- Killed By Death
- Jun 29, 2013
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Does anyone have Supermechagodzilla's (I think it was him) post on why Duke Nukem Forever failed miserably as a game? I remember reading it some years ago.
SuperMechaGodzilla posted:Duke 3D homaged/parodied 80s/early 90s action films by making the villains such ridiculous villain caricatures that Duke was an acceptable protagonist by comparison.
Roddy Piper and Snake Plissken are goddamn psychopaths in They Live and Escape from NY, but the point of the films is that society is so broken that these guys can thrive. It's a deliberate part of the films, presenting extreme cynicism (Snake ignores a rape-in-progress because he's that desensitized and amoral) with a smattering of dark humor (Snake's nickname apparently comes from his dick tattoo).
Duke 3D's pig cops were in a context where the Rodney King beating and the LA riots were still fresh in people's minds. Not only that, but the villains behind the pigs were basically rapists - the cheesy "mars needs women" premise getting a gruesome subversion with the Aliens-referencing outcome. Duke 3D didn't joke about the rape. It treated rape as a serious problem equivalent to racism and class warfare, to which Duke was a source of catharsis if not any actual social change. (Duke is was a parodic figure specifically because, despite being a working-class shmoe, he's so unenlightened that he's exclusively driven by basic urges to gently caress and kill.)
The women and civilians in Duke 3D were just "normal" people doing their jobs, even if they are strippers or whatever. In other words, they're us. They're the folks feeling oppressed by the government corruption and other social ills, who are crying out for a populist hero to save them. That Duke is ultimately an idiot gave the game a measure of honest-to-god complexity.
DNF treats these "normal" characters with relentless and utter contempt.
Any pretense that Duke was a working-class hero have been dropped, as now he's a apparently a billionaire in a solid-gold penthouse with a loving throne. The aliens no longer represent police corruption or the patriarchy, but rather, "foreign cultures" (see: the WMD joke). And, obviously, they joke about the rape now because the people being raped are no longer audience stand-ins, but rather a bunch of semi-conscious inhuman inferiors.
(What makes the Olsen twins so objectionable that they need to get taken down several pegs anyways? Besides that they're female, of course. Since when did they represent "wholesomeness" and why is wholesomeness the enemy now?)
The aliens are basically now equivalent to Duke. The line separating him from the baddies is altogether erased. He's not defending anything good, even accidentally, because instead of reacting against the status quo (however clumsily) Duke is the status quo now. And it's loving unbearable. SuperMechaGodzilla posted:The gameplay is intrinsically tied up in the storyline.
In Duke Nukem 3D, the environments, NPC characters and overall production design are relatively 'realistic', which is contrasted with Duke's superhuman run-and-gun ability and total lack of psychological complexity to emphasize that, yes, this guy is a cartoon like Bugs Bunny - but also a transgressive and rebellious figure because of that cartoonishness. The gameplay in DN3D is a huge component of Duke's characterization.
The strippers in DN3D are just women who strip. They didn't shriek innuendos at you at all. They didn't declare themselves stupid in scripted sequences. They did their jobs in exchange for money. Again, the interactive world was 'realistic' (for a 1996 game) and Duke was the cartoon avenging force who flew down to Earth to right the wrongs. Kinda.
(People have noted that in Duke II, Duke is a full-fledged celebrity. But that's part of the 80s action parody - Duke is simultaneously an everyman and a celebrity, a blue-collar Joe and a relentless killing machine. But in the grand scheme of things, he's far more populist hero than elitist billionaire. Think of the Ghostbusters - beloved by the public despite being impoverished, uncouth and totally reckless. Duke is a similar underdog. The aliens in Duke II interrupt his TV appearance and steal his moment in the spotlight, because Duke just can't catch a break!)
BeanTaco hit it right on the head: Duke in DNF is clearly an entirely different character, to the point of being essentially the opposite character. He's an impostor.
With the 2-weapon thing and the slower movement, Fake-Duke is 'realistic'* while the world is cartoonishly exaggerated. Women are literally subhuman cock-hungry idiots and not just perceived that way by a flawed protagonist. The president is a liberal pantywaist caricature who (allegedly) gets his comeuppance when Fake-Duke "proves" that the world does need another George W. Bush. Y'know, someone who's motivated by sheer literal prejudice - we don't need no evidence of WMDs. Those alien Iraqis are obviously going to rape our (white) women because, naturally, that's what they do.
It bears repeating that the "normal" people in these games represent you, the Duke's Bro. Those moronic groupies sucking Fake-Duke's cock and getting raped are you.
