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Unexpectedly Cruel Moments (That Took You Out Of The Narrative)

S

SOLDIER

Member
As I'm replaying Odin Sphere via the PS4 version, I've got another one listed (ending spoilers):

Mercedes' death still bums me out to this day.

You could argue it was appropriate from a narrative perspective, which is true considering the apocalyptic way that game ends.

Still, her death always felt the most tragic and mean-spirited to me; her family, her loved ones, and her entire race is killed before her eyes, and there's no one left to witness nor acknowledge her final sacrifice. Meanwhile, all the other playable characters went on to get happier endings while literally everyone else dies.
 
C

CloudWolf

Member
Hellwarden said:
The morality system in Dishonored 1 and 2 was always terrible, but there's a moment in 2 where it's almost like they gave up writing wise. (And don't give me that nonsense "It's a high/low chaos dichotomy! It's totally different!") So in Dishonored 2 there's a target, a genius inventor, who you have the option of killing or
lobotomizing. The latter option is the low chaos/good option.
The whole scene is just so casually cruel, and yet devoid of any actual impact.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Dishonored is full of this shit. Most of the non-lethal "morally good" options in the first game made me uncomfortable. Especially the one where you have to give the unconscious body of that noblewoman to her stalker. What the actual fuck, Arkane?
 
dl77

dl77

Member
It's interesting how a lot of the scenes in this thread are ones I've seen but haven't taken me out of the film/programme. I often find they're an integral part of the story.

Though in JW that woman's death was ridiculous I didn't think it was unfitting. To be honest what bothered me most was that she was only a minor character and given the length of her death scene it seemed they were trying to give it resonance that hadn't been earned.

One that did bother me was the scene in the film Super where Frank smacks that guy in the head with a wrench. It was odd as up to that point the scene was played comedically with Frank getting irate over someone cutting in line and then seeing him struggle to get his costume on in the car. Oddly I found that scene more distasteful than I did when Libby gets half her head blown off.
 
A

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
AuthenticM said:
What!?
Click to expand...
In Dishonored, many of the "non-lethal" target assassination options actually sound like a fate worse than death. It's pretty fucked up, and it's made worse when the game clearly tries to frame these actions as the "merciful/good" options.

If I remember right, these are a few non-lethal ones that are okay and sound about right:
-
Knocking a guy out and branding his face with the brand of a traitor/enemy of the state. Okay, that's obviously done with no due process, but apparently the brand means the country strips the guy of all his power and exiles him immediately, no questions asked. That's pretty dumb, but not really morally messed up on your part when your original goal was to kill him.
-
Broadcasting a guy's voice recorded diary entry to the public, where he conveniently confesses to all his crimes. It's pretty dumb to keep a recording like that but eh.
This is what I expected most "non-lethal" options to look like.

Some of the fucked up shit:
-
The stalker thing. You give a woman (who is admittedly a total murderous psycho) to her stalker, where they live out the rest of their lives together on some island or something. Okay, that's fucked up. The even more fucked up part is that her sisters later THANK you doing this instead of killing her.
-
You give a corrupt official/businessman to a mobster who says he'll cut out his tongue and put him to work in some mines for the rest of his life, where he won't be able to tell anyone about what happened to him. Again, you get thanked by his relatives for sparing his life. Uh...
 
S

SOLDIER

Member
Prompto said:
Yeah that one seemed unnecessary
Click to expand...

I think that was done to show that he was 100% dead.

In fairness the movie was ramping up the fake-out deaths, so this was probably done to keep the audience from thinking he would turn up alive.
 
J

Jangowuzhere

Banned
Most of the deaths in Peter Jackson's King Kong.

It's crazy to me that movie is somehow rated PG-13, especially with that scene where all the bugs attack.
 
