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Which games (if any) successfully managed to be mature?

Raghar

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One of subordinates in Sengoku Rance is pedophile. A women who fell in low with him adopts a girl to get him close to her, then she explains him if he would like more he can have sex with her, and he would have more small girls. That's wicked plan. He is doing hardcore things like protecting small girls when they are going from the school, and because of his job he's not suspicious at all. Thought they should tone down sex by a lot, sperm is flying left and right, and main character abuses every cute woman around. There is also male child killing.


However when I looked at mature TV series and compared them to completely immature anime, that completely immature anime actually won by quite a lot

Anime won because it had a story, dreams, and because main characters didn't suck. Mature isn't automatically better, and some themes are not watchable when they are done in "mature" way.
 

Raghar

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Sengoku Rance was more mature than majority of "mature" games?
 

DriacKin

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Raghar said:
Mature isn't automatically better

Nobody ever said that it was. The older GTA games (VC, SA) gave us obviously over-the-top, immature depictions of sex, prostitues, drugs, and violence. Nobody in their right mind would ever call these games mature. Yet, they still were enjoyable and pretty humorous.
I certainly don't think that immature == shit. My original question was whether or not any games have managed to tackle these topics in a mature way successfully.


Raghar said:
[...] and some themes are not watchable when they are done in "mature" way.
For example?
 

bhlaab

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Raghar said:
One of subordinates in Sengoku Rance is pedophile. A women who fell in low with him adopts a girl to get him close to her, then she explains him if he would like more he can have sex with her, and he would have more small girls. That's wicked plan. He is doing hardcore things like protecting small girls when they are going from the school, and because of his job he's not suspicious at all. Thought they should tone down sex by a lot, sperm is flying left and right, and main character abuses every cute woman around. There is also male child killing.


However when I looked at mature TV series and compared them to completely immature anime, that completely immature anime actually won by quite a lot

Anime won because it had a story, dreams, and because main characters didn't suck. Mature isn't automatically better, and some themes are not watchable when they are done in "mature" way.

Hey here's the reason mature themes weren't presented in a compelling way: you were watching a retarded shoot and fuck anime cartoon from japan
 

bhlaab

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Annie Carlson said:
ALSO as a completely crazy comment that someone mentioned Taxi Driver made me wince, because my first game in the industry was an ill-fated and never released (and let us thank god for that) Taxi Driver VIDEO GAME. That was basically a muddled GTA3 clone. Whose story was originally written by "Hollywood writers" who had maybe heard of video games before but certainly never played them, and I had to rewrite the dialogue, then they said "wait try it as NOT Taxi Driver but we can't change any assets" so THAT was fun, then it was back to being Taxi Driver again, and oh my is this blood coming out of my nose? Ooops... rage stroke... /thud.

How good was the script from the hollywood writers. And what exactly were their qualifications... being a screenwriter who lives in Hollywood isn't particularly difficult to achieve.
 

Annie Mitsoda

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Lesi - I have not yet played The Void, although I've wanted to since I heard about it on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It seems like quite the mindfuck, and apparently insanely difficult, but I've been eager to try it out, if only because it seems truly and profoundly different from most stuff out there.

bhlaab - I've no idea what their qualifications were, to be frank - the word that I got from the higher-ups was simply the phrase "Hollywood Writers"... and to be honest? It was like the closest these guys got to Taxi Driver was seeing the poster of Travis Bickle with the gun and the mirror and the phrase "You talkin' to me?" They made him alternately a savage psychopath and an emotionless killer - misread the entire character how that fucking poster does. He thinks he's a badass, but it's supposed to come off as a little kid posing in the mirror. If those guys actually made a living in Hollywood, they probably shat out stuff like Face Murderers 2 and Terrorex and other 'SyFy' channel originals. It was BAD.

Also I don't think stuff that's not explicitly made for a 'mature' audience is bad - I love the fuck out of Pixar movies, and those are really for everyone, in an impressive and elegant way. Hell, I even found moments of surprising depth in Pikmin, for fuck's sake, and while that game may be difficult enough for adults it's certainly not explicitly meant for them.

Let's make the assumption that "mature" doesn't stand for any kind of objective quality here, but that the ones we're trying to pick out are ones that we do feel are good games that succeed in that respect.
 

Lesifoere

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Annie Carlson said:
Lesi - I have not yet played The Void[/], although I've wanted to since I heard about it on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It seems like quite the mindfuck, and apparently insanely difficult, but I've been eager to try it out, if only because it seems truly and profoundly different from most stuff out there.


It's amazing. I think the last game that affected me like this was PS:T--haunting and nagging me at the back of my mind long after I've finished it. It's pretentious as anything but also holy-fucking-shit awesome. I'm still trying to piece the story together because so much of it is insanely opaque, even when some of the characters finally deign to explain things to you. The difficulty is full of hurt, yeah, but if you adapt to it you can become somewhat comfortable with the ecosystem.

