Visceral nearly finished a game where you played as a heroic Jack the Ripper
69 replies, posted
Oh no a fictional bad thing was depicted
To be fair, Assassin's Creed let you play as him but certainly depicted him as a villain. This would not only have you play as the Ripper, but he's more of a force for good for fighting monsters. I think that's where the distaste comes from.
Personally, I like the idea and I would love to see more alternate history games and movies. This seems like something that Vampyr could do as a prequel or as DLC or what The Order 1886 could have done. If they maintained it as a single-player character and story-driven game, it would have probably been pretty good. It's no surprise to me, though, that EA played a part in its downfall.
everything sounds trivial when you generalise it and remove context
To be honest, judging by actually reading the article, it was very much going to be a mix of action and surreal horror, ala Dead Space. You're not a 'hero', the fictional take on Jack would've been a traumatized, PTSD-suffering individual unable to tell reality from hallucination and questioning his sanity amidst a seeming conspiracy at large. The surreal horror became part of Dead Space, while the melee gore, vulgar content and sexuality transferred onto Dante's Inferno a little later.
I think he means every Assassin's Creed game in general. Every assassination target was a real person, and no one cares that they're portrayed as the enemy.
I'm not surprised this was in 2008-2011. EA at that time seemed relatively willing to take risks and experiment, they launched Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, and Dante's Inferno, all new IPs that had something a bit different going on. Really enlightening to know that there were other new IPs that didn't make it during that era.
Sounds like a really cool concept but i can see where the drama would fuck it over.
Yeah man, my comment about mummies and werwolves taking over the twin towers forcing our good buddies the Saudis to step in and help out the US was totally serious.
I think everyone is overreacting. Isn’t this what Sakuya from Touhou is implied to be?
Also there was a freaking Scooby-Doo movie which took place at the historic site of the Salem witch trials and actually depicted one of the victims as an evil witch. This happened right after one of the characters said how offensive it would be to depict his dead ancestor as an evil witch.
He later does a face-heel turn and becomes the bad guy by unleashing the evil witch’s ghost.
Taking a Very Bad Person and depicting them as a misunderstood hero is always controversial, but it can work if it's handled well.
Taking a serial killer's innocent victims and portraying them as monsters who had to be killed? That's a lot worse, and IMO pretty tasteless.
I can't think of any historical fictions that have done this kind of approach. Usually if you want to make an antihero out of a historical figure, you either create wholly fictional antagonists or use people who are generally regarded as bad IRL as your antagonists.
From Hell is a excellent comic book that is a very well researched what-if on Jack the Ripper
When was this exactly anyway? Everything about this premise sounds like a terrible idea and absolutely tone-deaf in the age of the 'Incel Rebellion'.
And judging by the bolded reactions in the article, others at EA and the focus-groups agreed too. God, I'd never think I'd say I was in agreement with EA Focus Testers for once.
dude, it's an alternate history riff. the developers aren't saying jack the ripper was a cool dude. it's a 'what if' scenario, with a totally fictional version of jack the ripper. it's been 100 years since the killings, nobody is offended by this because they understand it's a playful, fictionalized take on 100 year old murders.
I don't see why fiction can't use historical reference to create a scenario that flips history on its head in different ways; justified within the context of the fiction, of course. It does not negate the historical impact nor does it argue that history is wrong and it should be taken as anything more than just fiction. Dracula: Untold had Vlad Tepes as an anti-hero who becomes a vampire to save his kingdom, for example. Alternatively, why can't there be a story of Vlad Tepes and the Order of the Dragon actually being vampire slayers with the Ottomans being ruled by vampires? Assassin's Creed, for another example, has several characters that are depicted as misunderstood, allies, or villains, despite their historical counter-parts or popular perception. Why should fiction be confined to arbitrary notions of "heroes" and "villains" when it can fabricate the scenario justifying either?
That's still like saying here's a game about John Wayne Gacey, but it's in an "alternate reality" so it's ok.
