there’s the Final Fantasy Type-0 route, where the game opens with a rather protagonist-like character killing other soldiers and dying in the least dignified way possible while remaining completely sympathetic throughout. (Violence in that game is kind of messed up >_>; ) I found that quite a bit more impactful than shooting a digital guy in the face while he begs. =/
A trained black woman with young boy/young man as sidekick would’ve at least been something more interesting, something not generic-white-dude-soldier, imo.
Agreed. Even a generic grizzled 30-something white dude with a young boy or disabled person would have been more interesting. Why did they have do go the most cliche route possible?
I’d also bet you hard currency that our protagonist will end up collecting enough firearms to become a walking gun rack, and yet we’ll never see the little girl use one regularly or effectively.
Also, I have issues with the set-up with the characters. We have the burly dude, who is some kind of trained military Sam Fisher dude. (Who couldn’t see that coming as a protagonist?) And then we have a young-looking, tiny-bodied girl/young woman as a sidekick. Well, she is more like an escort mission or background NPC from everything they’ve shown so far.
This is what killed my interest in the game. When they showed the debut trailer way back when, I had hoped that maybe it would have co-op play and was excited, but ever since I found out the the girl is basically Yorda I haven’t wanted to play it anymore. Wow Naughty Dog, a middle aged white dude protagonist with dark hair? That’s SO original! How do you come up with these daring, novel ideas? /eye roll
I have some difficulty following the line of thinking where the psychological realism of violence being “disturbing” and “very uncomfortable” could be seen as a bad thing. Is being made to feel uncomfortable really a bad thing, particularily so since violence is concerned?
Now, it goes without saying fetishistic emphasis on the graphical fidelity of blood and gore makes no game more realistic or mature. That said, what makes the violence in The Last of Us gruesome is the animation and vocal reactions of the people you kill as they’re struggling not to be killed. By the player, as it were. Depicting violence is something that calls for treading a fine line, but I think it’s very hard to go wrong in representing the people you kill as fellow human beings. Doubly so since the alternative – taking away human features from enemies so you don’t feel bad about killing them – strikes me as pretty erasive.
A lot of great games are great specifically because they make the player feel uncomfortable about their actions. Shadow of the Colossus is an obvious example. One of the high points of Tactics Ogre: LuCT, a fantasy retelling of the Yugoslavian Wars, is that in basically every battle, you are reminded that the people you fight are no different from you, fighting for what they think is right. Speaking of Tomb Raider, Anniversary was remarkable for the utter absence of combat with humans; those fights from original game were relegated into QT events and form a key component in the narrative arc of Lara coming to realize the human cost of her adventuring lifestyle. It was vastly more compelling than the otherwise highly entertaining Legends, where Lara mows down people by the dozen punctuated by quips from her support team.
That’s not to say that these games are in any way beyond reproach; the dynamic of The Last of Us, where gruesome violence is “justified” by having a grizzled man protect a defenseless daughter-figure, is manipulative and patronizing. Still, from what I’ve understood, The Last of Us is meant to at least acknowledge what killing people on a day-by-day basis does to a person. This is much more than can be said about any Bioware RPG, for instance, and I think it’s hard to fault a game for not letting the player off the hook easily when it comes to hurting and killing people.
That said, what makes the violence in The Last of Us gruesome is the animation and vocal reactions of the people you kill as they’re struggling not to be killed.
Okay, fair enough, you make a good point, except…
the dynamic of The Last of Us, where gruesome violence is “justified” by having a grizzled man protect a defenseless daughter-figure, is manipulative and patronizing.
That pretty much erases any merit to making the violence realistic. In fact, if anything it makes it worse – here, do real killing and tell yourself it’s completely okay (as opposed to mowing down millions of cartoonish Russians or space aliens in a way that not at all resembles real life). Especially since they seem not to be giving the players a choice whether or not to kill them. And I have sincere doubts that this is going to be treated with the psychological depth you seem to think it will be.
I have my doubts that it will be treated with the psychological depth as well. I mean, in the same trailer/gameplay video, after killing several guys, the young lass (who helped kill some of these men) says to the grizzled dude, “Good job with the — you know — killing stuff.” Rather bantery/glib. It’s one line from an unknown part of the game, of course, but that doesn’t quite advertise that psychological impact and depth, imo.
It could be interesting. I do like the idea of having to be forced to deal intimately with the violence you’re inflicting. However, this game could end up sharing Manhunt’s great pitfall, which was that there was just no point to the murders and there was no reason to care about what happened to either protagonist or antagonist.
It all depends on how well the world and characters are built. If the whole game is just going around murdering other survivors in gorier and gorier detail, I’d just find it a huge waste of time.
Likewise. The desperate humanity of your victims was very prominent for me. Killing them was too sad and visceral to enjoy it on any level.
Also, and maybe this is nit-picking, but I don’t understand the rationale behind using the “hostage.” If all these people are dog-eat-dog, to the point that they would try to ruthlessly kill you and your 10-year-old companion, why would they care about some random dude you’ve got in a headlock?
They’re a gang of folks. I thought of it more like one survivor group versus another. If the girl was taken hostage, the dude wouldn’t shoot her to kill the hostage-taker. Likewise, maybe the hostage was a friend and ally to the others of his little gang/survivor group. Enemies don’t have to be without their own codes, values, emotions and motives.
That’s how I read it anyway. It could just simply be a mechanic gimmick.
Square’s tech demo was nothing short of awesome, the next generation consoles cant come soon enough