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Boobs. They pop up every now and again
in video games these days. None more so than in Dante's Inferno, an
action game from Visceral Games and EA. You are virtually assaulted
by them in the opening few minutes of the game and at times the
appendage in question fills most of the screen. Indeed, one level
finale has giant breasts filling the entire background during most of
the lengthy battle. It's not the sort of game you can play with any
sense of seriousness in the company of others, that's for sure.
Bayonetta, another action game in the
same genre, this time however developed by Platinum Games and
published by Sega, is another crowd cringer of a title. Bayonetta is
literally and figuratively bulging at the seams with sexuality, with
each cut scene finding a new angle and way in which to ruthlessly
expose the heroine's slithering form. Packed with innuendo and blunt
over-sexualised dialogue, the gameplay too joins in on the orgy
leaving the star of the show almost entirely nude during certain
attacks in game, with only a sliver of cover granted for the very
extremities.
Dante's Inferno had the pleasure of
being at the centre of another controversy however, but one which can
be linked to the display of the virtual boob. Many were adamant the
game had committed some kind of catastrophic blasphemous sin against
the medium and that it was the absolute example of immaturity in the
gaming industry. You see, the game was loosely based on the classic
poem the Divine Comedy written by Dante Alighieri, a work that is
widely regarded as one of the most important in all of world
literature. Visceral Games certainly didn't aim low, but they were
shot high, low, and in all weak spots for their trouble. One major
gaming forum playing host to a thread with the title “Dante's
Inferno is the most insulting game ever made”. The author, 'Dacvak' going on to say:
“...they're trying to tell the tale
in a similar fashion of God of War, except they manage to make the
epic completely uninteresting by focusing on the most mundane but
"shocking" details. And tits. So many tits. With the
exception of the hilarious sex mini-game in God of War, the tits made
sense. They weren't a big deal, nor were they emphasized. I'm halfway
through the demo, and I've seen, like, 20 nipples already.”
To the authors defence, he hardly
mentions the terrible sin of the 'bastardisation of the Divine
Comedy', only calling that aspect in “bad taste”. The crux of his
problems being that it copied many features of another popular series
of games, God of War. However, bringing up the subject of tits, and
my running boob theme, lets us in on an interesting observation. That
God of War's sex scene was 'hilarious', and that the 'tits made
sense'.
Now, I'm sure from a perspective of the
mainstream tits make sense when they are a side distraction and a
simple visual stimuli for the average teen male. Turn on any music
channel and you'll be bombarded with video clips of women simply
being used as hooks to keep the viewer interested, long enough for
the song to be cemented in the mind as catchy. The boobs make sense,
the exploitation of women makes sense, because that's what we are
used to. They exist so we feel that the singer is sexually desired by
all and perhaps if we take part in the enjoyment we too will be
sexually relevant to the desired partner of choice.
The sex scene in God of War 3 goes like
this: You pilot Kratos, the hero of the game, toward the door of
Aphrodite's chamber, and as you enter a cut scene begins. Female
moaning and groaning can be heard before the camera pans up to
Aphrodite's bed, where she's busy having a pretty good time with her
two bare breasted servants. She notices Kratos and bids them away. A
short dialogue ensues where Aphrodite complains about her worthless
husband and begs Kratos to join her in bed. She hasn't had a real man
in her chamber for a long time, she mentions. After a prompt of Yes
or No to join her, the sex scene begins and the camera pans away to
the former servants who are now watching. During the scene the player
is prompted to press certain buttons and move the controller in
various ways to fulfil the scene requirements, all the while the
servants watch and say they wish it was them with Kratos. Eventually
they get too turned on and start having sex with each other.
Once the scene is over you move on,
entering the portal behind a curtain next to Aphrodite where your
next mission begins, and where Kratos' real man adventuring of
ripping heads off bodies and well, angrily killing anything that
dares step in his path continues.
The scene is a distraction, and has no
context other than to cement the fact that Kratos is a man that kills
who he wants and is wanted by every woman, reasonably similar to most
themes in mainstream music. One youtube video uploader of the
particular scene (as there are many) uses this as the comment:
“Kratos Fucking The Hell of Aphrodite in HD The New God of War's
Sex Scene is Epic and horny !!”.
The games director, Stig Asmussen, was
himself unsure what the point was for the scene when talking to UGO:
"It was more a debate between me and several of the story
writers. I was like, 'I'd rather not have it in there at all.'"
When asked what the purpose of the sex minigame was he said "You
asked a very fine question, and I felt sort of the same way. What is
the point? If we do it, it has to have a point. Women like sex too...
I don't know, it's not like we're doing a porno or something,"
he said.
Asmussen went on to say, "I definitely think about the
female audience when I think about violence against females, though.
"We always try to do (the sex) in a way where the woman had a
choice, and we wouldn't want to do something like a rape scene or
anything like that. I get what you're saying, but violence against
women is something we definitely avoided."