B

blakep267

Member
Whenever I'm watching a movie and somebody gets shot in the head unexpectedly it always shakes me up. Idk it's weird. They could be shot in the chest a bazillion times and it wouldn't affect me

Like remember on NCIS early seasons where the woman agent(Kate?) got sniped in the head. That was super jarring
 
C

Catdaddy

Member
pauloshinobi said:
Hmm, let's see...

I'll start with the awful giant-maggot-rape scene from Galaxy of Terror. I saw that shit as a kid. One of my biggest movie traumas.
Click to expand...

Forgot about this one, that was so messed up - this was one of those movies I watched right after we got cable.. fun fact- James Cameron worked with Roger Corman on this movie..The Corman part partially explains why the scene is so disturbing..
 
F

Fuchsdh

Member
Jangowuzhere said:
Most of the deaths in Peter Jackson's King Kong.

It's crazy to me that movie is somehow rated PG-13, especially with that scene where all the bugs attack.
Click to expand...

Oh this is a good one. It feels so tonally off from the rest of the film too. "Okay lets go from stampeding dinosaurs in a jungle to an alien landscape where giant bugs eat this guy's head."
 
M

Mighty Chin

Banned
lightskintwin said:
This thread is making me want to watch Jurassic World just so I can get an idea of how jarring the scene you're describing is within the context of the film.
Click to expand...
It's literally nothing. Just something GAF latched onto. Dinosaurs are on the loose and a minor character gets killed oh and she's female and apparently the first female to ever die on film in these movies.
Catdaddy said:
Forgot about this one, that was so messed up - this was one of those movies I watched right after we got cable.. fun fact- James Cameron worked with Roger Corman on this movie..The Corman part partially explains why the scene is so disturbing..
Click to expand...
Poor Kate.
 
P

PeskyToaster

Member
Hellwarden said:
The morality system in Dishonored 1 and 2 was always terrible, but there's a moment in 2 where it's almost like they gave up writing wise. (And don't give me that nonsense "It's a high/low chaos dichotomy! It's totally different!") So in Dishonored 2 there's a target, a genius inventor, who you have the option of killing or
lobotomizing. The latter option is the low chaos/good option.
The whole scene is just so casually cruel, and yet devoid of any actual impact.
Click to expand...

It is different. You're disposing of these people in ways that quietly remove them from the picture rather than murdering them.
Like the lobotomy is supposed to be set up as an experiment gone wrong.
I think it's a smart way to add narrative consequences to the player's style of play. Sure, you can murder your way to the end but don't be mad when people are upset that you killed your way to the throne with powers granted by a dark god.
 
adamsapple

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Akuun said:
In Dishonored, many of the "non-lethal" target assassination options actually sound like a fate worse than death. It's pretty fucked up, and it's made worse when the game clearly tries to frame these actions as the "merciful/good" options.

If I remember right, these are a few non-lethal ones that are okay and sound about right:
-
Knocking a guy out and branding his face with the brand of a traitor/enemy of the state. Okay, that's obviously done with no due process, but apparently the brand means the country strips the guy of all his power and exiles him immediately, no questions asked. That's pretty dumb, but not really morally messed up on your part when your original goal was to kill him.
-
Broadcasting a guy's voice recorded diary entry to the public, where he conveniently confesses to all his crimes. It's pretty dumb to keep a recording like that but eh.
This is what I expected most "non-lethal" options to look like.

Some of the fucked up shit:
-
The stalker thing. You give a woman (who is admittedly a total murderous psycho) to her stalker, where they live out the rest of their lives together on some island or something. Okay, that's fucked up. The even more fucked up part is that her sisters later THANK you doing this instead of killing her.
-
You give a corrupt official/businessman to a mobster who says he'll cut out his tongue and put him to work in some mines for the rest of his life, where he won't be able to tell anyone about what happened to him. Again, you get thanked by his relatives for sparing his life. Uh...
Click to expand...

I have to disagree with your last one, it's not cruel, it's actually the just option.

IIRC the story there is that the official is the one running the mine where they cut out people's tongues and force them to work, so he got the same treatment and because he got his tongue cut out, he can't tell anyone who he actually is and will have to serve in the mines the same way he was making others work.
 
