How was the gameplay in Chaos Theory clunky?
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Splinter Cell Blacklist's torture scene is cut
- Thread starter SolidSnakex
- Start date
How was the gameplay in Chaos Theory clunky?
He also like Absolution the best too. It's clear his priorities are on flashy graphics and smooth animation over actual gameplay depth.
I think it's exactly the context that made it pretty shitty (from the little we've seen) with the military wankery bullshit undertone.
There are plenty of fantastic gory horror films that are (partly) fun because of their use of extreme violence, after all.
bigboss370
Member
good for them. i might actually be considering buying the game now. as long the game doesn't have any political messages in it (like the torture scene) or real world conflict crap , or is just "'murica, fuck yeah", then I actually might buy it.
I actually dont care what the content was. I just think in any form of art be it movies or games , content should not be changed because someone is offended. If the creator does not think its offensive he should put it in no matter how tasteless someone else thinks it is. This should always be the case whether its a shitty transformers film or a Kubrick film.
I'm glad it got cut. It was tolerable in Conviction because the whole story was about revenge. This was the one time it was personal, and he wasn't even employed anywhere. He was totally rogue.
Now he's the leader of the whole fourth echelon and he's just carving people up with knives? What the hell? It was gross and excessive. It's totally out of character for the series, and for Sam. Splinter Cell had a few torture scenes in the past where it was the "bad guys" doing it. Really shows how things have changed over the last 10 years to now have Sam carve up people for intel when they're even begging him to stop. Watch the trailers. One of those guys wasn't even putting up a fight at all. It's so weird.
And their decision to not change the setting in some parts of their game is even more irresponsible. The game is about a killed US ambassador, and they show him on the floor with blood all over and then you go shoot up Benghazi?
How did war games get so trashy? It used to be controversial just to set a game in historic wars like WWII, decades after the fact. Now they literally turn current conflicts into playgrounds for amusement. It's unbelievable really.
Now he's the leader of the whole fourth echelon and he's just carving people up with knives? What the hell? It was gross and excessive. It's totally out of character for the series, and for Sam. Splinter Cell had a few torture scenes in the past where it was the "bad guys" doing it. Really shows how things have changed over the last 10 years to now have Sam carve up people for intel when they're even begging him to stop. Watch the trailers. One of those guys wasn't even putting up a fight at all. It's so weird.
And their decision to not change the setting in some parts of their game is even more irresponsible. The game is about a killed US ambassador, and they show him on the floor with blood all over and then you go shoot up Benghazi?
How did war games get so trashy? It used to be controversial just to set a game in historic wars like WWII, decades after the fact. Now they literally turn current conflicts into playgrounds for amusement. It's unbelievable really.
Bony Manifesto
Member
I think most people are revolted by the act of torture, as they should be! That's not to say it shouldn't be in games, but if you're not using the audience's distaste for it in any meaningful way, and instead are expecting them to be cheering along with the game's protagonist as he unflinchingly tortures and murders someone, then perhaps you should be thinking about the kind of person you're making this game for.
Burgess_101
Member
The same way in Spec Ops you dont want to shoot people, could work in Splinter Cells favour if they play it right.
Meccanical
Member
I did want to shoot people in Spec Ops...
InfectedZero
Member
It is a video game. I am glad they stopped that digital pain on that computer person.
Burgess_101
Member
NullPointer
Member
So true. Current conflicts are now amusement rides. Torture is interactive entertainment.
Its repulsive.
Creative works aren't made in a vacuum. Even Kubrick's works are influenced by external factors.
Anything involving traversal or intricate navigation felt like I was controlling a robot in all of the older games. Shifting between your 17 variants of lethal and nonlethal ammo was clunky. Hell, switching weapons in general felt poorly designed. Oh, and don't forget to constantly keep an eye on your light meter and your sound meter, because you're fucked if you rely on your own senses of sight and hearing. Just off the top of my head.
My opinion, of course. Splinter Cell fans make me hat Chaos Theory more the same way Hitman fans make me hate Blood Money more.
Actually, after some time of reflection, my favorite Hitman is still Hitman 2. But you had no way of knowing that. Sorry to ruin your flawed assumption of my tastes.
SlipperyMoose
Member
Well I never saw or played the section they cut so I don't know if it would have been a fun section of the game or not. However, it is a bit of a bummer that they cut it for that reason. The game is suppose to be violent and that torture actually did/does take place in settings like that unfortunately.
