The Problem with Power Fantasies - We're Not Always Right - Extra Credits
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- čas přidán 3. 10. 2017
- Games embrace power fantasies that let the player do whatever they want, to whomever they want, without anyone questioning the morality of their actions. But questioning and re-evaluating our choices is an important part of life, and players don't need to be treated so delicately that we never address these issues in game.
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In Crusader Kings 2 I once muredered my own brother and one of my own children, and then became a vile, cruel and hated king who eventually was imprisoned and executed, and all of it was part of a complicated and intricate plan to make sure that my nephew wold be successor to the throne because he was perfectly suited for it (and thus the best hope for the dynasty). There were a few times during all of that when I asked myself what the hell I was doing. Good times.
yeah but paradox games revolve around building empires and there's little to no morality in building an empire, especially when Machiavellianism is so effective. I mean, we all know killing babies is a bad thing to do, but on the other hand the world would be better of if a strong, genius, gregarious man could sit on the Byzantine throne and he also happens to be your apparent heir.
They also aren't power fantasies because players aren't mechanically superior to the AI, just smarter.
It's a power fantasy in relation to real life, as IRL I don't rule nations and command vast armies for some reason. Most characters in action games aren't superhuman either. Nathan Drake was mentioned in the video for example.
And there is a lot of morality in empire building. The world isn't better off with my nephew on the throne, my dynasty is. I'm sure the common people suffer almost as much regardless of who rules them. Effectiveness isn't an excuse for unethical actions. The paradox game mechanics do not reflect this however, but I'm not saying it would have been better if they did.
In CK2 I seduced my son's wife in hopes of impregnating her because I had the Genius trait and my son hadn't. I wanted to have a shot in at least my grandson having the trait and continuing my lineage with an awesome character.
@fenrir Whoa calm down there Lelouch. XD
So no one here actively aimed to have a spawn of the devil son? And tried to start his own satanist nation when the three witches of the apocalypse arrive?
I just remembered this comic where these two guys were on a couch, one is playing a game and says, "Ugh, why does this cave have so many monsters?!" And the other guy responds, "They live there." First guy thinks about it and chucks the controller.
Toshimi1043 Tell me where this comic is.
Cyanide & Happiness
explosm.net/comics/3486/
Toshimi1043 hehehe, I've seen that one too
And that feeling is how we wound up with Undertale. When I played ESO, I often snuck my way past mooks for similar reasons.
Terrible Writing Advice: "If a storey is a cake, then power fantasy can be thought of as the icing of the cake. And the best cake is basically all icing and no cake."
Love Triangle!!!
Kitchen Sink elves
Oh, YES! ANOTHER TWA FAN!!! Spread the word! TWA must RISE!
“You’re lucky I can’t do the G R A V E L Y
V O I C E, or I would’ve killed that too!”
Bloodborne is a power fantasy? I spent most of that game having my guts painted across cobblestone streets by the things that should not be.
Harmon Lanager I guess it's a power fantasy if you've played the other souls games and you're alredy a master if the mechanics
Uuhh you did thins with words there which are very nice in my Head (compliment on the phrasing ^^)
In the end, you killed them. You defeated them all, and it felt good. That is a power fantasy, the difficulty only made it sweeter.
The story even emphasizes how little you know about the world and how little control you have over things.
All 3 endings are BAD endings. Either you forget everything and are left even more powerless and doomed, you are enslaved, or you become an infant God with no concept of humanity. Neither option gives you any real power to change anything. Hell even the people you "save" in the chapel are all doomed regardless of your actions.
Id say bloodborne is the opposite of a power fantasy, you're struggling to gain power against the unnatural beasts around you, but ultimately you have so very little.
bukvaQ ooor you failed, and helped to validate those that succeed.
In Hotline Miami, the player must always backtrack after completing the level, walking past the carnage they've just created. It serves as a cool down period from the chaotic, heart-pounding action. At the same time, it forces the player to see how grotesque and brutal the game is and the violence the player is causing. However, I'm not sure how effective this is at making the player question the power fantasy, as the people you're killing are all faceless Russian mobsters and you're never given any reason to empathize with them.
Yeah, I never had the reflective mentality when coming back through the level. It was more like "Damn that was tough, look at all these guys that almost killed me!"
EDIT: It just hit me that there actually was one level where I felt bad, and it was in the police station.
I actually thought it was pretty effective at communicating that the player is an unhinged druggie with a bloodlust. You the player, don't necessarily feel bad for the actions of the character you're playing as, even though they are your avatar to this world.
(Before Hotline Miami 2) I actually like to imagine that Jacket is just a guy with no particular interest in killing the Russian Mafia but gets filled with an unbridled rage that is triggered by special phone messages and puts on a mask, like a sleeper agent who's been brainwashed.
Except for the levels where you're not just hunting mobsters, and you slaughter innocent civilians. Like the police station, where you kill policemen by the bucketload, or the homeless man from the very first level, or everyone in the hotel, or the people in the club, or any other number of your victims, really.
I actually think such sequences often happen in games which fall under the idea of "power fantasies". Some interesting cases off the top of my head include:
- The torture sequence in GTA 5. I'm sure not everyone will agree, but it's incredibly unsettling to watch and really makes me wonder if I should be doing things just because I can do them. Actually, the entire idea of Trevor as a whole seems like a great look at the power fantasy player's mindset. He's violent and unstable...basically the only way you get an actual person out of the in-game actions you see in a typical GTA player. You get thrown the question if what you're doing in a GTA game is right purely through his actions...I mean, the heist he plans and executes has no reward in memory serves. You just murdered half security force for nothing and are told that nothing good will happen out of it other than having federal agencies hunting you down. A nice little touch in my mind.
- Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 went as simple as showing you the ramifications of your actions. Cheat on a character in-game and you'll either be treated with one of the most heart breaking sequences (Persona 4) or get your ass handed to you by all the hearts you've broken (Persona 5) by the game's end. It's an interesting shift as you're pretty much set up in game to date any female character you wish.
- Spec Ops is probably going to be thrown a crazy number of mentions in the comment section here...so I'll just leave it at that. Same goes with Undertale.
- Though it may be a bit more of an esoteric case, I always found the ending of Red Dead Redemption to be an excellent example of this. You can have all the conviction and drive in the world, but it won't save you from a hail of gunfire. And no matter how many people you kill, it won't save you from your ultimate fate. Nor will your many sacrifices end up preventing your worst fears (namely, your son following in your admittedly checkered footsteps).
- On the same esoteric look, the little plot there is in Shadow of the Colossus really makes you wonder if you're actually the "good guy" in all of this.
