i still absolutely adore hotline miami for how it made the player consider the nature of the game they were playing without shoving any sort of message in the player’s face
the game’s minimalist art style makes the violence presented in-game seem less intense despite being incredibly graphic, the game’s pulsing music and colors are meant to keep the player in the moment, not thinking too hard about any given action, encouraging a flow that keeps the player going
then once a stage is completed, the colors dull and the music stops and the player is made to take a short walk through the carnage they just caused. a quick, quiet moment to reflect upon what you did in the stage. it doesn’t outright ask you anything, but through its visuals and its mechanics it asks the question “are you really okay with this?”
the game asks, in story, “do you like hurting other people?” it’s essentially asking the player this too. Do you, the player, like hurting other people? Probably not, right? Not to the extent presented in the game. So why are you playing a video game about brutal, violent killing? Why aren’t you contemplating the implications of you playing this game? Through the single sentence “Do you like hurting other people,” it asks a million other questions.
And then, ultimately, if you comb through the game to collect all of the secrets to get the secret ending, you speak directly to the developers of the game. Your character demands answers. Why were they doing these horrible things? What is going on?
“Who cares? You had fun, right? You don’t actually like hurting people, and you know that. You played the game because the game is fun. It has fun mechanics. The rest of it doesn’t matter. You enjoy the mechanics, you enjoy the spectacle, and there’s nothing wrong with that because it’s not real and you know that it’s not real.”
That’s so fucking fantastic to me. The game sets up all these questions about morality and gears you up for some pretentious spiel about right and wrong, then it hits you over the head at the last second and just says “haha nah there’s no deeper meaning. we just wanted to make a fun game. it’s all pretend, you’re not a bad person for indulging in a silly, unrealistic fantasy, it’s all good.”
titsay
baratheonpilled
izzy806
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
