The Bodies of Fear and Hunger
(CW: Fear and Hunger is a game with intense themes and content, including violence, gore, sexual violence and substance abuse. Of these, violence and sexual violence will be discussed at length. While any images shown will be censored, discretion is advised.)
Moments into my second playthrough, my Mercenary was cornered by a guard. I attempted to escape, but to no avail, as the guard hacked at my Mercenary with its cleaver. It chopped his arm off, causing him to drop his shield. He immediately begins bleeding, and I panic. I tried to pivot my strategy, fight to kill, but it was too late. The game then presented a choice: heads or tails. I picked heads and the animation of the coin toss plays, the shiny golden coin spinning in the air and landing on its face. The guard’s stock sound effect played, and poor Mercenary was beaten into unconsciousness.
But it kept going. Mercenary woke up in a pit of viscera. The world around him was one of wet, pink rot, shredded limbs and meat and bone jutting from all sides. With his one arm he staunched his bleeding best he could and with one arm he painstakingly dragged himself forward. He poked his head out from the gore, and tumbled onto the red floor. It looked, to me, almost like a giant tongue. I tried pulling him out of the room, but with one arm he could barely move, and was quickly apprehended by a large lizard creature. It dragged him away from the gore, further down into the catacombs, and then stopped in a room, meat hanging on the walls. It set him down, pulled out its sword, made a long, clean cut from his face to his groin, grabbed the seams, and tore it all off.
And it kept going. My second run of Fear and Hunger lasted for thirty more seconds, as a mass of naked flesh. The game explained, as what was left of the Mercenary writhed, that he was in shock, in excruciating pain, struggling to stay awake and to keep himself from spilling everywhere. Animated by nothing but pain and adrenaline, he managed to drag himself a few long yards. Then he mercifully expired.
Fear and Hunger, released 2018, is the debut survival horror RPG of Finnish developer Miro Haverinen, otherwise known as Orange. The player can choose from amongst four characters, our ill-fated Mercenary, Knight, Dark Priest and Outlander, each with their own unique backstories and skillsets. Despite their differences, they are all, for one reason or another, on the same quest: find the enigmatic mercenary leader Le’Garde, who has been imprisoned in the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger. From this description, the gameplay comes naturally. This is a dungeon crawler. You, the player, as any one of these characters, will delve into the depths, grab loot, overcome obstacles, fight some monsters, and achieve the win state by reaching Le’Garde. The first paragraph of its features on game distributor Steam instead proclaims that “the world of Fear & Hunger is VERY dark. THE GAME IS MEANT ONLY FOR MATURE AUDIENCES! Extreme violence and gore are everyday sights in the dungeons and death is one of the easier ways to go in the game. The game has drug and substance abuse, heavy themes ranging from self-mutilation to sexual violence.”
This has very little to do with rescuing Le’Garde. While the game does have an overarching story and a large, imposing set of lore, most of the game is running through hostile locales, getting brutalized by monsters and scrambling for whatever one can to survive. It is that struggle that forms the story of Fear and Hunger. On its own, the story of Mercenary getting flayed alive, or many, many similar stories of Outlander getting his head pecked off by a giant crow man or Knight’s skull getting caved in, can come off as almost misery porn. However, as a collective, they form the game’s story. Fear and Hunger cannot function, both as a game and as a narrative, without the many many stories of dying hundreds of times in hundreds of horrible, unique ways. It is not something that could be communicated in a rote summarization. The cruelty is the point, and must be understood as being within and delivered by the game’s mechanics.
The Body
A body would be composed mainly by one’s torso, the point at which all following parts connect. Limbs, at least two to facilitate movement, and maybe a set of arms, with some mechanism to deftly manipulate objects. Some more obviously sexually dimorphic groups may also sport free hanging genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics like breasts. What seems to be a constant is the presence of a head. While the torso is positionally the nexus of the body the head is where the brain is stored, where sight, smell, sound, taste is processed and enjoyed. The mouth too, resides at the head, in the center of the face, serving as a point where the outside world can be taken in, literally absorbed into the body.
This isn’t a scientifically sound definition of a body, but it is the body as defined by Fear and Hunger, and it is one that the game will stretch to its limits. The physical body is the center of the mechanics, the combat based on targeting the limbs of opponents. Destroying the head counts for an instant kill, but the low hit rate makes it risky, and in the rare moments where the game necessitates engaging with combat, players are encouraged to attack different extremities to gain an advantage. Cutting the legs makes certain enemies stumble, exposing their heads. Slicing off arms would disable certain attacks, as would external genitalia (penises sometimes referred to by a myriad of euphemisms). However, the same systems apply from the opposite direction: as demonstrated above there isn’t much stopping an enemy from dismembering you.
