An early trailer for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lies of P, the soulsborne reimagining of Pinocchio in a world overrun by monstrous puppets, featured one of said puppets hanging suspended from a bridge by their strings, bearing the sign APAB, standing for All Puppets Are Bastards. It’s a twist on ACAB, or All Cops Are Bastards, but, in part because of our collective lack of media literacy and in part because of our need to turn everything into a meme in order to understand it, people thought it was pretty funny. I didn't think it was funny at all. Not because I thought it was offensive or tasteless, but because I found it an impressive piece of world-building that instantly captured the tone of the game and established the mores of the world. Now though, just before launch, developer Neowiz has walked APAB back, out of what appears to be pure cowardice.
, director Ji-Won Choi said the art was taken out because "we wanted everyone to enjoy the game exactly how we intended it to be enjoyed, and not judged based on any trends", which feels counterintuitive. APAB meant All Puppets Are Bastards, as Choi himself admitted in the above interview, so the idea that it was removed because of "trends" seems hollow. Choi follows up with "we took out factors that could be a little risky", which is a damnin💙g statement on how video games are made these days.
What I found so impressive about the original APAB sign was that it underlined that the game stood with an anti-authoritarian viewpoint. Building off ACAB felt tantamount to agreeing that, yes, ACAB. We're very choosy with what we take seriously in video games, for reasons I still haven't figured out. When 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:God of War Ragnarok came out, it felt like a pissing contest where the piss was tears - whoever cried the most at the game with the fictional god who wielded magic lava blades and his son the small giant who is also a different kind of god was the biggest fan, the best gamer, the most supreme art enjoyer. But a world where law and order is kept by unfeeling automatons who have their strings pulled by a silent figure in the shadows? Ain't games so darn goofy!
The idea of a game based on Pinocchio is unexpected, and that drapes everything about it in an air of silliness. But comparing cops to robotic puppets was a clever metaphor, one underlined by Lies of P's rejection of their rule through the slogan APAB. And while you might only know the phrase from Twitter, ACAB is not just the latest trend - it's not this generation's Ice Bucket Challenge to be distrustful of an increasingly violent law enforcement status quo. ACAB has been a punk slogan since WW2, it is a phrase with innate historical value. The replacement, Purge Puppets, recalls The Purge movies and feels like more of an attempt to capture a 'trendy' phrase.
Most disappointing is that Choi says "we respect everyone who might want to play this game, and we wanted everyone to get the best experience out of it," and like, sure. Republicans buy sneakers too. But it's sad to see a game lead with a firm stance against tyranny, then decide that actually, if the game was instead about nothing, then people who like tyranny would have a good time with it too. It's becoming a major problem in video games - the loudest audiences care about nothing, and so if you're an artist who cares about something you're (in theory) limiting your audience. But there is a vast crowd out there yearning for stories that mean something, and if you build it, they will come.
Lies of P no longer thinks APAB, or at the very least it doesn't think it with enough conviction to say it within earshot of any puppets. I hope when it launches next week it at least believes in something, and that we can get past understanding media through "trends" and memes.