That said, I'm not here this morning just to offer an explanation. I'd like to show some of you to what happened in the wonderful world of videogames yesterday:
Wild out!
Yesterday Ubisoft made official the announcement of Far Cry 4, set to be released for all consoles except Wii U this November. This time the action takes place in the fictitious region of Kyrat on The Himalayas, currently terrorized by a ruthless, self-appointed king. More on this as it develops or just wait until E3. Is the villain sitting there on a smashed Buddhist sculpture and subjugating his pet Tibetan with a live grenade that bad king we have to take out? Who knows! But hey man, can't wait to play this! Stoked to find out what's the story there! A very evocative image on the part of Ubisoft for this big announcement! It should be pointed out that this series has been good at this since the first game setting a huge benchmark with graphics and tropical jungle scenery. The sequel had been a little misguided and I can't say much about it because I haven't played it myself, but by 2012 the third game placed it back on top with not just with the killer graphics again on a large open world environment full of action and different strategies for combat, but also the most dreaded cut-scenes shot for a videogame featuring the game's antagonist Vaas Montenegro, played by Michael Mando:
Far Cry 3 had been a huge hit, so you can guess Ubisoft would follow the same formula for the eventual sequel by focusing on a new sociopath criminal from a very real and dangerous underworld...
...unless you're a wasp and you have a Tumblr account!
Shortly thereafter the game's big announcement and fans rejoicing and hyping and pre-ordering, the White Knights stormed the blog scene! Clad in their shiny new magical White Guilt armor to declare they are once again offended by modern chauvinist action games, controversy will be made, and their voices will be heard! Once this manifestation was done they removed their armor in order to suit up in their hipster 'gaming journalist' fedoras to declare the world that a great controversial wrong had once again been made!
What's the controversy? Well for starters the villain is sitting on a decapitated Buddhist statue, which is of course shocking enough to get people's attention. One would assume Ubisoft did that on purpose! But does this warrant such youthful controversy and call for change in behaviors? If those hipster clowns were to enter a goth kid's blog and saw pictures of him smoking fake weed while decapitating Catholic statues, and then posing his head on top on the figures giggling, what kind of fit would these Knights of Gaming throw? Oh I'm sure they'd call for his head on a self-righteous holier than thou typing walls of shit, and in turn the kid would be enthused to know he got the attention he never thought he needed!
The other item of discord would be the subjugated Tibetan holding a grenade, yeah that's just heinous! You know the cover of the third game also showed Vaas posing with a half buried man's head in the sand and behind him people hanging upside down on some trees in a very serene beach. It was scary but no controversy at the time, however there's apparently something horribly wrong with the world with this new one. There's something too wrong and too offensive with showing a Tibetan on his knees holding a grenade. It's just too vile, even for a villain in an ultra violent series of videogames like Far Cry. It's cool to run around showering mercs and modern Somali pirates with a flamethrower, stab them hundreds of times right after sneaking at them from above with a machete like Jason Vorhees, consume hallucinogenic drugs to either heal, gain strength or even sexual potency with a female guerrilla leader, but you know Tibetans on their knees forced to hold grenades, that's just not gonna fly here, man.
How much is too much? I hate to use the word context but here's where the argument by the Knights fails incredibly hard, if you take a closer look at the bad king sitting there, you may notice his detailed facial features by the excellent work on the textures. To me he appears to be an Asian, and judging by his hairstyle and pimp clothing, Id say the developers might be channeling the disturbed masochist Kakihara from the Takashi Miike yakuza movie Ichi the Killer. The Knights however are not noticing this and they put the Guilt on display believing he's as Caucasian as them and the image is just wrong in this day and age, even if it's meant to be the ruthless antagonist.
True enough this isn't the first time Far Cry gets some controversial heat, the third game as successful as it turned out also faced similar criticism by having a set of privileged Caucasian tourists victimized and among them the protagonist taking a sudden lead with the natives in the struggle against the pirates. The writer for that game's storyline then annoyingly explained that the whole thing was meant to be a parody of the Mighty Whitey concept. And before I had read about the controversy I already had assumed that this idea will continue with the fourth game only thing with monks instead of natives. Maybe it'll be twice as over the top, even self-aware and comical on some points.
Whatever the case Ubisoft accomplished their goal yesterday of starting the hype, and we're just living in an age where everyone's outrage will be heard, but hopefully it'll continue to be ignored. Because it's fun.
-AA
