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The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
81–90 of 149 posts
Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shadow of the Colossus came out around the zeitgeist of when people really started earnestly debating if videogames were art. After that game there was no more debate.
Yes, it confirmed that the key was conveying a complex and intentional artistic vision through the gameplay. If a game is effective, but removing the gameplay makes it ineffective, then, as a game, it's art. Ikaruga and Journey should be mentioned in the same conversation. More recently, Undertale and Death Stranding, pick up similar conceptual throughlines ("choice" and "connection", respectively), albeit in less el…
Ikaruga mentioned! Don’t even get me started, that game consumed my life for nearly 2 years when it came out for the GameCube. The emptiness I got when I finally achieved a 1CC only to quickly fill that hole with an obsession with scoring afterward… that is a feeling that has only been achieved by a number of games I can count on one hand.
Funny enough, I enjoy Death Stranding for many of the same reasons that I enjoy arcade-style games: routing, resource management, and failure that feels meaningful, as well as the satisfaction of successfully executing a plan. The story is pretty cool too, but the gameplay is what I really like.
Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
#83I mean this has been a this has been a theme going back further than "Shadow of the Colossus" or "Undertale".
Both "Chrono Trigger" and "Crono Cross" make you question your actions and whether or not it was worth on a monster genocide.
Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
#84No mention of the Witcher? The whole franchise is based on moral dilemmas like that.
Maybe the author, being Czech, wanted to look beyond the quintessential Slavic contribution to the genre. It’s the only explanation I can think of. The idea that monsters can be understood, and spared because in the end they’re exhibiting human flaws, is such a powerful storytelling device.
>author, being Czech
Sapkowski is from Poland, though. Still Slav, but still.
Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
#85No mention of the Witcher? The whole franchise is based on moral dilemmas like that.
Or Nier, which are inspired by and connected to Shadow of the Colossus in the same way as SotC is connected to Zelda (explicitly mentioned in the article)
Agreed, Nier: Replicant definitely belongs in the list. Yoko Taro successfully asks "What if the opponents you fight were the main character of their own stories with their own good and justifiable motivations?" as well as any of the other games mentioned.
Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, these reflections upon my aggressive and violent behavior in a game are much more impactful than games that put me into dilemma situations, where you are already presented with a nicely arranged moral problem in the moment. These are two distinct techniques and I feel the latter almost always failed to impress me much, while the first one is where I feel caught, even shocked by myself and the cold-bloodiness t…
The Uncharted games are weird like this. They get lauded for their storyline, yet Drake is out their killing hordes of guys for what ? Some treasure ?
I believe that exact framing of Uncharted is the origin of the term “ludonarrative dissonance”, where the character’s motivations and morals are in contrast to the extreme violence they are committing because of the nature of it being a video game.
Definitely one of those things I didn’t question when I was younger, but as I get older it’s hard not to see it.
EDIT: I was wrong, the term originated from an analysis of Bioshock, but Uncharted was later held up as a strong example of this. And it’s more generally about the contrast between narrative and gameplay mechanics.
Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
#87> Contrary to Flowey’s advice, the game can be finished without a single kill, leading to a special ending, but this pacifist route is markedly more difficult.
...huh? This is very much not true. The most difficult[0] encounters happen on the Genocide route, in which you powerlevel like it's a normal JRPG until the encounters run out. Pacifist is only slightly harder than a "No Mercy" neutral run[1].
For the first two thirds of this article I was screaming "BUT WHAT ABOUT UNDERTALE". Toby Fox basically wrote the book on the moral quandries of killing monsters in video games, and this article does not do his work justice. It feels like the author wanted to briefly mention it at the end as a way to cap off the essay. And, while I haven't played Shadow of the Colossus, I suspect the inspection of that is about as surface-level as the tacked-on mention of UNDERTALE at the end.
I feel like I just read a high school English essay.
[0] Mechanically and emotionally.
[1] As in, a run in which you kill everything you see, but do not exhaust the kill limit.
Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Atreus' question come out of fear, but Kratos' response is what the article focus on. Kratos does not take any joy in killing, he does that out of necessity and would have loved for that necessity not to arise. He could have boasted "I have killed bigger things", but instead he choose words of resignation against a kill or be killed fate he was trying to escape
> he does that out of necessity and would have loved for that necessity not to arise Which I believe is in contrast with the older games. Haven't played them but from what I've heard he'd pursue conflicts because he enjoyed them. I think this change is because of his ongoing process of coming to terms with being a father which takes the act of killing and twists it inside out.
Nope that aint it - look it up its nicely done
Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
#89Perhaps not a monster, but in "It takes two", there is a particular scene where you have to murder a friendly stuffed elephant to get your in-game daughter to cry.
I have been playing video games for decades at this point but that one really shook me up. You pretty much execute a toy begging for its life. As soon as that scene was over it genuinely took me a few days to come back to it.
That was a hard rewatch: https://youtu.be/12FNU8bNEbE?si=BKZCynsHhoz5GN2m&t=65
Re: The Melancholy of Slaying Monsters
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Atreus' question come out of fear, but Kratos' response is what the article focus on. Kratos does not take any joy in killing, he does that out of necessity and would have loved for that necessity not to arise. He could have boasted "I have killed bigger things", but instead he choose words of resignation against a kill or be killed fate he was trying to escape
> he does that out of necessity and would have loved for that necessity not to arise Which I believe is in contrast with the older games. Haven't played them but from what I've heard he'd pursue conflicts because he enjoyed them. I think this change is because of his ongoing process of coming to terms with being a father which takes the act of killing and twists it inside out.
Kratos in God Of War Chains Of Olympus through to God Of War III (if we're speaking Chronologically) didn't enjoy conflict. He was originally a soldier fighting the Persians that was then cursed to be a representation of war. He had a family that Ares took them away, and so he willingly took on the curse in order to kill every god and free humanity from their helplessness under the gods. A huge thread of the sequel series is him realizing that the Pantheon were not the only gods, and that killing them all isn't as powerful as enabling humanity to defy them. And he sees his own son as the bridge that will link the humans to their own innate potential. Kratos has been entrenched in blood and warfare since he was a teenager, and has come to see conflict to be a result of those unwilling to separate their needs and wants.