How does this differ to the rampant
breasts flung around in Dante's Inferno? Well again, I believe it all
to be a matter of context. You may be getting an eyeful of boob every
few seconds during the first areas of the game, yet it is the story
which takes the forefront here. Dante's wife being laid bare to the
viewer as he finds her dead body represents a loss of innocence, as
she's been betrayed by Dante and made a pact with demons. Her nudity
following is testament to this as she is courted by her new demon
lover, innocence now a thing of the past. Nothing is sexualised, no
innuendo, just the sad tale of a man who has lost virtue and his
lover as a result.
A later level is indeed sexualised,
with the aforementioned boss fight where boobs fill the entire
background for extended periods. While cringe worthy if anyone
happens to walk in the room at the time, once again the context is
there. The player is battling through one of the circles of hell,
Lust, and as cliché as it is these days, in hell it's not like
they'd try and be a little more understanding of one's surroundings
or PC culture. Temptation is the running theme and I have a feeling
Satan wouldn't hold back.
The controversy of the bastardisation
of the poem didn't last as long. Most people and critics alike came
around to the ludicrous idea of video games being expected to hold a
higher standard than other forms of media. Movies have been borrowing
ideas from classic literature for nearly a century and doing a worse
job representing them too. EDGE magazine came to their senses when
they realised they had mistakenly hopped on the hate bandwagon when
it came to review the game, saying in its reviews introduction piece:
“A classic is whatever you say. Case
in point: The Divine Comedy. It wasn't called that at all until
Giovanni Bocaccio decided that the Dante's plain old Commedia
deserved the added Divina. It wouldn't be published under that name
until over 200 years after the poets death. And who was this saint
Dante? It was a mere two years ago that Florence, the city of his
birth, got around to rescinding an order he be burned at the stake if
he ever returned. That must have been a relief."
"You sense Dante would have had nothing
but scorn for the current spectacle of hand-wringing critics having a
whinge about the reinterpretation of his work by Visceral Games. The
Inferno is a section of a poem, let's not forget, which isn't
especially pleasant."
"When you get to the likes of William
Blake's interpretations, it's pretty grim stuff. Nobody would
criticise him, naturally, because he's an artist, and he's entitled
to interpret. Mickey's Inferno, a Disney retelling with its own
characters? The bits in Dungeons & Dragons' own Nine Hells that
are directly ripped from Dante's version? Professor Fate's 2007 album
The Inferno? Entitled, entitled, entitled. Regardless of what anyone
thinks of them, no one believes such references shouldn't exist.
History shows that the poem will survive and grow through whatever is
done to it."
"Except, it seems, in the anxious
critical atmosphere around videogames, where even approaching a
'classic' is subject to so much speculation that it's a wonder
Visceral is able to hold its tongue. Rather than engage with the game
and figure out what it's doing, many have dismissed it based on
assumptions about what it'll be. Dante's Inferno isn't a great game,
but that's beside the point: before playing it, many have decided
that a combat-focused videogame isn't capable of doing anything with
this source material. (Looking back, we were too cynical in our
post-E3 report last year.)"
"The quality or otherwise of its
interpretation should be held distinct from the fact that it is an
interpretation, and its right to exist is sacrosanct to anyone who
claims to evangelise the medium. You can think anything you wish
about Dante's Inferno as a videogame – but at the same time you
have to be prepared to defend its right to exist.”
I don't think much more needs to be
said on that matter.
But boobs, sexuality in video games. Is
it mature or immature? Context is the key. Is the flamboyant
escapades of Bayonetta wrong? Is it an exploitation of women or
empowering? Again, context, and context is only discovered by the
will to explore it. The casual viewer may dismiss Bayonetta as the
typical buxom image of women in the medium, but the player knows
different. Gamasutra's own Leigh Alexander wrote a piece on this very
subject for Gamepro and surmises:
“That emphasis on style over
character substance isn't every player's taste, but it's not
inherently unfair to women in this case. Kamiya's thematic choice for
Bayonetta is an undercurrent that unifies the entire game, thus
giving her sexuality context -- and context is the most important
consideration in judging whether an element is appropriate or not.”
It's an interesting subject for thought
as to why Bayonetta's themes and the context they are in work so
well. One that I'm not going to go into detail here. But it does work
so well and even while gyrating and thrusting the game still
maintains a level of sophistication and context that holds it all
together. Personally I can't help but think it's akin to an Austin
Powers movie, where the innuendo and sexual content is so over the
top you can't help but marvel at its own self-awareness.
Immaturity in the medium of videogames
is more a fault of the critics and gamers than the games themselves.
We are so obsessed with being taken seriously (see the furore over
Roger Ebert continuing to say videogames aren't art) that more often
than not we are our own worst enemy. While it's somewhat impossible
for people outside the industry to appreciate and understand due to
the interactivity of the medium – which means they never gain
context – we ourselves need to understand that boobs may sometimes
represent more than titillation.