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Categories: Commentary
Tags: fps
So this is pissing me off.
At first I thought Popular Mechanics‘ look at the realism of video game weapons was cool, but the more I read the more annoyed I got. Not at PM — it’s still a great article — but at Ubisoft and other shameless fakers.
“I take these weapons, and look at what defines them, or what people think defines them,” Theiren explains. “For an Uzi, people think it fires lots of bullets, and it’s really inaccurate.” That, he knows, has nothing to do with reality—if anything, Uzis are considered some of the most reliable and accurate submachine guns around. But the 80s (and Miami Vice in particular) offered us the Uzi as a low-life villain’s weapon, spit-fire and out-of-control. “So I make it fire faster than it should. It’s about taking the personality of a weapon, and making it shine in the game,” Theiren says.
Theiren is Ubisoft Montreal’s Philippe Theiren, a designer PM calls Rainbow Six: Vegas 2’s “gun guy.” I’m annoyed at him because one of the pleasures I derive from playing Rainbow Six games is the feeling that I’m actually playing with real guns. Honestly, any practical information I have about firearms comes from videogames and The Punisher Armory.
Why go through the effort of pilling on hundreds of real-life weapons when the stats really come down to “the personality of a weapon?” And what does that even mean? Why kind of personality does an MTAR21 have? I’m thinking most guns are borderline anyway.