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Why is there so much violence in TDM FMs?


fraten

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I noticed lately that Fan Missions for The Dark Mod are sometimes extremely violent.

 

Doom3 and in consequence The Dark Mod should be played by adult persons only (18+), therefore one can expect that some FMs show adult material.

In fact extreme violence (gallons of blood, decapitation, body parts, etc.) was chosen quite often to tell the story. In my perception there is also a clear tendency for authors to show even more gruesome scenes in new missions. But I may be wrong on that.

 

The Thief-Games are the inspiration of The Dark Mod. And the Thief-Universe did well without showing outright bloodbaths. In fact that was part of its grace. And I think that extreme violence is somehow destroying what we all loved in Thief.

 

Speaking of 'adult material': It is interesting that there is solely violence shown. Sex is absolutely no issue for authors, although one could expect that a thief would run into a secret love affair sooner or later while searching the city at nighttime.

 

Don't get me wrong: I am not crying for more naked women and less brutality, but I got the impression lately that the universe of the The Dark Mod is a bloodthirsty one. And I am wondering why that is.

 

Or in other words: In The Dark Mod we could have anything. Why do we choose brutality?

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A lot of Thief FMs were pretty gruesome too, so I don't think Darkmod FMs are all that trend-breaking. It all depends on the story the author wants to tell. Remember FMs tell most of their story through visual imagery first. So if they want to establish the antagonist as unscrupulous, then violence is a visual way to unambiguously get the message across. So I actually think it's more of a calculated storytelling thing for some authors than just "lol moar blood", though I'm sure there's authors like that too. But I could agree that we could use some more "fluff" FMs in the mix too.

 

Edit: Sex isn't represented more probably because there aren't assets for it, no naked AI models or "toy" models, but it's there in some stories. I put relationship stuff (including a secret gay affair) into my FM from the model of Lady Rowena, who liked to connect all her NPCs and represented all the aspects of their lives, professional, domestic, fears, love-life, etc. IMO she set the standard for NPC use.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Good question. The asset thing is one explanation.

 

Violence is much easier and more accepted than sex for one thing. (Tv shows, movies, games, etc.)

 

Still, since the sneaking genre is all about peeking in other (fictious) people's closets without permission, there would bound to be some interesting discoveries. I think such discoveries should exist, but they should not be overused. The problem is that they get bland very fast.

 

And sex is even more difficult to make look interesting and stylish in medieval writing media. I did my best in that one mission of mine.

 

But yeah, to satisfy the human natural tendency to peek in other people's business should reveal something else than always gruesome murders or infidelity. It just happen to be so that the mappers usually want to use the strongest and gravest elements possible. A chopped bloody corpse is an easy and significant element. It gets used a lot.

 

But Mappers want to be original, too. I'm sure that when time goes by people are gonna start avoiding elements that have been used a lot. Corpses will wane and interesting yet subtle things will emerge.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Doom3 and in consequence The Dark Mod should be played by adult persons only (18+),

 

According to whom?

 

In fact extreme violence (gallons of blood, decapitation, body parts, etc.) was chosen quite often to tell the story. In my perception there is also a clear tendency for authors to show even more gruesome scenes in new missions. But I may be wrong on that.

 

How many of the nearly 50 missions have "extreme violence"? TDM takes place in a medieval-ish time period, where things WERE extremely violent, and your adversaries are people who are out to kill you with swords and axes, so a certain level of violence is inherent to the genre. Even so, I would bet less than 10 of the 50 TDM missions have explicit gore in them.

 

The Thief-Games are the inspiration of The Dark Mod. And the Thief-Universe did well without showing outright bloodbaths.

 

What do you call ripping out someone's eyeball with foot-long claws? Thief also had graphic depictions of Hammerite torture and monsters made of human body parts...not exactly Disney.

 

In fact that was part of its grace. And I think that extreme violence is somehow destroying what we all loved in Thief.

 

How?

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In fact that was part of its grace. And I think that extreme violence is somehow destroying what we all loved in Thief.

I´ll second that: how ?

 

 

There are many young players, which in fact like brutallity and gore in games (and movies), that´s because of their age. They think its "cool". As grownups, we do not need it to be there anymore, ´cause nothing seems so "cool" about it. In fact, we even do not notice it. At least, i dont.

