IGN - The Year in Violence

Dhruin

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IGN looks back at the year's most violent games and, not surprisingly, Dragon Age gets a spot. The write-up is only one paragraph for each title, so here's the whole thing:
Here be viscera.

BioWare is in the fantasy business. And in the medieval-style role-playing game Dragon Age, the developer provided gamers ample opportunity to indulge themselves. Want to train a killer dog? Here you go. Want to wield swords and slay beasts? Done. But these are mere pencil-and-paper choices that have become common RPG fare. BioWare went past that artifice of violence, choosing to give players direct feedback for their behavior by splattering their characters with gallons of blood. In most modern western RPGs, the character creation is a sacred ritual in which gamers carefully craft their avatar's background, appearance and dress. But the resulting character is seldom put into context. In Dragon Age, if you've just fought a battle and stroll into town to chat with the locals, the conversation scene will show your elves and wizards drenched in the blood they've just shed. Designed to be both a thrilling symbol of victory and a reminder of your brutaity, it fails at both. In the end, it comes across as little more than gallows humor.
More information.
 
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The blood in Dragon Age is stupid. Absolutely, positively, bare bones dumb. It's all over the loading screens. It's used to mark your progress on the map. It splatters all over your characters (in exactly the same pattern every time). The dragon in the logo is made of blood. The web page has blood splattered everywhere. Honestly, it reminds me of that old Monty Python skit where the movie producer kept talking about the blood going sppuuussh in slow motion.

Luckily, the game is able to overcome this.
 
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I regard it just the same. The violence level of DA was entirely misplaced and appalling.
 
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the decaps and stuff are fun, i actually really like the gameplay violence itself. It really looks like she's cutting a swath thru the enemy. When she finishes someone, it's pretty dramatic. The blood splattering on the models tho is a bit much, and tho i do turn it on sometimes, it always ends up getting shut off again after a while. Would have been fine if there wasnt so much of it, it didnt happen even when fighting creatures such as skeletons that have no blood to splatter, and your character wiped down or something after a battle. I wonder if anyone actually plays with it on, I havent really seen any screenshots w/ it.

But yeah, the blood all over EVERYTHING in the menus, load screen & stuff is just going too far w/ it. Like the boss simply wrote "BLOOD" on the board in the meeting or something, and the team just ran w/ it. What the hell. Like Zloth said, it borders on parody at times, kinda funny. Kinda creepy. There should be a "turn off all blood" option, I'm fine w/ the coffee stain parchment tone and ye olde traditional RPG look.

Actually that would be a good thing to ask Patrick Weekes if/when he stops by again. "Hey pat, give us some inside dirt here - wtf w/ all the damn blood?"
 
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I turned off the persistent blood in DAO pretty early on. Not because I'm sensitive to that kind of stuff or because I was offended in any way - no, simply because it *very* quickly became "just a gimmick" (although I admit it was kind of cool in the first couple of fights). It simply looked and felt stupid...

For example, the very first "quest" I got in the game had me killing giant rats in a food store room. After the fight we're all *covered* in rat blood... and then my party member goes something like: "You know, lets not tell the cook that we encountered rats in here". Doh! I think it'll be hard to hide from her, looking like this :)
 
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I was expecting it to have a larger effect than it had, but I personally didn't really notice it much after the first couple of fights.

So, while the impact wasn't big - I did think it added an extra little something to the sensation that you were fighting an almost endless war.

It made it feel slightly more "real" - and I think it ended up being a nice visual addition.
 
I actually agree with DArtagnan…I didn't notice it much and I found it somewhat realistic - it made sense to me there's be a boatload of blood after some of those fights.

Sure, boatloads of blood ... but no one was winded, no new NPC reacted to the fact that our heroes were covered in blood? No one pointing to gore all over you - oh wait, it was never gore, just droplets of blood - I mean, sure you can rationalize it, but once you look beyond the 12-uear old male fantasy violence aspect, it falls apart. It is all part of the same brainless mindset that produced the obviously aimed at teen boys PR campaign.
 
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Well, I think that's a bit harsh really.

Maybe it helps to attract a younger audience, but I actually think they wanted a more visceral feel to sort of represent a "serious" underpinning to the whole war aspect.

Asking for realistic responses from NPCs or having internal organs splattered all over the armor is, in my opinion, pretty far-fetched.

They're taking a step towards something, but they have limited time and resources to fully cover everything entailed.

But that's just my opinion.

The marketing campaign, however, was a travesty of epic proportions.
 
I switched off the persistent blood almost immediately. The idea is good, execution laughable, which is why it more-or-less stays in the realm of gimmicks. Everything that can be switched off is no big deal for me though.

In regards to overall abundance of blood in DA, I enjoy it (bwahaha).
To me it´s an aesthetic decision which goes well hand in hand with a lot of important in-game themes - Warden joinage, blood magic, origins (metaphorically), war. As such, bloodied journal, loading screen, travelling trace etc feel very integral to the game and not like gimmicks. At all.
It also makes battles feel more visceral which I don´t think is a bad thing.
With more careful implementation, persistent blood would be a good addition to this.
 
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Well, I think that's a bit harsh really.

Maybe it helps to attract a younger audience, but I actually think they wanted a more visceral feel to sort of represent a "serious" underpinning to the whole war aspect.

