How realistic is your cup of tea?

[Shatau]

I went with ESRB-friendly Realism.

 

I want a mature game, where bad things can happen, all you mentioned and even worse. But I don´t necessary need to see them all.

[qlum]

surrealism still including taboos but not to a scale that it gets thrown into your face so often that it gets tiresome, sure there may be child rape sure there may poverty but don't make it all consuming. The society itself may have very strange principles not common in most real sociaties to break it up but I generally don't like sugarcoting, the witcher generally did it pretty fine.

[HansKrSG]

I want them to not sugarcoat anything, neither to feel constricted by any ESRB rating or the like. I do want there to be some moral relativism shown though, as many things we felt was immoral before, is not today, and many things we feel are immoral today, was not seen as such before, let the alien cultures in a fantasyworld have morality that doesn't fit our 2012-western world view of things.

[l3loodangel]

[Perception success] We are talking about RAPE and not about slavery, racial violence, cannibalism or violent crimes! Pedophilia or child molestation is also a problem of society, but it doest mean I want to see them in the game.

 

[Perception success] There is no "we". Only *you* (and a small minority of posters) seem to be fixating on rape exclusively.

 

You like stating the obvious, don't you?

[aluminiumtrioxid]

[Perception success] We are talking about RAPE and not about slavery, racial violence, cannibalism or violent crimes! Pedophilia or child molestation is also a problem of society, but it doest mean I want to see them in the game.

 

[Perception success] There is no "we". Only *you* (and a small minority of posters) seem to be fixating on rape exclusively.

 

You like stating the obvious, don't you?

 

If your argument is that only disgusting perverts want to include rape, and they do so because they want to **** to the sight of rapists gangbanging helpless women (as dlux implied, which you liked - thus it seems quite logical that you agree), I think it's rather important whether the OP and the supporters of "hard realism" are the ones really fixated on rape, or not.

[Shaewaros]

The OP's question confuses two separate issues - maturity and realism. The devs have pointed out that this will be a M rated mature game, so there will certainly be mature themes. However mature themes do not imply that the game would also have to be realistic - it can be utterly unrealistic while being mature at the same time.

[Rinu]

...

 

I don't really interpret "realistic" as a gore fest/ orgy street/ game of thrones, those horrible things only act as an example.

My take on "realistic" is, quoting myself, "There are wonderful things out there, but there are no sugar-coating the ugly truths either. Just like IRL."

 

Thanks for your response, I see your point. In that case I suppose we have similar expectations; I just wanted to express an opinion what I expect from a realistic portrayal of society. That it shouldn't include simply explicit scenes but also a context.

 

Hear, hear. I'm kind of confused, why are people expecting these ultra violent "themes", if you can call 'em that, all of a sudden? Is it because of the witcher? I don't think the titles any of the members of the dev. team worked on in the past featured that kind of explicit violence. Well I mean sure you could hit a child in the nuts with a sledgehammer, but otherwise I think fallout played it rather coy and so did all of the other titles.

Which also brings me to the next point: PS:T which was generally lauded for it's mature themes wasn't dark and gritty, it got it's appeal from the complexity of the themes and its imaginative world-building. What reason would you have to expect or want the level of grittiness described in this thread for this game?

 

I mentioned these themes because the poll used this wording:

"How realistic... ?" "Hard realism = show EXPLICIT racism, rape, child killings,..."

Knowing Obsidian's work I don't worry they'll try to create playable American Psycho. I completely agree with what you said about PS:T. If they craft another world like that, I'll be happy. That's what I imagined under the option "Surrealism" and voted for it.

 

By the way, this forum's system is freaking awesome. Combination of "Like", quote's link and multi-quote is very handful.

[Perzyn]

I voted hard realism. This is one of the reasons I love The Witcher (books and games) and why there are still books in Fantasy genre that can be considered good. Works on the cynism end of Sliding Scale of Cynism vs Idealism are just more entertaining to me, showing worlds similar to our, but more awesome by addition of magic or dragons or whatever.

 

To give better example of level of realism (or cynism if you will) I'd love to see in Project Eternity, here's short list of books that fall into that cathegory:

- Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

- The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercombie

- Best Served Cold by Joe Abercombie

- The Chronicles of Black Company by Glen Cook

- The Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski

 

I don't want a tale of good heroes fighthing Empire of Evil. I want a tale about group of people entangled into struggle between forces that are not "Black and White" but each have their, more or less reasonable, motives and justifications.

[timobkg]

I don't want rape, incest, child killings, etc for the sake of having them. I do want the devs to be free to put them in if they serve the story.

 

A Song of Ice and Fire (A Game of Thrones) is a good example.

[Entropious]

All in all, it all depends on the mood chosen by the developers, although, seeing as how the so-called "gritty" Dragon Age series have failed to deliver on the "mature" part of gritiness, one can hope that in this case we will receive a product for adults, both in body, mind and spirit. And I should know, being George Bush.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Entropious

[Troller]

All in all, it all depends on the mood chosen by the developers, although, seeing as how the so-called "gritty" Dragon Age series have failed to deliver on the "mature" part of gritiness, one can hope that in this case we will receive a product for adults, both in body, mind and spirit. And I should know, being George Bush.

hahahah

[Kate_wise]

I don't want rape, incest, child killings, etc for the sake of having them. I do want the devs to be free to put them in if they serve the story.

 

A Song of Ice and Fire (A Game of Thrones) is a good example.

 

I agree (and particularly the ASoIaF ref) ... I chose the second option in the vote. I feel like these elements should be present in the world. I think if you limit what can exist and go on in the world then you also undermine the representations of good and evil struggles (and inner struggles). It's almost disingenuous to have some evil behaviours represented and not others - it makes the world less realistic with less serious consequences. One of the reasons I respect Game of Thrones / ASoIaF is that war is represented properly - as a horrible, terrible thing that changes people, changes the world, leads to some awful actions. To have a world where battle and fighting is only presented as glorious or good vs evil ('look out they are trying to destroy the world in an abstract way') would be disappointing and difficult for me to feel emotionally involved. To have the full range of good and bad consequences to events in this world, along with its psychological implications and the motivations it leads to, is what I would look for, anyway.

 

That said, I have chosen option two because I believe (similar again to Game of Thrones), horrific extremes should be implied rather than explicit. It's going to be isometric so let's face it - it will all be conveyed by text. We don't need that kind of explicit detail.