Fig. 1: Your Face Here.
These NPCs are so ridiculously idiotic and annoying that Duke actually appears rational, levelheaded and intelligent by comparison. The first hour or so of the game is spent with Fake-Duke just walking around gawking at the absurdity around him, because he's normal now. DNF is almost evangelical about this. If you're not like Duke, the game says, you're a loving moron and a bitch.
Even DNF's cover shows Duke, from the perspective of a kneeling person, holding his gun like a cock. The game's box is telling you to suck Duke's dick. I guess it's truth-in-advertising.
Fig. 2: John Romero's about to make you his bitch.
Of course, that's not the real Duke. Duke fought the pigs, not his fellow man. Plus, the point of DN3D and earlier games, to an extent, is that no-one can be Duke. He's an amoral force of nature. He's a superhuman wish-fulfillment character. He's a cartoon.
*The DNF health system, bizarrely, goes in the opposite direction, replacing reasonably plausible sci-fi health pickups with the purely fantastic 'ego' system. So while Duke3D is a mortal (every)man who transcends his situation through impossible skills and bravado, Fake Duke is immortal despite lacking much remarkable talent or courage. SuperMechaGodzilla posted:While this is true, DNF's main thrust is just to insult its audience constantly. It's fairly unambiguous about this from the start, with the irritating and awful Duke fans. Then the game directly equates the protagonist to George W. Bush and makes him a closet racist. I doubt that the people responsible are sincerely pro-Iraq-War republicans, so what's the joke? Is it that Duke is stupid and evil, even though the game stacks the deck and proves him absolutely and immediately correct? Is it that DNF itself is intrinsically stupid and evil? That's much more likely.
Keep in mind that this is tied into the theme of Duke's 'relevance'. "Is he just a relic?" The intended controversy over Fake-Duke's neoconservatism is directly tied to the questionable existence of DNF itself. The game declares outright that it has one purpose: to serve as a refreshing blast of oldschool "political incorrectness", which we need in today's world because of... spineless democrats, evil brown people and "vapid cunts"?
That's not to say that the people responsible are raging tea-partiers. I actually strongly doubt it, as they were probably just attempting to be 'edgy' and self-satirical. "Ha-ha Duke3D was really neoconservative and racist wasn't he?" (Again though, this stacks the deck. Were Roddy Piper, Ash from Evil Dead and all the other characters that inspired Duke neoconservatives? Nope. They were, for the most part, libertarians at worst - and most of them are morally ambiguous antiheroes besides. Duke3D, after all, hates authority and his two main character traits are his love of guns and pornography. The creators are satirizing aspects of the character that never actually existed.)
However, it doesn't ultimately matter if DNF is sincerely oblivious or is deliberately being terrible as a gently caress-you on anyone "dumb enough" to pay for it. DNF is fundamentally asking sensible people to reject it and every message it conveys. Like when they insult Halo's regenerating health while simultaneously using that exact system - that's not a contradiction. They're simply admitting, intentionally or not, that they've made a bad game. Again, the political themes are directly tied to the gameplay mechanics (or lack thereof).
There's really nothing in the game worth embracing, where DN3D had a valuable amount of juvenile-but-valid anti-authoritarianism and commentary on action hero tropes and how they relate to interactive fiction. While you do play as Duke in DN3D, his constant interjections prevent total 'immersion', leaving the women - surprisingly enough - the more relatable, human characters.
No-one in DNF appears relatable, leaving its Duke-shaped void the closest thing to a human experience they could muster. SuperMechaGodzilla posted:I hope that, by this point, it's clear I'm an admirer of Duke 3D. If DNF is specifically targeted towards Duke 3D fans, they've hit the wrong ones. I mean, very little of DNF is the same as Duke 3D, besides trivial stuff like how the weapons look.
These fans apparently didn't care about the gameplay or the storyline or, really, anything about DN3D besides the sheer fact of the pixelated tits and swear words. Like, not even what the swear words and tits mean in context, their comedic effect and whatnot. You could just play Halo with a nudity mod and a fart noise soundboard, and it would be a roughly equivalent - if not superior - Duke Nukem experience to what DNF provides. Which is to say that it doesn't really provide one at all.
These are the fans you always encounter who love something but don't (or won't) consider why. So they make outrageous and indulgent demands that end up backfiring. "I want a sequel to Terminator where it's in the future now and we see people shooting robots and Christian Bale is in it and he saves the day." Etc.