Survival also hinges on the maintenance of three stats: body, hunger, and mind. Hunger can be staved off with food, madness by drugs and alcohol, and the body can be helped by the rare herb or blue vial (and the very occasional dark magic ritual). On a technical level, every few steps will correspond to the characters becoming more fearful and more hungry, the number values calculated by the number of steps taken and the environment. Every character is randomly assigned a fear, and coming into contact with that fear can drastically affect their mind level. Certain values will correspond to debilitating levels of hunger and madness, and eventually failing to maintain mind and hunger will lead to death. Therefore, moving forward is a strategic move based on several different considerations and risks. How far can you stretch your resources? Can you afford to fight this monster? How lucky do you feel? How many limbs do you have left? No action is without risk, no matter what, you are always trading something. Most emblematic of this is the status effect “infection,” indicated by an image of a particularly veiny hand or foot. The only item that can cure infection is the rare green herb, found growing near the entrance to the dungeon and in the small courtyards. This presents the otherwise absurd question of “how important is this limb, really?” Because the second, roundabout “cure” for infection is grabbing a bonesaw and sawing the limb off, either by yourself or a willing participant.
Another ludicrous question posed, but one at the forefront of all videogame design, is the question of whether the media is worth trading your time. Sexuality and sexual violence are at the forefront of the game’s spectacle. Monsters, like the aforementioned guard, often roam in varying states of undress, the guard’s large penis swinging, pendulum-like, between its legs. Cutting off the player character’s legs and throwing them into a bloody ditch is not the only way that particular enemy exerts its power. In another playthrough, the game allowed just a flash, a brief glimpse, of the Mercenary lying prone, the monster assaulting him. In another playthrough, after evading the guards and running into the mines, he was once again brutalized, this time by another monster that ambushed him from the darkness. Anal bleeding is a status effect in Fear and Hunger. Sexual violence has become by far one of the game’s biggest claims to infamy, to the point that it is known as the game with all the rape in it, to the point that, in researching this topic, I came across a Reddit thread on the game’s subreddit simply titled: “so is this just a porno game for psychos?” Adding fuel to the fire is the game’s own clumsiness. The game’s usage of graphic content is almost juvenile in its gratuity, a problem that heavily affects the more sexual aspects of its horror. The usage of genitalia in its aesthetics and the usage of rape then come off as almost cheap, shock for the sake of it. The cheapness is exacerbated as it seems also uninterested in the real-life circumstances surrounding rape, democratizing the act as not one that exists within the intersecting lines of patriarchy, racism, and classism, but simply as an expression of dominance. While this isn’t an incorrect observation, it is upsettingly reductive. It’s notable too, that much of the sexual violence in the game is frontloaded to the early areas. It almost feels like even the developer Haverinen decided to dial things back.
The intent however seems clear: the game positions itself, through unpredictable, unfair design, as an entity that holds power over the player. It is possible to be good at Fear and Hunger, but the sheer amount of random chance (such as the aforementioned coin tosses) means that one can never master Fear and Hunger. The usage of sexual and extreme physical violence then, are gestures of that power, the characters within the text using violence to exert and express dominance. Critically, the player is never the perpetrator of this violence. Sexual violence is inflicted onto the player (by way of their avatar), but they cannot inflict it onto others. What’s missing from these discussions however are the presence of sex within Fear and Hunger. Though the game presents neither sexual violence nor sex as particularly erotic, there is a clear delineation between coercive violence and mutual, consensual acts. As clumsy as Fear and Hunger can often be with its themes, it is not thoughtless.
Fear and Hunger is a game obsessed with limits and boundaries. The violence done on the body in Fear and Hunger functions as the invasion of physical, emotional and social boundaries but also metatextually as the invasion of the invisible, unspoken boundaries on what is considered acceptable forms of violence. We must then conceive boundaries as a two-way division: they are meant to keep things out, but also, to keep things close, whether we like it or not.