U

UrbanRats

Member
I think the Gennaro death scene from Jurassic Park is more or less the same level of unwarranted cruelty than the one in Jurassic World, just less drawn out (and JP is a better movie in general, so it stings less).
The Gennaro hate in that movie is completely unfounded.

But i think that's what they were trying to replicate, anyway.
 
O

Ordinaryundone

Member
Re: Dishonored, it's telling that so many people try to conflate the "non-lethal" option with mercy, when it's really not supposed to be. That's why it's called "Low Chaos", not "Good Karma" or whatever. The non-lethal options are meant to remove whoever the offending person was while preserving whatever institution they were in charge of for the good of the city. Killing them would just cause power vacuums or the collapse of their area of expertise, which didn't necessarily need to go but needed new management. They didn't say anywhere you had to be nice about it though, hence Lady Boyle in D1 or Jindosh in D2.
 
Necron

Necron

Member
Hellwarden said:
The morality system in Dishonored 1 and 2 was always terrible, but there's a moment in 2 where it's almost like they gave up writing wise. (And don't give me that nonsense "It's a high/low chaos dichotomy! It's totally different!") So in Dishonored 2 there's a target, a genius inventor, who you have the option of killing or
lobotomizing. The latter option is the low chaos/good option.
The whole scene is just so casually cruel, and yet devoid of any actual impact.
Click to expand...

This one was especially ridiculous. For me personally, this was actually the most depressing "low-chaos" option as it's just way more cruel and even spiteful to choose this for him.

Edit: Ordinaryundone has a point, though. Still, I think removing him another way could have been there. This just seemed to somehow be cruel against his intellect and choices. Sokolov never reacts to it from what I remember but I'm not sure even he'd agree to something so monstrous, essentially.
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
I think the JW example shows that dinosaur/monster/disaster movies are moving towards the saturation of slasher films in the 80s/90s, where the audience is so desensitized to characters dying they're actively rooting to see the goriest death possible.

Half of the cast exists exclusively just to get torn to shreds in imaginative ways.
 
P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Has anyone mentioned The Sword of Truth series where Goodkind literally tortures Richard and Kahlan to the point of making one think the other is cheating on them with a demon or something but through the power of magic or something, they're actually sleeping with eachother?

Fuck Terry Goodkind. He's a sadist and misogynist and wants his readers to enjoy good people being tortured. I finished that book and walked away.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
In the videogame realm, I hated the waterboarding/torture mission in GTA V. I know it's a commentary on the fucked up American military, and Trevor's masochistic personality, but I really hated it. Sure, the developers maybe "Wanted me to feel uncomfortable" doing that, and maybe they'd counter "You have no problem shooting 50 innocent police/civilians, but can't torture a guy?" But it's beyond that. The 50 pedestrians who are killed every second in GTA are computer ragdolls that you feel no particular empathy towards. The police that chase you become military-state lunatics the second you accidentally bump their car.

The mission where you terrorize the foreign guy sets it up from the start that you're doing the wrong thing, that he's got a family and children, and that you're targeting the wrong guy... that the intel he gives you is all wrong. Now, I know that the game is making a commentary about intel from torture, and I get that it's a commentary on both violent games, gamer apathy towards killing/violence, and the American government, but... I really didn't like how, to progress in the game, I had to be an actor in the commentary... One that I knew both characters were wrong in, and one that I knew was a fools errand.

It breaks me from the narrative because when you're controlling a character in a videogame, you can't help but impose some of your role playing onto the character. Even when I'm controlling the psychotic madman Trevor, I am the one hitting the buttons in the game, not watching a movie, so doing that -- and given the audio clues and all else -- is not the character making those choices, it's me the player. Really didn't like it, in a game that I otherwise liked.
 