You'll always encounter pockets of fans who claim to be actually satisfied by this crummy fanservice. Because if you go through the checklist, the game does admittedly have a breast, a swear, a shrink-ray and the appropriate brand name/logo. Who cares about the implementation? Fans can consider themselves officially serviced - but to what end? SuperMechaGodzilla posted: An actual Duke's Bro would know from the level "XXX-Stacy" in the Atomic Edition of DN3D that the real Duke was never a misogynist, but is simply into light S&M and even some femdom action on the side to mix things up.
On encountering two lipstick lesbians being spanked by a butch dominatrix on the set of Sister Act V, Duke exclaims "my kind of party!" This dominatrix actually insults and degrades him - yet, despite the character's reputation as an uncompromisingly brutish individual, this is Duke's kind of party. Not a fetch quest for a dildo in a tiny strip club. Strip clubs are small-time. They're the first level. Duke's fantasy is to spank a submissive woman while simultaneously being called pathetic by a leather-clad gal with a whip.
The dominatrix actually looks a lot like Duke, as folks have noted, giving the whole thing a mildly homoerotic vibe, but what this also demonstrates is that being Duke is a gendered fantasy that transcends biological sex. Not only is a female Duke possible, she's desirable to the Duke himself - as a relative equal, even. This understated intelligence is leagues outside the grasp of whoever made DNF what it is.
DN3D was offensive in valuable ways. You didn't need to invoke regressive anti-intellectualism and incuriousity to justify it, because DN3D was much more than just a fecal simulation. SuperMechaGodzilla posted: The danger here is in considering it 'just' perception. That everything is subjective does not make every subjective opinion equivalent in worth.
While DNF can certainly be considered "good" at generating nihilistic despair (and some people do apparently enjoy the game's directionless, quasi-misanthropic hatred of life itself - thanks to "irony" or some other cultivated indifference), this approach to Duke Nukem can be considered invalid when held against other, much more valuable approaches.
Like, for example, rejecting this equivocating heap and experiencing instead the unqualified joy and vibrancy of Duke 3D.
It's simply correct to dismiss the Fake-Duke who would have you fellate his gun, and to celebrate the real Duke who fought to satisfy women of all stripes as well as himself. The real Duke was ultimately a figure of sexual liberation, and to conflate that with this bizarre rape-culture stuff is totally un-Duke. And you always bet on Duke!
What people seemingly forgot is that betting on Duke necessarily requires being able to discern which Duke is real and which is a poo poo-golem lookalike. You don't bet on poo poo. You bet on Duke. SuperMechaGodzilla posted:
I feel that it's been shown fairly definitively that Duke 3D was not "South Park offensive" (read: halfhearted, 'apolitical' crypto-conservatism) but was rather an precise and laudable progressive statement pulled off with minimal resources, and with excellent gameplay as its base. The revelatory dominatrix scene in DN3D:AE consists of a couple sprites and some tinny sound clips. In fact, that's all the game had at its disposal in any scene. This is absolutely remarkable.
The one 'problem' with Duke 3D is that this minimalism left space for bad people to void their horrors into it and consequently undermine everything the game was actually doing. Effectively: "Duke always hated women, because that's how I played him." And because 'Duke' did it, it's all naturally acceptable.
It's safe to assume that DNF's creators and fans read the dominatrix scene as "hurf, dominatrixes are silly poo poo" - because everything about Duke 3D was "silly poo poo" - because there's this very real perception (voiced openly and repeatedly here, and clearly held by the game's creators) that humor is a somehow an apolitical violence. The belief is that the sole purpose and effect of comedy is the mitigated degradation of a target. By 'mitigated', I mean that the humor is considered "just a joke" and "harmless escapism" so there's no consequence to the attacks. They might not even be considered attacks at all. This is not "real" violence, they assert. Duke is and has always been, to them, "just a stupid videogame."
What this attitude reveals is, of course, that people are supporting the rape and hatred perpetuated by DNF's Fake-Duke with utter sincerity. DNF allows them to escape from the society that would tell them rape is wrong and freely enjoy the trappings of rape culture in a "safe" context. DNF's existence as a mass-media event allows them to consider themselves not deviants and aggressors, but simply indulging in some collective (and therefore "normal") rape-wish. The "ironic" approach serves a similar purpose of protecting the DNF creator/player from from being conscious of their hatred.
This appeal to "escapism" - the paradoxical assertion that Duke is desirable because of its lack of impact, relevance, emotional engagement or overall value - is tied into the celebration of its [alleged] "offensiveness".
The real Duke naturally would tell you that an offense involves having a target and a plan. Offense is a strategy. (Again, a game's story and its gameplay are indivisible.)