The Dungeons of Fear and Hunger is home to many, many creatures and factions. It is inhospitable, but is by no means inhabitable, and much of the game will be learning how to become another creature of the Dungeons. As much as the player will be learning to negotiate with other bodies, the Dungeons serve as the body at which all entities are at the mercy of. The architecture is only barely functional, water drips through the ceilings and the floors occasionally give out. Take a bad tumble and the character may roll their ankle, or even worse break a bone. Scattered about are minuscule, pixel sized pieces of detritus, and stepping on the odd upturned nail chances infection. The floors are covered in traps that would pierce your chest and break your legs. Even one of the most basic of video game functions, saving the game, is at the mercy of the environment. Saving can only be done at beds, sequestered away in small, cramped, rooms, most of which will trigger a coin flip. Failing the coin flip would mean that a creature has found the player, trapping them in the room. The act of saving progress becomes a calculated risk, the places of greatest safety doubling as a place of greatest danger. That’s not to say that the player does not also hold agency in this relationship. Players will be forcing their way through doors, picking locks, digging through rubble. A recurring line in the game is a variation on the words “you delved too deep,” the act of moving forward placed directly on the player, the interfering dormouse, the invader, who peered inside and regretted their choice. Even breaking a door is framed as a battle. The relationship the Dungeons hold with its inhabitants and its invaders then must also be understood as a struggle for control. An experienced player will learn to play the Dungeons against their enemies, but whatever alliance the player makes with the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger will always be an uneasy one.
Despite everything, the permanence of the structure became one of the few things I depended on. My fourth run was going fine, my equipment was subpar and I wasn’t going to be able to rescue Le’Garde at the rate I was going, so I slowed down to an almost relaxed pace. Outlander is the most physically powerful of the four player characters, and allied with the mutant wolf Moonless, the pair made quick work of the guards in the prisons. The prisons are full of beds, and so I began a routine. Explore into the Dungeons, return to the prisons, save. Explore, return, save. Explore, return, save.
The Crow Mauler is a reference to the 2001 survival horror game Silent Hill 2’s Pyramid Head, both characters being half-naked humanoids wielding large blades and sporting non-human heads. Both serve as a “stalker” enemy, a nigh-invincible force that chases and punishes players. Critically however, the Crow Mauler functions to punish players who get too comfortable in their space. Players like me. The Crow Mauler is activated after descending deep enough into the Dungeons, after which it can spawn anywhere, given that the player has loitered long enough. This is announced by the sound of a foghorn, and the text “you feel a terrible presence entering the dungeons.” The Crow Mauler has two methods of spawning: usually it’ll appear at the entrance to the area, and begin its roaming phase, searching for the player. Most terrifying however, is its occasional ability to break the boundaries of the world.
In developer Kitty Horrorshow’s 2016 horror game Anatomy, the game force quits itself after the player does a complete sweep of a suburban house, collecting and listening to every cassette tape inside. These cassettes come together to form what seems to be a semi-academic lecture in which the speaker likens a house to a body. The living room is like a heart, the dining room a stomach, hallways are veins, and the bedroom, the narrator muses, may be like the mind, or, in a twist similar to Fear and Hunger’s take on the bed, a mouth. With each reopening of the game Anatomy tasks the player with memorizing the layout of the house, but at the exact same time each repetition of the lecture, which degrades with each visit, consistently reminds the player that the house cannot be trusted. It is that contradiction that the Crow Mauler exploits. As inhospitable as the Dungeons can be one can generally trust in the integrity of its walls. Much of the game after all, involves ducking for cover or darting around corners, the walls literally functioning as shields.
Imagine my fright then, when the foghorn sounded, and the Crow Mauler burst through what once was sturdy cobblestone, initiating a fight. The Crow Mauler possesses several game-ending attacks. “Peck” involves it literally pecking someone’s head off, “Maul” will break bones and knock the life out of a body, but the one it led with this time was “Flock of Crows.” “Flock of Crows” is the ultimate punishment for the lax player, as in-game the Crow Mauler summons a mass that eats the character’s eyes. What this means for a player, is that the rest of the game, provided they survive their encounter, will be done in pitch darkness. Are you so comfortable in your space, that you can navigate it without sight? This is rhetorical of course, the lack of sight only exacerbates the treachery of the Dungeons. Not only have the walls betrayed me, but I can no longer even perceive them. Moments like these, being blinded by the Crow Mauler, or getting my legs chopped off by the guard, are what I’d like to call a “post game-over state,” the uncanny period of play after what should feel like an ending. When the Crow Mauler eats your eyes and you’re scrambling in the dark, when you’re a torso and one arm dragging yourself out of a pit, that is effectively a game over state, but therein lies Fear and Hunger’s cruelest trick: it will constantly hand over control, and then show just how illusory that control is.
