Zygoptera on 11/11/2008 at 04:47
Quote Posted by demagogue
Former mustard gas plant. Now producing unknown gas.
Technically, that would not mesh with either HCN (prussic acid, hydrogen cyanide, zyklon-b) used largely because it was easy to generate and transport as liquid or solid and which boils at just above room temperature or CO, used because it was easy to generate
in situ and without specialist equipment.
Fair enough not to know that though, it is something someone without a degree in chemistry (either a poster or a developer) would not be expected to know.
BEAR on 11/11/2008 at 04:48
I think reminding people of the capabilities of human beings is never a bad thing. A worse thing by far would be to ignore these acts or write them off as the works of "evil". That kind of imagery in the introduction to a game where you will undoubtedly be "killing" with little thought to "who" you are killing actually seems rather relevant. The fact that we have in the past, present, and in all likelihood future killed with the reckless abandon and carelessness that we do in videogames deserves at least the passing thought that such imagery is likely to induce.
june gloom on 11/11/2008 at 05:00
Quote Posted by ZymeAddict
Sorry, but that is completely untrue. There are tons of films out there on the Holocaust, as even this (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_films) partial list at Wikipedia attests. And those are just the ones which have it as the main storyline.
Yes, well. Point taken.
Quote Posted by Zygoptera
So, you hate SS2
and Bioshock? Because Levine's first writing effort was a little known, poorly remembered and critically panned title called...
"Thief: The Dark Project"In any case, even Ken pales into insignificance before the awesome which is Mr Chris Avellone.
I had forgotten that Levine wrote TDP, but it doesn't invalidate my point (I was using his name as a generalization- perhaps I should have said Smiths.) My point was that a lot of people we once venerated have proven themselves to be really quite, erm, less than stellar these days. And I don't hate Bioshock, for what it's worth.
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
He hated Planescape Torment and Fallout 2 as well.
Yes well, my problem with those is that they simply weren't fun. It doesn't matter how good a game is written if it's saddled with unfun gameplay. FO2 is a badly unbalanced big bag of boring suck, and thanks to the horrible engine PS:T's gameplay is
aggressively inaccessible- a term I've used only one other time to describe the original Metroid.
demagogue on 11/11/2008 at 05:18
Quote Posted by Zygoptera
Technically, that would not mesh with either HCN ... or CO
Just to clarify, are you saying what
I said doesn't mesh with it, or you've played it/watched the video and what's in the game doesn't? Because I might not have (probably haven't) reported it accurately, and what's to say it isn't zyklon-b or CO?
To my eyes, at one point you shoot a container and visible gas starts leaking, for which you need a gas-mask. Something seems to be led through pipes throughout the facility, but I don't know it's the same gas, or even if it is gas. We don't "know" what you can see was produced there with specialist equipment, or brought in from off-site, or anything about it except what you can visibly see once it's released. You could watch the video and you tell me what you see with more expert eyes, since I don't even want to report it not knowing what to look for. We know the place used to produce mustard gas, but that doesn't really answer anything going on now, and still leaves a lot of questions open about why it was reinstated with the new role of holding POWs. (It could be the designers weren't clear themselves, intentionally or inadvertently. For that matter, looking at it forensically could also be misleading to how the designers wanted the gas and POWs to work in the fiction.)
It also still begs the question about what the designers were thinking when they gave POWs the leading role in the narrative in the first place. The writers wanted to emphasize that there's something dodgy going on in this place with gas and POWs. That was the point of the mission, of its narrative.
My original point was just that that is invoking the holocaust narrative. The details above are actually largely irrelevant to that point. It actually isn't essential what the literal "truth" is (as far as a streamlined fiction that breaks the laws of physics every 3 seconds can even have one), or the technical details IRL, or even if they meant to be intentionally ambiguous. I think the way they wrote the narrative only makes sense (or anyway makes the best sense) against the background of what we know about the holocaust. Otherwise you're left scratching your head, why on earth would designers of a game want to emphasize, as the purpose of an entire mission, the connection between gas and POWs as a finale to a WW2 game? What possible function would it serve except as something that pulls on the strings of the holocaust narrative, to bring it into play? The narrative is an integral part of how you understand the fiction, however you want to interpret it finally.
It's a point about the story-telling, not forensic details. That's the only point I was really trying to make from the beginning. It was actually more like the observation that: isn't it strange that they would bring the holocaust narrative into play so purposefully (the designers wrote it knowing what people would think if they put the pieces together, with all this business about gas and POWs), but then do it so obliquely, and be so coy about it? If you weren't trying to connect the dots you wouldn't even notice. Is it just for us to contemplate the possibility? To make us feel better about the mission with that narrative hanging in the background, or to give it an air of moral importance? Is it better to hint at a holocaust connection than make it obvious? Why? Those are the sorts of questions I was thinking about. It says something about the use of the holocaust in fiction, in whatever guise it comes into play.
Ok, I think I've milked the point about as far as it will go by now...
Sulphur on 11/11/2008 at 12:18
I'm mildly surprised that a WWII FPS, from EA no less, can actually raise such questions. Whether by design, or by accident, that's still a good thing.
Part of the problem is that game devs are content to mine the same old FPS tropes from the days of Doom. Play whatever side - the Reds, or the Yanks, whomever - you're still tromping from Point A to Point B and killing soldiers at the next set piece.
People have yet to make use of what games are good at - immersiveness and interactivity - and fuse those things with real narrative choice.
I don't mind the normal 'kill 'em all' missions, but people in the war were not just mindless killing machines. They had thoughts, emotions, fears that played on them while they were fighting.
