Why so angry?

It might be an odd stance for a pig who just finished one New Order timeline and started the other, but I'm kinda tired of all the violence and shooting in games. In fact, I would go so far to say that I see the FPS sections of Wolfenstein as the (admittedly fun) chore I have to wade through to enjoy its far superior world-building, storytelling and plot... In short, I find the fact that violence is the main selling point for a majority of computer games today irksome.

Of the 75 reviews I've written, just nine described games that were not violence-centric. Among GoG's 11 new release announcements for the passing week, only two had nothing to do with killing... That's just 12% on my end — 18% on theirs.

Part of it is preference bias (I could go against the grain of what I enjoy and review nothing but puzzles, in which case the violence percentage would be zero); but the larger, more pervasive, reason is that time and time again devs keep betting on Mechanics That'll Defo Sell instead of trying to come up with something new.

For all it's charm (and it has oodles), Cyberpunk 2077 (which really should have been called Solo 2077) is a poor adaptation of the PnP RPG it was based on. That game had its nine (!) archetypes split neatly between doers (your Solos, Cops and Nomads) and schemers (Rockers, Netrunners, Techies, Reporters, Corpos and Fixers) and having a, say, Netrunner resort to gunplay was fair indication you weren't playing your character right.

X4, which I love dearly, might bill itself as an empire builder first, but – in reality – still depends on violence to drive and resolve the majority of its gameplay. It's just executive violence, where you order a fleet to steamroll a system, rather than doing it yourself... You'd think a game that's a step removed from being a first-person 4X adaptation would consider diplomacy or dialogue playing a greater role, but – at the end of the day – it's "who has the most guns" rather than "who can spot a more lucrative angle" that determines the outcome of any given situation.

Even The Outer Worlds, which does have some of the best dialogue and interaction in recent memory, still devotes most (I'd say 83.65%) of it's gameplay to bashing, slicing and shooting Halcyon fauna... "Discover new worlds — and frag 'em" seems to be the order of the day.

I think it was Leonard Boyarsky that said in an interview that if he were to helm another Fallout game, it would have to be somehow different from what came before (though he did also say that "being original is risky"). I hope more devs try to come up with new game mechanics that sidestep violence (or, at the very least, include the option of a non-violent resolution into their games).

Just because something's popular doesn't make it good.

Speaking of non-violence...

Although I've been staving off buying it (because I think it'll be scary, short and limited in scope), I finally caved and picked up Dredge the other day — the odd, Lovecraftian fishing game. And even though I know it'll be short and limited in scope, I also snatched The Bookwalker (Do My Best Games' elusive second entry) on sale at GoG, which makes me a very, very happy pig indeed! Seriously: you can't see it, but I'm doing a little happy-pig jig even as I write.

Despite their lack of staying power when compared to larger, more complex titles, it's odd little ducks like these that give me hope for future gaming innovation (even if, at the same time, they sorta highlight the stark divide between being big enough to do something remarkable but not having the freedom to indulge and being free of any constraints but without the resources to undertake anything intricate).

Rooting around some Reddits and Wiki pages also led me to the welcome discovery that the piggies in Stardew Valley are kept for their truffle-finding skills (and not, as I feared, our tasty, tasty bacon!). I'm okay shooting humans in games, but I hate to see animals get hurt which put a (perceived or imagined) stopper on me getting into the aforementioned farming goodness.

Now that I know Stardew piggies are (more or less) unexploited and safe, I might consider picking the game up (although it does seem sneaky-daunting of the Starbound sort: simple, cheery pixels that'll eat up a hundred hours of your time, easy as pie).

Yeah, yeah — now about the shooting...

These aside, if everything stays on track, three more weeks of November should see the long-awaited release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 (which I'm still planning to cover in a more episodic manner).

As is my pigheaded habit, I've been steering clear of gameplay footage and previews so I can form a clear impression on day one, without any preconceptions. Something tells me diplomacy and finer feelings won't get me far in Pripyat (ditto for animal safety), but I hope the game pans out as well as I think it will (if for no other reason that poor, beleaguered Ukraine could definitely use a win).

Stay safe out there and remember: violence is always an option — but it oughta be the last entry of a pretty long list.

Pig — out.