Lali ho!
Final Fantasy 7 was reduced on PSN a few days ago so I finally bought the digital copy, even though I own the actual discs. Discs that are never to be played, touched, or even looked at, they're practically a family heirloom at this point. So the wife is overjoyed, because she can finally go on her first ever solo run through the game. She's enjoying it, in fact she's done very little else for the last two days, but she's raised a very interesting point that got me thinking.
As you all know, games these days seem to attract controversy like turds attract flies. Sometimes you could say it's justifiable, other times it's just attention seeking nonsense. People will pick a game apart for any reason, be it violence, sexual content, racism, anything. And to me it seems like this is much more common these days. Not saying games didn't do the controversy circuit in the old days, we all know how much of a fuss the original Mortal Kombat caused. But the wife pointed out that despite some decidedly sketchy content when you look at it, neither of us remember FF7 and many other games that quite easily could have been picked apart ever gaining any sort of negative press. Feel free to correct us if we're wrong on that but I've never seen it. Here's a short list of points she considered dubious just from disc one. Spoiler alert, I guess? Despite everyone knowing the entire story off by heart at this point.
That's just disc one. I could go on to talk about attempted execution without trial, etc in disc two, but you get my point. When you really think about it, the game has some disturbing moments that just seem to fly in completely under the controversy radar. It's not unique to FF7 either. In games like Streets of Rage you can stab people with a knife and yet nobody ever complained. Why is it that violence, sex, crime and etc are somehow acceptable in some games but treated like the devil incarnate in others?
Let me just state categorically that I don't care for controversy, I've always thought controversy is bullpies because you can always just not play games that you find offensive. But I'm curious. Did people just not give a crap back in the day? How come only a select few games got the media attention before this last console generation and the dawn of the online age, but now that we have high speed internet it seems that a lot more games get picked apart by the media for this sort of thing? Is it just a matter of the more realistic looking graphics, or are people just more inclined to bitch these days? Is it a matter of declining moral standards, or just people taking advantage of the widespread influence of controversies to get attention?
Thoughts, opinions, examples?
Final Fantasy 7 was reduced on PSN a few days ago so I finally bought the digital copy, even though I own the actual discs. Discs that are never to be played, touched, or even looked at, they're practically a family heirloom at this point. So the wife is overjoyed, because she can finally go on her first ever solo run through the game. She's enjoying it, in fact she's done very little else for the last two days, but she's raised a very interesting point that got me thinking.
As you all know, games these days seem to attract controversy like turds attract flies. Sometimes you could say it's justifiable, other times it's just attention seeking nonsense. People will pick a game apart for any reason, be it violence, sexual content, racism, anything. And to me it seems like this is much more common these days. Not saying games didn't do the controversy circuit in the old days, we all know how much of a fuss the original Mortal Kombat caused. But the wife pointed out that despite some decidedly sketchy content when you look at it, neither of us remember FF7 and many other games that quite easily could have been picked apart ever gaining any sort of negative press. Feel free to correct us if we're wrong on that but I've never seen it. Here's a short list of points she considered dubious just from disc one. Spoiler alert, I guess? Despite everyone knowing the entire story off by heart at this point.
- Game opens with you playing as terrorists, blowing up a reactor and killing hundreds of innocent people, it's never brought up. Call it eco-terrorism and morally justifiable all you like, you just bombed a power plant, killed innocent people and then tried to do it again.
- The whole Wall Market scene in its entirity. Implied rape in the Honey Bee brothel, literally everything Don Corneo does in the entire game, the cross-dressing scene, then the plate getting dropped and likely thousands of innocent civilians murdered. Never mentioned again.
- Implied beastiality when Hojo tries to breed Aerith with Nanaki.
- Dyne commiting suicide, never mentioned again.
- Don Corneo in Wutai's implied paedophilia given that Yuffie is technically underage in the main game.
- Reno murders Don Corneo in cold blood, nobody bats an eye.
- Barret's dubious remarks towards Cloud if you somehow go on the date with him.
- Cid's brutal treatment of Shera.
- Cloud smacking Aerith around after the Temple of the Ancients.
- What happens to Aerith, obviously.
- The whole Wall Market scene in its entirity. Implied rape in the Honey Bee brothel, literally everything Don Corneo does in the entire game, the cross-dressing scene, then the plate getting dropped and likely thousands of innocent civilians murdered. Never mentioned again.
- Implied beastiality when Hojo tries to breed Aerith with Nanaki.
- Dyne commiting suicide, never mentioned again.
- Don Corneo in Wutai's implied paedophilia given that Yuffie is technically underage in the main game.
- Reno murders Don Corneo in cold blood, nobody bats an eye.
- Barret's dubious remarks towards Cloud if you somehow go on the date with him.
- Cid's brutal treatment of Shera.
- Cloud smacking Aerith around after the Temple of the Ancients.
- What happens to Aerith, obviously.
That's just disc one. I could go on to talk about attempted execution without trial, etc in disc two, but you get my point. When you really think about it, the game has some disturbing moments that just seem to fly in completely under the controversy radar. It's not unique to FF7 either. In games like Streets of Rage you can stab people with a knife and yet nobody ever complained. Why is it that violence, sex, crime and etc are somehow acceptable in some games but treated like the devil incarnate in others?
Let me just state categorically that I don't care for controversy, I've always thought controversy is bullpies because you can always just not play games that you find offensive. But I'm curious. Did people just not give a crap back in the day? How come only a select few games got the media attention before this last console generation and the dawn of the online age, but now that we have high speed internet it seems that a lot more games get picked apart by the media for this sort of thing? Is it just a matter of the more realistic looking graphics, or are people just more inclined to bitch these days? Is it a matter of declining moral standards, or just people taking advantage of the widespread influence of controversies to get attention?
Thoughts, opinions, examples?
