LogFAQs > #896067066

TheGrindery posted...

Those poor fictional bastards.

Well, that's the point isn't it? We've dissociated. We've dehumanized the populace because they don't matter, even if we at the same time give value to named and fleshed out characters.

Lots of games either don't address that dissociation or actively revel in it.

Take Musou/Warriors games. Thousands of soldiers die in every single battle in one of those games, yet no one really addresses it and it's all the hero characters speaking to each other as though they're the only people involved in the fight and all the soldiers are just blades of grass they're cutting down. Which they are, if you follow what the game wants to imply in its tone.

My favorite example I've found recently is in Fire Emblem Warriors. There are a couple of missions where your group runs into a character (Elise or Sakura), and a second character (Camilla or Hinoka) shows up saying "Oh you kidnapped *character*! Let's fight!" You'll have a normal battle because you couldn't talk the second character out of fighting and at the end everyone will say "Oh it was just a big misunderstanding!" And I'm like yeah, a misunderstanding that left thousands dead on the battlefield.

I'm not saying it's bad or anything. I'm just drawing attention to it as a bit of an absurdity very atypical of reality that we've grown accustomed to.
---

CyricZ