Ashley BirdOne thing that every one wants in a new game that it looks more amazing and more realistic than anything before it. Even the most outrageous of sci fi shooter with a ridiculously implausible storyline still needs to look good. With this quest for verisimilitude becoming more realized with every new console generation I have started to wonder if there will ever come a point that real becomes to much for people to take. Films like Saw and Hostel don’t seem to have found any problem with grisly gore since both sets of films have spawned numerous sequels each more depraved than the last that continue to pull in huge audiences but I’m not convinced that video games will fare as well. When you watch a film, especially a film like Saw, it is easy to just watch without really getting involved with the story or the characters which means when they meet their gruesome end the emotional response elicited is minimal. When you work through a game on the other hand you control the figures on the screen and are forced to become involved in the story unfolding in front of you.
While playing through The Last of Us remastered for example I actually found myself feeling quite protective of Ellie, although I know she is simply made up of some pixels on a screen I still wanted to keep her safe from harm. Admittedly if she died it was game over for me to but it was more than that I tell, we had come so far together after all. So imagine my horror every time I failed in my guardian duties and was forced to witness a Clicker rip out her throat with his teeth. It was almost enough to leave rocking back and forth in the corner. Obviously it wasn’t enough to stop me but imagine if you will twenty or thirty years down the line when Oculous Rift and its various VR competitors have taken gaming to the next level and through some new fangled technology video games are indistinguishable from live action films how disturbing and post traumatic stress inducing this form of entertainment could become.
For now though there seems to be no limit to the brutality audiences are willing to accept and there is a steady supply of trashy films to abate the blood lust. Perhaps this should worry us a little but that’s coming from some one who recently watched The Raid 2 and laughed through so incredibly brutal fight scenes so perhaps I’m just talking crap. I can’t help feeling that eventually peoples tastes in games will stray from the violent shooters to an altogether more serene experience and the devolopers will be forced to adapt to a new way of entertaining the world or lose out to those that will. All of this is just the musings of a gamer how ever and I don’t know if any of it will come about or even if it matters but I am curious to see if peoples attitudes will change at all in the years to come, including my own. Will the day ever come when real gets to real. Until that day I’m going to carry on blowing stuff up on Battlefield.