Certainly, some games are fairly low on the scale of how much consequence they inject for your actions. The Elder Scrolls is a fairly common case for this (though I'm one to not steal unless it fits in the mindset of the character I'm playing, so maybe I'm wrong about this for the typical player).
Русские мафиози тоже люди, sooka blyad'. Cheeke breeke lives matter
I can't remember an experience more unsettling than hearing Dan go "Woohoohoo, we're evil now."
Big Joel in the gaming house.
Hello verified man
Hello there Joel.
2:51 for those wanting a time stamp
Spec Ops: The Line
"Do you feel like a hero yet?"
"How many Americans you killed today?"
Yes and 241
Yeah, felt like they actively were avoiding mentioning the go to example. That game is only really great for that one aspect.
"Here's the thing..."
*shows The Thing*
I love it.
I almost spat out my coffee at the "HEHEHEHHEE I'M EEEVIL NOOOOWWW TEEHEHEHEE".
Totally died there, myself. Imagining Fable 1 as a kid...
Sabrina Boynton i'm thinking Overlord myself.
I read that right as he said it, and it made me laugh for a good five minutes.
Nicholas Whaling sounds just like the jester from overlord
he pulled off that voice surprisingly well
"Minion, What are you doing? Those were people! With lives, and families! AWWW WHO AM I KIDDING? SCREW THOSE GUYS!"
I've always loved how Borderlands lampshades the way you rescue Pandora, by killing Pandora.
Me in response to Claptrap: "They were total insane pychopaths!"
Me by the end of the game: "Well, I'm probably a totally nuts psycho too. At least I'm not an asshole though."
I frequently tried to do the more moral thing when given the option (which, let's face it, wasn't often), specifically because I was a mass-murdering douchecanoe the rest of the time.
I thought the character was an asshole though.
I mean, the things you would do for Iridium...
NZPIEFACE !
Ridi-ridi-ridium!!!
-Tiny Tina's slot machine in Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon's Keep
Sebastien L'Abbe you completely messed up the quote.. sigh
Pokemon just oozes Power fantasy. The player is never called out for anything. Most legendary/mythical Pokémon are controlling some part of the world. Eg: catching Dialga leaves time to absolutely fall out of motion. No one comes up to you and says “dude, times going out control, why’d you do that?” It’s always “Wow *name* you did it!”, as said person fades out of existence.
Stop-Mootions Man: anyone who questions you can be time phased out of existence 😀
I remember catching Arceus... *literally GOD* ... and no one did anything. They even had a church to this dude in 4th Gen and no one noticed that the guy they worshiped was in my pc somewhere.
But then again, some of these monsters literally stand there not fleeing & almost never has there been a time something went haywire
Who says that time can't be controlled from inside a plastic ball?
The series isn’t always like that though. The villains of Black and White do actually bring up the question of whether or not Pokémon Trainers are just glorified dog-fighters.
Hah that "Are we the baddies" reference.
I miss Peep Show :(
@@user-pz6yh3st7f that mitchell and webb look
I fOuNd a gAme fOr bAdDIEs 😩🥵
Metal Gear Solid 3. You spend the entire game brutally murdering a ton of people only to get confronted with every single soldier you've killed haunt you in one section.
I think this is enhanced by the fact that the game is a stealth game and you don't /have/ to kill anyone, even bosses can be beaten with tranq darts. I beat MGS3 like 10+ times as a kid, and this is part of why I liked it so much.
Sounds cool.
And even in the instance of The Sorrow's encounter, it's not necessarily judging you for taking the lethal route. Yes you're confronted with all the soldiers you've killed... but there's no voice calling you a monster. Just a sequence where you're asked to look at your actions and consider. And really I feel like that's why it works so well, if not better than some instances.
Baron of Beard
The best part is that you actually have a choice in doing that. It's an additional theme that's in the game that's a part of the series's totality.
i think metal gear rising did an amazing job of it too~
even more contrast there i think
In MGS1... when Liquid says "You enjoy all the killing, that's why!" and you realize... he's not talking to Snake. He's talking to YOU. That's a chilling moment.
"...heck"
*tiny snek pops out*
A+, Scott. Never stop with the visuals.
And then there is the scoring system that sets perfect stealth approach as the gold standard in later MGS games, especially Peace Walker with Perfect Stealth challenge missions.
MGS4 makes a flashback dialogue using Liquid Snake's same lines to nauseate Old Snake and cost him stamina if the kill count hits milestones.
"We ho hooo I'm EEEVIL now hehe..." *Set as default ringtone*
_Goes to church_
"In reality, villages are going to be plunged into mass poverty"
And the local blacksmith would have solid cash issues as I regularly sell him a ton of armours and weapons and took all his money XD
"We don't always have to be right"
Gosh darn it Dan, you are so right
Really made me rethink how I approach some stories
lol ikr?
we HAVE those game that make us think like Spec Ops: The Line and Mass Effect and Undertale.
this episode was kind of insulting when you stop to think about what he's implying here.
Rule 1: Dan is always right
Rule 2: if Dan is wrong refer to rule 1
I've always been aware of my "character's" actions in a game I'm playing. I've played "characters" that been good and those I've played as evil. I know it is a game and it has no effect upon my personal code of ethics or morality.
When I was a kid a group of my friends and I went to a party. Even though we were all under age we had alcohol and the guy that drove us to the party got drunk.
I argues that we should't let him drive us home but no one else agreed, so even though I was right, I was still left.
Gosh darn it *James. he writes these, remember, although I'm sure Dan has some input.
I used to play Maplestory with my dad and after a while he mentioned that in order to grind we had been committing mass genocide. We simply laughed it off because it was funny and kept playing. We both stopped but we still laugh at it because of that. I never felt guilty or quit because of that, it was cool to think about and move on.
Jaiya Papaya I think that is the part that is sort of missed. Some games, most games are just fun, that is what they are ment for. You really don't want to mull over the moral issues. It would be a powerful engaging moment in the right narrative game, or even as in your case a fairly comical moment.
Runescape players probably turned cows into an endangered species.
Vidar D I think James talked about that in his video about the retro trend: we love retro games because “they are unabashedly about joy”, shamelessly silly and relaxing, as I think he put it.
"You're here because you want to be something you're not: a hero."
People to go to job interviews to be something they're not, employed.
@@XX-sp3tt False comparison.
@@rogerogue7226 Incorrect.
greatest argument of all time
Reminds me of the first MGS where you encounter Psycho Mantis. And through some clever ways makes us sure of the fact that when talking about how we enjoyed the sneaky killing of guards and soldiers he wasn't talking about Snake, he was addressing us. The players.
I think it was the first time I encountered that kind of meta storytelling in a game.
i love that mitchell and webb sketch (are we the baddies?)
cornichon our flag is a skull!
