Why not over the top? Whats wrong with putting an axe through someones skull and having brains and [censored] fall out? Video games are meant to give us an experience that we will never have in real life.

don't forget the screaming and the fountain of blood and the suffering :whisper:

No, but it contradicts the nice clean, anti-septic, civilized world in which we now live. And many people don't like, or can't handle that.

There are also plenty of people over 18 that have no desire to see excessive blood/gore.

It seems that the arguments against gore always call it immature to want it in the game, or just be about "not liking blood". I think that it has a lot more impact than this from a very mature and artistic standpoint.

The reason I advocate that more realistic death and gore is helpful to the narrative and the art is that it would bring to the surface the type of feeling you get in the Lachance story for all deaths in the game too (maybe not quite that brutal for each death, but in that vein). Are all other people's deaths so unimportant that they only deserve to be dolls in death? Only Lucien gets the good treatment? How disappointing it would be if Lachance were just a doll on the ground is how I feel about all the people "killed" in OB. Granted, excessive gore where its just splattering on the screen and limbs and heads fly off every single time you kill would be over the other edge of the bell curve. In the skilled and tempered hands of a good artist, it can be implemented to great effect, and would serve to bring the graphics of death in line with the graphics of life in the game world. Without this you have an almost absurdist art piece that belongs on an advlt Swim cartoon sketch where death by battle-axe is like peacefully going to sleep (although they'd likely take it in the opposite direction on those programs, but its the absurdity and cheeze factor I'm getting at). Death OB style is watered down for commercialism and marketability, the hallmark poisons to good art. It actually makes the game have a more mature artistic style if gore is added in the right amount, and not overdone.

I always felt like I needed to sharpen my sword in Oblivion, it felt like I was hitting people with sticks rather than slashing them.

Now probably those blood effects and finishing moves we saw on the trailer will be enough, to make it feel like an actual swordfight...
There's no need for guts and different body pieces to fall around. It worked in L4D because... well it's a zombie game, and with zombies goes big amount of gore. Skyrim doesn't really need this, though a clean decapitation here and there wouldn't hurt. No fountain of blood though.

Sound effects of things hitting flesh are always extremely exaggerated in movies and games. I would prefer them to be more realistic and by that I mean low volume and barely noticeable most of the time.

re: "immature" vs "mature"

I guess it all depends on how it's done and presented.

Blood & nastiness in Saving Private Ryan? Used maturely & for artistic/emotional "impact".

Blood & nastiness in, say Grindhouse or Hobo With A Shotgun? Immature, over the top, exploitative grandstanding. Done because Heh heh. Blood. Cool.

And honestly? Many of the people saying "I want to see extreme gore! Bwhahaha!" come off as wanting that second thing. (Not everyone. But the impression is still pretty prevalent).


(Actually, I've never seen the Lucien quests. In all the games of Oblivion I've played, he's only shown up twice - guess I don't murder people enough - and both times, I've killed him the instant his conversation ended. He's a bad guy, after all.)

But many posters in these threads, not just myself, are advocating for a tempered approach to gore. It just seems like the anti-gore crowd is so extremely anti-gore that the amount of blood in OB is even considered to BE "gore". Something in between that approach and Grindhouse. I don't want geysers of blood myself either. But the impact of a corpse showing the violence of the death is impacting in a way completely unrelated to wanting a bloodthirsty spectacle. It was quite a shock to see his corpse hanging there mutilated. But the LaChance story was an extreme case in the way he died... I don't want every person who dies to become a gruesome zombie. I just don't want them to be peaceful dolls, I want their death to mean something... it supposed to be disturbing when you kill someone... that elevates the emotional impact, which elevates the art.

Hmm. I think it'd be kind of hard to have it like that, in a combat-centric game where you'll probably end up killing dozens upon dozens of people. Most of them faceless mooks.


(Don't a good number of the more violent/bloody games positively revel in the bloodshed, actually? Rather than trying to make it a weighty and difficult thing? Like the God of War games, or Mortal Kombat, or the zombie games, for instance.)

I'm starting to think that some people are intentionally misconstruing the want of a more realistic implementation of blood and gore. It's like in the the multiplayer threads where people where people were asking for two player co-op, and the counter argument from more than a few was, "if you want an MMO go play WoW."

Those games all handle a lot of aspects of the game differently than TES. I don't want an implementation of the gore like they have in those games, but I want a good, even-handed TES approach to it. Its just unfair to call blood spatter that disappears in 3 seconds by evaporating out of existence like we had in OB an already even-handed approach... its anything but. I want them to implement gore that fits into the TES playstyle, not implement gore that fits into the God of War playstyle. Everything that is done by Bethesda (aside from level scaling in OB) has been at least satisfactory if not marvelous in my opinion except for the lack of realism in the corpses... laying there with no blood looking asleep is just very odd to me. Something between that and God of War, something that Bethesda balances well, is what I'm advocating and I see other people advocating in their posts. There are a few that want explosive gore, but many want a balanced approach.

