Topic: Premise of Monster Hunter Tri a bit...Unethical?

There's a reason the game has a "mature" rating, dude.

I'm not against proper morality being promoted within the context of a game that the kids can get their hands on, but for mature games, there's nothing wrong with unethical behaviours. You can expect by the time a person has hit 15 or so, they will either already realise that the real life mistreatment of animals is unethical, or they're bad people and a video game isn't going to change that.

Is a Friday the 13th or Halloween or Saw movie unethical because it makes a hero or cult figure out of the serial killer/ psychopath? No. It's entertainment, and the movies are given adults-only ratings to make sure it stays so.

Look at Manhunt - that's worse than Monster Hunter. Rather than being cruel to animals, you're playing a role in what amounts to a snuff film.

Look at Dante's Inferno - in that game you play a character whose immorality got his beloved sent to hell, and then proceeds to go into hell and kill everyone and everything. The message behind that? If you're angry and powerful enough there's no consequences to indecent behaviour.

There's a tonne other games out there with similar possible readings. What concerns me though is attitudes like this. The minute someone claims something is "immoral," others start calling for it to be banned. There's no reason you have to play it if you feel it's immoral, but provided impressionable minds can't access it, it's harmless enough.

Please, don't give the pro-censorship brigade more fuel for the fire.

Don't play Grand Theft Auto...you'll have a heart attack.

He's not asking for it to be banned, he's not suggesting it is worse than every M-rated game in existence, and he's still playing the game according to his comments (he asked someone else to play online, I noticed). Some of these responses seem to be taking his comments a little bit out of proportion, I think.

I only played the demo, but I definitely felt uneasy about the whole affair -- most of the monsters in the demo level would just stand there and let you walk by them, hardly the village-terrorizing beasts of myth and legend. They seemed nice, actually. And I remember someone else (Sean, maybe?) saying they felt about the same as I did, that it'd be nice if there were more peaceful options.

I don't think it's quite right myself, but that doesn't mean I'm faulting others for being able to enjoy it. And for the record, this is all coming from someone who just ate a burger. A yummy, yummy burger.

Poor poor... whatever is in a burger. Well, those monsters do attack you sometimes.

I definitely don't judge the game from the demo alone. Just giving my initial impressions. My main complaints with the game/demo have nothing to do with "ethics" but the fact that it is very, very boring.

Capcom really could have played with that concept, too. Shadow of the Colossus comes to mind as a game where ethics and morality actually started playing into the game, making it a more emotional and powerful experience. Any game can task you with going out and killing a monster--Shadow, at times, had you questioning why? Most of the Colossi in that game don't attack you, and they're incredibly beautiful creatures for the most part.
I, too, have only played the demo of Monster Hunter, and while ethics didn't really come to mind, I did find it strange that none of the monsters I was killing seemed to fight back. I realize that probably changes as the game does on, but like I said, it would have been interesting to see Capcom do something a little different and actually play with morality a little bit, as it would have made the game even more unique.

Yea, Shadow of the Colossus really did that great! It didn't strike me into late into the game, but when it did, it was definitely a powerful moment. Monster Hunter though raises the issue without that Aha moment to make it compelling. Asking a lot of a demo, I know, but again, the controls and game play itself were what turned me off there, not the moral dimension. I couldn't have played Fallout 3 for 20+ hours if I had too much of a conscience.

Yeah, I was going to suggest Shadow of the Colossus. This game is really similar to SotC, just without the whole guilt thing.

Also, please don't judge the game by the demo. If most of the monsters weren't fighting back then it was a really, really small section of the game. There are only like 3 or 4 types of herbivores who are passive, the rest of the monsters (herbivore or carnivore) will attack without provocation.

@Adam I'm surprised you enjoyed SotC and found MH3 boring. What didn't you like? I'd say alongside PSO, SotC is the closest game to MH3. Especially since you didn't feel the remorse thing until late game - I felt it after killing the first colossus. Maybe the MH3 demo was poor (I never had it).

Except for fighting to the death, this also describes Pokémon. Do you consider the Pokémon franchise to be unethical? Are Pokémon battles like sanctioned non-lethal dogfighting?

I've had the game for two days and I feel bad about killing the "innocent" animals. When I say "innocent" I mean those that are just minding their own business and don't attack when I pass by. I have no qualms attacking anything in area 6, insects or those cave leeches. I thought I'd get over killing the docile animals, but I had to get some monster guts today and felt a little guilty getting it. I guess if there's a threat I don't feel bad. I was however expecting more monster-like creatures.

The controls are awful, and killing a monster takes forever.

I'm surprised you'd compare the game with Shadow of the Colossus. Aside from being third-person action games, I see no similarities in the game play at all. Colossus is a really elegant experience, perfect if not for the worst camera in the history of cameras; Monster Hunter may be a fun game for some, but it is hardly the same kind of game. I'm sure there are plenty who would like one and not the other.

Nothing more honourable than hunting innocent animals to increase your resources or the resources of your town, this is what humans have done along all our history and this is what we'll keep doing forever. I cannot see the problem? Are you vegetarian BTW?

Actually I'm surprised you haven't seen the similarities. But if you hadn't noticed, killing colossi takes forever too. Some of the later ones took well over an hour, and in MH3 you have a time limit of 50 minutes to take down your foe. The only real difference is that in SotC you can see a health bar to tell you how far you've progressed, whereas in MH you have to observe the actions and sounds the monsters make to see when they're weak.

