@BeefoTheBold: A scene is being deliberately excluded from a specific version of the game, and you don't see that as supressing content?
For your McDonalds analogy, the difference is that McDonalds has never offered zucchini instead of McFlurry in the past, and the menu offered by that one establishment is vast (for a fast food place).
Here, the issue is that the version being made available to the Western public is having a scene being removed from it on the grounds that some people will find moral objection - essentially, they are not being given any choice - take the version offered, or not, and especially for a scene that many people don't have a problem with being in the game.
Now, if instead they were offering two versions of the game - one with the scene in, and one with it removed; or some ability to remove that specific content, then I can understand that (Modern Warfare 2 did it for No Russian). Now, I personally don't opt-out of such content because I believe that it is removing a key part of the game, especially because it ellicits such strong reactions from people - but if people want to, then the option would be avaialable. And I do think that people should experience such content because it will ultimately serve them better because cooping up and never experfiencing anything outside your comfort zone leads to stagnantion, and no sense of truly being strong in one's convictions (which is why I liked that GTA V didn't give you an opt-out of the torture scene)
Trevor is portrayed as a murderous psycho, but he is also a murderous psycho that ultimately brings soem good by taking out other bad people - in that sense, he could be considered good. But he isn't, and we all recognise that without the game needing to explicitly say "he is a bad person"
"Where I bump up against it with this scene is that it's very ethically problematic but, from what I can see, is not ever acknowledged as "black" or even "gray" at all. It's just a good guy helping a woman with her "problem""
The scene does have a lot of ethically horrible sense around it, no doubt - so does death, and suffering, torture, and the rest. And again, why does the game have to make some sort of statement regarding the morality of the situation - if you come to disagree with it, then that is your choice. But you came to that decision BECAUSE you saw/experienced that scene, it made you think about what your moral compass is, and by removing that we no longer are able to think
"When a company decides themselves to change something about their product for fear of how it would be perceived in the marketplace that is NOT CENSORSHIP. That's the company making a business decision themselves"
On the contrary, I would say that it is. Censorship is the supression of speech, ideas, whatever - it doesn't matter who does it or why, whether it is another party or whatever, it is censorship is something is being supressed - in this case, a particular scene.
The question is what types of censorship do we allow - when a news show bleeps out bad language, we consider it okay because younger people may be watching the programme, for example
"I'd rather not be playing a character who drugs somebody against their will and have no control over that particular decision. Choosing the "evil" route in games can be a lot of fun when it's done intentionally"
Everyone keeps saying that we need more diverse character types in video games - if every character is the same clone goody two-shoes, then true diversity dies.
There is absoultely nothing wrong with having a character that is evil, or disgusting, or whatever - Trevor Philips proves that
"But not having any choice in the matter and the game not acknowledging that you've done a "bad" thing would be uncomfortable for me personally. YMMV and others may feel differently."
Why should game have to hit you over the head, telling you that "this character is bad" - if you personally think that the action is bad, then that is for your personal experience of the game - the game itself shouldn't require to make sure that it conforms to your personal morality - because those stories are ultimately the most interesting
@Slim_Lyrics @jodiii This issue is a bit of a double-edged sword. If you pick someone that really enjoyed the story, they may just ignore the issues - but if you pick someone that has no clue what was going on, then they will punish the game unnecessarily simply because they didn't understand it.
An example might be say, a car reviewer or something. You wouldn't choose the guy who can't drive to review the car, would you?
@tommynj I honestly would have to disagree. Brotherhood was great and whilst Revelations and 3 weren't particularily good, I still got my money's worth from them. IV was a blast.
Far Cry 3 was really fun and an enjoyable experience.
Blacklist, whilst not the best story (and no Ironside) had good gameplay.
Unity is the only real MAJOR f-ck up they have had - technically unstable, annoying and pointless side-apps and micro-transactions.
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