Having us kill civilians in Oriath Square is tasteless.

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007Bistromath wrote:

You (collectively) are trying to make a game developer live up to superficial and restrictive standards of public moral cleanliness, and in the process you outright claim that this game has no meaningful narrative voice. By declaring it lowbrow and voiceless, you render yourself innocent of trying to silence it. I'm sly to this disgusting tactic, and I'd like you to quit.

Bold emphasis mine. So anything goes?

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Mythreindeer wrote:

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007Bistromath wrote:

You (collectively) are trying to make a game developer live up to superficial and restrictive standards of public moral cleanliness, and in the process you outright claim that this game has no meaningful narrative voice. By declaring it lowbrow and voiceless, you render yourself innocent of trying to silence it. I'm sly to this disgusting tactic, and I'd like you to quit.

Bold emphasis mine. So anything goes?

what's worse than killing all people you meet outside towns?

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Mythreindeer wrote:

So anything goes?

Yes. There, I even bolded it for you.

It isn't anyone's business to say what "goes." The moment you try to change anything other than consumer opinion, you cease to critique and begin to censor.

If we require "offensive" material to have "artistic merit" according to the standard of Some Guy, no matter who that is, we have destroyed art. Here in America, people would be asking "what purpose does that statue's penis serve?" And because some people who are good at using flowery language say that the game has no narrative weight, it doesn't earn that penis. It has to be removed, so we don't pollute the minds of all the children who aren't supposed to be playing the game in the first place.

The fact this hasn't risen to the level of trying to get the government to Do Something doesn't change the nefarious intent. The rest of the work either redeems the parts you don't like, or it doesn't. The attitude that creators must make "gross" things less so needs to go back to ResetEra where it belongs.

Of all the dark and really effed stuff in POE's story and lore. This is your concern and you label it tasteless?


Lordy lord. How the heck you made it through Lunaris or the Slave Pens is beyond logic at this rate.

And those are just the obvious ones.

Oh, but it's different, because the **hero** is doing it. You know, the "hero" whose dialog for most of the classes indicates they were bitter to the point of being warped before they even got to the Twilight Strand. We have to make the civilians completely untargetable just in case you might want to play a slightly less bloodthirsty serial killer.

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Squishysquish wrote:

okay, that's nice and everything but that doesn't explain why, YOU the PLAYER are considered HOSTILE and can KILL them. if you're there to PROTECT them then why do your minions and abilities kill them?

Friendly fire? I don't know lmao

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007Bistromath wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

It's hard not to read your statement as "Art is immune to criticism, because to criticize it to disrespect the artist's vision."

If you treat what somebody has used as a literary device as a "problem" in need of a "solution," as Fruz has, and as you clearly do despite not being explicit about it, what you're doing isn't critique.

When other people see the meaning of something and you don't, continuing to insist it has no meaning is absurdly egotistical. I don't need to explain it, because I've no interest in dancing around somebody who is arguing in bad faith, which I have seen you do with every single post in this thread after the first one.

You (collectively) are trying to make a game developer live up to superficial and restrictive standards of public moral cleanliness, and in the process you outright claim that this game has no meaningful narrative voice. By declaring it lowbrow and voiceless, you render yourself innocent of trying to silence it. I'm sly to this disgusting tactic, and I'd like you to quit.

You seem way too emotionally invested to have a reasonable discussion. Are you OK?

I've been thinking about this. I'd like to reframe it.

Firstly, we need to be on the same page about what this is. You are not forced to kill the civilians. There is nothing even remotely encouraging you to do so. It's just very hard not to, because you've probably made yourself into a giant wrecking ball over the course of the campaign. Despite this, it's still not impossible; it's just damn inconvenient and probably dangerous to you.

In the real world, when there are civilians in a war zone, militaries from the developed world will take great pains to avoid harming them unnecessarily. However, if the cost is too great in blood or treasure, they will still shell or bomb a place rather than invade it with infantry. That's what they have to do. This kind of trade-off is something that applies all the way down to the level of a single combatant or squad; it's simply that in the real world, the SWAT team is (almost) always going to try to save the hostages instead of gassing them along with the terrorists.

You want your character to be a hero, but when faced with a task that requires you take significant risk and care to be one, you complain that the game is offensive for making it so hard to be good. It doesn't cross your mind that perhaps it's hard because the devs didn't intend for most characters to be heroes.

Not sure what that's all about. I was under the impression we were able to kill them because we were supposed to be putting them out of their misery since they are infected by Kitava and were turning into one of those monsters you see on the field.

But you see some rebels out there that are friendlies killing them, and any kind of AI summon you have out also attacks them on sight. Maybe every exile has a fatal grudge against the people of Oriath for getting them exiled in the first place? I dunno, just shooting in the dark here.

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007Bistromath wrote:

I've been thinking about this. I'd like to reframe it.

Your reframing is nice, but you should stick with your initial interpretation that it's a discusion in bad faith.

The fact the scene has a plentitude of interpretations(as evident by this thread itself) is an artistic choice.

It being tasteless is a mater of opinion, a valid one, but not the only one plausible interpretation and therefore doesn't have the punch to require change.

And even if we go with the hypothesis that there is a general consensus that it is tasteless(which doesn't appear to be the case) we could question if this is an artistic choice and desired by the developers in order to get us emotionally engaged with the story.
(which again, this thread and the OP demonstrates thus making it a succesfull artistic choice)

It's not self-evident the emotion being provoked isn't aimed towards "disgust" or "eery chaos".

Peace,

-Boem-