Half-Masked

Halo 3 and Resident Evil 5. Two games that take place in undisclosed sections of a fictional(?) Africa. Fictional, yet no less a place of startling natural(and unnatural) beauty. That ancient mass of countries, of places rich only in their culture and mythology amount to some of the most breathtaking imagery the planet Earth can provide. But it’s also a place with a history heavy in bloodshed. It is a deeply scarred face of the world, home to people that suffer hardships many of us dare not imagine. And (as it is believed in some circles), it may very well be the starting grounds for life on Earth. In spite of the poverty, the disease and corruption, Bungie and Capcom knew that they could do a lot worse as far as backdrops for their big-name video game projects go. It is primeval.

What a shame that neither games have the wisdom or backbone to explore these places, the people who are a part of Mother Africa, or why all of that is worth protecting from hordes of aliens or zombies. Both miss the point of what makes this such a striking setting in their furious pursuit of retardation. Enter: explosions, one-liners and generic evil video game bad guys who also explode while shouting one-liners.

I find it hard to fault Capcom here. While the “plot” to Resident Evil 5 drives me mad, I must remind myself that it is a Resident Evil game. I can’t go expecting a competent story from these people. Not here. No more than I can expect a Coca-Cola vending machine to dispense a live giraffe. That doesn’t forgive its sins, but you know, nobody reads Playboy for the articles.

But Bungie? Those people actually have writers. They could have done their setting right. I never got a feel for why it was so important to save humanity other than on principle in Halo 3. That’s not enough. I also only count 2 black people in each game that aren’t zombies. I’m supposed to be in fucking AFRICA, and yet my only present company is a bunch of 1-note stereotypes and George Lucas cartoon aliens? Isn’t this supposed to be for a (M)ature audience? I’d assume the plot was dumbed down for the younger audience they’re not legally allowed to have but do anyway, but that would imply it was ever a smart story in the first place. It could have been, if it spent less time being a shooting gallery written for jocks and other customers in serious need of Ritalin, and more time being entertainment.

Even Halo 2, that sickly, gangrenous appendage of the Halo trilogy at least had some interesting cutscenes. It’s also the first game I can think of that not only shows us the vantage point of the aliens, but does so without forced, Destroy All Humans humour(except for the teddy bear-like Grunts). Buried under a shitty video game was a compelling story from the “bad guy’s” perspective. It looked at a typical scenario from an angle not often explored, and in doing so unearthed a fortune unrelated to its monetary success. These are people of genuine mastery of the English language. There is no good goddamn reason I should have to sit through dialogue such as the following:

“Where should they go?”

“TO WAR…“

This article seems to have warped from a criticism of the portrayal of Africa in modern video games to writing in modern video games. Both are regrettable, I suppose.

While I’m here, and since I’ve beaten RE 5, let me chime back in on something: This game is not racist for having black zombies in Africa. It’s not even racist when the poor, defenseless, pretty, well-dressed white woman is turned into a zombie early on. It could have been, and these characters are dumb enough to make me think it could have been an example of idiocy in the script. But then I remembered why Chris Redfield is there: He’s searching for a pretty blonde friend of his. The pretty blonde woman isn’t there to make a statement about race-relations, it’s there to provide a cheap-scare. She’s there to draw a parallel to Jill Valentine, maybe even trick the audience into thinking that it IS Jill, which certainly would add to the tension the first time around.

That is not racist either(although it REALLY pushes it without the context). No, I’d say it crosses the line when you start fighting native African tribes in grass-skirts who literally chuck spears at you.

I know it’s not a stereotype to see tribal people in Africa, but this only inspires imagery of when blacks in Africa were depicted as the mindless, crazy, cannibal-type movie monsters from “simpler times”. I understand Capcom wanted to tap into that spooky mysticism of tribal culture in Africa, not to mention something to go hand-in-hand with the rainforest locale of that particular level. But it was the wrong artistic decision to make. It’s the only part of that game that I felt went too far past being simply disturbing. It crashes its way through suspension of disbelief and into the realm of racial insensitivity.

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~A.H.