R

Rosstimus

Banned
The Albatross said:
In the videogame realm, I hated the waterboarding/torture mission. I know it's a commentary on the fucked up American military, and Trevor's masochistic personality, but I really hated it. Sure, the developers maybe "Wanted me to feel uncomfortable" doing that, and maybe they'd counter "You have no problem shooting 50 innocent police/civilians, but can't torture a guy?" But it's beyond that. The 50 pedestrians who are killed every second in GTA are computer ragdolls that you feel no particular empathy towards. The police that chase you become military-state lunatics the second you accidentally bump their car.

The mission where you terrorize the foreign guy sets it up from the start that you're doing the wrong thing, that he's got a family and children, and that you're targeting the wrong guy... that the intel he gives you is all wrong. Now, I know that the game is making a commentary about intel from torture, and I get that it's a commentary on both violent games, gamer apathy towards killing/violence, and the American government, but... I really didn't like how, to progress in the game, I had to be an actor in the commentary... One that I knew both characters were wrong in, and one that I knew was a fools errand.

It breaks me from the narrative because when you're controlling a character in a videogame, you can't help but impose some of your role playing onto the character. Even when I'm controlling the psychotic madman Trevor, I am the one hitting the buttons in the game, not watching a movie, so doing that -- and given the audio clues and all else -- is not the character making those choices, it's me the player. Really didn't like it, in a game that I otherwise liked.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Overall I found the characters and narrative of the game to be really off-putting. To me it was always a shame that Rockstar North creating the most stunning open world ever seen in a game(imo), but filled it with the most noxious and characters imaginable.
 
O

Ordinaryundone

Member
Necron said:
This one was especially ridiculous. For me personally, this was actually the most depressing "low-chaos" option as it's just way more cruel and even spiteful to choose this for him.

Edit: Ordinaryundone has a point, though. Still, I think removing him another way could have been there. This just seemed to somehow be cruel against his intellect and choices. Sokolov never reacts to it from what I remember but I'm not sure even he'd agree to something so monstrous, essentially.
Click to expand...

If I remember correctly, the idea was that Jindosh had been stalling on finishing the clockwork soldiers and allowing them to be mass produced, both because he was a perfectionist and because he was holding them as a bargaining chip against the Baron even though they were basically some. If you had just killed Jindosh, the Baron would have immediately seized his estate and put the robots in the field, but since you left him alive and incapable they were kept off the street for as long as possible thanks to his famously eccentric and private personality preventing any sort of examination. So in this case you actually WANTED the head of the snake to stick around, albeit in a way that made him worthless to the Baron.

It feels so needlessly cruel though because it's sort of the opposite of what D2's other options are about. That sort of karmic punishment would fit right at home in D1 but D2's non-violent solutions are generally more about fixing something wrong and bringing that element back on your side rather than just getting rid of them. As for Sokolov, well, Jindosh was planning on doing the same thing to him once his usefulness was up so I don't think he was too beaten up about it, even if he'd probably find the act himself distasteful.
 
P

playingwithfire

Member
I love outrageously brutal death scenes. I didn't care whether that chick in JW deserved it or not to be honest, her death was fantastic.

How about that scene near the end of Kong Skull Island where the dopey soldier attempts to save everyone from the giant scull crawler by sacrificing himself, but it doesn't quite work out.
 
T

TheGameshark

Member
First time I watched Akira, Kaori's fucking awful death completely made me stop caring for what happens to the other characters. On top of that she gets sexually assaulted earlier in the movie in a scene which felt completely unnecessary.
 