The gameplay in MH3 is very elegant too - sure, the weapons are slow but they are intentionally so. The point is not to swing your sword blindly and wildly but to evade and wait for opportune moments to attack. The game requires a level of player skill that when achieved is extremely rewarding. It has tight controls, and varied and deep weapon system. When you say "fun for some" you probably mean "fun for people who appreciate deep, challenging, skill-based gameplay".

I suppose the big difference is SotC is played primarily for the story, complex battles and impressive aesthetic, while MH3 is played for mastery and cooperation. The monsters themselves have weaknesses too (body parts, elements or statuses). In this manner it's very similar to SotC where you have to find weak points, put in effort to get to them and then strike them to do any significant damage. SotC's weak points were more like puzzle-platforming, where MH3's are plain action RPG. But if you know what you're doing, you can take down a monster in 15 minutes instead of 50.

MH3 does have a much better camera, albeit less cinematic. I've never had any problems with the camera since I got used to its controls. Don't get me wrong though, I loved SotC's camera when it was doing the right thing.

To pass MH3 off the way you did only makes me suspect you've got some false preconceptions about the game. I really think the demo must have been very poor if people have the first impression you do.

I can understand your point. It is just a game so as long as it doesn't lead to real hunting it's not a big deal. I don't believe Grand Theft Auto leads to more criminals but games can have an effect on how we perceive these actions. Lot's of people feel that humans are so much more important than animals and it's not important if they are killed. When a human dies of a freak accident it becomes news. It's funny because there is so much Japanese Anime with an environmental message and animals are often very highly respected yet they are the most notorious whale hunters.

That was me, though ironically when I got hands-on with the game I had no problem going up to one of the big herbivores that's a combination stegasaur+hadrosaur and chopping it to bits with my sword. The idea of the game and the "reality" of the game are two different things.

You're put in the role of "Monster Hunter" - a sort of free-wheeling adventure/bounty-hunter who takes down monsters for the locals. The innocuous ones are for meat, which really isn't too different from hunting any other animal in the context of the early agrarian/fishing society depicted, so I don't have a problem with it - unlike hunting in a modern industrialised society where it's largely for sport.

I too avoid games with a more realistic setting like World War II - I've played, and enjoyed, the original Call of Duty, but I'm uncomfortable with making a game out of real human conflict in that way and prefer my games to have more of a fantasy flavour to them rather than remind me of the darker periods of human history.

If it's relevant (and I don't really see how it is), I won't eat anything I'm not willing to kill myself, so I'll eat fish and invertebrates, but not anything closer to humans than that. I have yet to play this game, but it's sitting on my shelf and waiting for me to finish my second playthrough of Sakura Wars (or first of Alien Syndrome).

Well as I said somewhere else in this post, it's not exactly what's happening, so much as it is how it's happening. One thing I will note about pokemon that nudges (note i said nudge) it into the place of redemption, and that's that the people are sometimes obsessed with the pokemon's comfort as well. So there's at least a range of ways people treat pokemon.

That said, I would never compare this to Pokemon. Just too different, except for the possible question of ethics. However, I think the sub-discussion of Shadow of the Colossus is a nearly perfect parallel as the same kind of "guilt" for killing the "beautiful" is what I was trying to put out there. Someone else also mentioned perfectly, the notion of threat and its role on erasing much of the guilt.

I feel like this became much bigger than I intended it to be, though.

@Adam Good lookin out man.

@HolyMackerel If you read this, I'm sorry I never ended getting online that day, muchawork about nothing sidetracked me. On that note, this site could really use account email...or some other way to get a hold of people without creating a post.

No, I meant precisely what I said, hahaha. I don't like the game. Doesn't mean I'm not open to challenging games or skill-based games. And, depending on what you mean by deep, I certainly think a lot of the games I play are full of depth.

And as for Shadows of the Colossus... so the similarities are that it takes a long time and the bosses have weak points? That's... not much to go on. I don't even like to call the colossi bosses because they aren't. They're the level and the boss. Someone once described them as inverted Zelda dungeons, which sort of makes sense. SotC is not even about combat in the sense that a game like MH3 is. It's almost like hitting a switch. The game play is all in getting to the weak points, rather than the actual striking of them. The experimental minimalism of SotC and the complexity of MH3 could not be more at odds with each other. And while I know MH3 has a solo game, Capcom seems to have put a lot of emphasis on cooperative play while SotC is very much an experience of solitude.

I say this not to say that one game is better, just to point out the differences I perceive. MH3 just isn't a game for me. Nothing to do with the "ethics" either, and I wouldn't put any blame on the demo. The only misconceptions I arrived at from the demo was the idea that the world was full of innocent monsters when apparently they are few and far between from what you've told me. That had no effect on my enjoyment of the main quest, which was simply to kill the big boss monster. There were two quests, and I think I beat the first one but quit after trying the second one once and not finding it any more fun.

@Adam Yeah I see. MH3 is certainly a niche game just like SotC is. Still I'd call the colossi "bosses" in the sense that the entire game is essentially a boss rush (that also happens to be how it was described before it was released). I suppose my point was that bosses are the central event in MH3 too, and they're on a large scale like SotC. SotC took the "bosses" to the extreme by making them levels in and of themselves, while MH3 focuses on combat and multiplayer. I really enjoyed SotC and I really enjoy MH3 too, although clearly for different reasons. To each his own, anyway.

@bluegray No problem, I had to go off early yesterday. You should look at the MH3 thread in the Online Games board, we have an ongoing discussion there and a list of everyone's IDs.

Is it dumb to ask for a link? I'm not entirely sure about where to find it (at this site, or capcom's? Where, in either case?).

EDIT: Nevermind...I used my head and found it here.