I think Blood Money takes the crown more if for no other reason than because the game has two gay characters that are also sexual predators. An old and extremely hateful stereotype the internet still indulges in to try and vilify gay people (as well as trans people). Possibly three characters if you count the cut content that implies Skip Muldoon molested Margeaux as a child (it was supposed to be her primary motivator for destroying the Dixie Mobs)
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was the muldoon thing cut? i’m sure i picked that up from the game… it’s been awhile though.
but yeah, bm absolutely does attribute stereotypically ‘gay’ characteristics - egregiously offensive ones - to confirmed paedophiles, which is completely unacceptable. it’s also phenomenally terrible in its representation of women; it uses a physical disability as an indicator of ‘badness’, etc.
and this is something i broached in the op: absolution itself equates noncery with all kinds of relatively benign sexual proclivities. it is, in many ways, the culmination of the series’ worst aspects, up to and most definitely including bm.
where i think absolution goes a step further than its predecessors - a big part of why i find it particularly uncomfortable even among such… ‘esteemed’ company - is in how it condemns all these things - both the benign and the genuinely appalling - as ‘bad’ yet also gratuitously leers at these very same aspects. victoria is at once fetishised and to be protected from predators.
having said that, i don’t think it’s productive to engage in a ‘which is worse’ chart. i find any of this kind of guff unacceptable.
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They might have shifted it to oblique references but even then Skip still uses coercive tactics such as making the first class pursers all dress in those uniforms so he would still fall under what the academic notion that people depict bisexual people are depraved and sexually underhanded so he is still bad either way or both ways.
It demonises a lot of benign sexual mores ,glosses over actual sexual depravity and uses both as a lazy shorthand for a villain character. Not helped by the fact that the game calls itself out on it in the same mission where it is at its peak (Attack of The Saints and Hunter and Hunted)
Oh I should have read that you said exactly what I just said in the above paragraph. In that case just take this as reaffirmation that you are right Absolution’s sexual politics are bad and lazy.
True, I didn’t want it to be a competition I just wanted to point out that Absolution wasn’t without precedent like most media texts. We can’t point at Absolution being bad while letting Codename, Blood Money and the like slide.
EDIT: Altered some language to clarify that the depiction of bisexuals being depraved was literary academic idea NOT that bisexuals being depraved was the academic notion.
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100% agree. i don’t think anyone suggested otherwise.
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I just wanted to mate a clarification plus some people will always view a piece of media as thought it spawned in a vacuum so I thought I might cut them off at the pass.
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ah, okay. fair enough.
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Little thin skinned , no?
What are your thoughts on Max Payne 1 and 2?
I loved Absolution. Gritty? Sure. Edgy? Yep. That’s why I loved it.
Out of all the Hitman games, I still think Jeremy Bolt’s suicide is the only thing that didn’t sit well with me.
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in what way…?
two of my favourite games. sam lake has a way with purple prose like no-one else and the gameplay is perfection (and yet those kung fu mods still manage take it to another level). 2 is probably my goat; depends on the time of day.
i don’t think absolution is remotely comparable to those two, though.
that’s fair enough.
personally, i wouldn’t call absolution gritty or edgy. gritty basically means ‘uncompromisingly real’, doesn’t it? like, i’d say something like ‘the wire’ is gritty (and edgy, for that matter). is that how you see absolution…?
i certainly don’t think it’s ‘dangerous’ enough to be considered ‘edgy’, unless we’re saying fox news is 
what do you think is ‘edgy’ about absolution…?
what didn’t sit well?
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The single best thing about Absolution was Tobuscus ripping it a new one with his Literal Trailer for the [justly] mocked Attack Of The Saints pre-release trailer. Nearly 10 years on and it’s still hilarious:
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absolution is funny and stupid 
good game
if we’re being real here, yeah when you don’t take it seriously it’s a funny game. it’s full of very out of character and weird stuff. for example, when 47 shoots Diana in the shower, the glass shatters, she lands on the floor…and some how a shower curtain that didn’t exist before (LOL) has now materialized to perfectly cover her body
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Same with Franz Fuchs, who the fuck showers in a red speedo? Killing for money is okay but nudity is were we draw the line! 
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absolution is one of those games where you just need to not take it seriously to get the most out of it. every damn cutscene is so nonsensical and edgy for edgy sake. i love it
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To be fair it would be polite to not hang dong in a public shower just like you wipe down gym equipment after you use it.
But its not a public shower, it’s in his hotel room. Also people who wear clothes in public showers like in a Gym need to grow the fuck up.
Maybe he is just afraid of germs or something. Maybe he has a thing against nudity, he was a Nazi so he probably might have some hang ups against nudity or cleanliness. Hotel rooms aren’t all that sanitary and I dread to think about what their bathrooms are like.
He already a Nazi who uses a sauna with a pre-existing heart condition, he clearly has no problem defying society’s rules and moral codes
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Thats his Brother Fritz
Just admit that you wear swimming shorts in the shower too 
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I think they were all Nazis weren’t they? You don’t bomb the UN because you are some sort of leftist, you do it because you are a reactionary fascist.
I have reached the point in my life where I can no longer wear swimwear without crippling self-doubt so I hardly ever swim not that I did much of it anyway.
I stopped wearing shorts in the eighth grade because I would feel like an overgrown child wearing them and as an adult I think I look like a bike courier when I try new pairs on.
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The virgin Franz Fuchs vs the chad Charlie Sidjan 
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for sure, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy. to me, at least.
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