T

Toxi

Banned
paragonpro said:
I dont think the scene in jurassic world was mysoginistic, the first and the lost world had scenes where one person gets it bad from the dino's. I think in this case because it was a woman who bit the dust it made people uneasy, its the same with lara croft dying and leon kennedy dying. No one wants to see a woman go through something like that, i get it too because i myself am made more uncomfortable when its a woman. Like i said i dont think there was any sexist intent behind it, as a society i think seeing women go through something so harrowing makes us all uncomfortable.
Click to expand...
The original Jurassic Park really doesn't have a scene like that. Muldoon's death is fairly quick (In terms of screentime) and mostly hidden from view. Samuel L Jackson's death is offscreen. Nedry and the lawyer are both established as nasty people, so their deaths are karmic. Hammond's death is entirely absent in the movie; Hammond has a pretty gruesome death in the book, but the movie changes Hammond's character from a greedy asshole to a kindly eccentric, so obviously he can't have the same karmic demise.

The closest is the scene at the start of Jurassic Park with some random worker gets pulled into the velociraptor container, but there's a pretty big difference between the context of that scene and the Jurassic World one. One is setting up an unseen horror with an unnamed random. The other is spectacle in the middle of the movie with an established character.

I think people who try to analyze this from a "realism" perspective ignore how Jurassic Park and its sequels wear their narrative status on their sleeves. They're not movies where children or the main hero will get eaten alive onscreen. They're idealistic action stories that kids can enjoy. Part of why The Lost World and Jurassic World weren't so great is that they sometimes forgot that.
 
S

Silexx

Member
PantherLotus said:
Has anyone mentioned The Sword of Truth series where Goodkind literally tortures Richard and Kahlan to the point of making one think the other is cheating on them with a demon or something but through the power of magic or something, they're actually sleeping with eachother?

Fuck Terry Goodkind. He's a sadist and misogynist and wants his readers to enjoy good people being tortured. I finished that book and walked away.
Click to expand...

I feel like that the torture of the main characters has basically become the point of the series.


That said, they weren't cheating with a demon, it was two actual human characters (although only introduced in that book, had prior connections to Richard). The actual fucked up part was that because of some ritual they each had to have sex with someone else: Richard was to sleep with a childhood friend who seemed to have a crush on him, and Kahlan was supposed to sleep with Richard half-brother. The latter, it turns out, was basically a Jack the Ripper-type serial killer. So through some last minute ass-pull magic spell that Richard always seems to be able to pull out, he swaps places with his brother to be with Kahlan (who still thinks she's having sex with the half-brother) annnnnd basically leaves his childhood friend at the mercy of the psycho killer.
 
T

Toxi

Banned
The movie 2012 has the boyfriend of John Cusack's ex die by getting horribly crushed in machinery. And it's supposed to be his redeeming moment because... I dunno, he's the boyfriend of Cusack's ex? So Cusack and his ex can get together again?

It's a dumb movie.
 
W

Whizkid7

Member
Silexx said:
I feel like that the torture of the main characters has basically become the point of the series.


That said, they weren't cheating with a demon, it was two actual human characters (although only introduced in that book, had prior connections to Richard). The actual fucked up part was that because of some ritual they each had to have sex with someone else: Richard was to sleep with a childhood friend who seemed to have a crush on him, and Kahlan was supposed to sleep with Richard half-brother. The latter, it turns out, was basically a Jack the Ripper-type serial killer. So through some last minute ass-pull magic spell that Richard always seems to be able to pull out, he swaps places with his brother to be with Kahlan (who still thinks she's having sex with the half-brother) annnnnd basically leaves his childhood friend at the mercy of the psycho killer.
Click to expand...

....I clearly need to catch up on the series.
 
P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Silexx said:
I feel like that the torture of the main characters has basically become the point of the series.


That said, they weren't cheating with a demon, it was two actual human characters (although only introduced in that book, had prior connections to Richard). The actual fucked up part was that because of some ritual they each had to have sex with someone else: Richard was to sleep with a childhood friend who seemed to have a crush on him, and Kahlan was supposed to sleep with Richard half-brother. The latter, it turns out, was basically a Jack the Ripper-type serial killer. So through some last minute ass-pull magic spell that Richard always seems to be able to pull out, he swaps places with his brother to be with Kahlan (who still thinks she's having sex with the half-brother) annnnnd basically leaves his childhood friend at the mercy of the psycho killer.
Click to expand...

