Talk:Goldeneye 007/@comment-7706473-20130923072613

THAT ENDING

THAT ENDING

THAT ENDING X3 COMBO

... I love abrupt endings. I also live violence, and 'unlikable' narrators. But before we discuss the ending, let's talk this pasta and Goldenye a bit. Hell, let's talk about classic shooters.

Back in the day, life was easy. You could play Doom, Quake, Hexen, Heretic - maybe Heretic was my favorite - without people thinking much about it. Just a great soundtrack, lots of violence, and quiet. No attempts to judge you by the actions in the videogame or tacked-on 'morality' underwritten by the fact you just waded through 1000+ people. Not demons, or nazis or zombies whatever - people.

Goldenye gets a lot of praise, and I think it, as well as Perfect Dark, were truly the last of their kind. Killing Floor is a good attempt to bring the genre further, but that's all it is. These days we have near-limitless violent video games - games that have no other option or objective *but* violence - that then chastise you for playing them, and therein steps this pasta.

The beginning is nothing special - although the homage to blowing in the cart is loving, we're expecting to find ourselves in just another game, probably possessed by some terrible spirit or vengeful entity.

But instead, the game is just... Depressing. Instead of the hyper-capable hyper-murderer James Bond we all know and love - the James Bond that abandons women and enemies (and enemy women) like they were vermin - we have a Bond, who like many real-life espianoge agents is miserable and looking for the easy way out.

When a familiar, relatively plot-less game like Goldenye starts to psychoanalyze you, it's more effective then when a modern game does it. You're being asked - before it was even a question in the mind of most developers - is this acceptable? And normally the ending would be a resounding no, and the narrator telling people how they burned the console and never played videogames ever.

But.

But..!

Aaah, forgive me.

But I absolutely love this ending.

The narrator has already compared gaming to an addiction and gone into detail about how both Bond and themself are relatively uncaring about the destruction they cause. When they reject the message of the game and revel in the destruction they cause - it is a glorious, uncomfortable, beautiful thing that makes the *reader* more thoroughly question their actions then someone just going "Violence can be bad 'kay".

But nothing changed and I felt like killing some bad guys.

So it comes, so it goes.

Watercress - for the interplay of conquest, violence, and bloodshed.