I feel that for a long time, the game industry has been trying to emulate the movie industry. That's apparent in a lot of games, from Final Fantasy VII to Uncharted 2. New levels of cinematic flair have often been met with a lot of praise and enthusiasm and now that game budgets are becoming about as high as movie budgets, we have better suited technology to do such things.

Now let me just bring up a point I've thought up of.

Right now, we've been using analogies between films and other games to discern what's accpetable, and to see where the metaphorical "line" is.

Some say "Movies include violence all the time, look at a scene like the one in Die Hard where Alan Rickman shoots that douchebag hostage for being annoying. Same thing."

Others say "There's a difference between watching Alan Rickman do that, and being Alan Rickman and killing the hostage yourself."

I'd say that the former is wrong, and the latter is right.

But unlike the latter, I don't consider that a bad thing. The main thing we have to remember is no matter how much games have tried to emulate movies, the fact is, GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES.

No matter how realistic the graphics are, no matter how amazing the scripted encounters become, the fact remains that interactivity is still something that games have that movies do not.

In that sense, Modern Warfare 2 isn't just pushing narrative boundaries for gaming. It's pushing narrative boundaries, PERIOD. While a film could recreate the airport shooting and still make it a very emotional and gut wrenching scene, a game is the only one that can put you in the shooter's shoes and make you feel that sick pit in your stomach as you're picking off innocent civilians.

On top of that, I'd like to stress the importance of waiting until the finished product is out in order for everyone to gain more context when it comes to the scene. I'm reminded of a french film called Irreversible which is a revenge story told in a weird chronological order in an attempt to show the shocking shit first and then finally show you the meaning behind it.

In that film, there's a 9 minute rape scene involving Monica Belluci. Just like all the violence in that movie, it's a brutal and disgusting scene, and worse of all, it's a long take, the camera doesn't look away for one second. It makes you see every single minute of it. The point is that it wants you to get angry. It wants you to want revenge also. And it wants you to be heart broken when you get to know this character further, and know what's going to happen to her.

The film in general has a very powerful message. It's a disturbing film, not for everyone, but if you can brave it, it's worth the watch.

Imagine though if we were only shown a clip of the rape scene and had none of the film provided to show context. People would be reacting to it like monkeys, half the film critics still reacted to it like monkeys, which is saying a lot considering how the film community is arguably more sophisticated than the current game community, what with the occasional review score drama that constantly surfaces.

Fact is that even after games eventually reach the level of current film, people will still miss the point of things like this. However, it's still up to us as intelligent members of the game community to praise progress when we see it. We don't know how good the campaign we be. I don't know for a fact is this scene will meet my expectations in the context of the game, but I do know that the fact that it exists is huge, and it's a fucking good thing. Props to IW for including it.

This can kinda serve as my c-blog intro post. Basically this is the story that explains how I became who I am over a 6 year period on a Zelda message board. Starts with me as a massive forum noob and chronicles my slow rise into an intelligent member, down to my banning at the hands of an admin who held quite the grudge against me over a shocking secret he held. It's a little barebones to spare you on length, but it covers the gist of things, hope you enjoy.
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The Origin of Gatsby


Who am I? You sure you want to know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody said it was a happy little tale... if somebody told you I was just your average ordinary guy, not a care in the world... somebody lied.

Act 1: Genesis


To get to the end, we must first start at the beginning. The time was 2003. Young Gatsby was a naive middle schooler. A complete failure at life, and the total antithesis of the studly hero that you know him to be today.

Gatsby was quite the gamer back then. Often completely immersed in his gaming. His best friend at school was this black kid who sat next to him in math class. He was a Nintendo fanboy, and Gatsby was a Sony fanboy. Naturally they argued in class often, but overtime, they overcame their differences and befriended each other.

During Lunch, him and his friend would go to the library to look up information on video games. While looking for Wind Waker information, they stumbled upon a Zelda website that was rather amazing. The two of us shortly joined the community after. To give a good idea of what a douchebag young Gatsby was, his username on this forum was "Link Bow Down To Me".