Clearly then, DNF is not actually offensive. It's just, I don't know, tragic? Unfortunate? DNF is "offensive" only in the sense that a child playing with a gun is an "offense". It's simply the terrible threat of power in the wrong hands. "Wrong" by way of ignorance and inexperience: ignorance of the power held and inexperience with regards to how or why to wield it.
What it comes down to is, as I have shown before, that DNF apologism is anti-Duke to the core. SuperMechaGodzilla posted:I think the Holsom/Olsen twins' rape-death scene should be examined in greater detail so that we can convey the full scope of why it doesn't work, and hopefully help prevent Duke's Bro pretenders from further dismissing our criticisms.
While apologists will says it's just deliberate slut stereotypes getting their comeuppance in a game that "hates everyone equally" (read: whitewashes majority privilege) the twins are actually granted a modicum of psychological complexity. These are full-fledged personalities being raped to death for "just jokes". Why, again, is it the Olsen twins being targeted, and why it's specifically their "wholesomeness" that's (apparently) objectionable? We know from the infamous DNF artbook that Broussard originally intended them to be Christian celebrities and that they are satirical. Superficially, you might mistake it as a satire of hypocrisy in religion/"family-friendly" media, like those anti-gay politicians getting caught cruising for boys.
This is not the case.
What's revealed in the game's actual dialogue is that the two women are self-aware about their degradation. They state outright that they act "naughty" (i.e. "not wholesome" (get it?!)) because, otherwise, Fake-Duke won't protect them. The important point here is that these women are not hypocrites, but are rather actually nice, honest, human people who Fake-Duke is coercing into degrading sex acts. Because, if they don't service him with quasi-incestuous performances that nobody appears to be enjoying*, Fake-Duke will refuse to defend them from rapists. What is being "satirized", then, is not false piousness at all. The game is actually "satirizing" the lengths women will go to to escape the omnipresent threat of sexual violence. Because - ha ha - they might even "choose" institutional oppression to escape straight-up rape-murder!
It's important that all this hateful content is present in the game long before the hive level. The hive just re-enforces what was already present from the game's first seconds. So the reading that the "losing the weight from the rape-pregnancy" line is at the expense of the twins being "vain celebrity sluts" is a misinterpretation. The "joke" is actually that the characters are fully aware of their situation and are playing dumb in a desperate attempt at earning Fake-Duke's "sympathy". And by "sympathy" I mean recognition of their use-value as sentient holes. They are simply offering their bodies in exchange for mercy. They are pleading for Duke not to kill them or let them be raped to death.
Fake-Duke responds: "Looks like you're... hosed."
And hosed by what? As has already been established, the aliens no longer represent American hegemony and patriarchy (as they did in DN3D). They're now "foreigners" - specifically middle-easterners, and most specifically Iraqi people. They are, of course, "uncivilized", yet possess secret and unimaginably sophisticated terror-weapons (WMDs!). With this in mind, why do the twins plead that this was only "our first time... with an alien"? once again, the "joke" has been misinterpreted. It's not just "lol they're totally not virgins". They are trying to assure Fake-Duke of their racial purity because otherwise he will kill them. This of course puts perspective on the whole level: "they're not human anymore." "I'm doing them a favor," and whatever.
For context, the cocooned women in DN3D pleading "kill me" were victims of rape by aliens who stood in for white, American men and the patriarchy in general. The bad guys were the phallic rape-monsters of Aliens and the sexist/racist "pigs" of the LAPD. Since DN3D was innovative for including destructible and interactive objects, the cocooned women, fascinatingly, were made equivalent to breakable barrels by the villains. They were literally objectified, and Duke was powerless to save them. ("Putting them out of their misery", rightly, was discouraged, and neither outcome was "good.") The very clear purpose of this was that rape and sexism are wrong. If DN3D is read in terms of a traditional act-structure, this could be considered the point where Duke grows from paying women at the strip club towards enjoying consensual femdom.
The Fake-Duke in DNF "grows" in a very different way: he simply starts slapping the aliens' "wall-tits" instead, because (paraphrased): "human women don't like it when you slaps their tits". Note that that Fake-Duke's violent groping is overtly non-consensual in either case. Worse, Duke hasn't actually gained any appreciation for his babes - the event has only intensified his hatred for the inhuman "foreigners". Now he's (more overtly) sexualizing his violence against them. He's going to kill their queen-bitch!"
The point of this long post is pretty straightforward. Despite one poster's assertion that the hive scene is only 40 seconds long and therefore 'easily ignored', that scene is a locus for attitudes that pervade the entirety of the game. It summarizes DNF in the same way that the interactive turd summarizes DNF. At least that much is consistent.