Hans..... are we the baddies?
Our hats have skulls on them.
I mean why skulls though?
+
That Leetri Guy Maybe they're the skulls of our enemies...
Pirates are fun!
"...associates a critical examination of what you're doing with being in some way attacked."
This right here, folks.
Oddly enough, Shadow the Hedgehog actually kind of does that. If you go the super dark path and go full villain, by the time you get to the end of the game, you get stopped by Sonic, who more or less straight up tells you, "Stop. No seriously, stop. What do you think you're doing?"
I don't know, I feel like that kind of works. Most people who have played Sonic games up to that point identify with Sonic, generally see him as the good guy. So when he's telling you to stop, it kind of stings, and makes you really think about what you're doing. Because he's the hero. He does the right thing. So if the hero who does the right thing is telling you what you're doing is wrong...maybe what you're doing really is wrong.
Do you have any idea how bad I felt after that? Like I just felt miserable. I had destroyed way too many robots. People were probably in those. I shot people until they were on the ground, unable to stand up. When I walked to them, they screamed no, don't come any closer. All for what? An achievement? Unlock a final story?
For all the flack the game gets, and it probably could have been done better yeah, I feel like this kind of does set up the last story, where Shadow realizes that okay, yeah, Black Doom is DEFINITELY the bad guy, let's beat him up and save the day instead of being tricked by him into committing atrocities. That's PROBABLY the right thing to do, you know? And so that happens.
I can't really feel mad at this game. I've tried, but I just...can't. It does way too many things that I want out of video games, even if they could have been done better.
Edgehog
Prototype
Listening to this video made me remember spec ops the line. As their entire messages in that game was for us to self examine all our military power fantasies, and realize the weight of pulling the trigger.
Sure, it kinda forces you down that path because it fears you won't explore it on your own, but it manages to shake up the unprepared players who were just expecting yet another game of "go to place and shoot the lads". It gave them a moment to think of what those actions would mean in any other game they have played. After that they present you in the most brutal of ways how the worst possibilities of that future would look like.
FlyingJetpack1 underrated comment right there. Spec Ops was a really good game taking control of that aspect of a game.
Came here to say spec ops the line does this VERY well.
A little disappointed that Dan didn't mention it in the video.
He's done a video on it already, its linked at the end of this video.
The thing I think that's missing from Spec Ops the line that would of made a great game even better would be the choice to be hostile in that game. I think it loses it's punch a bit because you're really forced down the path to doing all those terrible things. But if you weren't and you had to choose, it would make the concequences hit you that much harder.
Shadow of the Colossus more or less entirely turns on encouraging players to examine what they're doing. it never stops to bluntly spout morals at you, but it gives you just enough cues to make you start to feel very uncomfortable with your actions after a while. That uncomfortable feeling of being forced to act out the role of a character whose actions weren't necessarily ones I agreed with was something I wish more games would try to evoke instead of shoving players down the stale paths of good/evil/neutral.
Oh man, I had my moment of realization dangling from the last collossi's palm and seeing the lit up sky over each collossi I'd killed and was like "Did I do a fuck up? ....WELP, too late now, just have to trust in my original convictions!" and it was amazing.
I was honestly surprised he didn't bring that game up in the video.
I know Shadow of the Colossus has kind of become the go to in most "look what games can do" conversations but it really does illustrate this point so well. The feeling of doubt over whether what your character was doing was "right" was so tangible without ever being directly expressed. Yet that feeling never stopped the player from continuing to kill every living thing they came across. Every success in the game was tinged with regret for what the character had just succeeded in achieving. Particularly the moment, towards the end where the desire to achieve the characters primary goal necessitates not only the death of these majestic foes, but also the sacrifice of your only companion in this world.
Spec Ops: The Line
This reminds me of a time when I was playing Minecraft. I had decided that this world was going to be a world where I was a benevolent god of a village. But that eventually gave way to me figuring out a bunch of ways to creatively imprison and kill the villagers, and force them to breed. I was watching the sunset while some villagers died in a drowning contraption I made, and a certain song played. That song felt like the kind of song that would play in a movie when the heroes saw the horrific things the villain had done, and that song made me truly realise how evil what I was doing was. I knew that it was evil, and that was part of the fun, being an evil god, but it was that moment it really registered in my brain. As silly as it sounds, that moment contributed a lot to a big shift in mindset I was going through at the time.
Probably no one will ever see this, but if you read it all, thank you for listening to the ramblings of this 13-year-old
Ro I saw this. Thank you for your entertaining Minecraft story!
Man, in hundreds of hours of Skyrim, I never stole or killed innocents, to the best of my ability.
I guess I'm in the extreme minority 🤷
AntisepticHandwash I'm with you here. I closed down Fallout New Vegas because of the excessive murder.
I think it's just that those of us who are unable to separate fiction from moral never pick up a lot of games.
i killed 1 half innocents half bandit knowingly and unknowingly killed a ship full of inncoents and a innocent old hag.
never should have helped those bandits who said they will reck the ship save the pepole and ask for money for savong them.
if youre doing the right things you take an arrow to the knee
I even play Civ peacefully, my poor soldiers, their wives, children ... and my resources.
I'm with you. Now, I will admit that I have asperger's syndrome, and that does mean I tend to take the world literally. But that's exactly why I wouldn't play a game where the point was to hurt innocent people! That's not a fun fantasy for me, and I really don't get how it is okay for "normal" people to indulge in that fantasy, yet still think of themselves as not evil.
But I do love playing games. I like Minecraft and Terraria, and I mostly enjoy the world-building aspects of those games. TBH, sometimes the envioronmentalist in me does mind a little that my character's "job" is to approach every living creature in the world as an enemy, though, and treat them all as hostile. Real life isn't like that, and I think it is unhealthy to teach people that attacking/murdering is the only way to interact with mobs, and the best/only way to get rewarded for your actions.
This ONLY works if the player has a choice in a linear game were the player has no choice this sort of self examination will only lead to resentment of the player. "Don't make me feel bad about killing 100's of people you gave me no options" There needs to be a viable alternative!
Not at all..
That self-examination can happen even if its the only objective.. Plenty of games already do it and with better effects..
If you give a 100% honest choice to *not* doing the bad thing.. Than you have an entire play though that never brings up this question of "did I do something wrong?"
Because you avoided it. Because you did nothing wrong.. Having *no* choice is still as valuable as having choice.
This made no sense, the absence of choice means the player will feel no responsibility and therefor there is no reason to feel any kind of guilt or look for deeper meaning they had no choice so no moral decision was made!
