A while back, I wrote this piece on the discussion around the Hitman trailer. Then, I followed it up with an annoyed rant about the response from the game’s developer. Finally, a couple of days ago, I posted about Julien Merceron’s (of Square-Enix) thoughts on what the next generation of consoles will be all about.
Well, at the end of that interview (and the end of my self-linking), writer James Brightman asks Merceron about the Hitman trailer situation. I felt the response deserved a post all by itself.
Here it is:
In Hitman, there are these criminals dressed as nuns, and I see them as criminals trying to get rid of Agent 47. I couldn’t actually look at it and see how people would react because I didn’t see Agent 47 killing nuns or religious people; I saw terrorists disguised as nuns.
I’m wondering where the terrorists in this person’s universe get their wardrobes because last I checked, leather and fishnets are not standard issue terrorist gear (if there even is such a thing).
But it goes on:
And the world of Hitman is a world of disguise… so I saw it as funny and pretty interesting, but definitely when you take it out of context I can understand why some people reacted the way they did. You suddenly realize that some scenes in games are borderline. I think we should definitely be more careful about how we communicate about things, explaining the context and being careful about what we publish. The last thing you want to do is to make people annoyed about things that are supposed to be entertainment. So we have learned from that.
New message. These are not provocatively dressed women being brutally beaten by a male protagonist. They’re provocatively dressed terrorist women being brutally beaten by a male protagonist. See how context helps to understand? I’d ask what about all of this is “funny,” but I’m not sure I’d want the answer.
