Extremely violent or gory deaths in video games.

[BarryFishFinger]

Last of Us Part 2 is really realistically violent, but somehow I don't mind as it fits the tone and themes of the game. It gives every combat encounter a sense of weight and consequence.

Stuff like modern Mortal Combat I don't enjoy, it straddles a weird line between ultra realistic and completely cartoony but I find the fatalities a little unsettling.

Modern Tomb Raider has some really unpleasant fail state deaths, like Lara impaled by the neck on a giant spike and struggling. It's one of the many, many (many) reasons I hugely dislike modern Tomb Raider, it just feels wrong. Lara smashing heads in with axes and throttling people feels wrong in a tomb raider game. I gave up on Shadow recently with this as one reason why, the series has gone completely away from what I feel it should and the violence in it both to and by Lara is an illustration of that.

 

[AlexBasch]

This scene in Dead Space 2

Spoiler

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I'll never replay this game because of this scene. Got it done after several tries, finished it and sold the game, just can't deal with that.

 

[xir]

Shadow gate tg16

 

[MikeProtagonist]

Sometimes I wonder why I never play modern AAA action games anymore, and then I get reminded.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Sleeping Dogs has some surprisingly brutal shit up in it

 

[King Fossil]

Well YouTube-ing deaths for Resident Evil made me learn a lot people fetishize this stuff...

 

[EinBear]

Played through Resident Evil 7 recently, and

Spoiler

burning to death in first person

was particularly nasty. Bet it's even worse in VR.

 

[WhiteNovember]

RE4 the goat.

This game has such a ridiculous variety of ways to die.

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I have finished this game many times, but this death scene is new to me.

Also: We need a new Dead Space game with Ds1 quality (or a remake of Dead Space 1). And please ND, hurry up with the Tlou Pt 2 patch.

 

[Mars People]

Its so disappointing that all the cool gory death animations from Resident Evil 4 were abandoned or censored after that game.
Makes me kinda worried they'll be gone from the remake.

 

[TolerLive]

Not technically gory since it cuts away but this fucked me up as a kid

 

[Keio]

I feel embarrassed when my wife is reading on the couch and sees me playing AC Valhalla and one of the finishing animations plays. The gratuitous violence feels extremely childish, I would hope games get over this edgelord shit.

 

[Mr.Deadshot]

God of War 3 still has some of the best finishers. TLOU2 is probably the most violent game when it comes down to realism.

 

[Magic Mushroom]

Even though I'm a real-life pacifist, I really enjoy fictional violence. Whether it's John Woo's heroic bloodshed, splatter movies like Peter Jackson's Braindead, Paul Verhoeven movies, more recent flicks like The Raid and The Night Comes For Us or indeed games.

Dead Space (2), Resident Evil 4 and 2 Remake and The Last of Us 2 are some of the best, where the violence fits the world.

MK 11 is hilarious to me. Don't get why some people take it so seriously, it's nothing compared to the violence in other media.

 

[Dphex]

The Immortal comes to mind as an older title featuring many different death animations for the player avatar. back in the days it was extra awesome.

 

[Much]

 

[Silvergun-Blue]

Honestly, this shit is off-putting to me now.TLoU2 was just too real, I didn't enjoy the human v human violence like my teenage self would have. Guess I'm getting old.

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I always took this to be the point in TLoU and part 2. It's supposed to be off putting.

 

[Aurora]

 

[Shiz Padoo]

The classic:

 

[Aurongel]

Spoiler: Red Dead Redemption 2

Kieran's death in Red Dead Redemption 2 fucked me up. He had a mini redemption arc going then vanishes from camp and shows up later strolling back into camp with his head cut off, eyeballs removed and skin mangled.

 

[Gloam]

In Tenchu 1 Rikimaru gets crushed by a big stone door at the end. Pretty gnarly.

 

[DIRTY-D]

ILL looks insane!
quick clips:




and the trailer:

 

[Tremorah]

Fallout 2



Guts explode out of his chest.
Torso explosively separates from legs. Somehow Frank can still move around and talk.
Head explodes off neck.

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I love how the rest of the Enclave are like "well fuck this" after his head explodes, lol

 

[.exe]

The Great Serpemt kill in Sekiro is quite something. It rains blood! More gratuitous than gory though.

 

[Obi Wan Jabroni]

I feel embarrassed when my wife is reading on the couch and sees me playing AC Valhalla and one of the finishing animations plays. The gratuitous violence feels extremely childish, I would hope games get over this edgelord shit.