After a mission, what if one your friends in the platoon decided to desert? Where's the option to talk him out of it, or tell him to do whatever he wants, or even to join him? If your CO yells at you to do something suicidal, where's the option to say 'Fuck you, sir!'?
As an aside, a game could actually drive home the horror of the Holocaust more than a movie could. Imagine playing from the perspective of a Jewish boy or girl captured by the Nazis, seeing through their eyes.
As you play, you see flashes of their life before the Nazis came, then flash back to life after you were caught, right until that fateful moment inside the concentration camp where you and all of your friends are crowded, herded into a dark room. I can't imagine having the power to go on with the game after something like that.
Thirith on 11/11/2008 at 15:13
Quote Posted by Sulphur
As an aside, a game could actually drive home the horror of the Holocaust more than a movie could. Imagine playing from the perspective of a Jewish boy or girl captured by the Nazis, seeing through their eyes.
As you play, you see flashes of their life before the Nazis came, then flash back to life after you were caught, right until that fateful moment inside the concentration camp where you and all of your friends are crowded, herded into a dark room. I can't imagine having the power to go on with the game after something like that.
While I find the idea tremendously interesting, I think we're a long way away from this. Unless you're an indie developer, your publisher will look at this and say, "Interesting idea. Do you honestly think that a single person will pay money for this depressing crap, though?" Right now games are first and foremost entertainment. You get people who watch feel-bad films or read feel-bad books, but there isn't much of an audience (yet) for feel-bad games. You have to trick the player into this sort of thing...
catbarf on 11/11/2008 at 20:43
Quote Posted by dethtoll
I can't remember if it was catbarf or Aja who insisted games were not art. Probably Aja, which would explain a lot actually.
Sure wasn't me.
Videogames, when properly done, are just as valid a form of expression as conventional art- and perhaps more introspective in that they show the player the consequences of his own actions, rather than simply present a set piece.
That being said, if a game deals with the theme in a heavy-handed manner, then I'd prefer it be cut entirely. I didn't like the morality in Bioshock because it was painfully obvious and black/white. I hated the jackasses in Army of Two high-fiving each other over piles of dead Arabs. But Deus Ex, for example, was able to explore themes of terrorism and government in an enjoyable manner on the level of any film.
As for the OP, I'll wait and see before passing judgment on COD5. If the game uses the footage to show the brutality of the Nazi party, then fine. It is doing so in a brutally direct but effective way. If the game uses the footage to depict all Germans in WW2 as anti-American psychopathic Jew-killers, then I won't bother.
Zygoptera on 11/11/2008 at 20:57
Quote Posted by demagogue
Just to clarify, are you saying what
I said doesn't mesh with it, or you've played it/watched the video and what's in the game doesn't? Because I might not have (probably haven't) reported it accurately, and what's to say it isn't zyklon-b or CO?
Well, I cannot comment on the game itself and what it intends as I haven't played it, though I tend to think that you are right as to what
was intended. However, the general methodology was, in reality, to either produce carbon monoxide on site (which, assuming you do not need pure CO, is extremely easy to do- basically burn something containing carbon in a confined space- no specialist equipment required, a pass through line from a running engine will do it) or to use HCN (zyklon-b) which was very deadly, 'easy to use', could be produced elsewhere (primarily occupied Czechoslovakia, iirc) and readily transported because you can 'freeze' it easily and it will become a gas spontaneously at room temperature and pressure.
Basically the premise of the level- freeing prisoners from a poison gas plant- would not have happened in reality, but is something 'cool' the developers thought up. That doesn't really speak as to what they intended though.
Sulphur on 12/11/2008 at 06:43
Quote Posted by Thirith
While I find the idea tremendously interesting, I think we're a long way away from this. Unless you're an indie developer, your publisher will look at this and say, "Interesting idea. Do you honestly think that a single person will pay money for this depressing crap, though?" Right now games are first and foremost entertainment. You get people who watch feel-bad films or read feel-bad books, but there isn't much of an audience (yet) for feel-bad games. You have to trick the player into this sort of thing...
I know, I wouldn't want an entire game to run like that, myself; but as a prologue or an interlude for a game about WWII, it would help put into perspective what the other parts of the war were like.
Games are capable of making serious statements now beyond BLAM BLAM BLAM, and they've been attempting to do so for a while (arguably, you could say Interactive Fiction's been doing it since the Infocom days). There's far more room for this in games now than ever before, so all the industry needs to do is take advantage of it. I guess they just need the right push in the right direction.
AxTng1 on 12/11/2008 at 06:53
Quote Posted by dethtoll
It doesn't matter how good a game is written if it's saddled with unfun gameplay. FO2 is a badly unbalanced big bag of boring suck, and thanks to the horrible engine PS:T's gameplay is
aggressively inaccessibleFor all that I love Torment, I agree completely. It's so hard to get people to play it when they see the 640x480 dithered headache in action, I usually just sent them a link to the script. Even Baldur's Gate players turn Torment down.
Having said that, doesn't "aggressively inaccessible" cover all "great" works of art? How many of you hav-
Oh wait this is TTLG :D
Go onto any other gaming forum - Steampowered, GameFAQs or even The Escapist, and see how many have read War and Peace or listened to Holst's Planets suite performed. Not many, I'm guessing. 99% of art is the warm elitist feeling you get by understanding more than the proles. Any form of media is divided into the critically acclaimed and the populist. We have that now in a number of ways - Hardcore vs Casual is the easiest to see, but even casual gaming is still somehow a dirty secret. Until Zero Punctuation gets onto Newsnight Review, we have a long wait.
Also Torment needs a remake. Just don't let Bethesda do it.