When you say it like that ... I think my description was apt. I mean, read this aloud with a straight face and then go look at Terry Goodkind's terrible mug:

3737_1.jpg


This is a man who you should believe him when he shows you who he is. YIKES.
 
S

Silexx

Member
PantherLotus said:
When you say it like that ... I think my description was apt. I mean, read this aloud with a straight face and then go look at Terry Goodkind's terrible mug:

3737_1.jpg


This is a man who you should believe him when he shows you who he is. YIKES.
Click to expand...

I mean, when it came to his half-brother, yeah totally apt lol. But since it's technically a fantasy series, saying 'demon' usually is literal. :p
 
A

Akuun

Looking for meaning in GAF
chandoog said:
IIRC the story there is that the official is the one running the mine where they cut out people's tongues and force them to work, so he got the same treatment and because he got his tongue cut out, he can't tell anyone who he actually is and will have to serve in the mines the same way he was making others work.
Click to expand...
Oh, that's what he was doing? I must've missed that part. Thanks, that makes a lot more sense.
Ordinaryundone said:
Re: Dishonored, it's telling that so many people try to conflate the "non-lethal" option with mercy, when it's really not supposed to be. That's why it's called "Low Chaos", not "Good Karma" or whatever. The non-lethal options are meant to remove whoever the offending person was while preserving whatever institution they were in charge of for the good of the city. Killing them would just cause power vacuums or the collapse of their area of expertise, which didn't necessarily need to go but needed new management. They didn't say anywhere you had to be nice about it though, hence Lady Boyle in D1 or Jindosh in D2.
Click to expand...
I see your point, but the game does draw a number of parallels between Low Chaos actions and being merciful/good. I remember the
Low Chaos ending monologue from the Outsider talked about how you showed mercy and restraint, which carried over into how Emily grew up to become a wise and kind ruler. Elsewhere in the game, Emily draws Corvo as a loving daddy if you consistently chose low chaos solutions instead of killing people, and certain NPCs (especially Samuel) generally being much more respectful and kind to you.

Besides Dishonored and on topic, I remember a scene in Black Ops 1 (I think? One of the CoD games anyway) where you put a shard of broken glass in a guy's mouth and then punch him in the jaw so that the glass shatters in the guy's mouth. Like seriously? That's just being violent for cheap shock value.
 
G

gutter_trash

Banned
Jangowuzhere said:
Most of the deaths in Peter Jackson's King Kong.

It's crazy to me that movie is somehow rated PG-13, especially with that scene where all the bugs attack.
Click to expand...
that scene threw me out because all the bugs of different species all came out at the same time and all left at the same time
 
O

Ordinaryundone

Member
Akuun said:
Oh, that's what he was doing? I must've missed that part. Thanks, that makes a lot more sense.

I see your point, but the game does draw a number of parallels between Low Chaos actions and being merciful/good. I remember the
Low Chaos ending monologue from the Outsider talked about how you showed mercy and restraint, which carried over into how Emily grew up to become a wise and kind ruler. Elsewhere in the game, Emily draws Corvo as a loving daddy if you consistently chose low chaos solutions instead of killing people, and certain NPCs (especially Samuel) generally being much more respectful and kind to you.

Besides Dishonored and on topic, I remember a scene in Black Ops 1 (I think? One of the CoD games anyway) where you put a shard of broken glass in a guy's mouth and then punch him in the jaw so that the glass shatters in the guy's mouth. Like seriously? That's just being violent for cheap shock value.
Click to expand...

I've never much cared for that ending, particularly because it implies you showed mercy when, as you've noted, you never really did. All of the conspirators get their just desserts, even if you don't kill them, and like you said many of the alternative low chaos methods are far and away more cruel than death (and many of them still result in death anyway, in a roundabout manner). All you've really shown Emily is that, when it comes to revenge, you can always get creative. Dishonored 2 actually does have you legitimately showing mercy in a couple of instances which makes the moments of D1-style Karmic justice that are still in stand out. If they'd simply said that the Outsider represents Chaos, not evil, and that you've denied him by choosing a more subdued path it would have made perfect sense but no, morality had to come into play.

