Boris Stoke

Far Cry 4: A grenade rolls down everest

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It's official: the guy on the cover isn't white.

 

....anymore.

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Well, he never looked white to me in the first place — but I'm guessing any possible misinterpretation will be cleared up in future art.

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So, I don't have anything to really add to the conversation but I really hate the way that Far Cry 4 is being marketed. It doesn't sound interesting in the slightest and going the Saints Row route on cartoon villains and over the top stuff for the main franchise seems like a completely missed opportunity. Why not make the Blood Dragon spin-off the one that goes with this stuff?

 

I really need to sit down with Far Cry 2 again and play it.

 

There are clear elements that made me really enjoy the game - the emergent gameplay meant that I had hundreds of little stories that occurred of the course of the game and almost none of them relied on the narrative imposed by the cut scenes. Far Cry 3 felt like I was being constantly funneled down a route of the developer's design. One that just never felt compelling enough for all the harassment the game kept giving me to do the dumb stuff.

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I don't know, it seems incredibly disingenuous to complain about a singular piece of marketing related to a game franchise that is about going to remote parts of the world and murdering people in cruel, inhumane ways. I am all for being sensitive to your audience's possible racial, religious & sexual backgrounds, but there's got to a point where you put your foot down. Far Cry 4's skewering is based upon an erroneous assumption derived from box art.

 

Can't we just another six months until our worst suspicions are confirmed?

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I'm certainly not saying there's anything wrong with the box art. I'm just saying that the guy on the front looks white. If they didn't want a white bloke on the front, then why colour him so?

 

I know nothing about the game other than what the box art is, and that there's a tweet saying the white dude on the front isn't white. Apologies if it came across as attacking the marketing. 

 

Edit: 

After reading Merus' link...maybe I am saying there's something wrong with the box art.

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I don't know, it seems incredibly disingenuous to complain about a singular piece of marketing related to a game franchise that is about going to remote parts of the world and murdering people in cruel, inhumane ways. I am all for being sensitive to your audience's possible racial, religious & sexual backgrounds, but there's got to a point where you put your foot down. Far Cry 4's skewering is based upon an erroneous assumption derived from box art.

 

The Himalayas aren't remote. There's a tourist racket up Everest. And that's kind of the problem - they picked the Himalayas because they needed somewhere cool and different after Far Cry 3's island chain, and they cleared off all the actual people who live there and who have real identities so they can have a video game. It'd be like if they set a video game in Compton except there's only one gang there, they're all white, and the player's the only one that's allowed to fight back.

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Anderson Cooper, FC4 Villain and Ken Watanabe.  Which one looks like which:

 

post-33601-0-73598200-1400781703.jpgpost-33601-0-29606500-1400781710.jpgpost-33601-0-02726500-1400781776.jpg

 

 

Marketing conveys a message.  In this case, the message that was received by a lot of people made them distinctly uncomfortable.  It doesn't really matter that they say he's Asian.  The message spoke on its own, and it was one that made people uncomfortable.  When you communicate without context because you want to make a "cool" image, that's a risk you run and one that devs/pubs/PR ought to be thinking about.  They weren't patient about releasing their "cool" and "edgy" marketing materials, and so we don't have to be patient about digesting them with full context. 

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Shushing people from an affected group is seriously tacky, Architecture. Did you even read Merus' link?

I read the entire thing, and what I gleaned was that people are taking huge offense based on incorrect assumptions. The character on the cover in no way whatsoever represents British Colonialism. The developer has come out and officially stated that he's Asian.

 

These reactions serve to stymie the creation of art. Perhaps it will be awful, gaudy art that negatively stereotypes an entire continent and deserves all of this pre-release ire. But can't we save our collective judgement until we've all actually had a chance to experience the game first hand?

 

As for his reaction to the defamation of religious iconography--that's kind of the point, isn't it? A reckless self-proclaimed king with no respect for the culture or heritage of the people he subjugates? Ubisoft is vilifying the villain. They want you to be angry. They're giving you a reason to hate the man you will undoubtedly murder in some horrific fashion inside a video game about fucking killing things.

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I read the entire thing, and what I gleaned was that people are taking huge offense based on incorrect assumptions. The character on the cover in no way whatsoever represents British Colonialism. The developer has come out and officially stated that he's Asian.

 

These reactions serve to stymie the creation of art. Perhaps it will be awful, gaudy art that negatively stereotypes an entire continent and deserves all of this pre-release ire. But can't we save our collective judgement until we've all actually had a chance to experience the game first hand?