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There is context for much of the violence in games. Dismissing it as "edgelord shit" seems strange given that you are playing a simulation of the Viking era, which was historically brutal.

Wanting games as a medium to censor violence because you dislike it and label is childish seems...myopic. Do you also consider violence in film to be automatically juvenile?

And understand, I'm not picking on you, but I've read these types of arguments before and they are odd to me. There's edgelord shit out there to be certain but when I play something like TLOU2, I don't see how the depiction of violence in that game qualifies in any way as juvenile.

Quite the opposite to be truthful.

 

[Obi Wan Jabroni]

I always took this to be the point in TLoU and part 2. It's supposed to be off putting.

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That is most assuredly the point.

 

[EvilBoris]

I remember thinking some of the scenes towards the end of the Wolfenstein Reboot were gratuitous and gory for the sake of it. I know it's a game of violence, but it was jarring

 

[Noctis Winters]

The bloater head-rip is forever burned into my memory unfortunately. Even though the scene cuts perfectly to achieve its desired effect I wish it would cut earlier. I both love and hate it.

 

[Obi Wan Jabroni]

The Immortal comes to mind as an older title featuring many different death animations for the player avatar. back in the days it was extra awesome.

Click to shrink...

So I played this on the NES and everything was very much dialed back but when I bought this on the Genesis I will never forget my first fight with a goblin:

My jaw hit the floor.

And there are so many gruesome variations in the game.

 

[Deleted member 13798]

I remember dying on purpose in RE5 just to see the different death animations.

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After RE4, RE5 was weirdly censored with camera cutaways and no real damage to character models and such. I thought RE6 was like that too but I don't recall.

 

[Deleted member 23046]

 

[Deleted member 13798]

I always took this to be the point in TLoU and part 2. It's supposed to be off putting.

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It is. Nothing about it is fun.

 

[Silvergun-Blue]

More from The Immortal.

 

[Deleted member 13798]

Last of Us Part 2 is really realistically violent, but somehow I don't mind as it fits the tone and themes of the game. It gives every combat encounter a sense of weight and consequence.

Stuff like modern Mortal Combat I don't enjoy, it straddles a weird line between ultra realistic and completely cartoony but I find the fatalities a little unsettling.

Modern Tomb Raider has some really unpleasant fail state deaths, like Lara impaled by the neck on a giant spike and struggling. It's one of the many, many (many) reasons I hugely dislike modern Tomb Raider, it just feels wrong. Lara smashing heads in with axes and throttling people feels wrong in a tomb raider game. I gave up on Shadow recently with this as one reason why, the series has gone completely away from what I feel it should and the violence in it both to and by Lara is an illustration of that.

Click to shrink...

Shadow's random very gory deaths were extra jarring because otherwise that game feels like a shift towards classic Tomb Raider with adventuring as the focus, and combat more of an afterthought compared to the previous two. The gory deaths in there almost felt obligatory so they added a couple.

 

[IvorB]

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Or this:


An actual god of war not a glorified baby-sitter. :)

 

[Apathy]

Mk 11 and 10 have some crazy fatalities

 

[HK-48]

For me in recent playing history at least the deaths in the reboot tomb raider games

 

[Kaversmed]

ILL looks insane!
quick clips:




and the trailer:

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I really hope this turns into a real playable game someday. Shit looks amazing and I love Oleg Vdovenko's art style

 

[Adamska]

Also: We need a new Dead Space game with Ds1 quality (or a remake of Dead Space 1).

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You're in luck:

 

[Tambini]

It's a classic

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Lol, is this game worth playing though? Never touched the Clock Tower series

 

[ShapeGSX]

Not really a fan of gory stuff. Not that I can't stomach it, but devs and artists are basically forced to do this, and it may not necessarily be what they signed up for.

'I'd Have These Extremely Graphic Dreams': What It's Like To Work On Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat 11

Mortal Kombat 11 is a brutal game. That’s what you come for—sensational, over-the-top violence that’s inventive and gratuitous on a level that doesn’t exist anywhere else. It can be shocking in its detail and funny in its execution, but it’s always arresting. It’s also short. Fatalities, gory...

kotaku.com

 

[JustinH]

First one to come to mind was this



but damn does it seem kinda tame compared to games released since then.