Action movies, which due to the nature of the medium have a single linear storyline, get away with stepping back and examining the morality of the protagonist all the time. They can even get away with implying that the protagonist really isn't the most stand-up guy and still keep the audience engaged. And so I think we could easily get away with the same thing in linear games without making the experience feel pointless, especially ones with a protagonist with a fleshed out personality and motives separate from the player.
thecabbage they can only do this because they're in the third person. Games can only examine NPCs without accusing the player.
Yep!
"Minion, what have you done? These people had lives...and families...and... nah, I'm totally kidding! SCREW those guys!"
The Borderlands series did a good job with that. No one even HAD to stop and ask "is this the right thing to do", because no one gave a shit. You murdered everyone, because no one was innocent, especially you. Your allies included a man who literally used anyone who 'wronged' his business (competitors, for example) as target practice in a firing range, a woman who became a mass-murdering bounty hunter just to hide herself from the main antagonist, and the leader of a bandit clan.
Your foe, Handsome Jack? He literally only wanted to bring peace and stability to Pandora. He went about it by murdering and deceiving and oppressing, sure, but considering the planet was effectively nothing but bandits and murderers, it becomes less awful.
Dork Wonder yeah, pretty much everyone you meet is insane, super evil, apathetic to human life, or all three. People who don’t fall into those categories typically don’t survive very long in a kill-or-be-killed world like Pandora. Jack is probably the most evil, but in reality he’s just the one with the means to do the most damage.
I never looked at the game in this light tbh
I guess I now never feel like the good guy in borderlands either fuck
"Bright Lord, Dark Lord. Same thing really."
-Bruz the Chopper
This is enlightening, not only for gaming, but for life as well, self examination is a key point in the objective to keep moving, not to give up.
There was a student project where the game was an fps; however, after you defeated your victim you had to apologize to their family.
EchenSketch really?
Oof... that's a great example! Do you remember the name of the game?
damn
Yea like on age of empires 4, when your explorer died, you receive a message that they had to communicate with his family to give them the news, or on cannon fodder, when you fill the hill with graves.
@ Gecko
Since it is a "student project" (probably from some social science career), it probably required the player to select one of several posible options about what your caracter would say to the family.
Posibly structured like a "web" of dialog [going to a central conclusion, rather than a "tree" leading to different endings]; with the metadata about the selected choices what it is measured.
I feel like Persona 5 is a solid example of this type of discussion. Not only is it a blatant power fantasy (remember all those people in positions of power that wronged us? Wouldn't it be awesome if we gained superpowers and could make them see the error of their ways, 100% guaranteed, without reprecussions?), but the main characters frequently discuss the morality of their actions. Even if it's as simple a conversation as 'are we doing the right thing?' 'Yeah.' 'Alright, I suppose so.', they're constantly examining their actions. It's what sets them apart from the villains, who continue to do horrible things to people - the villains never question if they're justified in their actions, even when it's clearly immoral or illegal.
I do think it's a somewhat basic example, but an effective one regardless. Kind of a bare-bones approach to the situation, at least for a good chunk of the game.
JRPGs in general seem to be good at having characters discuss if they're doing the right thing. And more often than not, the answer is either "Yeah" or "What else CAN we be doing" in them.
It doesn't have to be as genre deconstructing as Spec Ops: The Line or Undertale. It can just be a short discussion or anything that makes you slightly uncomfortable. I think Dragon Age took a great direction in their morality system, where it doesnt flat out tell you that your decision was good or evil, it just affects how your party members perceive you.
For example, the assassin Zevran initially seems camp evil as he has no repercussions about killing random people or seducing anyone. But the moment you do something that screws elves over, he suddenly takes issue with you. Sure, its an instance of the pot calling the kettle black, but it made him seem more three dimensional and it gave your actions more depth and consequence.
vfaulkon But the game makes all its bad guys so cartoonishly vile that asking if brainwashing them to feel remorse is like asking if killing a Natzi is wrong. Sure they ask the question, but the situation is so slanted to "we are right" side you wonder why they bothered asking the question at all. It's disingenuous. It's paying mere lip service to the idea of having a moral delemma.
Very true. Like I said, it is a very basic example - the moral quandary is not a very deep one since, as you said, the villains are all doing horrible things without remorse at all times. That said, I think the fact that the protagonists ask the question at all still means something, even if the answer is obvious to us. After all, if they didn't ask the question, I'm sure more than a few of us would, which would render the game more shallow as a result. We'd see the power fantasy as just that and nothing else, and any attempt at addressing societal and moral issues would fall flat because the 'heroes' are effectively brainwashing cartoonish evil people without any thought at all.
Like they alluded to in the video, even the briefest moment of self-reflection can add to the experience. The moral dilemma doesn't have to be a very complex one, nor does it need to truly be a grey-and-grey scenario where no one's truly right or wrong. Even if the answer to the question is obvious, I think a genuine moment of self-reflection can make the difference between hollow power fantasy and thought-provoking art/entertainment.
I agree with Persona as an example, and while it's pretty straightforward that you are doing the right thing since the bad guys are pretty damn bad, it's really nice to hear your team at least bring it up a few times and wonder aloud. Especially once you learn about That Guy and his story, you know that miniboss before the big (human) bad, and it shows you how abusing your powers for evil could not only be easy, but effective.
That's why you play DOOM. Never anything wrong with killing demons!
Yaaaaaaa!!!!
"That's racist."
Thing is, the game does this wonderfully, the giant robot guy questions doomguys actions a lot, and each time doomguy pauses to consider deciding that he is right to keep doing what he's doing.
That depends on your definition of "demon". For example, in Japanese mythology, many demons extremely friendly and helpful!
@@porcupinethecat5073 well he probably lives in a western society with a western definition of demon and not an japanese one
I'll never forget that line in Metal Gear Solid, when Snake talks about how he's called a hero, but he doesn't feel he's a hero "I'm just good at killing people"
OMG the beach ball XD
TOP 10 anime easter eggs
That scene was too dark, it needed it.
WHERE?!
I laughed so hard when I spotted it. Instantly came looking for the comment :D
:55. It's on the lower right-hand side of the screen.