 

As for his reaction to the defamation of religious iconography--that's kind of the point, isn't it? A reckless self-proclaimed king with no respect for the culture or heritage of the people he subjugates? Ubisoft is vilifying the villain. They want you to be angry. They're giving you a reason to hate the man you will undoubtedly murder in some horrific fashion inside a video game about fucking killing things.

 

The argument you seem to be taking is that during pre-release, communication ought to be a one-way street.  Companies can release, say, justify and explain whatever they want.  But that consumers are to withhold commentary until they have full context.  That is, with all do respect, fucked.  

 

As for Merus' friend...I have a deep antipathy for all religion, and little personal care for whether or not its respected.  Just to put my personal feelings out there.  That said, I can appreciate how someone from a group that is almost always stereotyped and gets few to no positive or respectful appearances in mainstream media would be fucking pissed at this shit each time it happens.  Not because it isn't a reasonable thing to do to have a villain desecrate a holy image, but because there are so few positive portrayals of a race, group, religion, etc.  Something can be a completely reasonable individual creative choice, but can still be really fucking offensive and tiresome when it exists in a greater cultural context of consistent stereotyping and minimalizing.

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A few things:

Changing the race of that character to something other than white doesn't excuse anything. There is a whole history of racial subjugation by non-whites in that region and this cover is still toothless evoking that to little point or value.

This flows into a larger point of how childish it is to portray your villain in this way. There's no nuance or depth; the bad guy is presented as more of a cartoon character than a real person. Sadly, actual human malice is much more mundane and complicated than what this box art is showing. I would love it if a game wanted to explore that complexity honestly, but I'm fairly sure that Far Cry 4 will not. If they want a cartoon villain, fine, but there's no need to be pointlessly offense and then pretend your game is going to be about something deep.

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Has anyone edited the image to give the dude normal black hair instead of clearly-dyed-blonde-and-also-cut-weird hair?

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The argument you seem to be taking is that during pre-release, communication ought to be a one-way street.  Companies can release, say, justify and explain whatever they want.  But that consumers are to withhold commentary until they have full context.  That is, with all do respect, fucked. 

No, my argument is that we have about four pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle. People have every right to have their own instinctual reactions--my issue is with people continuing to bemoan a moot point. As I stated much earlier in this thread, I don't expect Far Cry 4 to handle its chosen subject matter in a thoughtful manner, but nothing yet presented has managed to raise my hackles, and much of the controversy is mired in the false assertion that the character is a WASP.

 

Colin Moriarty over at IGN has a surprisingly cogent take on the issue at hand.

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These reactions serve to stymie the creation of art. Perhaps it will be awful, gaudy art that negatively stereotypes an entire continent and deserves all of this pre-release ire. But can't we save our collective judgement until we've all actually had a chance to experience the game first hand?

 

Can you elaborate more on your thoughts about this kind of criticism stymieing the creation of art?  I can think of a lot of ways to interpret that thought.

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It's interesting that you again make the point about false assumptions and assertions:

 

 

The character on the cover in no way whatsoever represents British Colonialism.

 

Do you have insider knowledge about the story?  About the character's background, both culturally and ethnically (besides the tweet that he's Asian)?  About the context of his actions, or the general themes being explored?  

 

Part of your argument has relied on unfounded assumptions and assertions.  I'd argue that you are making bigger assumptions about the game than the people who are focusing on the limited pieces of information that are communicated through the released images. 

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Recalling RPS' discussion of FC3 with its writer, Jeffrey Yohalem (and anticipating the defense of "you're supposed to be offended, he's the antagonist," wherever it comes from), I'm sitting here trying to come up with examples of the effective use of satirical violence in media.

 

All Quiet on the Western Front comes to mind but that's not exactly satire, just a straight retelling of the horrors of massed violent conflict. Effective though.

 

Again, Spec Ops: The Line went out of its way to ensure players understood their character, aligned with the use of deadly violenceas a means to an end, was becoming the sort of monster he sought to eliminate.

 

Is satire just not the right tool for the task?

 

 

Oh, moot point, and I might be looking at the wrong quote, but didn't the game director say "he's not white" rather than "he's asian?"

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Until now I hadn't seen the high-resolution version of the art, but having just done so it really does seem cripplingly obvious that he's East Asian. His eyebrows even look dyed.

 

far-cry-4-villain.jpg

 

And just for you Twiz, I did one of my professional Photoshop jobs:

 

far-cry-4-villain-no-hair.jpg

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