Most obvious are the moments that are actually designed to be dead ends. For example, being flayed alive by the Lizardman gives the player a few more seconds of control, but it’s impossible to turn things around from that point. A meaner example is the Elite Guard, an enemy that is the guard, but more heavily armed and armored. Being defeated by one has the chance of triggering another post game over state where the player is taken to another room. Inside they can crawl around while the guard laughs and occasionally beats their character with its mace. Even meaner, it’s possible to reach a door, only to find it’s locked. The only way to “progress” is to succumb to the guard’s dominance and be beaten to death. Neither of these scenarios are meant to be survived, but the game hands over control to give the illusion of agency. Narratively, these moments are the punchline, a graphically violent display to cap off the tension of earlier gameplay. Mechanically, it’s the game rubbing it in.
The Rubbernecker
Susan Sontag in her 1965 essay “The Imagination of Disaster,” criticizes sci-fi and horror media for being formulaic and refusing to examine the implications of what she identifies as the true center of these films: disaster. She identifies, for example, the contemporary trend in sci-fi concerning the annihilation of mankind as a parallel to American Cold War anxieties, and Japanese kaiju as a reflection of nuclear trauma. She worries that the formula side steps the realities underpinning sci-fi disasters. She worries that the spectacle has won out, that the very real threat of annihilation has been relegated to a set piece.
It’s not a stretch to say that the spectacle is what made Fear and Hunger. On May 6th, 2023, the Youtube channel Super Eyepatch Wolf, a videogame and internet commentary channel, released a 48 minute video about Fear and Hunger, simply titled: “The Cruelest Video Game.” In ways similar to this essay, Eyepatch Wolf discusses the design aspects of the game, as well as his glowing pride at having learned how to master it. Still, the cruelty was the point. He called it the cruelest video game, spoke extensively about the myriad horrific and unfair events of the game, and it enthralled us. The video garnered over 3.4 million views, sparking mass interest.
In his article for Vice titled “How Shock Sites Shaped the Internet,” gaming journalist and senior associate editor of Game Informer Blake Hester, draws a lineage of taboo and transgressive media in the age before and in the infancy of the Internet. He writes specifically about the virality of famous videos and images such as “2 Girls 1 Cup,” an infamous Brazilian scat fetish film; “Goatse,” an image of extreme anal stretching; and “Tubgirl,” a picture of a woman excreting an orange juice enema; amongst others. These early internet shock media however follow in a lineage of exploitation media. Hester specifically singles out the genre of mondo horror, films such as Cannibal Holocaust, Faces of Death and the Guinea Pig series, all famous and successful for their unflinchingly graphic depictions of violence. The development of the shock site such as Rotten.com, a veritable catalog of faces of death, can be read as mondo adapting to the media formats of the internet. Hester argues that this transition has shaped the modern internet. The earliest “reaction video,” videos where people consume a piece of content and give their live commentary or reactions, were in response, he writes, to “2 Girls 1 Cup.” While reaction videos are generally associated with reacting to movies, television or videos, they are inextricably tied to online gaming media. Popular formats such as the “let’s play,” are essentially a person reacting to the game they have. Super Eyepatch Wolf’s video on Fear and Hunger then, can be understood as a react video. Like Tubgirl and Goatse before it, it’s undeniable that much of the game’s magnetism is held in its transgressions, the ability to vicariously experience it secondhand. Like Sontag, I cannot help but feel that the spectacle has overrun the game’s disasters.
Throughout the game, one may run into Pocketcat, a dour merchant wearing a cat mask. He refers to himself as a “child of darkness,” and on one encounter, says:
“Many mistake happiness with joy… But joy is just temporary. It’s just a faint light in the darkness to remind you that not everything is necessarily surrounded by bleak emptiness. That is the difference between happiness and joy… We only know brief joy every now and then, but even that is getting more rare every day.”
In his world, happiness does not exist, only joy, and the ephemerality of joy, he suggests, is reason to mourn. As a child of darkness, he is looking at it glass half empty
Super Eyepatch Wolf dedicates the first 15 or so minutes of his video on what he calls the “ogre problem,” “ogre” being what he chose to call the guards. Guards are, after all, a common early game enemy, and due to their particularly punishing characteristics are a problem every player must learn to negotiate. He recounts, clearly proud of himself, the way he figured out how to use bear traps to disable the guard’s legs, having made the conclusion after stepping into so many himself. His story of Fear and Hunger, is one of many, many disasters that culminated in this moment of triumph, transforming this moment of heightened tension into one of catharsis. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be engraved onto The Mysterians, if the legacy of colonialism as anthropology can be engraved onto Cannibal Holocaust, then the disasters underpinning Fear and Hunger are the myriad intimate yet grisly disasters we move through every day.
