I was browsing the groups on Flickr today and noticed that Destructoid does not have a devoted Flickr group for the community. There are, of course, the two personal Destructoid flickr pages here, and here, but that doesn't do the community much good, does it? As a remedy, I've created a dedicated Destructoid group on Flickr, which you can find at http://www.flickr.com/groups/destructoid/. Dtoid UK has one already with 11 members. I know we can do better than 11 members. So if you have a flickr, join up and add your shots to the pool. It doesn't have to be videogame related, so long as it's original work and not just copypasta. This is just another way for us to keep up and in touch with everyone. Please have fun and keep it work safe.

Also, I figure this would be as good a time as any to mention that I've started a 365 project. For those who don't know, I fancy myself a bit of a photographer, and this is a rather large undertaking in which I'm to shoot a picture each day for 365 days straight. I'm going to post some highlighted images here each month (if that's acceptable to the lot of you). I'll try to just use the ones that are VG related, but inevitably some of the images will be personal and might not interest you (unless you just like photography). Let me know if you'd rather I not continue to make these kinds of posts.

Additionally, I'm going to do another legal form in the next week or so, and I promise I'll get to Bowser soon as well. This project is just taking up a bit of my free time.

Day 1/365: Abbie New Year!


This was the first day of my 365, January 1st. This is of my puppy, Abbie. She's a red headed teacup poodle. She and I are not easily excited.

Day 6/465: A Slime Approaches


As you well know, the blue slime is a staple of the Dragon Quest series, also known as Dragon Warrior here in the States. It is usually the first enemy you fight. I bought this when Dragon Quest 8 came out. It's actually a functional PS2 controller, and one of my favorite things.

Day 12/365: The Mushroom Kingdom


Pictured is the blue mushroom in its natural habitat, amongst the other, lesser fungi. The outer casing of this particular mushroom is rather hard and tasteless, but inside is an edible, albeit foul and disgusting, candy-like substance.

Day 14/365: The Vistana


This is a building near outside of my office in downtown San Antonio. It has always reminded me of Gotham City.

Day 19/365: Who's watching the watchers?


Hey! It's me.

Day 23/265: In my room.


This is my room, and the only room in my apartment. See if you can spot anything awesome.

Day 25/365: Aria di Mezzo Carattere


A page from the player's guide of the greatest game ever made - Final Fantasy 6. This is from the opera scene, which Chad covered in #6 of the Memory Card.

At any rate, I hope you enjoyed these. And please let me know (kindly, if possible) whether or not I should STFUAJPG and not post these here.

Thanks!

Oftentimes the defense attorney is castigated for defending a person believed by the public to be someone so reprehensible as to be unworthy of representation or defense. It is a common misconception that the defense attorney's job is make sure their clients are found innocent, regardless of culpability, making the attorney's job more a game of manipulation. In reality, what we try to to do is make sure our clients are treated fairly according to the law. Therefore, I believe it is my duty to see to it that Sephiroth gets his fair shake, so to speak.

Again, it's not as funny as I would've liked, but I do hope you enjoy it all the same.



You're the judge. You decide.

Happy new year!

Having been a paralegal now for a few defense attorneys for around 6 years now, I've always wondered what it might be like if certain videogame villains had to be represented in an actual court of law. What motions would I prepare? What might our defense be? How could we explain any of this to a jury? I decided today that I wanted to start a series dedicated to treating iconic videogame characters as if they were clients here at my office. Every so often I will prepare a different court document prepared in the fashion of an attorney representing a client, this week's client being Dr. Wily. Because I can't format a proper motion in bbcode, I've saved the actual document as a jpg. Hope it's easy enough to read.

Admittedly, this one isn't as funny as I'd have liked it to be, but I tend to sit on ideas for a while and then never use them. Doing it now kinda forced the idea and will make me come up with new & better ideas. A Sentencing Memorandum is filed prior to sentencing, after a defendant has pleaded guilty to a crime. The judge can use the memorandum as a kind of primer for sentencing. It generally puts the sentencing argument in the judge's head a few days before they actually hear it. Giving them some time to sleep on your argument usually results in a more favorable sentence.

Chad Concelmo provided us earlier with a truly inspired list of Disney villains. While I commend Chad for his effort, I must step in to inform you that his list is BLATANTLY WRONG! I intend to prove this with the use of SCIENCE and JOURNALISM. Read on for the correct and nationally accepted list of Disney's greatest villains.

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10. Sheriff of Nottingham (Robin Hood)



Though the Sheriff is generally portrayed as a bit of a bungler and a fool throughout the film, the scene in which he steals money from the church's donation box, then fights Friar Tuck and clasps the poor old man in irons is incredibly depressing and quite nefarious.

