Quote:Original post by T1Oracle
I just came from a war zone and I can assure you that it is ugly. There is no beauty in hate driven murder.

I know that you are only thinking of games right now, but please be a little more mindful in your comments. Thank you, and happy gaming.

Well, that's just low-intensity war, more dependent on propaganda (on both sides) and terror.

To put it another way: It wouldn't be a fun game to set IED's or snipe people who didn't know you are there. It probably isn't rewarding to the killer instinct to engage in war on that level either.

One loose infantry charging another was honest, and it was, I suspect, something that certain people enjoy. Yeah, people dying is ugly. Having friends die is ugly. Watching someone die is a strange experience. Watching someone you know twitch like a rabbit you just clubbed on the head is strange. (I was in a car accident where 2 of my friends died.)

The closest I've been to war is a few riots, I was in one and then I ganged up with some idiots to try to instigate them because I loved it so much. I expect this has something to do with what war used to be like. I got beat up pretty bad once, but yeah, it isn't like going up against people with swords or guns or whatever. I knew I could get injured pretty badly or killed, but it wasn't the object of the conflict.

I don't care how offensive this is, but that emotion I had, suicidially charging lines of cops with shields, breaking things, lighting fires, screaming, ordering charges, burning my fingers throwing teargas canisters back at the pigs, getting hit in the shoulder by bean bags, pulling cops off people they were beating and dragging people I didn't know but were fighting with me away from the lines... this was still one of the best experiences I've ever had, I felt alive, and I think it's bad that we've been trying to eliminate it. I'd totally enlist if I thought Iraq was worth anything. I'd just lie about how crazy I am. Maybe I'd be less brave if it was actually lethal. I'd like to believe that isn't true, but that I'd be like that if I was fighting for something I thought was real.

Yeah, violence can be beautiful. A lot of beauty is violent. A lot of beauty exists because of violence. Truth is beauty, beauty truth, and both are violent.

T1, I respect you and wish you the best of luck, and hope you come home safely. I still had to say my piece.

[Edited by - future farmer on May 15, 2007 11:33:10 PM]

after reading all the posts, ive sort of got the idea of a , one man you control (your general) that you trai up to great accuracy and skill and your "age of empires" sort of town/city wicch you use the beauty of tactics to protect from the other armies/cities attacking you and you can also go out and use the art of strategic attackss to atack the enemy cities aswell.

involves personal training and control and strategical large army control, including taking risks on your town.

My thoughts on the art in violence.

1- Long range weapons are for cowards more interested in not being killed than
in killing or incompetent enough to need them.

2- Armored units... Well, that's quite obvious.

3- Controlling an army from far away has as sole benefit the conservation of the tactician's life. The tactician part can be artistic, but it's not violent.

4- In a battlefield with five thousand teammates where anyone can die from a random bullet there's simply no violence art, just strategy. Only those who can't benefit from control allow themselves to lose it.


The only violence I consider can reach the state of art is personal hand-to-hand combat. However it can only reach the state of art by long time practitioners.
The need to survive to keep polishing the style lets only two chances: rules to avoid deaths or many people dying while a few get better. The latter happened only a handful of times during history and probably won't happen ever again. The former use rules that can be closer or farther from reality, but always change the combat itself, so create a fake combat art that can be very interesting but will always be fake.

Quote:Original post by sirGustav
War isn't beautiful
Violence & weapons in real life isn't fun, or good for you or anyone else

I've trained and competed in contact martial arts for about 10 years. I had my nose broke and was KOed some times, but I also had quite some fun.

Uncontrolled violence can have lasting consequences, but repressed violence can too.

War can certainly be beautiful. Not from a participant point of view (as I already said) but even reading about historic master strategists is amazing. Seeing them build their battlefield and fight their mind game against the opponent general whom they'll probably never even meet must have been like watching a perfect game of Go or being present while a long lasting world record is broken.


Not all in war is beautiful, as in every other thing. Not all in war is ugly, as in most things. War just has a lot of the later and only a tiny bit of the former.

Human excellence in any arena is praiseworthy. I don't think there's anything special about combat that makes a master fighter more admirable than a master woodworker or a master accountant, except that the lay people who don't understand the nuances of the craft are more apt to respond to the visceral, overt victory of the kickboxer or the swordsman, while failing to comprehend the beauty and perfection of a well-made rocking chair.

And I see an undercurrent here that characterized a lot of anime fanboy role-playing kids who imagine that the feudal period in Japan or anywhere else was a time when fair play was the governing force behind wars. It's a sad little fable perpetuated by lousy science fiction and it is a pet peeve of mine.

There was, perhaps, a time when bronze was "teh leet haxxen craxxen", and those who had it kicked everyone else's butt. No doubt the stone-wielders talked about how unbreakable knives are the cheapest thing to ever come down the pipe, and that warfare has no dignity when you can just up and stab forty guys without stopping to make a new spear.

All the true merit of human conflict, in any arena, is the same now as it was ten thousand years ago. Whether you're fighting with sharp sticks, horse-drawn chariots (Stirrups? Oh noes!) or flintlock muskets, it is possible for an extraordinary master of the craft to stand out and have a huge impact on the course of whatever project he's working on.

So if you want a game with a really sweet and deep combat system, do it. Took at God of War or Twilight Princess or any of the dozens of other very interesting games out there. FInd ways to invest your fighting with a new, unique character and style that will engross players.

But do not claim that by so doing you are tapping into the lost art of true combat. In feudal Japan, if you had the means and opportunity, you'd fight battles by spamming arrows at the other guy's horses or poisoning his water supply or killing all his SCVs. No doubt there were some guys who walked alone to the center of the field and challenged any adversary to a duel. They got shot in the neck, and then the real soldiers had a battle.