 

[Zombegoast]

But he got stabbed, the sword was sticking out the other end and just pulls it out a long with your entrails. He's fine

 

[giapel]

There's certainly some very graphic, gory deaths mentioned here and the advances in graphics make them even more so.
However the one that always stuck with me with pure shock is the monk death in Eternal Darkness.

 

[Keio]

There is context for much of the violence in games. Dismissing it as "edgelord shit" seems strange given that you are playing a simulation of the Viking era, which was historically brutal.

Wanting games as a medium to censor violence because you dislike it and label is childish seems...myopic. Do you also consider violence in film to be automatically juvenile?

And understand, I'm not picking on you, but I've read these types of arguments before and they are odd to me. There's edgelord shit out there to be certain but when I play something like TLOU2, I don't see how the depiction of violence in that game qualifies in any way as juvenile.

Quite the opposite to be truthful.

Click to shrink...

I think violence has its place in all mediums, but it's rare to find games where it has a clear place in world-building– TLOU is definitely a series where the violence adds to the sense of lost humanity. Although even there the amount of gory slaughter committed by the player ends up blunting the sense that you somehow stand for something decent in an indecent world. I had the same issue with Uncharted, and the fact that there was a "we are not so different you and I" meta joke with the boss didn't help either.

In Valhalla there is (for me) no need for zoomed in, canned finishing scenes in battles where the action halts to grant the player another view to an impaled head or chopped off limbs. It's more breaking the immersion than making a point about the brutality of the times. The moments where you decide whether someone lives or dies in the story are much more efficient in pushing that point home.

It's easy to be completely numbed to violence, and yeah even in Valhalla it takes the presence of my wife to make it even register. For me that's a point where art has failed.

 

[Obi Wan Jabroni]

I think violence has its place in all mediums, but it's rare to find games where it has a clear place in world-building– TLOU is definitely a series where the violence adds to the sense of lost humanity. Although even there the amount of gory slaughter committed by the player ends up blunting the sense that you somehow stand for something decent in an indecent world. I had the same issue with Uncharted, and the fact that there was a "we are not so different you and I" meta joke with the boss didn't help either.

In Valhalla there is (for me) no need for zoomed in, canned finishing scenes in battles where the action halts to grant the player another view to an impaled head or chopped off limbs. It's more breaking the immersion than making a point about the brutality of the times. The moments where you decide whether someone lives or dies in the story are much more efficient in pushing that point home.

It's easy to be completely numbed to violence, and yeah even in Valhalla it takes the presence of my wife to make it even register. For me that's a point where art has failed.

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Is it? Most of the examples in here demonstrate the opposite of that sentiment and given the amount of horror games cited, I'd say the violence is most assuredly part of the world building as much as violence serves the narrative of a film like The Thing.

The violence in Valhalla being excessive or even breaking immersion - while I don't personally agree with that - is a more understandable position but what you are describing is more about personal taste and game mechanics than the "edgelord" accusations you levied earlier in what was essentially a blanket statement on violence in games as a whole. When I read a term like "edgelord" I think Postal 2, not something like Dead Space or Valhalla.

I do get the annoyance at having to watch the same brutal finishing animations over and over but again, that strikes me more as a mechanical issue than a problem with the actual violence itself, which isn't all that spectacular in AC: Valhalla. (Mostly just gouts of blood sans wounds and some beheadings)

Regardless, the way you expounded on your ideas here was much more nuanced and illuminating than the edgelord stuff so I appreciate you taking the time to explain your position, even if I don't fully agree.

 

[Fudus]

Only gory thing that stuck with me was that one bit in Quake 4, I guess not technically a death though. (if you've played it you know what I'm talking about)

 

[HoodedSoldier]

Got you fam:



Great games.

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You're a man of culture. Good culture and yes they were great. I remember running them on my gateway back in the day.

 

[Yopis]

https://youtu.be/D_Sdm3E5cpI

 

[j7vikes]

I mean Manhunt and Manhunt 2 to me easily takes the cake for the sheer consistent amount of it. When I played those games I didn't think much about them and the violence as it was "whatever" and I was younger. I was already playing violent games this one was just better at it. And I really enjoyed the hide and seek style gameplay. I've thought to myself I would like another but truly no. Graphics are too good now for this type of game.

Thinking and looking back it's incredibly fucked up even from the "these bad guys deserve it" perspective. Getting more gruesome levels of kills for being more patient and risky is even more appalling.

Story and gameplay was fun no doubt but man...hunt.

 

[Piggsy]

Last of Us Part II the thread

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Every thread.