This is why I stopped playing Watch Dogs. When I realized that on a daily basis I was nonchalantly emtyping out people's bank accounts, spying on their intimate conversations, stealing their cars, and then using those resources to buy clothing and make home-made explosives to be used to knock out entire sections of the city's power supply just to avoid being caught by the police really drove home the fact that I was a bigger criminal than the drug lords and muggers who I often beat into a coma in an attempt to "fight crime." Suddenly I saw Aiden, and by extension, myself, as a hipocrite. It left a bad taste in my mouth
SerDerpish It didn't stop me from playing, but I realized that to. I could sympathize with Aiden's evil for a greater good shtick to still respect him and I liked how characters realized how off kilter he was. On the other hand, the fact that nobody realized that shit for Watch Dogs 2, where you do all the same shit against people who haven't done nearly as much to deserve it, is baffling to me. Aiden is a flawed punisher-style anti hero, the WD2 hacktivists are 4channers turned terrorist
Aiden actually asks himself a few times in the story whether or not he's really doing the right thing though, i think the developers may actually have been intentionally aiming for that sense of discomfort upon realizing you're essentially a revenge obsessed extremist, but in my case it actually enhanced my experience, i especially remember one privacy intrusion where you spy on a couple where the husband is lying in bed with stage 2 cancer seemingly in pain, the wife sounding desperate talks about how they've spent everything they have on cancer treatment and that she's pregnant, the husband tries to lift her spirits, but to no avail. There was a tablet in the room i could've hacked to steal their money but i just couldn't bring myself to do it.
I can probably count on one hand how many games have made me feel uncomfortable like that and i really respect the game for it
I actually tried going non-lethal in Watch Dogs, the game doesn't accept that you are but the way I did it was by only ever 'incapacitating' people (using an amazing pistol to kneecap them and cripple them for life) and smacking them on the back of the head (which is what I did most of the time). Unfortunately at certain points in the game waves of enemies come so you have to get... a tad violent. Still though while I did always call for my own vehicles I always broke road laws and there were a few occasions where I kneecapped some cops, I also robbed tonnes of people of hundreds of dollars but ya'know, I'm a good guy.
And then there is Watch Dogs 2. I take a non-lethal and stealth approach in most cases, except in certain situation. The only ones I don't show mercy to are gang members, who I intend to engage to torture, exterminate, and induce internal implosion in their ranks without feeling bad about them and their families. As reflective as Lawful Neutral, non-lethal approach to security guards, police, and companies, total extermination to gangs.
Each time somebody says "are you really convinced you're the good guys" It's always super great to hear. Even when it comes from the antagonist who is clearly evil I think "well he's doing the right thing in his mind and I'm doing the same so I'm his bad guy" I just love games that make me think
great that someone pointed this out. many of my favourite characters have been the ones who turned around and asked "am i doing the right thing?" sometimes the answer is yes, other times its no, sometimes its just their view point but no matter which way it ends it has deepened the character and story to levels not commonly seen and had those stories stick with me for years. gamers are not generally children and we shouldn't be treated like them.
0:56 BEACH BALL TO LIGTHEN THE MOOD! I GET THAT REFERENCE!
Its all about the Mitchell and Webb reference at 2:28
OMG I DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE IT. XD thanks for pointing it out!
That one got me. Hahaha
i hope there's a ball in every sad moment
Oh yes! Someone more noticed!
... and then there was Prototype.
A game in which you had to slaughter hundreds, if not thousands, of people - and made it seem as if that was completely justified, as you were obviously playing the good guy. But at some point the game suddenly reveals the context of your actions and makes you realize that all this time you have been playing as a terrorist and mass-murderer, which pretty much toppled any sense of justification.
And you know what? Instead of diminishing the experience [or power fantasy for that matter], it enriched it and saved it from being dull and two-dimensional.
In short: Prototype is a power fantasy done right - at least in my humble opinion. :)
and then Prototype 2 f*cked it up
That's why we have Infamous
I admit that I haven't played InFamous myself, but from what I know about the game, it does not even try to deal with moral ambiguity, but rather embraces the idea of contrarian "hero" & "villain" archetypes in a pretty literal sense.
Yeah I'm glad you brought Prototype up, I loved that game. For those of you out of the loop, the game tells you you're a dude who's got some science-gone-wrong parasite shit in him that serves as the most badass superpower ever, allowing you to carve enemies in half, throw cars around, and heal yourself by devouring enemies- essentially, if the military were gunning you down, it was a viable tactic to grab and kill a civilian to save yourself.
All of this may sound similar to the destruction a player may cause in a sandbox like GTA, but here's the twist; the protagonist discovers he doesn't have a parasite in him, because the parasite kills the host after entering their body, and instead he is the parasite with the memories of the human he's controlling. You were mercilessly killing hundreds of people because you were the villain all along.
Then Prototype 2 came out and gave us a protagonist who loved his daughter and wanted to save her and stuff, all while murdering hundreds and hundreds of people with no remorse. Nothing made sense again and the balance of shitty video games was restored.
I believe its simple gloss simplification for publicity at work. You will be the hero/villain base on if you prey the innocent and the method you take to complete your objective, the difference to Prototype is that the game system stick it to you whether you are being wrong or not. So the grey zone it kinda narrowed but the system isn't hard to game so things to get questionable, and is made more obvious to the player.
Tales of Symphonia was a good example. You played honorably most of the time because you cared about what your party members thought. More notably, it attacked you for your ineptitude and stumbling into things, sometimes getting your screw-ups thrown right in your face. Aifread's Hat might have been the best side-quest an RPG ever had.
Thank you for crediting the music you used.
It's rare, and even without the moral issue, I just love how convenient it makes finding said music.
One of the oldest and best examples of power fantasies done right is Baldurs Gate II - Throne of Bhaal. The self-reexamination of killing hundreds and thousands of people - even for a good cause - is written as a fundamental to the story and in the end even leads to the final conclusion of the story. It was a fantastic experience not only because the game DID feel like a true power fantasy in the last acts, mowing through hundreds and thousands of nameless soldiers, but also because even if you were playing the good guy, you would still always be the child of the god of murder and everything you do will not free you from that taint. It's great.
Zwiebel4 came to post about baldurs gate. That's the fucking game.
Spec Ops the Line subverted this troupe amazingly!
Redman A As well as Undertale. Shit, I heard about Spec Ops FROM EC.
"Do you feel like a hero yet?"
I have to second this. Spec Ops: The Line took the chance to look into the dark underbelly of war and PTSD. A really underrated title.
this! that game is deep and really thought provoking...
originally spec ops the line was going to give you a choice, but they didn't have the resources to develop 2 diverging storylines
Tyranny by Obsidian Entertainment just addresses all of the points you brought up perfectly.
I didn't even know this was a problem for others. When a game looks at morals of the player's actions like that, I just see it as part of the experience.
They should definitely make games where villages starve and people are hung if you start stealing things.
Especially if those dead people are useful to the player
Ryan Arntz Starving, fine, but come on: Small rural medival-ish towns tend to be somewhat mistrustful of outsiders anyway. I'm pretty sure all the people will, correctly, blame the stranger who arrived the day before the entire village was looted.
Fredrik Dunge
People who REALLY want to collect carrots
"they should definitely make games where"
i.e. not Skyrim.
