Thoughts VS Opinions Why do some titles hold back on certain features such as gore?
Aside from the obvious reasons of keeping the ratings down or avoiding controversy, I see no reason for games to skimp on such factors. A gory game can provide more entertainment in the sickest way possible, I know it sounds disgusting but I find more ‘enjoyment’ out of bursting a creature/human’s brain with a rifle bullet than seeing him flop on the ground devoid from a scratch of any description apart from the pre-rendered scar etched on the supposedly ‘grizzled’ soldier that now lies dead on the floor.
There are numerous games that I can think of that with a bit of extra gore could have added extra immersion. Battlefield; you sink a glorious headshot with an M98B from range and deep down wish you had seen his head explode so his little medic friend couldn’t revive him. This is a prime example of where gore is missing, I’m not saying the poor bloke has to fly away in tatters of sinew and organs, I am saying there should be a little added extra than your every day spray of blood. Sword fighting games are also a big one for lack of gore. Skyrim made a good step forward by adding the occasional head removal with a finishing scene yet you could also argue that you did just spend the last 30 seconds rending the enemy with an evil-looking claymore, so where are the lopped off limbs?
I always bang on about this game but for good reason, Dark Messiah: Might and Magic handled the gore at a perfect level, while not being too over the top it had that gritty feeling when you did lop off the enemies limbs with a long sword. You could cut off hands, legs and heads and even make the buggers explode with a well placed fireball. It is this sort of gore that really lends itself to taking the game to the next level and is something in which we sadly lack in titles these days.
To avoid banging on about gore thus revealing how sick in the head I truly am, I will stop writing deeper into this subject matter and leave it to your thoughts. Are games too petty about gore, or is there another reason behind it all?
Thoughts VS Opinions is where the writers express their thoughts on games and news so
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Josh Atkinson
Battlefield 3 holds back because having the heads of American soldiers exploding would bring a certain uncomfortable feeling to a portion of their gaming audience: US Soldiers.
Si
Good point, but then look at World at War, both sides had the troops getting mutilated and set on fire. I think there is, or should be a clear line between games and reality. MW2 got away with having you hose down hundreds of unarmed civilians, gore isn’t much worse than that surely?
Josh Atkinson
That happened quite a few years ago though. The Iraq war is still a hot topic at the moment and with that developers still need to tread carefully. We won’t be seeing modern games go bloody in their depictions of this day and age of war for a good number of years. It is all about being respectful of both sides until neither will be offended as time passes.
Josh Atkinson
I forgot to reply to the second part of your comment. From what I remember MW2 wasn’t really a depiction of war but instead the escalation of global terrorism. It was a depiction that I don’t really agree with to this day and I feel that it didn’t really benefit the game in anyway. Activision did it as a move to give the game more controversy and it succeeded. I love violent games but like many gamers and non gamers have stated it was something that didn’t need to be presented even with the fact that it gives you the option to skip the entire scenario at the start of the game. If the game was released with that section of the game at this moment in time after the Aurora shooting then you can be damn well sure that MW2 would have been banned for the US.
Alexander Kraus
I think it depends on the aesthetics and experience the game is meant to deliver.
In the Battlefield game you mention, the game is meant to make you feel like one of those grizzled, 80s style action hero in films that take out swarms of bad guys with a cheap excuse of being a ‘good guy.’
If there was a scene in a Battlefield game where you have to apply a hand drill to a person’s neck to make them talk on where the nuclear bombs are, it raises the question on whether you are a good guy, right?
Another problem with gore is that its easily misused to make a game immature, or break immersion. In Dead Space you could slam your foot down on a body and sever its limbs. The game makes Isaac look like a power-house in the game for severing limbs so easily, yet he is meant to be an engineer and not some marine. Also, considering the gore in the game is over the top with the severing limbs it doesn’t lead to a feeling of horror or powerlessness, like so many other survival-horror games try to aim for.
Si
I agree with you on most of these points Alexander, as a matter of fact I understand how gore can be seriously overdone.
Take Fallout 3 for example, I used a simple kitchen knife to finish off a huge Super Mutant (who is about twice the size of the average man) and cut his leg off. It is this problem that (as you say) can make a game immature.
However there are ways of making the use of gore in a game capture the immersion. Lord of the Rings: War in the North has some brilliant finishing moves that are polished with ‘good’ gore, regardless of the fact the game itself could do with some polishing, I think this provides an example of what I was trying to get across.
Certainly after all is said and done what it boils down to is the discretion of the people creating these titles. I for one would not be the person to spit my dummy out because a game does not include heaps of blood shed.
Alexander Kraus
“Good” gore might be hard to define, I think. Gore is gore, and its up to whether some people like it or not. However, as you said, it depends on how its used in the game. I don’t know anything about the new Lord of the Rings game, but I think the latest “Mortal Kombat” is a good example.
Honestly, I see the gore in “Mortal Kombat” adds a campy, tongue-in-cheek humor to the game. The fatality for Jonny Cage is a good example: He rips off a person’s head with bare hands, and then rips their torso off with his upper-body strength. Cage is an egotistical version of Bruce Lee – a good martial artist, but capable of pulling off limbs or even a torso? The guy is the LEAST super-natural person of the roster, and yet he is capable of doing this. In that way, it just seems comical, kind of like the old Adam West Batman show.
Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings films, said in one of his first films to his mother (Bad Taste) that, and I loosely quote, “for every drop of blood, there is a drop of humor.” Even though this film and Dead Alive use gore as a means of making a comical scene, it could still be disgusting to some people. What’s one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure, I think.
Si
‘Good’ gore can only be defined by your own opinions and that is where you think it works. In my opinion, gore works where there should be gore, i.e. when a man gets attacked by a large axe or sword or shot with a high calibre bullet.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about it, but would the movie Black Hawk Down be where it is if “smoke” came out of the soldiers instead of blood?
I digress from the point, but it highlights what I was trying to say in this article. That is that games could put themselves out there a bit more with the graphic content and in doing so possibly add some more immersion or feeling to the game.
On the flip-side I also agree entirely with you’re last point made about the Peter Jackson quote and “What’s one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.” These things are a matter of opinion at the end of the day.