If Fear and Hunger is to be understood as an exploitation game, it is one of multiple angles, not least of which is sexploitation. The usage of sexual violence paired with the uncanniness of the post game over and the almost multi-narrative act of playing Fear and Hunger can make the story of the game not just a roughie but a rape and revenge story. It is a storytelling method wholly unique to videogames, because the Outlander I’m playing on my 7th run is not just a guy who walked into the Dungeons but the culmination of several explorations worth of knowledge, memories and weariness. “Revenge” is sweet, regardless if the “rape” took place because of the multi-temporal perspective at play. The game’s own inability to reckon with its usage of rape however necessitates abstraction. If the player-game dynamic is abstracted to that of power, then every victory is a little “revenge.” As Super Eyepatch Wolf points out, the currency that the game deals with is that of knowledge. He grasps joy by trying, trying again. However, this is an argument that is still framed within the language of violence, the invasion of bodies, and while that is a common language of videogames, it is within the world of Fear and Hunger a darkly grim fact. So engraved in the game is this fact that it is remarkable when those boundaries open.
Scattered throughout the Dungeons are these ritual circles, where the player can pray to an Old God, sacrifice someone, or “show love” to a party member of the player’s choice. The wording itself is disarming. This is not framed as a transactional or necessary act, but one of emotional vulnerability. Pains are taken to obscure the code scaffolding. Characters only consent after spending enough time in the party, and some will never be interested. Showing love in one of the ritual circles creates a “marriage of flesh,” merging the two characters into the strongest character in the game. “You have become the materialization of the love you two shared. Intertwined forever,” the game states. Being Fear and Hunger, showing love’s not an act without risk, there is a chance that the Marriage fails and the metaphor writes itself, but in a game rife with the invasion of boundaries, there is joy in the creation of Marriage. Marriage is, to put it bluntly, a gnarly looking character. But the idea of two people, joined so closely by trials of fire that they become a singular unit, one built on reciprocity and affection, is affecting. It’s not spectacular, it’s not erotic or even at all romantic but it is love. It will restore your lost limbs and your broken bones. It will make you more than the sum of your parts.
There is a kindness even in the post game over. I’d consider waking up in a bloody ditch with most limbs chopped off a failstate, but it isn’t one at all either. Considering the existence of Marriage, it’s in fact something that can be turned around, provided the player is willing to endure the anxiety of only being able to drag themselves around with one arm. The game mirrors this tension both narratively and in the construction of the Dungeons. Le’Garde will refuse to return to the surface, citing unfinished business. The Dungeons of Fear and Hunger will give way to a mine, which will give way to a large cavern, mazelike catacombs, an ancient city, the belly of an elder god and an oblivion beyond comprehension.
If humans are to be children of darkness, if our lives are to be a series of small, intimate disasters, Fear and Hunger declares that there is an imperative to move forward regardless. There will always be more, always further depths to delve into, because the story of Fear and Hunger is that of pushing oneself to the absolute limit. The belief that as long as someone is alive they can move forward, exact change, that being alive is power. It is an ambitious message but it is one that Fear and Hunger is able to send because the language of videogames forces the player to go through the motions, to live by that imperative. There’s a character who, against all odds, has made the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger his home. His apartment in the mines is startlingly mundane. A couple bookshelves in one corner, a stove in another. A fresh pot of tea sits on a table, next to a stock pot and a couple ladles. “How do you stay sane in this darkness?” you ask. Nosramus answers simply: “It’s supposed to be dark here.” Then he laughs, “we’d be in trouble if these dungeons were as bright as day!” The darkness is normal, the suffering is normal. The world is a large, indifferent beast, and you must rejoice in it.
Works Cited
Brewer, Nathan. “Going Rogue: A Brief History of the Computerized Dungeon Crawl.” IEEE-USA InSight (blog), July 7, 2016. https://insight.ieeeusa.org/articles/going-rogue-a-brief-history-of-the-computerized-dungeon-crawl/.
Haverinen, Miro. Fear and Hunger. V.1.4.1. Steam. PC. 2018.
Hester, Blake. “How Shock Sites Shaped the Internet.” Vice, February 27, 2023. https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxnw7b/shit-death-and-gore-how-shock-sites-shaped-the-internet.