Fallout 3 is the one that made me think of this. Cuz I remember starting to steal a couple things and remembering Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation talking about how you can steal everything from a whole town but because of a few not actually that productive choices in the main story you're hailed as the perfect goodie two-shoes and it made me think more at depth and come to the conclusion that hardcore theft is not penalized or treated with anywhere NEAR enough gravity that it should be xD Seriously you can bring the economy to a crash if not a total collapse leading to all kinds of strife that comes when presented with food or water shortages or how many lives would be lost after making off with a medic's entire stash of medical supplies, and that is FAR more heinous than shooting a couple of people already dying of thirst in the wastes or slaughtering an incompetent overseer and his goons.
I'm glad someone with more of an audience actually brought it up xD
"Are we the baddies?" I see you Extra Credits version of David Mitchell. xD
I love how they made all this out, because I have an idea for a game in my head, and one of the MAJOR points I was wanting to have my game portray is a question of right and wrong with absolutely NO clear answer.
Different players would have slightly different morals, and I would love to see that part of my game be a discussion of it's own.
How your allies react to you in dishonored if you simply kill every guard is heartbreaking
Undertale made me feel powerful like very few games do by allowing me to NOT be a rampaging murderbot even though it is a completely legitimate way to play through that game. That legitimate moral choice made me feel truly powerful-- that temptation to cut corners through violence that CAN be resisted.
I don't enjoy games that say DIS IS RONG when there's no capacity to ever legitimately do right (looking at you SpecOps The Line). It feels like it's dicking me around-- reminding me how shitty the game that I am playing is for not giving me the option to do anything else. Makes me want to go play games where I actually have power to make choices.
I generally agree with that, but I think the effect would be diminished as it is spread. Undertale had its impact because JRPGs where you don't have to kill and that killing is depicted as bad are few and far between.
Now, if RPGs everywhere decided to plaster that "killing is bad, mmm'kay" message, it would get tiresome fast. Because I don't think there are many people who are so deluded that they don't realize killing is bad. We live in a world where the harms of death and crime are made clear by every single news report.
Power fantasies shouldn't be all that there is for the sake of cultural diversity, but there is no "problem with power fantasies". They are what people want them to be, escapism. A way to put reality aside for a little while.
If you'd like a similar game to Undertale that's totally free and allows you to go through it however you like, check out Iji. It's free and I won't spoil anything for you, but it's got some of the same concepts going on. I wouldn't be surprised if it was part of Toby's inspiration for UT
I personally think it boils down to the question of, does every game need it? Does every player need it? Just like any other potential component of anything, it can add or subtract to the overall experience depending on what the rest of the game is like or even just who is playing it. I really doubt self-reflection is a new idea in the whole scheme of things.
2:27 "Wait a minute...are we the baddies?
I mean―the new logo on our hats is a skull! There's skulls everywhere!"
Love it. Brilliant sketch by Mitchell&Webb.
I'm kinda disappointed this video didn't mention NieR Gestalt
The beach ball is back!
Favorite games for this reason:
Dishonored.
Spec Ops: the Line.
Silent Hill 2.
Undertale.
The Last of Us.
Bioshock.
Assassin's Creed.
Amnesia: the Dark Descent.
Consequences are what seperate the ordinary games from the masterpieces.
I like the direction Dishonored went but it could have been executed better. The ending was based around how many you killed but sometimes killing was the "right" thing to do. The world actually has a lot of murderers in it. Wouldn't it be better to kill them to stop them from killing others?
Completely forgot about Assassin's Creed. The literal first scene of the game was a look into the mind of Altair and what he though was right, while another character questioned him.
The ends justify the means? By that logic you should go as low chaos as possible because it has a better outcome for the city as a whole, even if it means letting monsters live.
Besides the system was a bit more complex than that, you could kill all the targets if you wanted, you just had to offset them by performing some chaos reducing actions.
But the chaos system made no sense in the first place. There are people that the heart tells you will kill people if you don't kill them. Morality is so complex that a simple negative versus positive is too simple.
The Last of Us does this really well, both during the game and in the final parts.
"Wooohohohohooo! I'm evil now!"
That was the best thing I have ever heard XD
YES. I've been saying all of this for years! I especially appreciate the section about how our culture believes "wrong = weak." I gave a training earlier this year on allyship, and a big chunk of it addressed that it's BENEFICIAL to admit that we were wrong because it shows that we're able to learn and grow, and that we're really, honestly sorry for messing up.
"Coding your own games, is easier than you think. You know ? You should take this" - * Presses Skip Ad *
You get those ads too? XD
I thought that ad was only in Latin America
Shit. Perhaps the one time I would like to have seen an add xD
The Skyrim example kind of made me think, because when I play a game like Skyrim I choose to act heroically, even though it's not the easiest way to go about playing the game. I don't steal from peasants and I don't kill people and generally don't do anything that doesn't seem heroic to me. One of the biggest things that bothered me in Skyrim is that the quests often don't give you this kind of choice. For example if you want to play through the Companions storyline one of the first things you have to do is beat up an old woman. That instantly ruined that whole quest line for me, simply because the quest didn't have any option to say no. There are a whole bunch of quests like that in Skyrim where you're simply told to do something evil and have no option to not do it other than just play the rest of your game with "Do something evil" in your questlog without a checkmark next to it.
When did the Companions quest ask you to beat up an old lady? I'm kinda drawing a blank for some reason.
I've played the gaumut of characters in skyrim too. The oblivious skooma-addled goofball who doesn't understand that stealing is NOT "sharing", but is kinda heroic anyway. The Chessmaster evil mage who was trying to pull the strings on a lot of things. And my favourite, the reluctant hero. She started as a kahjiit who just wanted to mine and smith and to NPC things, but sloooowly got roped into the whole hero thing without really wanting to.
Aetrion
en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Hired_Muscle
The quest “hired muscle” had you beat up a randomly selected NPC for some vague troublemaking they did.
This can include little old ladies.
The target for the beat down is randomised
Wait, isn't that one of the "radiant' quests?
You can just do one of the not so bad ones like culling wildlife or rescuing someone or whatever, right? Because I've played the companions questline through to the end twice and I've literally NEVER had the "Hired Muscle" quest pop up.
On one hand I totally agree with the larger point here. On the other, Hired Muscle SPECIFICALLY never gave me a single pang of guilt, because the script isn't that you find someone and beat them up. The script is you find someone and deliver an ultimatum, and they invariably go "YEAH YOU AND WHAT ARMY? COME ON, PUT UP YOUR DUKES!" I mean sure they're no match for you but... this is the resolution they specifically preferred. Who am I to question Nord cultural norms?