To Young Gatsby, this forum was a haven, a paradise. To him, gamers were isolated. They barely existed. There were a few of them here and there, but they were in the vast minority. On this forum, there were nothing but gamers.

A year went by and the forum members grew older. Young Gatsby did not adjust. He still acted like a moron, he was still a massive tool and nearly everybody hated him. It was not long until Gatsby was the victim of the Veteran Member's wrath. Gatsby fought them off as long as he could, but was eventually driven off. He knew his reputation was too tarnished to ever hope to re-assimilate himself into the community, so he abandoned his old account, and made a new account by the name of Sorrow(in reference to the MGS 3 character).

Act 2: Shit Gets Real

Before going any further, I must introduce you to this forum's lead admin. A man named Kao. Kao was an intelligent and dedicated admin that was well loved by the community. Kao also had a rather dark secret. Kao had a tendency to e-date female members of the forum. Throughout the years he hopped from relationship to relationship, but this was largely unknown to the community until a few choice incidents.

Now as you recall, Gatsby had made a new account, he had his new beginning. Sorrow was basically the Gatsby you've come to know now, except he wasn't a pseudo intellectual. While he was often a dick to other members, his intelligent posting and sense of humor earned him a near instant spot into the community.

Two years later, Sorrow affiliated himself with two other members(Named Coolwhip and Kirby) and the three of them were a super asshole fighting force. They caught the scorn of many members and started Sorrow's eventual bad streak and marked his first trouble with the administration. During this time he met a female member named Pink. While at first they hated eachother, they eventually befriended eachother and became close.

Once while Sorrow was complaining about what a turd sandwhich Kao was, Pink offered Sorrow some rather choice secrets. She had e-dated Kao before, and knew his history with the other female members. Kao had cybered with the resident forum fat chick. He had been in relationships with half the girls on the forum. He hated dated Pink, but was dumped by her the minute he started showing axe murderer tendencies. Pink made me swear to keep her secret, and I promised her that I would.

The next day I told Coolwhip everything and we spent a good amount of time collectively laughing at Kao on MSN. What I didn't anticipate about Coolwhip is that he had a jewfro, and therefore, could be trusted.

Shortly after he copied the MSN log I had with him and showed it to Kao, Kao got rather pissed at Pink and I.

Then around early 2007, he was having a new skin made for the site, and to make things easier, he gave the person making Administrative privileges on the site. This guy was named Punisher, and Punisher was a gigantic asshole. He had a history of abusing his power, and one day to piss me off, he removed the spoiler tags of a different member's post and spoiled a few people on an episode.

So I went batshit and started calling him out on the forum along with three other members. Kao came shortly after, perma banned me, and gave the other three members warnings. He permitted me a final post, and I made it. The community then made a petition to have my ban lifted, they all asked Kao to lift the ban, to which he told them to "Shut the hell up." And that was the end of Sorrow.

Act 3: I'm pretty much like an internet Jesus.

I stayed off the forum for about two months. After that, I started approaching people on the website. Since nobody else approved of my ban, a lot of people agreed to help me successfully ban dodge. I had two admins and three mods on my side who all took the necessary steps for me to make a new account while going unnoticed. I then took my current username of Gatsby, and joined the forums once again.

I layed low for a few months and then started acting like my old self again. However, I was also actively involved with making the community better and often offered layout suggestions, and was actually at the helm of a revival for the Writer's board, so I had some good to balance the bad out.

Overtime, we had to tell more mods about who I was. It came to the point where Kao was basically the only person who didn't know that Gatsby was Sorrow. One day I got into a fight with one of the mods, and in his anger, he told Kao who I really was, and I was wiped off the map once again.

It's been a year since I was a member there. I still miss the place, it was the best community I was ever a part of, but eh, shit happens. Kao's still pretty missed at me. Mainly because after I knew I was fucked, I told everybody about his little E-dating and what not, Kao's a nice enough guy, but that guy can hold a fucking grudge.