Asking for realistic responses from NPCs or having internal organs splattered all over the armor is, in my opinion, pretty far-fetched.

They're taking a step towards something, but they have limited time and resources to fully cover everything entailed.

But that's just my opinion.

The marketing campaign, however, was a travesty of epic proportions.

I guess I tie in the marketing campaign to the blood spatter. There has been blood and gore in games for years, as well as decapitations, and many, many, many games have done it more realistically. This stuff is over the top for effect, and that is why I tie it into the immature marketing campaign … sort of a 'blood is kewl' thing.

Personally I would *love* if they had actually gone a step further and *tried* to reflect something beyond excessive blood. That would confirm that they were indeed trying for something related to the 'endless brutality of war' thing rather than just being 'dark & gritty'. But with the evidence we have, it is hard to see it as anything but gratuitous.
 
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I like the blood, it's just a bit of harmless silly fun.
Gallons of blood is definitely more realistic than no blood at all, but I don't care much about that.
Also, blood is pretty... (ok that sounds a lot sicker than I actually am :D)
 
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I guess I tie in the marketing campaign to the blood spatter. There has been blood and gore in games for years, as well as decapitations, and many, many, many games have done it more realistically. This stuff is over the top for effect, and that is why I tie it into the immature marketing campaign … sort of a 'blood is kewl' thing.

Personally I would *love* if they had actually gone a step further and *tried* to reflect something beyond excessive blood. That would confirm that they were indeed trying for something related to the 'endless brutality of war' thing rather than just being 'dark & gritty'. But with the evidence we have, it is hard to see it as anything but gratuitous.

What games would you personally rank above DA:O in terms of gore and decapitations and why?

I see no evidence of anything - except something which you can interpret as you feel is right.

It seems we're pretty evenly divided on the Watch - so I would say it's a bit fuzzy.
 
What exactly is wrong with it just being gratuitous? I assumed that was kinda the point. A little bit of over the top craziness never hurt anyone.
 
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What games would you personally rank above DA:O in terms of gore and decapitations and why?

The Witcher?

Witcher's felt right, there was blood spray and I think it splattered on things but then it faded away pretty quick. It was brutally violent at times but it felt so much more in tune with the rest of the game. When he draws the dagger off the leg jumps on top and stabs 3 times on a downed body finisher was so brutal it was art. Only ever seen that one once but it was awesome.

To tell you the truth I turned off the blood in DA so early that I forgot all about it. After the aforementioned rat fight I thought it looked so ridiculous and was so distracting it was turned off and it's stayed that way. I didn't even realize DA had decapitations, since it sucks to play anything but zoomed out (I played mostly 1 click shy of all the way out ) I didn't even notice any death animations.

Remember that game from the 80s, splatterhouse or something like that that got all the controversy ( that was the marketing plan I believe ). Realistic blood is well and good but when it covers everything in sight it's just ridiculous.
 
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The Witcher?

Witcher's felt right, there was blood spray and I think it splattered on things but then it faded away pretty quick. It was brutally violent at times but it felt so much more in tune with the rest of the game. When he draws the dagger off the leg jumps on top and stabs 3 times on a downed body finisher was so brutal it was art. Only ever seen that one once but it was awesome.

To tell you the truth I turned off the blood in DA so early that I forgot all about it. After the aforementioned rat fight I thought it looked so ridiculous and was so distracting it was turned off and it's stayed that way. I didn't even realize DA had decapitations, since it sucks to play anything but zoomed out (I played mostly 1 click shy of all the way out ) I didn't even notice any death animations.

Remember that game from the 80s, splatterhouse or something like that that got all the controversy ( that was the marketing plan I believe ). Realistic blood is well and good but when it covers everything in sight it's just ridiculous.

To be honest I don't really see the "art" in The Witcher's implementation over what's happening in Dragon Age. You have similar "over-the-top" action when you kill large enemies of a certain type in DA:O - and I found them to be just run-of-the-mill action hero crap like all popular entertainment and The Witcher was the same way.

For some reason, ever since The Matrix, every action movie or violent game must have these semi slow-motion implausible kills and I have no idea what the appeal is. The last two LOTR movies were almost ruined for me by this ridiculous approach to killing things.

Anyway, I still don't see how the blood and decapitations in Dragon Age differ from so many other games that use them for entertainment value, just like the Fallouts and The Witcher.

To me, it seems like it's an irrational target "just because" it's Bioware and Dragon Age based on the abysmal marketing campaign - and I'd have an easier time understanding this opposition if it was just a general attitude against needless blood and gore. But when it's stated that blood and gore is fine in some games, but not in DA:O because the blood is persistant or whatever, well, it makes no sense to me at all.
 
DArt, because it's distracting and the persistence makes it gratuitous.

The decapitations don't bother me, like I said, I hadn't even noticed. The DA logo and map trails being in blood is ignorable. It's the blood on the characters after a battle. That I can recall it's the first game to do this and they went over the top with it by drenching each character in blood. During the fight, that'd be fine ( I wouldn't have noticed anyway zoomed out ) but when the characters are standing around talking about the weather drenched in blood it's ridiculous.

Heck, if they even had an animation for immediately post combat conversations where the characters are using a rag to wipe the blood off their faces it wouldn't be so bad. It's the character's and the everyone around them complete lack of reaction to the blood that push it over the edge.
 
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