Undertale does this perfectly, because you have so much choice and while you can kill everyone, the game calls you out on it, and conversely you're actually rewarded for helping everyone.
The ending of the last of "The Last Of Us" is something like this we really need to talk about, it kinda did this but a lot of people disturbingly rationalized into still being the good guy.
*spoilers* You literally doom the last chance of the human race in exchange for sentimental personal gain. The main character (Joel) develops an emotional attachment to a girl (Eli) who has the cure to a zombie plague, and because taking it out would kill her Joel instead kills every single person who had a hope of getting it or figuring a cure out, against Eli's wishes and without telling her. All because she felt like a replacement daughter because his died.
Like half the people who played this say that was justified and they would do the same. Props to NaughtyDog for getting everyone to sympathize with Joel so hard but I really don't think they meant for people to think he was in the right.
I DIsagree with your premise. I don't doubt that, that is your "public opinion" but I am almost certain that if someone came into your house and said your mother, or your brother, or your son had to die in order to save a hundered or a thousand you wouldn't do it.
This guy he literally had nothing left his family, friends, all gone he was just existing, for no reason. Even when he meets eli he couldn't care less about her, its just a job, right up until its not he comes to care for her maybe even love her. Literally the 1 person on earth he gives a shit about so he made a choice one I can imagine was super easy for him. Save the one person I care about over the lives of all these other people that mean less than nothing to me.
I would make the same choice. I supopose maybe its just my pesemistic nature but I don't like people i'm nice to people i meet because its expected but i've never cared about people i don't care about if i had the choice between one of the few people i do care about and literally the whole world which I couldn't care less about, I know what i'd pick.
Maybe i'm not a "good person". If you said that to me I'd probably agree with you. I don't actually believe in selfless people its easy to give 20 dollars or a couple of can of soup to the church food drive, impossible to give the last meal you have to a stranger instead of your daughter if they are both starving.
To your original point I don't recall a whole lot of discussion about him being the "good guy" only about the fact that what he did was a choice they themselves would have made. "Good guys" only exist in fairy tales.
Naughty Dog was fully aware of the ramifications of Joel's actions in The Last of Us. That's why the story of The Last of Us 2 is entirely about dealing with those ramifications.
I think self examination in games often becomes extremely frustrating, mainly because most of the time you don't have a choice in weither you do the things you do or not. Just because I'm playing the game doesn't mean that is my ideal power fantasy either, it's usually a power fantasy someone else manufactured for me, so that feeling of the game suddenly judging you for what it just told you to do just feels really shitty. What's the point of questioning something if you can't not do it?
If it is a game where there actually are other options though, then I'm all for it.
That might be the best answer so far, if you can´t decide then you shouldn´t be judged because then it would take away the inmmersion, because the caracther dosn´t resonates with your morals. That means that in order to add morality you should add choice.
This is the issue I've a always had with Spec Ops: The Line. It comes off as in your face and disingenuous as a morality lesson because the story literally forces you into it.
I am not my character, I'm simply a puppeteer making that character complete their story. No different from how a live action actor does the same.
SeeAndDreamify To be fair, they don't have to judge *you*. It can be a perfectly valid story moment for your character.
Exactly. If you're not responsible for your actions in your game due to the lack of choice involved, then there's no regret or self-examination to be had.
SeeAndDreamify: would you kindly..?
WHY AM I FIGHTING FOOOOOR?!?
*what
Hey at least the voice acting was better than in MM 8. "Oh no, Doctah Wah-wee is back at it again."
I don't know, but untill you do, you should probly stop fighting.
Dank loot
No seriously, just the loot.
Self examination only really works in games if there's actually another option. It works in say New Vegas because in many of the situations the right choice is ambiguous and once it happens you kind of have to live with the consequences with very often the differences in outcomes being marginal.
Damn, Ubisoft really drove this in player's hearts with Watch_Dogs. The last mission was probably the deepest thing I've ever played.
I remembered playing witcher 3, kicking a bunch of guys' asses for racism and violent crime against an elf.
Later she questioned me, if I believe what I just did can improve her situation in the city, and did I just do that to feel good for myself.
Needless to say, I treated my action with more thought regarding my character in that playthrough.
You don't always need to be right, and you very well might not be.
And that's what makes a character interesting and deep.
Ghastly Gibbus She asked that? Damn, she's definitely no Skyrim NPC.
Ghastly Gibbus I ran into the same situation and I was kinda taken aback by how my expectations were so thoroughly subverted.
I'm pretty sure she also tries to murder you later but that might be a different elf-related event.
I don't normally steal in Skyrim, save for the Thieves Guild Questline (which is it's own thing), and I have never been halted by the need to examine my actions. Sure I have wondered what kind of maniac would run into a cave filled with bandit outlaws and kill them all without so much as a bounty board notice, but I otherwise usually behave as A) How I would in real life or B) How I imagine my character would reasonably behave.
Since I don't need to steal to make money in these games, I feel automatically deterred from going against my basic instincts on the matter.
I was upset you couldn't wipe out the thieves guild and just kill Maven Blackbriar.
Venatio I really like your profile picture, where is it from?
Venatio Yeah, actual role-playing!
MicManGuy you could. Go to the guards after I believe the first quest and it let's you have the guards destroy them
Devan Weathers that's the dark brotherhood
Roman Bellic: " Do you always get sentimental after you kill people?"
Grand Theft Auto IV is 90% dark power fantasy, and 10% introspection on what drives a man to do terrible things.
Those numbers probably wouldn't be so skewed if most of my play sessions weren't me just running and gunning around the city instead of doing missions.
If I remember correctly, there was a Dragon Quest game where the main character had to completely change his way of thinking and his motivation for fighting by having a physical battle against himself -- his old self, that is. That added some serious depth to the story, in my opinion.
There should be a game where you built up a broken country, and unite it to fight against the counties that ruined your country. And then, at the end, you realize your Hitler.
And it's just played off as a goof to further confuse you more.
And Benny Hill music plays over the credits while you/Hitler run from the allies.
I may have just had a stroke.
Loser's Club holy shit
I like muscle wizard
I. CAST. FIST!
Tristen Huffman He has terrible charisma though.
Also poor dexterity and mind/hand coordination (sometimes breaking the wand by accident).
Argamis (SilverComet)
I
Cast
Fist
Argamis (SilverComet) Casting Fist requires no material components, just the gesture and the vocal parts.
Well, this one settled it. You guys keep talking about subjects I'm interested in, so I'm subscribing!
As a side note, a game called Off also does a great job of introspection. I mention it because I don't think anyone else will, and it deserves it.
