The more realistic video games get, the less interest I have in games like GTA 6.
And I donât mean in terms of graphics. A game that looks that realistic but when you smack some random passerby they launch into the air team rocket style? Iâd play the shit out of that. But when instead theyâll respond like an actual person being hurt, and they look more and more like an actual person, the more I am just uncomfortable with the game.
I like violent games. I find them cathartic. But an important part of that is feeling like Iâm doing nothing wrong, and the more realistic the violence, the more it makes me viscerally uncomfortable
a game where you do lots of violence that doesnât want you to feel like youâre role-playing a psychopath needs to offer you some kind of fig leaf, e.g.
- your [melee attack from behind / gun] that makes people stop moving is Non-Lethal and theyâll be fine later, promise
- they want to kill you for no reason and it is Self Defense
- theyâre [bad people / people who work for a bad person] and youâre doing a Revenge or a Justice
normally the Assassinâs Creed games do at least two of these. in Valhalla I wasnât avenging a damned thing, I was just an invader, fucking up monasteries because I kinda needed the money. I couldnât even stealth-takedown, so everybody just died. it felt shitty! it felt shitty, and I guess ârealisticâ in that real history had a lot of shitty people, and to this day I donât understand what they were going for.
one of the best parts of saints row (2022) was using nerf guns and because âeveryone in the city is in on the LARPâ they all respect you âkillingâ them by âdyingâ in the most dramatic ways possible while. more violent games should go the way of saints row
bonus for having an entire LARP assassination side quest and you resolve the argument by continuously beating them with your LARP guns while calling them lame for being OP and a bad friend, rather than doing any actual murder violence like you might expect