 

Your post rather surprised me. I don´t see nothing "extremely" violent in TDM FMs. All violence falls within acceptable mantinels. When PranQster released his mission, warning about "graphical violence" contained, i asked after playing: where that promised violence was ? i didn´t noticed any. That´s how my "violence threshold" has been raised by playing games.

 

We adapted to violence in games, it´s integral part of game structure. It raises adrenaline, blood pressure, thus helps immersion. Although Thief/TDM franchise isn´t about relieving stress through violence, as FPS are, most of us are perfectly OK with it.

 

I don´t like gory movies. But i don´t think that torture scenes in Pan´s Labyrinth degraded the movie in any way.

 

If the movie is nothing but gore , i dont watch it. If there is some gore, blended well with the story, i can get through it. IMHO. YMMV.

Edited by Trickster
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According to German rating agencies and the German government for instance for instance.

 

Germany has rated TDM?

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Oh, no of course not, but Doom 3 is rated 18+ here (The highest rating). So we can just assume that TDM players would have to be older than that. Rating TDM itself is not really possible, as the TDM-Basepackage does not consist of any actual game-content besides the harmless trainingmission. You'd have to rate each FM one by one. In my opinion, some of the FMs released until now are appropriate for a twelve-year-old and some shouldn't be played before the age of 16 or even 18.

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Why is there so much violence in TDM FMs?

 

Personally I blame computer games.

"No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text-books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat,

Or ward the tulwar's downward blow

Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—

The odds are on the cheaper man."

 

From 'Arithmetic on the Frontier' by Rudyard Kipling

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I see the problem here : Germans. :mellow:

 

But on a serious note : TDM lends itself well to a gritty and slightly sinister undertone, which is pretty much spot on from design. However I think that you're mistaking the line between violence and gratuitous violence. The general gore factor is rather low - most of the noticeable gore is involved in reinforcing how a character is truly wretched, and that is fair enough imho as it's not caused by the game mechanics, small blood pools and bloodied bodies are very fitting. About the largest difference I think is the sound effects that we use - which are rather raw and powerful in themselves; The gurgling of a dying guard reinforces the moral choice of killing/ko to me, that's something I find very unusual compared commercial games where violence is played down so much.

 

I personally found the lack of 'violent' feedback in T1/2 to be odd and distracting almost, at most you had to clean some blood up, but it hardly had the same psychological aspect. This may also be related to why you find TDM more violent, the same acts are suddenly a bit more dramatic and as such , memorable. No longer just an arrow to the head, swivel around and plop neatly onto the ground.

 

Thief 1/2 had stories which had a fairly rigid and did not require violence, likely by design. They also - in my view - lacked some of the atmosphere that was brought in with T3/TDM; While you knew of the world in the grand scheme of things, it was always distant to the actual story, perhaps as a result of the map limitations.

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I guess it's fair to say that all TDM players must own a copy of D3, and by extension must therefore be 18+ years of age,

 

Isn't that just Germany?

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About the largest difference I think is the sound effects that we use - which are rather raw and powerful in themselves; The gurgling of a dying guard reinforces the moral choice of killing/ko to me, that's something I find very unusual compared commercial games where violence is played down so much

 

Err.. Really? I find the 'curse you' dying shouts of some character even humorous & silly. But luckily there are good ones as well.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Err.. Really? I find the 'curse you' dying shouts of some character even humorous & silly. But luckily there are good ones as well.

I have no idea, but I remember a lot of gurgling and some rather painful sounding stuff. I don't really run around lopping all that many heads off however :) It was more a comment on the sound of killing, I find that games mostly just use random shouts or completely overblown theatrical screaming turning to some quickly fading nothingness (iirc, the last Wallenstein and COD did that quite a bit). Better yet the most common one : nothing at all. You killed someone, they were dead and... well that's that just the sound of a bullet hitting the flesh. Maybe a slightly more 'shiiiing' sword sound.

 

Just writing that, it's damn hard to remember the sounds at all, but to me the TDM ones stand out a lot more as 'you actually ended the guys life'.

 

Oh, HL2's stellar 'Bzzzz' the radio just died. That's right, headshot and the poor guys radio isn't working now. He's just sleeping in the corner after that brief thud.

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According to whom?

