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[scrdest]

I hate video games that involve gunning down hordes of foreigners from places exist in real life.  Probably the worst offender I've encountered is Max Payne 3.  There was a point in that game where I realized it was literally a game about gunning down hordes of brown people for money.  And the game was aware of this, and Max repeatedly explains it to the player throughout the game.

Most of the people you shoot in that game are part of violent gangs, and I still saw Max as just as bad as them.  It is explained to the player at one point that you're in the middle of a fight between nasty poor people and nasty rich people, and have become a hired gun for the rich in a country you don't understand.  Yet somehow Max isn't a villain protagonist, he still gets to be the brooding but well-intentioned noire hero down on his luck.

CoD is bad about this as well.  They'll often use 24 style "but the real villain was an American!" cop outs, but like 24 it doesn't change what the story is fundamentally about.

I always thought that cop-out was even worse.  It can easily fall into making out the brown people to be only good as mooks - for actual brain power and plotting, you need another American.

Eh, I'm afraid you cannot win this one. You make the mastermind American, you're implying non-Americans aren't good enough. You make him non-American, you get yelled a for implying non-Americans are evil.

[Iceblaster]

Solution:

All villains are bannannas.

[flame99]

Solution:

All villains are bannannas.

This implies that all banana republics are evil.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I find your implications offensive.

[WealthyRadish]

I think if more 'evil' characters were written more convincingly, there'd be a lot less room for speculation about racism. Can't speak specifically for Max Payne, but I know of very few games with villains that are more than mustache-twirling plot devices... when that kind of depth isn't given, who knows what assumptions can be made about the writers' convictions. At the very least I think games should shoot for being self aware of their often ridiculous plots, but I know that some people also find that annoying.

[Wardo]

One-way rank systems

In Combat Arms, you gain ranks as you win and can only play in servers that allow your rank. The idea is that players of similar skill all end up in the same rooms together.

The thing is, you don't get knocked down for losing. So you end up stuck at a level where you consistently lose. This really sucks if you stop playing for a while and your game rank isn't representative of your skill level anymore.

Also known as the Peter Principle or Everybody is Incompetent Principle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

[EnigmaticHat]

I think if more 'evil' characters were written more convincingly, there'd be a lot less room for speculation about racism. Can't speak specifically for Max Payne, but I know of very few games with villains that are more than mustache-twirling plot devices... when that kind of depth isn't given, who knows what assumptions can be made about the writers' convictions. At the very least I think games should shoot for being self aware of their often ridiculous plots, but I know that some people also find that annoying.

Its weird, but a lot of video games don't have strong antagonists until right at the end, or ever.  I guess in a video game its acceptable for the main villain to be a horde of nameless mooks, while other forms of storytelling need the opposing force to have a "face".

Perhaps its because in a video game you understand that the horde can kill the heroes, while in other stories no one expects anything from nameless characters.

[Parsely]

Anyway, my argument isn't that Max is the devil.  He got sort of dragged along at the start.  He 100% should have walked away when he realized his boss was a mass-murderer whose entire family was utterly doomed.  But more to the point, when you write a story you get to decide all those little details.  The point is the place we got to was killing hundreds of increasingly non-villainous Brazilians for increasingly non-heroic reasons.  And they Max have talked about how awful it was, but for all that the people Max killed were faceless, characterless, storyless goons while he got to be a sympathetic brooding anti-hero.

I think Max is definitely a bad guy. He's not getting dragged along at all, he's totally willingly shooting everyone. And also the people he's protecting (badly) are scumbags too. They're some kind of celebrity crime family or something.

The enemy characters weren't nearly as faceless as you're making them out to be. You make them sound like they're angels. They're gangsters. They're kidnapping people. They're dealing drugs. Sometimes while you're wasting them. If that's not villainous I don't know what is.

Edit: Oh, and I was accusing the game developers and audience of racism/xenophobia, based on the idea that they were more OK with Max being the good guy, because people are used to seeing the foreign hordes gunned down in FPSs.  And media as a whole.  AK-47s let you tell who the villain is after all.

I'm not a big fan of Rockstar, but it is definitely not made of xenophobes. They take shots at everybody, especially in GTA.

...

Also you didn't even finish the game! >.>
He kills hundreds of evil dirty cops that are in cahoots with the evil cartel that kidnapped the evil crime family.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Yeah I liked hoe Donkey Kong was a bad guy and not afraid of anyone.

[Korbac]

Yeah I liked hoe Donkey Kong was a bad guy and not afraid of anyone.

Donkey Kong : The ultimate heel - face turn of gaming.

[SOLDIER First]

Completely Mute Protagonists
Who makes no sounds excepts grunts? I mean, if you can voice-act the rest of the characters, you could at least give the protagonist a few lines.
(Mostly aimed at first-person games with set protagonists.)

[hops]

immershun

[SOLDIER First]

If sitting in a torture room with the men who orchestrated my delivery to said torture room I want to spit in their faces and curse them, dangit!
It only seems weird because it's never been done before to my knowledge.

[Parsely]

Completely Mute Protagonists
Who makes no sounds excepts grunts? I mean, if you can voice-act the rest of the characters, you could at least give the protagonist a few lines.

I don't mind it in: LoZ, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, Cave Story, Journey, Dark Cloud, Pikmin- But then basically no one else talks in those games, or they don't speak earthlang in the first place.

IMO Half-Life is better with the ambiguity about Gordon, but the only one I feel it's well justified in is Metro 2033. Artyom actually does narrate between levels so it's not as if he's just a derp, I can believe that he really is just a quiet dude.

[Mech#4]

Hmm, "Sleeping Dogs" had a torture scene but that game was firmly third person.

"Outlast" had one as well, but, while the protagonist isn't silent for it, he otherwise doesn't talk.

I can't think of any where the protagonist has a voice and is first person. There's only so many 'loud' player characters like that such as "Duke Nukem".

"Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth" may have had one. Well, it was in first person, but was otherwise a cutscene.