Someone Think of the Children!

2011-10-04

Dead Island had allot going for it. The cinematic announce trailer is one of the best trailers for a video games ever. It is brilliant because it tells a very personal story, the tragic events that befall a young family at the brink of a zombie virus outbreak.

Many trailers for games are violent, but most are meaningless. But in the Dead Island trailer it has sense; a father frees his daughter from zombies. Tragically, the rescue was futile since the daughter turned zombie attacks her own father ending in all terribly dying. This trailer has the quality of a classic Greek tragedy.

The human nature of the trailer comes to life, because a father fights for his loved ones. This is especially augmented by the memento style presentation, where the full story is mostly told backwards and in reverse. Picking up your child in reverse is letting go; leaving your loved one to the slaughter of undead monsters.

If you go though town you will see many people, among them old and young. Now picture the zombie apocalypse happening here and now. Ask yourself where is my mother, where is my child, where is are my loved ones. Think of the immense emotional struggle you need to over come, not to get reduced to an animal fighting for survival.

You need to give it to them Dead Island really tried to capture that essence. If is unfortunate that this could not be captured in a video game of this format.

But there is one huge elephant in the room, you just can't ignore. There are no children in Dead Island! If you look between the lines, you can see that children where planed and either where taken out or never implemented. In three cases children are referenced. The audio sample clearly belongs to a child, but it is an adult character talking. Why where the children taken out of the game?! This makes the game less meaningful!

True, the Dead Island trailer sparked quite some controversy. But this has been a long trend in gaming, violent games have neither bystanders nor children. Occasionally, there might be children, but they are invincible, like in Fallout.

And why is that? Because publishers don't want to see evil people doing evil things to innocent AI characters and uploading that to youtube. Obviously they are afraid of the controversy that it might spark and the loss of image.

To a certain degree I can understand the notion. But Dead Island, this is ridiculous, since even children as survivors and quest givers where removed. Brining a teddy bear a child for comfort, so she can sleep, is understandable and a noble cause; bringing a teddy bear to a twenty something is ridiculous. Get your act together! This is the zombie apocalypse! For crying out loud!