Speaking of which, what do Codexers think of games that mislead/lie to you, the player, and not the character?
 

Gragt

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin
Looks like I'll have to try The Void as well. But is it really pretentious or confident in its own abilities?
 

deuxhero

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JarlFrank said:
Does a game need sex, violence and nudity in order to be mature?

Nope, I've seen games with very cartoony combat that manage to be way more "mature" than Dragon Age and Fallout 3 (saying nothing at all). And as the awesomeness of No More Heroes shows, (and in the case of NMH, the fact that it's not mature is a good thing.)
 

PorkaMorka

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I really hate to agree with nomask, but the concept of mature entertainment is a joke nowadays.

There is a widely held conception that in order to be mature, entertainment has to have a "progressive theme" and "social criticism" which reinforces pre-existing liberal beliefs, namely something along the lines of "gee racism is bad", "wow X minority group really has it rough" or "it turns out white males and or capitalists are the real monsters"

I don't really understand how this is mature, and not just the next level of immaturity after "teen maturity" (boobs, blood, swearwords and grimdarkness).

I mean presumably, as adults we've all thought about whatever the theme of a "mature" piece of entertainment is, hundreds of times, and we all have our opinions backed up by extensive reasoning... so what is a video game going to do, other than make me feel smug by reinforcing what I already believe or (more likely in my case) pissing me off by preaching something I don't believe at me. Heck, I tend to get pissed off by preaching even when I agree with what's being preached.

When I think of a mature game, I think of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, not whatever new version of Ferngully: The Movie: The Game.

SMAC is a game about thinking and planning, with a lot of references to politics, science and philosophy, so if that's not something that's enjoyable to adults, fuck adults.
 

deuxhero

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"Mature" to me meant more along the lines of "Takes its self seriously and I can take seriously its taking its self seriously"
 

Lesifoere

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Gragt said:
Looks like I'll have to try The Void as well. But is it really pretentious or confident in its own abilities?

Confident. It's just that it begins and ends with poems (one for each ending), so there's room for accusing Ice-Pick Lodge of self-indulgence, but it does fit the tone and atmosphere. The resource you pick up actually talks to you, which is fantastic--I thought they were hissing gibberish at first, then realized that it's actually words when I started paying attention. Like playing Malkavian in Bloodlines, but with more sense.

I'll add that the glyph-drawing system is oddly fun in combat. Admittedly, it's a game where you'll avoid combat when possible, but when you do have to fight the "bosses" it's actually enjoyable. Also, they chant interesting prayers when they fight you, which are themselves strikingly poetic.
 

Gragt

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Now that sounds like my kinda woman game, because as much as I liked Braid's puzzles and presentation, I disliked the pretentious story — delivered in a clumsy way, no less — so a game that tries to seriously deliver a quality story with all the ressources available in the medium is definitely something that interests me.

Edit: 10 € on GamersGate doesn't seem too bad. And here I thought I'd be able to replay PS:T after I finish Gothic 2 ... Why do I have so many games to play now?
 

Erzherzog

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Hey, there was that one game Pathologic, that supposedly had a really strong story.

I haven't played it though. If there's someone that has, what do they say about its maturity?
 
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PorkaMorka said:
I really hate to agree with nomask
But secretly you love me. It's like Romeo & Juliet. Society wishes it were otherwise, but you really like me, don't you?

No, don't respond. I don't want to cause any emotional turmoil or tragedies.
 

Heresiarch

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I definetly would agree with Dreamfall being mature. At first the game really looks just like some regular adventure of a youth, but the further you play, the grimmer and darker everything appears. I remember at the first third of the game I could still smile at various events at the game, but after half of the game "it just doesn't feel right", I was thinking: am I still playing the same colourful, fantasy oriented game? It's more like I was playing Silent Hill!

And last third of the game is really some big contrast to the carefree beginning. Maybe it's because of the idea that "fairy tales can be destroyed", the game really left me mad and sad at realizing how merciless realism can be.
 

Unradscorpion

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Raghar said:
One of subordinates in Sengoku Rance is pedophile. A women who fell in low with him adopts a girl to get him close to her, then she explains him if he would like more he can have sex with her, and he would have more small girls. That's wicked plan. He is doing hardcore things like protecting small girls when they are going from the school, and because of his job he's not suspicious at all. Thought they should tone down sex by a lot, sperm is flying left and right, and main character abuses every cute woman around. There is also male child killing.


However when I looked at mature TV series and compared them to completely immature anime, that completely immature anime actually won by quite a lot

Anime won because it had a story, dreams, and because main characters didn't suck. Mature isn't automatically better, and some themes are not watchable when they are done in "mature" way.
This is why we can't have nice things.
 

