(this post was last updated at 1345h edt)
like we def got frogboiled on that.
Diablo? yeah, i mean. that's the genre.
DooM? sure
postal 2? i hate to say it but like, it's part of the design. i don't respect it but we're defining genre
but these have gratuitous gore. it's intentional and, in all but the Postal case, there's SOME thought taken. They aren't just decoration thrown on.
There's been a shift to casual inclusion of realistic, but gruesome, gore just for the sake of it and i gotta just, scream about how it's become background noise now, yeah? there were overdone but still realistic torture scenes on 5pm "Prestige TV" shows for a decade on the national networks. But showing a nipple made everyone try to destroy a career.
back to games.
call of duty? it's tacked on like multiplayer in a 2005 licensed xbox 360 game.
and ever since, most shooters have had plenty of gore, from head-severing headshots to rendering wounds realistically in the people you kill. but not in a thoughtful or artistic way, to make you think of the horrors of war, or what you just did as a player, or what the systems came together to force you into doing. no, it's because we need realism, and it's likely just an option in the engine now sometimes. we got good at modeling, and the masses demanded meat.
it's like if every third picture on Google images just had incidental low effort gore.
but I'm thinking a lot about planetside 2 where because you're in scifi armor they just didn't bother. they could have, they were trying to be gritty.
or playing call of duty 4 modern warfare back to back with call of duty: World at War, which was goofy and also period-racist in ways it didn't need to be, but took time in actually doing the horrors of war with care. i think it was lost on the average gamer, but that's the only time I've had to pause and put down a game after being ordered to use a flame thrower. it's clear someone didn't want to glorify it, even if the rest of the team seemed to disagree. enough that it stood out. Whereas MW4 is a "shock and awe" doorkicking gunfight through the crowded urban streets of Baghdad as "insurgents" and "hostiles" pop out from doors like a carnival shooting gallery of cardboard targets. mechanical, low risk, pop pop pop.
metal gear solid as a series, to my knowledge, didn't have gore past blood. wait nevermind there's a lot of gore in V but it's both gratuitous, unrealistic, and plot relevant
or, i don't think overwatch has gibs either? but it seems telling that I can't even remember.
and while I know I'm not "desensitized" to it, I have to wonder: with the abundance of it, is that a signal that a lot of other people are?
even the media doesn't flinch at showing bad injuries or bodies live on TV
