musing from earlier: Revengeance and No More Heroes have both applied self-censorship in order to avoid problems with ratings agencies, but in both cases the game actually works better, narratively, with the censorship applied
I've previously mused that making all the enemies robots results in a weird feeling of alienation about the otherwise legitimately horrific violence, mirroring Raiden's active rejection of his own humanity to justify enacting this violence to murder everyone responsible for what he *perceives* as the loss of his humanity (his physical body)
similarly, making the enemies in NMH explode into pixelly coins and banknotes rather than blood both works better with the videogamey aesthetic of everything else, works better with the statements the game makes on violence, AND works better to characterise Travis as someone who's so far gone he doesn't even see the people he murders as human anymore, but like videogame enemies
@theoutrider I just realised something as well. in NMH the part time jobs Travis has to do to make up cash are literally little trashy minigames he does for a mercifully very brief period of time. They're under high pressure, very difficult, and often frustrating (in my opinion, at least in the first one) but over mercifully quickly so you can get back to the gratuitous violence...
...the normal jobs are a frantic frustrating means to an end so he can get back to murder. omg.
@theoutrider oh my GOD
NMH is genius
@Nine I also like this whole train of thought because Revengeance and NMH are so different but also so similar to each other in so many ways
@Nine also, the entire open-world minigame shenanigans in NMH is just a blatant riff on Western open-world games of the era - there's this entire city you can cruise about but there's almost nothing to actually *do* there