IT is not different than a God of War game (for example). The campain is about revenge.
God of War is fantasy, not something that happened for real. I have no issue with the campaign of Ryse either. It's the multiplayer in the arena, taking a real-life atrocity and turning it into a hobby that I have issues with. Different people will have different tolerances, and that's really a philosophical discussion. For me, this is akin to something like a Klu Klux Klan game where you have to victimise negros, or a "round up and gas the Jews" game. Or a Viking pillage and rape game. I can understand using violent, turbulent history as a basis for entertainments, as a context for a story or struggle, and reflecting on primitive requirements of conflict in difficult situations, but generally the line stops at making fun from the purposeless, godless violence of man.
I personally don't see the big deal with this arena killing. You're in an arena, you kill or be killed it's as simple as that. When I play MK the fatalities are fun and you get bonus points for pulling them off.
MK is high fantasy. Every time you rip a person's skeleton out, it's basically an extreme slapstick comedy act (unless you're a psycho!). It has little baring on real life events.
Shifty... that seems an odd stance to take.
That's almost (not exactly, I understand what you said differently) like saying the movie Gladiator is morally objectionable, because it uses context in which many people were killed and glorifies it for the cause of a cheap Hollywood story.
I have the similar qualms about that film.
But even then, people watching that film were shocked and appalled by what it showed, similar to Saving Private Ryan. Ryse's MP combat isn't presenting the heartless violence of the arena for people to reflect at its horror, but is recreating it in virtual form. The player isn't repulsed at the severing of limbs but is actively pursuing them.
And what about almost every theater of war that any shooter from countless games has taken place in?
I've explained that. The purpose behind all those other conflicts, no matter how warped, was battling an enemy. People weren't fighting in trenches for the fun of it. People weren't dropping bombs on cities as a spectator entertainment. Everyone at the time (save crazy troops) hated it. Gladiatorial combat is completely the opposite.
I appreciate your open opinion, but I am just having much difficulty accepting the premise of the problem... at which point the videogame has some element of being morally ambiguous or corrupted because of its setting... I just don't see it.
Not the setting. I have no issue with the game nor the historical context of the solo player combat, nor chopping up barbarians. It's only the violence for sport I dislike. There are plenty of other things people can make entertainment of. To take the obscenity of the Roman games and trivialise it just doesn't sit well with me, any more than the games I mention at the beginning of this post. TBH I could happily live in a world without any violent computer games, but I do understand the place of violence in many games such that I don't support the extremists anti-game lobby. I can play violent games like Borderlands and even Sniper Elite. I'm just unable to distance myself from the real and pointless suffering of the real people that experienced the Roman Games though. I also wouldn't be able to play a game recreating WWII where I'm required to drop bombs on Dresden; that really happened and people were burnt alive by it, and I'm not going to find entertainment in that. I'm am however happy to kill annoying NPCs in RPGs and I did, like everyone else, try to shoot Rico in the head in KZ2!