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9. Madam Mim (Sword in the Stone)



Madam Mim's transformation into a dragon may not be nearly as terrifying as Maleficent's, but it is equally insane and 100x funnier. Plus she could turn into anything she likes, so she could've turned into a Maleficent-esque dragon, but she knew it was important to be pink and hilarious.

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8. Clayton (Tarzan)



Dude wants to shoot people for fun!?

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7. Lady Tremaine (Cinderella)



Of all the villains on this list (and Chad's unquestionably inferior list), Lady Tremaine is the most common villain that exists in real life. A bitch of an abusive stepmother with no magic powers!? Raise your hand if you have one.

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6. tie Medusa (The Rescuers) & McLeach (The Rescuers Down Under)




Similar to Lady Tremaine, these villains are more referential to real life. Both McLeach and Medusa have captured, and are essentially torturing a small child. The Rescuers' Medusa may not be the original Medusa, but she is the Medusa more likely to abduct your kids at Wal-Mart. These villains have single-handedly influenced nearly every episode of CSI and Law and Order.

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4. Yzma (The Emperor's New Groove)



Chad, how could you forget this one?! She was the first Disney villain to make me laugh out loud. Aside from James Woods' take on Hades, the late Eartha Kitt's voice and inflection make Yzma the most entertaining villain in the Disney canon.

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3. The Queen (Snow White)



She may not transform into a dragon, but the old lady with the apple is arguably equally horrifying. The Queen set the standard for Disney villains.

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2. Shere Khan (The Jungle Book)



The only time I remember crying while watching a Disney movie is when I thought Shere Khan had killed Baloo. It was (and still is) the worst I have ever felt, ever! Even though I know now that Baloo lives, I still can't bring myself to watch that scene. It's just too sad... KAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNNNNN!

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1. The Horned King (The Black Cauldron)



Sweet mother of mercy! Do you see that?! The Horned King was effin' terrifying. He's like the abominable offspring of Maleficent and Skeletor. This guy will haunt you for the rest of your life. Sadly, The Black Cauldron is the least watched of all the films in the Disney canon.

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Now that you've read the irrefutable list, tell me what you think - and let Chad know how wrong he really is!

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. – Steven Weinberg

Beliefs are funny. They make us do things against our better judgment. They make us say things that we can’t explain or substantiate. They have the capacity to make us bomb abortion clinics, fly planes into buildings, hate groups of people based on race, gender and/or sexual preference, or play obviously terrible games that are based on the Left Behind series. Our beliefs have the power to make us do things that should be considered universally evil. What’s most frightening is that our beliefs can cause us to find those actions wholly just and proper. The purpose of this entry is to examine potentially evil actions committed in-game that are motivated by beliefs and preconceptions.



Disclaimer: Spoilers for Bioshock, Oblivion, and Execution are contained within.

Let’s first examine the dichotomy between Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine in Bioshock. We can easily draw the comparison between the portrayal of extreme “fundamentalist” objectivism to that of religious extremism. That comparison echoes exactly Weinberg’s sentiment in the above quote. It is evident that Fontaine harbors no delusions of utopian idealism, and his actions are not committed in hopes of furthering the greater good. Fontaine commits atrocities to further his own power. This is why Fontaine is a fundamentally weak villain. At his core he’s just a whack job whose only purpose in life is to achieve new heights of self-gratification. Fontaine is an evil man doing evil things. Contrarily, Andrew Ryan’s villainy is much grayer. Upon finally meeting Fontaine, he appears as a monstrous, spliced up mess; but when we met Ryan earlier, we were confronted with a much more sympathetic looking villain. Certainly Ryan has committed evil deeds, which may even make him an evil person, but the impression we get is that Ryan did truly believe in his objectivist utopia and that his aim was to make Rapture a place where man could abandon the restraints of the world outside.



This outlines the problem with Bioshock’s morality choices. You can choose to play either good or evil, but you are not allowed to choose which type of evil you will become. The type of evil you become is akin to Fontaine’s evil. If you choose to be evil, then Jack's moral compass is guided by craving Adam. He harvests the Little Sisters to get the Adam, ultimately becoming that which he is tasked to defeat. The player doesn’t get to believe that they are morally right or justified in choosing the evil storyline. It’s simply a matter of instant gratification, to which no one could make an argument for moral ambiguity. If there were a version of the story where Jack could adopt Ryan’s idealism, or even champion another (socialism, Christianity, etc…), the evil storyline would become infinitely more interesting and enjoyable. As it stands, the story boils down to simply pressing ‘a’ for good and ‘b’ for evil.