They probably could have completely avoided any sort of contraversy by not making the character Jack the ripper, distancing the violence in game from what really happened, and not mentioning Jack the Ripper at all. But I guess the whole bad press is still press thing is what they had in mind.
Did you watch the video? The multiplayer component ended up as a canned standalone project in a different setting, but presumably the gameplay remained the same. It doesn't look amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VXVLJQKlWw
How is Jack the Ripper controversial when we have games where Hitler won?
Because you don't play as a Nazi defending the regime. You're always pitted against Nazis.
Jack the Ripper was never caught, his reasoning never understood, happened over a hundred years ago leaving a lot to be interpreted. Hitler was WW2, fairly recent, people still feel the pains and horrors of what he did. No interpretation needed. Perfectly fine to simulate those horrors in their full capacity no matter the perspective, but make up a game that blatantly makes up a fantasy explanation at the expense of no one (being that no one living is even related to anyone involved in the case) and suddenly we stepped over the line?
Why? Sounds cool to me, besides its been two hundred years, nobody is even close to suffering from what happened at this time so who's gonna take offense?
That looks painfully generic. I guess that's what happens when you toss the dead space limb chopping mechanic.
Shame it was so close to completion. Maybe somewhere in the EA dungeon the game still exists, waiting for some benevolent force to release it.
That's not the same, though. I haven't seen a game that depicts Hitler as a hero, let alone a game where it turns out the Jews were actually monsters and it's up to one plucky ubermensch to save the world. That might be a little more controversial than games where the Nazis won but are still unambiguously villains.
There was a book called The Iron Dream that is, basically, a generic 50s sci-fi plot about a human warrior saving an oppressed human civilization from alien overlords, but it's presented as an alternate-history book by 'failed sci-fi author Adolf Hitler'. It was controversial upon release, because despite the core plot being a fairly standard sci-fi outline, it used enough references to Nazi ideology to make people uncomfortable (which was the point, as it was essentially a criticism of the sci-fi literature community).
The point is that you can take a generic plot that would be wholly unoffensive, but when you start invoking real people as characters then you need to start being careful. Nobody's going to object to portraying Nazis as evil. But if you portray people generally regarded as unambiguously evil as heroes, and their innocent victims as monsters, it may be regarded as in poor taste.
Well, yeah, that's pretty much it exactly. See above. Not sure what your point is.
Silent Storm was awesome, though, and you can play as the Nazis in a variety of WWII strategy games and Red Orchestra.
What would even be the point of using sarcasm in that context when you later on when to say that you're on the fence? Forgive me for not having telepathy.
I don't get it, why does anyone have an issue with this concept? It's a video game, a piece of art, and the idea isn't even slightly offensive, it isn't targeting minorities or anyone in particular. Going through this thread feels like reading about how doom is bad cause it glorifies violence or the incredibly controversial nature of GTA.
His victims may be modeled after the real victims and that's kinda creepy and morbid, but also they're vampires in disguise in the story so it's more of a dark parody of the victims than an accurate depiction. If your immediate reaction is disgust and you find it distasteful that's absolutely understandable and I wouldnt force you to buy and play the game but I don't think whatever arguments you're making to justify that response is grounds for the game not existing.
Apparently it seems like they made the right choice to cancel it from a business perspective though if this is how the market would respond.
I don't know, playing as a heroic Zodiac killer would be pretty fun
You could threaten to bomb the main villain and then pussy out in the last second. It'd have a nemesis system like in Shadow of War
Or WAS he real?!
I feel like it would have actually been less offensive to just have you play the historical murderer straight up murdering women for kicks. At least then it wouldn't literally say they deserved it lol.
idk something about painting the real victims of a serial killer as the villains in a story where they deserved to get murdered really doesn't sit right with me.
Just sounds like a Van Helsing kind of deal.
Getting offended over entertainment media is some boomer shit.
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