According to the Federal Repblic of Germany:

 

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom#Doom_3

 

"Doom 3 wurde als erster Ego-Shooter von id Software in Deutschland nicht indiziert: Das Spiel ist ab 18 Jahren freigegeben und ist für Linux, Mac OS X, Windows und die Xbox erschienen."

 

The law says it is for "18 and older only" (because it is not rated, so it defaults to 18+). I don't like it, either, but the law is the law...

 

One more reason to make a stand-alone TDM, because "download only games" are exempt from the rule that you need to get a rating, or are automatically "18+" in Germany...

 

(Yeah, soemtimes it sucks to be German...)

 

 

 

Er: Ninja-ed :ph34r: Forget what I was posting.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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silly tread...

 

Doom3 and in consequence The Dark Mod should be played by adult persons only (18+), therefore one can expect that some FMs show adult material.

 

Kids watching porn and gore movies,so TDM don't affect them

 

And actually,Thief should be grim and violent game

Edited by Shadowhide

Proceed with caution!

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Another point I left out of my post but was implying, the reason you don't see more explicit sex in FMs, as a practical matter unlike explicit violence it doesn't contribute to the visual storytelling or gameplay logic. Violence or the threat of it is actually part of the gameplay, so it makes sense to prime that some people are violent to make the level's logic work. Even if it seems gratuitous it's doing background work. Sex isn't part of the gameplay, so it's pretty much inherently gratuitous. You have to imagine authors have like a toolbox of stuff they put in FMs to make the plot & level work logically...

 

BTW I did script out a sex mechanic once, not for "prurient" reasons but as part of adding NPC-centric or "persuasion" gameplay (e.g., with an objective of gaining followers, or using persuasion, etc, to advance.). I wrote down a list of all types of interactions people have, and sex was one of them -- along with things like gift-giving & bribing, hiring, coercion, etc. (Edit: So I should more properly say I scripted out an NPC-centric mechanic, and sex was just one element of many. It's a slightly different paradigm from pure thieving, more into a "free agent" kind of game.) Then I thought if it's going to have sex at all, thinking in immersive sim terms, of course I don't want it to be pulling away to a side-game or a "cleaned-up gloss" lol; I'd rather it kept you in the world and the event happening openly & explicitly in real time (and an option for people to outright skip it if they don't want it maybe), but it's still just a gameplay mechanic, not just gratuitous porn... You have to do it "well" and get punished if you don't. Anyway, point being, if there were a mechanic like that, then of course you would see more sex in FMs.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I was planning on having sex (or at least the immediate aftermath) in my FM, but ran out of time/will to implement it. There are lots of gore assets premade in D3, but nothing particularly sexual.

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Well, Doom3 is already 18+, so technically we're already covered to do whatever we want unless it's full on porno. Even then I don't think anyone would take notice or care. Anyone remember the legal outcome of the Hot Coffee Mod for GTA SA? Also remember we are a Mod, not an independent game and the mappers aren't essentially creating the mod anyway. If TDM is responsible for what someone makes in a map, then Minecraft is responsible for all those horrid nude block images they make.

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I don't think it's a legal issue, but if a mapper has something really explicit, I think they should put a little notice in the readme and release thread just as a courtesy.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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One of my favourite games is FEAR, oh and Dead Space. So I've got no problem with violence, I even like it. But I don't enjoy (or would) enjoy them in a "thiefish" game liek this. I allways loved how Thief got around with violence in ways like the blustering bowmen in the "Party" Mission. As the Dark Mod isn't Thief I don't complain about violence here, though I think I wouldn't use it that much.

 

Depends on mapper. :)

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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Again, I ask, how many FMs actually have "excessive violence" in them? I know mine does, but I specifically wanted to make it darker and more "adult" than average.

 

Other than that, how many other missions use excessive violence? BI has reports of violence but nothing visual. I can only think of:

 

Patently Dangerous

 

Bloody suicide victim, bloody corpses

 

 

Glenham Tower

 

Trails of blood and dismembered corpse

 

 

The Transaction

 

A torture scene (relatively tame, IMO)

 

 

 

I'm sure there are others but I can't think of them atm.

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Again, I ask, how many FMs actually have "excessive violence" in them?

 

I agree. Blood remains and dead bodies parts alone don't make violence.

"To rush is without doubt the most important enemy of joy" ~ Thieves Saying

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