This is why I've been enjoying Star Wars: The Old Republic so much right now. It makes me feel powerful when I don't feel like I am in real life. It's even better to have my actions questioned, especially when I do something evil. Part of this is having the clear dark-side-light-side dynamic, but any game can do it. It's just something that needs to be incorporated more. (Undertale does this too btw! My favorite games as of late have all done this.)
Anyone else that's thinking Spec Ops: The Line?
Andreas Lind-Sahlin ....Nope, just you
(Looks up)
I was hoping he would mention it since reflection on your actions and the message the game had to tell was basically the whole point of the game.
Very surprised this wasn't brought up. That whole game was built around this idea.
Had you not written it, I would.
"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates
I just started to replay watchdogs and realized no matter how many petty crimes Aiden Pierce prevents he’s still an insane danger to himself, his family and the city of Chicago.
Omg, the slow fade back to a white background after a dark screen... Guys, you're the only people doing it right 👍
Games make us feel powerful and righteous all the time. But... maybe they shouldn't?
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Nice Mitchell and Webb reference!
I think the reason power fantasies are so popular across all Mass Media is because deep inside we feel weak and powerless in real life. I hope we will one day live in a society, where we don't need power fantasies anymore and can Focus our minds on creativity, exploration and learning experiences.
Try see Tales of Berseria @ExtraCredit
I'm seeing Spec Ops: The Line and Undertale already popping up here and there so I'll just be like, 'yeah theyre here we get the point they exist'.
This sounds like a wider critique on the fear of breaking power fantasy, and I agree. Games can become more stand out and popular because of these choices if done correctly. It's just that some games have done this, and they stand out because of it. Honestly if this is the way it is, then I like it more when the stand out game does something the medium hasn't done before, it makes that special, rather than the norm.
@extra credit, can you elaborate on how other medium (scifi, game of thrones) do this self examination?
This is why I love games like DOOM and Wolfenstein. In those, you're just killing demons, Nazis, and demon Nazis. Absolutely no moral quandary there. Hell, at one point in DOOM, Samual Heyden asks the Doomguy if what he's doing (destroying some power doohickies) is actually the right thing for humanity. The Doomguy responds by slowly and deliberately curling his fingers into a fist and smashing it brutally. Possibly the best moment in the game.
Equivalent moment in Wolfenstein: The New Order: BJ deploys a superweapon to stop a train going across the Gibraltar Bridge. The superweapon shoots cables everywhere and then twists, pulling huge chunks off the bridge. BJ's reaction: "What the fuck did I just do?"
+Zelenal You just said "I love DOOM because it doesn't do this. As an example, here's when it does this exactly."
Just because the game asks the question: "Is this right?", it doesn't mean that the answer cannot be an unqualified yes.
Yea, also he could have said, well is them or me, I mean is not like he would survive hiding or he could talk to them to reach an agreement.
I'll be honest--one time I was playing DOOM (the newest one) and started wondering if the demons had families and desires beyond wanting to destroy me... I snapped out of it really fast when the huge ones showed up. --Belinda
0:52 Oh good, I really needed that beachball right there.
Really needed to hear him saying "wee hoo hoo!!" Today
I'm playing the division and I'm dumbfounded by how blindly everyone is murdering former neighbors. All it would take is one of the GREAT V.O. characters that add so much color! It's a simple "Isn't a shame we've come to this?" line that would add such great dimension to an already fleshed out world. A real misstep there.
Samuel Hensley the problem is that you're playing the division.
Samuel Hensley People that ask these question in IRL collapses die.
James Gordon -- dude. People who dont ask this question die. A violent collapse of society kinda does that without needing to question morality.
"We don't always have to be right"
Said no person on the internet, EVER.
in guild wars 1, near the end when they were bringing out the stuff to bridge 1 and 2, your character acknowledges he's killed so many people that it doesnt feel heroic anymore while talking to a new adventurer, it was one of my favourite parts of that storyline
That´s what I love about the Witcher: you´re not told what is right or wrong, but you have to live with the consequences...
It´s far more subtle than Dishonored's chaos system, where you can basically work for any ending, by counting your kills. However, Dishonored 2 caught me off-guard when I was looting civilians and the voice of the protagonist justified her actions in such a creepy voice, that I felt totally guilty...
Hotline Miami did a great job making the player reflect on their actions once a stage was cleared. The music became grim and you had to walk through all the people you killed, pointing out exactly the kind of chaos you caused.
Insecurity is the denial of the mere possibility that we're wrong. True strength is recognizing our flaws and growing from it. I would love to see more self examination in games.
Admittedly thinking of uncharted I just remember that instead of changing the way the game worked, they added an achievement into one of the games called "Ludonarrative Dissonance"
A game in which you get to a point where you stop to examine the actions you've been taking and decide whether you're going to stop and actively fight against everything you've done before to embrace the "good" or to double down and continue in your course of action and never look back.
Is "heck" sometimes written into the script just for the heck snake?
I love the heck snake
Which came first, the heckin or the snek?
I had to pause the video and laugh for a minute at the scientist's expression.
the heck snek
Not cheerful enough. Can we add a second beachball?
it's possible to listen to this in the background in an audiobook/podcast way but I like the art so much I can't look away
Ah yes, the 2 germans in world war 2 contemplating if they're the bad guys because they have skulls everywhere. That was one amazing scene, thank you for making me remember it again EC with those couple frames of glorious reference.
This episode made me think of NieR: Automata as a recent example of successfully combining power fantasy and self-examination.
John Morelock idk if nier automata is a power fantasy though. I mean, there is always very hard mode (I mean on high enough difficulty you feel fragile af).
That said, the first drakengard is a power fantasy (also everyone is fucked up there). Like you start the game by having to kill 200 ppl.
But the protagonist of Drakengard is an asshole. And they game very specifically points it out. Not to mention how everyone else is an asshole. Drakengard is very specifically intended as an anti-power-fantasy.
And Nier Automata isn't really a power fantasy. It's a setting where everyone is suffering. That is not a power fantasy.
Papa's NIer's obsession with helping his daughter shows this, especially when we discover the big twist near the end of the game. Yet, even in spite of this, he keeps going forward, despite all that's happened. Were I not so cynical and kind of expecting it, I would have been thrown for a loop when I first played it.
Pretty much any Taroverse game is like that. Go watch the Drakengard 3 interview with the hand puppet where Taro talks about how the gameplay of hack and slash action RPG games inspired the story of the first Drakengard.
well if stay still in a few bosses they didn't attack you, and even adam tell you when he is born "why fight?"
"record scratch!!!" best quote ever
That feel when you realize you killed many, *many* cute little gremlin guys when playing throughout Spiral Knights, and then you realize. "Wait, aren't *we* the bad guys?"
Considering the games i'm playing and the way i'm enjoying them my power fantasy must be being an accountant.