Detroit’s Domestic Abuse Trailer Is A Hackneyed Farce

It's a shame how much goes into the animation in these games, but not anything artistic. Still, I believed for years that video games were poorly written, etc, etc. But the production values are not so different from broadcast television in the U.S. They are probably better on average, if you take into account how absurd video game subject matter happens to be.

Michael

Sometimes a hackneyed scene is just a hackneyed scene,

Crissa Kentavr

I'm not even sure if I want to get dragged into this but the guy wrote one scene. For a trailer. You make it sound like he was somehow obliged to put all the different kinds and all of history of domestic abuse for every single person into that one scene. That's obviously not how it works. Maybe he copied movies or read some tropes on tvtropes and thought, hey that sounds like something I can use. But you know what? That's alright. Videogames are not reality. They have no obligation to depict reality. To be honest, I prefer if they don't. Sometimes, reality is too brutal. You got triggered, perhaps you expected too much of the game, you took it personally, now you are in a bad mood, if writing helps you, good. But it leaves a poor taste in my mouth when people take their bad mood out on other people. Detroit will have some mediocre success, pewdiepie will play it, people will give it 7s or 8s and then it will be forgotten. No need to get riled up over a game.

P.S.: the color and direction the light falls on a wall in the afternoon triggers my ptsd into partial to complete flashbacks. This trailer didn't move my ptsd a single inch. That's the kind of psychological shit actual abuse leaves in your head.

I grew up as a victim of domestic abuse and am riddled with complex PTSD. That trailer didn't trigger me one iota. The abuse was so... laughable, compared to the real thing. It's the cliche that doesn't even touch upon why abuse is so damaging. If all my father did was starve me and beat me for 20 years, I wouldn't have the long, lingering psychological after effects I do today. Abuse is ultimately all about controlling and exerting power over your victim's mind. Even physical abuse is ultimately applied in a truly psychological nature—and this sad cliche captures not one iota of the truly dark place that abuse is. This trailer was nothing more than the "A Good Day to Die Hard" of surface abuse tropes.

I find this disturbing because it perpetuates a notion of what domestic abuse "should" look like so when there are allegations of abuse that don't match up, it's dismissed and ignored.

Jason Youngberg