SolidSnakex
Member
Because games are often emulate movies and TV shows. Many people have compared Sam to Jack Bauer over the years. Torturing people was one of the things that Bauer was known for doing in 24. The difference here is that those TV shows and movies will just go on through with whatever they want to show while video games are still held to a different standard for some reason.
When it's the scene from the E3 demo then I don't really mind. Seemed pretty pointless and just added for shock value/to be cool.
That after you brutally torture the guy you get the "moral" choice of killing him or just knocking out was pretty dumb as well.
That after you brutally torture the guy you get the "moral" choice of killing him or just knocking out was pretty dumb as well.
Baby, that ain't clunky. Assassin's Creed is clunky. GTA is clunky. Fable II is clunky. There's nothing clunky about Chaos Theory.
True. External factors might help him form an opinion but he should not be scared to showcase that opinion in his art. An artist should not believe in certain content and then analyze whether it would offend someone and accordingly remove or add that to his work. If the dev's thought it was okay and not offensive when they put it, they should stick to it. Ppl who liked that content in the end product would praise it and those who do not like it will lampoon it. That's life.
Burgess_101
Member
I wish we had games with writing as great as A Clockwork Orange.
keltickennedy
Member
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoUfmN5RrcQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=75s
I don't agree with having torture scenes merely for shock value...but when it is handled well for instance like it was in Chaos Theory it can be good. It was actually a memorable moment for me in that game when you had the choice to cut down the body after Lambert told you to just leave it.
The game wasn't censored by law.
They changed it based on a marketing decision, this game is pure marketing and focus groups, nothing more nothing less.
I think that's also simplifying the issue.
Human Centipede has torture in it, yet is a comedic horror that has you "cheering" now for the victims, now for the torturer/doctor, for example.
And thank God art can be a little more complicated and nuanced than "bad things should be only painted in an obviously bad light!".
I think it's more appropriate to say that CT is much more slower paced than Conviction(which I actaully enjoyed). Clunky would imply that certain game mechanics were incompetently made which is far from I would describe CT. Every design aspect of CT from the variable speed modes, CTE animations to dynamic sound detection was deliberately made to heighten the evasive stealth gameplay. Yes, it was possible to go Rambo and murder everybody(heck you have the option for assualt focused equipment in the beginning of each level) but direct firefights were to lot more difficult, well at least to me, than in say Conviction.
Which is exactly why I called out the dev's in the first place. They do not have the balls to stand by what they put. If it was censored by law that would have been a far more serious freedom of expression problem.
faceless007
Member
This is a nice, idealistic view to have, and it sure sounds hard to disagree with--who thinks content should be censored?--but it doesn't really reflect the real world. Content creators make thousands of decisions in everything they do based on how they think their audience will react to it, and design and edit their works to avoid turning off the audience entirely. This might be as simple as cutting an animation down several frames so it doesn't appear as violent, or toning down sound effects or music because they're proving too intense for players. And it might mean cutting entire scenes if they're not accomplishing what the creators intend them to, but that's not censorship, that's just dealing with the reality of struggling to create something with an intended effect.
Most creators' default position is not to make something as extreme as possible; doing so can often lose an audience entirely. Rather, they usually have some goal or theme or feel in mind that they want to get at, and hammer away at the finer details of a work until they think they've made something that embodies that. And the ultimate judge of whether they succeed isn't the creator, it's the audience. So while it sounds nice to say creators should do whatever they want, that leads to games like Derek Smart's, and it's naive to think that nothing creators do is or should be influenced by how they think the audience will react to it.
Honestly, I always got the impression they were already putting in things based on what they thought people wanted, rather than some pure artistic vision. Taking a few things out because they miscalculated or botched the reveal doesn't seem like much of a change to me.
They already admitted that they're making 3 types of gameplay styles to cater to 3 types of players. They already admitted that they only showed the non-stealth sections off because they were under the impression that slow stealth would be "boring." The whole project is guided by their perception of what audience reaction will be before they show it off.
Yeah... The cheering for that was just.... Gross.
As much as I love the early SC games, I actually find it hard it to go back to the first and Pandora Tomorrow due to their movement controls. But in CT I feel I have much greater control of Sam than any game in the franchise especially when it comes to speed.