*The very first "joke" of the game is based on the revelation to the player that Fake-Duke was being fellated. In other words, the player experienced nothing erotic, and the women certainly weren't being gratified either. Meanwhile, the joke-within the joke is that Fake-Duke is completely indifferent to the women sucking his cock. What happened to the Duke of DN3D who simply and unpretentiously enjoyed sex - which necessarily involved some degree of intimacy and reciprocation? SuperMechaGodzilla posted: Sorry to quote myself, but this has been addressed:
"...the humor is considered "just a joke" and "harmless escapism" so there's no consequence to the attacks. They might not even be considered attacks at all. This is not "real" violence, they assert. Duke is and has always been, to them, "just a stupid videogame."
What this attitude reveals is, of course, that people are supporting the rape and hatred perpetuated by DNF's Fake-Duke with utter sincerity. DNF allows them to escape from the society that would tell them rape is wrong and freely enjoy the trappings of rape culture in a "safe" context."
But more to the point, can anyone please support the game without resorting to this halfhearted whining that's being weakly passed off as cool-dude aloofness?
I'm strongly suspecting that folks are incapable of actually praising this game. That is to say, beyond lame one-liners and indignation over real criticism. Is there a critical perspective that finds value in the game?
Where is the positive criticism from DNF fans? SuperMechaGodzilla posted:
This is discussion of the game itself.
The gameplay is tied up in all this, because the game forces you to go through these linear sequences and view these cutscenes. There is no way to play DNF "good".
Like for example, you could play Half-Life 1 and rescue nearly every scientist and security guard. I had full squads of like four or more dudes. Or, if you're lame, you could just kill everything. This was a lawless environment and you could do anything within the constraints imposed by the level-world. This, consequently, allowed you to 'be' Gordon Freeman. DNF does things differently. Things that don't make sense.
There is the pretense of interactivity with the pinball machine and pool table, but it doesn't fit. Why is the game rewarding you for playing weak minigames, ignoring the story and not fighting? You don't explore to find the pinball machine. It's just there, in a room. So, the player's choice is between:
A) Killing all narrative momentum to play the pinball thing for X minutes in exchange for a health upgrade. Or:
B) Actually playing the storyline (remember: your home is under attack by aliens, and the dumb president has ordered you not to rush into combat, practically begging you to defy him)... in exchange for nothing.
To recap: playing pinball increases your 'ego'. Ignoring a direct order from the goddamn president does nothing.
Let's look into this 'ego meter'. The loading screens say the developers wanted to have a mechanic where truly idiotic behavior reduces the power of "Duke's" ego. For example, picking up the turd would reduce it. When you actually do pick up the turd in the game, "Duke" moans about being forced to do this by the player. So the player, obviously, represents the id. There actually is this potentially interesting tension between the player and "Duke" as a character.
DNF is actually deliberately playing with the division between id, ego and superego through an interactive medium. There are many references to this in the game. Clearly some of the makers were not just "trying to be stupid" and "making the game lovely on purpose, but it's ironic so it's okay".
This theme re-appears, for example, in the remote-control car driving sections. "Duke" is shrunk down to doll size but declares, proudly: "I'm an action figure." He climbs into this oblivious, self-centered kid's car and starts driving it somehow. Now, let's be realistic here for a moment. You can't drive a remote-control car from the inside. "Duke" is not actually driving the toy car. He's being driven by the dumbass kid, who represents the player, who represents the id. So, wait, what happens when Duke gets out of the car? Is he still being controlled by a dumbass kid? It's turtles all the way down. (In Freud's analogy, the id is a like horse that is partly-controlled by a rider, the ego. In DNF, you are the horse).
But then: pinball. Playing pinball during an a direct attack on your home is inconsistent with "Duke's" character. It's actually the peaceful inaction demanded of you by the president. "Duke's" narcissism should be driven by his rejection of the superego (AKA the president, society, "political correctness" etc.) in favor of egoism. Most of the interactive junk gets this wrong.
This confusion leads back to the wall-tits and that other garbage. Acting disgusting in that context should reduce ego. "Why am I titfucking an alien growth during a rape scene?? This is awful!". At the very least, it definitely shouldn't increase ego-power.
The whole hive level, if it is to be at all like DN3D, is to challenge Duke's egoism and juvenile attitude by creating a mixture of revulsion, guilt and sincere concern.
So the gameplay gets everything wrong, really. the player should be rewarded for "acting like 'Duke'" and punished for behavior that's too disgusting or self-sacrificing. They're not.
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Nov 18, 2015 11:06