Lesifoere

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Erzherzog said:
Hey, there was that one game Pathologic, that supposedly had a really strong story.

I haven't played it though. If there's someone that has, what do they say about its maturity?

I'd love to play it (same studio that made The Void, though they specifically did The Void's English translation in-house because they weren't pleased with Pathologic's botched babelfishese), but I tried the demo and the translation is nigh-incomprehensible.
 
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Raghar said:
Anime won because it had a story, dreams, and because main characters didn't suck.

I wish gender was something like citizenship. So you could have it fucking REVOKED.
 
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Lesifoere said:
Speaking of which, what do Codexers think of games that mislead/lie to you, the player, and not the character?

I'm not sure how the distinction is possible unless i'm on a wildly different frequency to misunderstand you. Player could easily be mislead by things the character isn't supposed to be and an argument made whether that's bad design, but lying to the player and not the character?

You do mean the player character by character, right?
 

Lesifoere

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Yeah, I mean the player character. Should've said PC.

It's possible. I'm thinking of--admittedly I'm going by someone else's write-up as opposed to my own gameplay experience--Pathologic: where there're instances where the NPCs address you or interact with you the player, not the PC you're playing:

Eurogamer review said:
And this is no one-off smug reference at the start. Every night, after midnight, your quest log clears, and the Masks at the local theatre puts on a play based on your day, and your internal turmoil.

There's also the player's tendency to trust tutorials implicitly because, hey, that's what you're supposed to do. Games don't lie to you about their mechanics so you take that for granted. But in The Void, the "tutorial" is wrong about almost everything. Partly because the NPC tutoring you doesn't know as much as she thinks, but also partly because she's not telling you the whole truth. Later on, as other NPCs talk to you, they'll explain things but often contradict one another. And so on.
 

Longshanks

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Azrael the cat said:
ghostdog said:
I consider mature games to be the games that stay true to their setting, with believable, well written dialog and themes that can be fully appreciated by ... adults ? ( - define adults...) Of course this definition -as all definitions- is bullshit deep down, but whatever.


Fallout
Torment
Arcanum
Bloodlines
Deus Ex
System Shock 2
I have no mouth and I must scream
Sanitarium
Grim Fandago (yeah humor can be mature)
Shadow Of The Comet
Gabriel Knight
The Last Express
Silent Hill
Mafia
No One Lives For Ever
Thief
Half Life
Jedi Knight 2
Betrayal At Krondor
Anachronox (did I mention that humor can be mature?)


Also nudity does not define maturity or immaturity.

And maybe, despite the fantasy aspects, TLJ and Dreamfall, though neither really traded on, or made any particular effort to be, 'mature'. It's more just the presentation of their social and personal lives in Stark, with the old 'spend lots of time at the start showing all these character relationships....so we can really screw with them in Dreamfall when folk start dying or turning into mind-snatched zombies.

Would add Max Payne - a shooter where the protagonist actually has a voice; an internal one at that.

The Last Express - definitely. One of the best plotted games I've played
Deus Ex - no. A purposely silly amalgam of other silly sci fi themes != mature
TLJ - no. A game that tried to be mature, but ended up as juvenile - though from the female persepctive for once, with some half-baked political and gender commentary

There are some games with a degree of maturity, but there's really none that match the level of quality found in other media. Has there ever been a game that successfully deals with loss, for instance? I can't think of one. Religion? Nope, certainly in no serious way, and so on... There are a number that reach or surpass the level of maturity found in say, Avatar (just seen it - and I have to say game plots have gone up in my estimation by comparison) or a Dan Brown novel, but they don't go much further.
 

Lesifoere

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Longshanks said:
There are a number that reach or surpass the level of maturity found in say, Avatar (just seen it - and I have to say game plots have gone up in my estimation by comparison) or a Dan Brown novel, but they don't go much further.

Your argument strikes me as inherently biased (games that reach the maturity level of Avatar/Dan Brown? Haha. Not even worth discussing). What books/movies do you consider "mature"? There're games I've found more mature and intelligent than, say, Jane Eyre. Or possibly Titus Andronicus. Not that it's saying a lot: the former is a glorified romance novel, the latter one of the plays widely reviled by Shakespeare students/scholars (I like it for the lulz value, but I'm in the minority), but they more or less still have a place in the western literary canon. I find Of Mice and Men trite and oh, do we want to touch Tolkien? I'm not even going for fish in barrels and taking shots at D&D novels, Twilight or Harry Potter. Even among the oh-so-holy canonical body, there're plenty of stinkers to be found.

Has there ever been a game that successfully deals with loss, for instance?

Silent Hill 2?
 

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