Kitty Horrorshow. Anatomy. Itch.io. PC. 2016.
NoCommentary. “NoCommentary.” YouTube. Accessed December 20, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/@NoCommentary12.
“While not cited directly in the essay, this Youtube channel has been compiling every incidental detail, cutscene, battle, dialogue and scenarios for both Fear and Hunger and Fear and Hunger 2: Termina. It has been an invaluable resource in referencing events and text.
Reddit. “So Is This Just a Porno Game for Psychos? : R/FearAndHunger,” January 14, 2023. https://www.reddit.com/r/FearAndHunger/comments/10c1u7r/so_is_this_just_a_porno_game_for_psychos/.
Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster.” Commentary 40, no. 4 (October 1, 1965): 42–48. https://www.proquest.com/docview/199542590/fulltextPDF/E74040CE5947CDPQ/1?accountid=12768&sourcetype=Magazines.
Steam. “Fear and Hunger.” Steam. Accessed December 20, 2023. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1002300/Fear__Hunger/.
Team Silent. Silent Hill 2. Konami. Playstation 2. 2001.
Wolf, Super Eyepatch. “The Cruelest Video Game.” Video. YouTube, May 6, 2023. https://youtu.be/dRIkWHo1SJY?si=XccOPdwl_ATcGF3N.
Self-indulgent postscript
This was written for class, and unfortunately I ended up butting heads with the page limit, so there are a few things I want to tackle in the future because there’s a lot in this game.
One, I’d like to spend some time in the future examining the role other characters play in Fear and Hunger. Enki, Ragnvaldr, Cahara and D’Arce are a delight. Enki has stupid amounts of chihuahua energy, Ragnvaldr is a fun subversion of the barbarian archetype, Cahara’s got several great “being alive is power” moments, and D’Arce is the hottest mess. I love them all. There was a version of this essay that had a section on The Girl within the context of Julie Muncy’s “Dad game.” Parenthood is like, a thing in this game and that bears investigating. Though (thank god) the game is much less unyielding in its commitment to violence when it comes to its child characters, it absolutely puts its finger on the scale when it comes to discussing power dynamics and child exploitation. As in real life, the children of this game have no rights.
Second, body horror. While I do find the wording surrounding Marriage disarming and meaningful, it’s also no mistake that it is also the manifestation of many’s fears surrounding marriage. The loss of individuality, the loss of a social life, this burden to be tied to another person forever. Just as meaningful is the positioning of becoming more monstrous as becoming more like a creature of the Dungeons. The New Gods become more warped and twisted in their physicality, as do the protagonists in Ending D. (I used Ragnvaldr’s as an image up top, both because his Ending D monologue encapsulates this kind of… “fuck life and fuck it by living anyways” but also because his sprite goes harder than legal.) Not only that, but monsters like the guards, and the… racist cave village are within the lore, just people who went nuts. Their bodies changed to reflect their mentalities, and that’s one hell of an invasion! The Dungeons so worming its way into you it warps not only your psyche but the way you interact with the world. Wild.
Third, I’m happy where this ended, but there was a section on doomerism that had to be scrapped. Fear and Hunger’s recent popularity can be seen as the kind of “positive nihilism” or Camus’ “absurdism” that’s been popular in media right now.
Four. I know my life would’ve been made easier by just using the censorship mod, but at the exact same time, I think the game loses something when it’s played that way! And this ultimately comes back to a lot of my own ambivalence surrounding this game. It’s fascinating, it’s a really interesting piece of hostile game design, and I really respect its dedication to violence. Sexual violence’s usage in this game is absolutely for shock value, it’s rape, it’s going to be shocking. More than that though, it’s also the game making absolutely sure that there are no bounds it would not cross. It’s another point in which the game transgresses boundaries, in this case the physical and emotional boundaries of both the player avatar, and emotionally the player. Because of the language of videogames both avatar and player can be more than this one, awful moment. Because of the post game over this moment can be a point to turn around from. But what kills me is that, as a nonbinary person of color, moments like these are nearly 1:1 reconstructions of very real societal threats that I fear and am at risk of. I’d wager a guess that this is why sexual violence is generally more scrutinized: it’s a far more intimate form of violence that a really good chunk of the population has experienced in some form, one that intersects with a ton of societal hierarchies. The same can’t be said of… getting crushed to death by an evil Gordon Ramsay. And the game treats both scenarios in pretty much the same fashion. I don’t know what to make of it.