Another offender is Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. In terms of the main quest, the player isn’t really given that much freedom by way of determining outcome. The primary antagonist is Mankar Camoran, a villain cut in the mold of Andrew Ryan. He's motivated solely by his beliefs and adherence to the Daedric doctrines that guide the Mythic Dawn cult. Evil in this instance is a matter of prospective for Camoran. Certainly he doesn't view himself as evil, though we can state objectively that he is. What if, by design, a game were able to cause the player to harbor similar delusions? What if, through subtle branching dialog options, the game had caused the player to be sympathetic towards Camoran and the Mythic Dawn cult, or even join the Mythic Dawn and supplant Camoran as the true Daedric adherent? No, instead we’re given the same black and white story we always get. In Oblivion, the player is able to do evil things, such as killing Eldamil, the kind man who guides you through the caverns of Camoran’s paradise, but doing so doesn't alter the story’s outcome. Committing evil acts in Oblivion doesn’t really even make your character evil, necessarily, but only psychopathic or sociopathic. A person with such a conscience (or without conscience) does not have the capacity to determine good or evil. In order to experience the depths of evil, the player must first believe that their actions, however evil they may be, are right and justifiable. Only upon witnessing the outcome of those actions can the player finally step back and determine whether or not those actions were either for good or for evil.



In the indie game Execution, which you should definitely play TWICE before you continue reading this, the player is presented with a faceless figure bound to a post. This is seen through the scope of a gun and a flashlight, presumably affixed to the barrel. The player’s first inclination is to execute (as the title suggests) the figure presented before you. Aside from the title’s implications, you are never formally instructed to do this, nor are you are required to do this in order to progress or complete the game. However, none of that stops of from you from lining up your sights to execute the perfect headshot – after all, that’s what games have trained us to do. Upon shooting the defenseless figure, you receive a message informing you that you have lost. My first response was, “Screw that, I’ll just try again and see if there’s something else to do.” There wasn’t. I opened the game back up only to see a message informing me that “it’s too late.” There the man was, still tied to the post, still dead. The permanence actually shook me a bit, causing me to feel just slightly dirty. The impact, however miniscule, was more indelible than what I had experienced with Passage or any other arthouse game I’ve tried. It’s not that the person died, necessarily, but that I didn’t know whether or not my actions were evil. I believed that what I was doing was the right thing to do. I’ve been playing games for nearly 20 years, and just about every single game I’ve played has taught me to shoot first and ask questions later. I still don't know whether or not my actions were evil, but I know that it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Execution gave me more consequence for potentially evil actions than either Bioshock or Oblivion - or any of the other games that claim to allow the player to experience an "evil" playthrough.

It was my beliefs, predicated on years of gaming experience, which caused me to shoot that figure. It was Andrew Ryan’s beliefs and Mankar Camoran’s beliefs that resulted in the presentation of two interesting characters whose paths towards evil are unexplored by the player due to the limitations of the game. In order for us to truly experience evil from a player-character standpoint, the developer must first make us believe that our in-game actions are proper or justifiable. I don’t have to feel the same level of permanency that I felt with Execution, only that I need to feel like I’m doing is what I should be doing or at least more relative to what I might do in real life. Until a developer can make "evil" choices a matter of perspective, I will continue to play the "good" storyline.

See how excited I am?



Dtoid user iconsam suggested (5th comment from the bottom) we all post pictures making the face. Sounds like a good idea to me. Everyone needs to get on this.

Just so that this entry isn't wholly NGVR, I will say that I've been playing Borderlands quite a bit. It's really quite incredible. I tried to start as a siren, but I couldn't stand all of her screaming when she got hurt. I'm now a lvl 20 hunter. My only complaint so far is that I wish there were a bit more story for me to keep advancing. As it is, the only real reason to keep playing is to keep collecting more items and continue buffing my character. The world is so interesting, but I wish there were a similarly engaging story to flesh everything out. So since I crave a greater degree of linearity and structured storytelling, I will probably start splitting my time between Borderlands and Magna Carta II. I have 'til Nov. 3rd to finish everything up, as I'm sure Dragon Age will wreck what little free time I have.

The HAWP DVD is almost equally as awesome. I will say that the two bonus episodes were more entertaining than some of the episodes that are canonical. I remember seeing a lot more great artwork in the forums, and I wish more of it could've been included. I haven't checked out the PAX panel, but everything on it is brilliant - ESPECIALLY THE (kinda) EASTER EGG! Click "wut" on the main menu.

Abbey isn't nearly as excited as I was.