Where do you draw the line?

[DDProductions83]

Was DB a reference to my mods lol

I do w/e I want cause I'm a crazy person and mass murderer in game :P I mean look at the body count you leave in your wake and all the kids you left fatherless and motherless AMG!!!

[TehKaoZ]

I personally think that the modding community (both on Nexus and elsewhere) could be a psychologists candy store. It really stretches the imagination to its boundaries and completely surpasses what is considered morally and politically correct. I personally don't have anything against any of it but, I can't help but wonder when I see certain mods that certain groups of people (activists in particular) would be terribly offended.

 

For my own I simply prefer my game to contain a sense of believability and "Immersion". Terrible things do happen in real life and were more common place in medieval & ancient history (which fantasy games like TES base their societies on). So grim and gritty things like murder and torture don't particularly phase me but just help Skyrim seem like a real world with people who do terrible things. It is important though that these things fit into a context and not simply exist for the sake of being terrible.

 

With that being said, certain "terrible things" really don't need to be enacted in game for there to be an immersion or realism element. In our world we know bad things happen all the time but, we don't need to be made aware of it every day by actually seeing it. If your downloading certain types of mods that take things to an extreme (terrible things for the sake of terrible things) than wanting realism in your game kind of goes out the window.

 

So I guess that is where the line is drawn, when context, good story-telling and the game itself are forgotten and the fetish becomes the point.

Edited October 2, 2014 by TehKaoZ

[Hoamaii]

Lol Darren83, nope no reference to your mod or any other Nexus mod, never EVER seen anything on the Nexus that even slightly made me think twice - and I try to at least drop by once a day when I have a connection.

 

In most cases, my position does not differ much from yours, guys - as a matter of facts I think LoneWolfEburg's mod "More Racism in Windhelm" is quite clever and funny. I've been a mass murderer in game too, not especially in Skyrim but in other games, and like anybody else I do things in game I'd never even think of in real life. It may be the language barrier (as some of you have understood by now, I'm French) but my point is not whether some mods are "bad" and some others are "good", my question was more "do you, as modders, draw a line somewhere?"

 

In real life, I'm a fiction writer so believe me I know all about putting myself in the "Villain" 's shoes, or psychos, when it comes to playing with my imagination - far less often victims, victims don't seem to have anybody's favors for some reasons. As a matter of facts, it's a thousand times more interesting and enriching to create a psychopath than it is to create a "good guy" - you learn an awful lot more about human psychology and yourself.

 

And the analogy is a pretty good one, I think it's LoneWolfEburg who mentioned it. You'd be amazed how much people use fiction, art, games, to exorcise their own demons. There's one project I remember that I refused to work on though: a producer wanted to make a feature about children prostitution in Asia, and I was really wanting to write this - I was half way through the script when I came to realize that the guy actually got a kick out of it. He was trying to finance his own perversion out of some investors' genuine concern. I made sure he never got to - on what you'd call a technicality I think - on top of it, the guy was stupid enough to have stolen the story he had hired me to rewrite ( :wallbash:) but he never produced anything that I know of after that.

 

But as a writer, I feel that I have a responsibility to viewers or readers. I guess I realized I feel the same about modding. Nivea understands how that feels, I think.

 

There's one point where cultural and historical backgrounds can make us differ though. A "right" is a notion defined by Law, and by definition it differs from one country to another. There are many things I disagree with in my country, but making it a "right" not to be insulted on racist or any kind of stupid, fallacious ground is something I agree with. And you're right about the fact that if "not being insulted" becomes a right to one group, that right should also be given to other groups. Don't worry, we still have a long way to go: it is illegal to insult a Jew, a Black person or a handicapped person in France, but it's still perfectly legal to throw sexist insults at a girl's face... :confused: .

[steelfeathers]

When I first played Skyrim and accidentally triggered the start of the DB questline, I completely freaked out and started a new save. I even avoided Riften entirely because I didn't want to get caught up with the Thieves Guild.

 

Now that I've played 20+ run-throughs, however, I find that I gravitate towards 'evil' characters that steal and murder their way across skyrim. :)

 

Violence in video games, especially 'clean' violence like the kind found in Skyrim (minimal blood, no disemberment or entrails, no tortured screaming) is really so far removed from actual violence that it doesn't bother me at all anymore.

 

But I would never use a torture/rape/prostitution mod. That's just...no.

[PetPet]

I type this with the full acceptance that Skyrim is not of "dark fantasy" genre, however, I will ask this...what about depiction of horrible acts with thematic purpose? Case in point, Skyrim describes a "brutal" civil war but without much depiction, even if its first act started with a behead scene (and follow with another when we first entered Solitude). And then...nothing. I see lots of talks about worrying citizens about the ongoing war. But not once did I sense the gravity of the brutality of war other than the two scenes I mentioned. Someone mentioned children should be "out of bound" and I agree. However, what about see a fully clothed child body laying on the ground during the siege of Whiterun?

 

My point...Skyrim tells, but does not show. I would much prefer "show, don't tell".

 

For what it is worth we have a few burned corpses adding some weight to the "Dragon Invasion" quests.

 

P.S. No surprise I preordered The Witcher 3...hoping TW3 will do the war part right.

Edited October 2, 2014 by PetPet

[Hoamaii]

Yeah, Skyrim is a very "mild" war environment (that's probably why I never did the CW quest, I keep forgetting there's a war going on), like most Bethesda open world games - the Fallout series was the same - probably because adding more events and more NPCs would strain the engine to a degree that lower end computers would not bear. It still is rated PG 18 here (France) but other than a handful adults friends who play it, all other Skyrim players I know in real life are kids. The game is far less violent than your average action movie.

 

Still, like I said, I never used the torture racks, don't know how they work and don't want to try... Maybe I should try, it's probably "milder" than the word itself sounds in my head...

[LoneWolfEburg]

The torture racks are not interactable at all.

 

There're some mods like Immersive Patrols that add more war in the wild. Still, the writing of Skyrim is full of informed attributes in other aspects as well.

[Hoamaii]

@ LoneWolfEburg: really?.. Not interactable at all?.. :facepalm: I don't know why I got the idea they were from playing with the Creation Kit... Silly me!..

 

I know there are plenty of CW mods, yeah, I'm just waiting till I start a new playthrough to do it, 'cause at the moment my game is kind of over-modded, I'm not sure it could take much more. Thanks :smile:

[DDProductions83]

Ahhh lol I always refer to DragonBreak as DB rofl keep forgetting the poor dark brotherhood