I never had a problem with weapon switching, you just hold down the ctrl key and immediately choose the desired ammo for the SCK. I actually found it to be pretty intuitive especially when you have to consider the deliberately slow weapon switching animation.
I understand your criticism of the light/sound meter but I honestly wasn't fan of Conviction's handling of the mechanic. Especially that B&W filter.
VeryGooster
Banned
"People were not comfortable with the torture."
Airstrikes.
Airstrikes.
keltickennedy
Member
I wonder if they dropped that entire level from E3. Cause that was a TORTURE to watch....
If he is he'll find Blacklist to be more "clunky" than conviction.
Not really. Chaos Theory has more depth. Conviction is much more fluid. Just my opinion, though I really don't see how it's that controversial if you've played both games.
Bony Manifesto
Member
Totally. I never meant to suggest that media should always have a clear 'good vs. evil' story, with the baddie getting his comeuppance at the end. But if you enter a more morally grey place, I think you've got to jump in with both feet. You can't just make a story about a detective who solves crimes and rapes people, and just use the rape scenes as titillation to spice up the standard procedural stuff. Once you've opened that can of worms, I feel you're obligated to do something with it.
Metal Gear?!
Member
In Modern Warfare 2's case it was more of the game (and the previous one) being about only shooting people in the face who are trying to actually shoot you, rather than mowing down crowds of innocents, so I think the skippable content switch made some sense there. That IW didn't stop to consider whether the airport rampage was a good idea in the first place is another matter.
You are either a sociopath or an intellectual child if you think hurting someone until they say something gets you intel.
The scene where he stabbed someone with a knife and continually thrust it around the wound until he got what he wanted to hear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne72x-Y3aic#t=91s
What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you all 12? Do you really think your absolutist artistic vision bullshit actually applies to multimillion dollar productions funded by multinational megacorps hoping to sell to a mass audience?
Here's a hint, when the developers fund their own game with their own money and don't have to worry about sales at all then they can put whatever the fuck they want in it, whether it's torture to "get intel" or child rape to "get intel." But when Ubisoft funds it in the hopes of getting us to buy it, then we get a say in it.
If the story is still about a group with the demand that America stop invading and occupying countries and how this is a terrible awful totally unreasonable thing and they must all be killed because AMERICA then I don't think so.
I think it speaks volumes that torture in Chaos Theory was something the "bad guys" did and in Blacklist they were going to make it something Sam Fucking Fisher did.
That is the thing. An artist should not be obligated to anything or anyone. He can make the exact same story as you said and we can refuse to buy it. Problem solved.
Good point. I agree that this is a business after all and there will always be a compromise happening at various stages in development. It just upsets me whenever someone remove's content because of some public outcry. We should actually try to minimize this nexus that brings about a need to appeal to everyone mentality.
The reactions to this pretty much sums up how the US reacts to the actual torture of actual terrorists that has actually been carried out by the government. These games don't handle this sort of thing with anything other than a way to be bad ass. The hooting and hollering during the torture scene in this and the face shots in The Last of Us trailer at E3 were both really gross. I used to think that shit was cool too, once upon a time. When I was 15.
Isn't this basically the plot to all the modern war simulators with the exception of Spec Ops: The Line? That's why I have less than zero interest in them.
NullPointer
Member
This sounds about right. Chaos Theory had more depth to the stealth, and Conviction provided more depth to the action, especially your options when you get spotted.
I'm hoping they took the good in Conviction, but with more of the old school stealth, in more interesting and open environments.
Burgess_101
Member
I understand its all about putting food on the table and having a stable job but I would honestly have a hard time as a developer cutting out content in my game because people were offended and the higher ups made the business decision to cut it out to make it more 'accessible'. I don't think I could do it personally.
Hopefully it'll be CT's brand of stealth and Conviction's level of action.
As long as Blacklist feels like it has more parts Chaos Theory (the tiebreaker being the levels) then I don't care if it has Conviction-style action, Derrick and others be damned.
Meh. I really don't care either way whether that scene is in or not. I do care however if they're making cuts just to avoid courting controversy.
Ditto for scenes added for the same reason. Only reason they should be adding or removing material is to improve the game. If that was their rationale, then I'm fine with it.
Ditto for scenes added for the same reason. Only reason they should be adding or removing material is to improve the game. If that was their rationale, then I'm fine with it.