Wednesday 17 January, 2018

Today’s gameplay session went particularly well, as I played the game for roughly an hour and a half and had a genuinely hard time putting it down when it was time for me to write the game log. The gameplay is quite good, I have been having a great time running around and fighting captains, to be honest I haven’t even really felt compelled to complete the first “real” story mission of the game since I have been having so much fun exploring the map. I will say that the game does seem a bit “easy”—you can fight off 10+ enemies by yourself by simply paying attention to the counter-attack prompt which flashes on the screen whenever an enemy is about to attack you, making gameplay somewhat…stale occasionally. Some enemies in particular are harder to deal than others though, there was an archer captain who killed me three times before I managed to kill him, making him grow quite strong before I got my revenge. In terms of topics discussed in class I thought about the discussion on unnecessarily violent imagery being present in games. When you unlock the ability that lets you “glory kill” enemies you start to see some violent stuff, heads cut off of torsos, as well as a lot of insides becoming outsides. While this sort of imagery isn’t something I’m not used to, as it is present in a lot of contemporary games, it does cause me to think about whether or not this sort of stuff is entirely necessary, is there a real need to see such gore when you kill an enemy, and is it really ethical to have this sort of stuff in games?

The topic of gore in video games, especially one where it’s optional, is an interesting one. What does it say about the player and developers when there is an option for a more violent death ( glory kill) than needed? Why might a player decide to do a glory kill? Is it ever ethical?