And yeah, Black Ops 1 is ridiculously edgy at times. Especially given that right after you torture that guy he gets up and helps you fight through the level like nothing happened.
And he still ends up dying for nothing anyway. Also, Dimitri didn't need to go out like that :(
 
L

LakeEarth

Member
Grenchel said:
The trophy you get for going to look at her corpse is really gross. It's titled, "I didn't do it, but I wish I did"

Probably the most uncomfortable moment I have had playing a game.
Click to expand...

Yup. That achievement was quietly removed for the PS4 remaster.
 
L

LakeEarth

Member
Ithil said:
Then of course the very same game tries to have Kratos redeemed by protecting a woman later. Tone deaf?

They have a lot of work to do in their new sequel.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I kept having to protect Pandora, and I kept thinking... why does Kratos care (emotionally)? He kidnapped and killed a slightly older innocent just an hour earlier.

I also kept thinking "why do all the puzzles suddenly require a second person to solve, and what would Kratos have done if he didn't find Pandora" but this topic isn't about videogame logic so I'll stop.
 
J

jonezer4

Member
FlaygletheBagel said:
Breaking Bad last season spoilers:

Nothing in any artistic medium has ever made me feel worse than watching Hank get killed in the last season. It wasn't necessarily unexpected in the few moments before it happened, but my heart dropped into my f**king stomach when it did.
Click to expand...

Sure, but it didn't take you out of the narrative. If anything, it further entrenched you in Walt's miserable decline.
 
J

Jangowuzhere

Banned
The Albatross said:
In the videogame realm, I hated the waterboarding/torture mission in GTA V. I know it's a commentary on the fucked up American military, and Trevor's masochistic personality, but I really hated it. Sure, the developers maybe "Wanted me to feel uncomfortable" doing that, and maybe they'd counter "You have no problem shooting 50 innocent police/civilians, but can't torture a guy?" But it's beyond that. The 50 pedestrians who are killed every second in GTA are computer ragdolls that you feel no particular empathy towards. The police that chase you become military-state lunatics the second you accidentally bump their car.

The mission where you terrorize the foreign guy sets it up from the start that you're doing the wrong thing, that he's got a family and children, and that you're targeting the wrong guy... that the intel he gives you is all wrong. Now, I know that the game is making a commentary about intel from torture, and I get that it's a commentary on both violent games, gamer apathy towards killing/violence, and the American government, but... I really didn't like how, to progress in the game, I had to be an actor in the commentary... One that I knew both characters were wrong in, and one that I knew was a fools errand.

It breaks me from the narrative because when you're controlling a character in a videogame, you can't help but impose some of your role playing onto the character. Even when I'm controlling the psychotic madman Trevor, I am the one hitting the buttons in the game, not watching a movie, so doing that -- and given the audio clues and all else -- is not the character making those choices, it's me the player. Really didn't like it, in a game that I otherwise liked.
Click to expand...

It's badly executed commentary. After brutally torturing a man to near death, Trevor feels the need to lecture the man he tortured (and secretly us) on why torture is bad...

Fuck off GTAV. This is by far the shittest way to drive a point across. Zero subtlety to anything. The game literally just tells you torture is bad, even after the game forces you through various overly elaborate torture mini games.
 
S

Switch Back 9

a lot of my threads involve me fucking up somehow. Perhaps I'm a moron?
FlaygletheBagel said:
Breaking Bad last season spoilers:

Nothing in any artistic medium has ever made me feel worse than watching Hank get killed in the last season. It wasn't necessarily unexpected in the few moments before it happened, but my heart dropped into my f**king stomach when it did.
Click to expand...

I was SO glad when that finally happened. I hated that character.
 
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