Thinking in general about emotional impact in games..... the things that come to mind right away are the end of Mass Effect 1 (even having played it more than once, it's still stirring every single time. And the first time I did it, I thought rescuing the Council's ship in the final battle would lead to too many losses and a bad ending. The scenes as their bridge crew realize you're abandoning them made me feel terrible.), and a couple of stick-figure Flash games I've played (The Company of Myself, I think?) None of them bloody at all.

Of course, then I also remember the silliness of some of the cutscenes in the JRPG Xenosaga III. Which were censored in the US version - all the blood was removed. Which really made the one flashback scene, where you see the protagonist as a young girl, having a breakdown in the room where her parents have been slaughtered by crazies..... no explicit gore, just blood decals & liquid. But with the blood gone, you just have a traumatized girl cupping nothing in her hands (rather than blood), muttering about having to "put it back". :facepalm:

(But, even in that case, there's nothing explicit - the context and presentation makes blood decals and tomato juice really disturbing. Not sure if any of the "pro-gore" folks here would even say it's gory.)

---------------

Anyway...

Here's the thing. Do you really want to make it "emotionally disturbing or impacting" to kill people, in a game where you're going to have to do it a lot? Or would that make the game not fun for the average player?

There's also the artistic question of: is that even one of the goals of the game and/or the developers?


(For example.... a WW2 game, made from an anti-war standpoint, will emphasize how horrible it is, make everything svck, "War is Hell", humanize the enemy soldiers to reinforce how it's a waste of human life, etc. And another one, made from a Heroic Soldier / Nobility of Fighting Evil viewpoint might make it not nearly as bad, making you feel good about gunning down the enemy, etc.)

Yes, I do. But beyond that simple answer, I don't think that every person you kill is going to have significant gore. Mostly, enemies you are going to fight and then stand and look at would be unarmored people you have murdered. Most other combat will involve armored enemies or even if unarmored, enemies with buddies around. Its not only disturbing, but it can also bring a sense of true finality to the epic quest. Storvlad the Merciless will now be DEAD in a pool of blood with a gash on his neck instead of peacefully asleep in the antechamber. Its not bloodthirsty, its catharsis. And when you do the same to poor innocent Ema in her bed at home, it is more in the realm of disturbing and makes you think about what you've done. In either case, if they just turn to dolls, their deaths feel of far less consequence.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but in the Skyrim trailer at 1:33 - 1:34 the NPC's arm disintegrates with the axe impact. (it's pretty hard to stop the video in the right spot)

Limb removals?

Dude, get your head straight there s NOTHING MORE GORY THAN REALITY.
You have a slashing weapon and you want a reality not over the top gore ?
WTF?!!! Is there something more gorry, than soeone slashing a throat and the victim start writting on the floor and while trying to breath the sound of the blood gurgling while the air pass throught the cut not reaching the lungs while the poor svcker writhle on the floor and a waterpool of blood spread on the floor while the heart is still beating at max speed ?
Or someone plunging a sword on the belly like in the video and when it comes back a thread of guts come back with the blade like a line being unrolled of a novel while the subject scream his lung out in despair while he dies slowly, in minutes our hours calling his mom, god or any help? And while in extreme pain he has [censored]ted and pissed himself all around ?
Or a skull being smashed by a mace and the grey matter splashing throught the place including your face mouth, tongue and nose because when you hit you were panting and you feel the taste of it and may contract some blood related disease because of this ?
Or and exposed fracture being a sad mess of muscle tendon, ripped skin and shattered bones, being serrated and or cut with a butcher like knive to try to save the svcker all that without any anestesy and having four to five people holding it because not every brain give a shut down command under pain ?

Is there anything more goring than reality? If so, please show me an example. Are you sure you want reality ? (whithout the smell of course).
I don t, the silly simplistic sanity and mind preserving Skyrim blood splash is enought for me, thank you.

It would only be emotionally disturbing in a limited sense, that is because we have been raised in a developed world where we are sheltered from these things, apart from in the general media. Society's position on gore is slightly better than society's position on six -- the damage either of them do in moderation is hugely exaggerated.

I like to think that when I hit something with a sword it gets damaged. Perhaps that's a better message to send out?

well the gore was not unrealistic but it was their

killing zombies with chainsaw and sword and blowing their brains out or spilling their insides out is gore in my book

Yeah sure, perhaps just against monsters.