Just became available on PC, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 was immediately modded to remove the black bands that appear on 16:9 monitors, the most popular ones. For weeks many have not slept there at night due to their presence and cursed the lazy developers who don’t know how to do their job.
In reality we are not talking about a real mod, but about a quick modification to a game file, easily identifiable and editable. Change a couple of values and that’s it: no black bars even on 16:9 monitors, the most popular ones. Don’t like film grain? Away with that too, modifying a single value as well. Don’t like lenticular distortion? Two values changed and you’re done.
Damn lazy developers, why didn’t you let us do this from the game menus instead of having to resort to similar loopholes?
Video games as toys
The answer actually lies in the very ease with which these settings can be changed: the developers could have done what was asked without any problem, but they didn’t want to do it because they hoped that the end user was mature enough to accept what is their authorial choice , that is, the use of a certain format for the image and the application of certain filters to obtain certain effects.
Nothing, for many the very idea that a author to be able to make choices is blasphemy, especially if these clash with their expectations. The fact that removing those black bands, making the image wider vertically, takes away pressure on the main character, breaking the composition of the image and altering its meaning, is not important. That a certain texture and certain effects are related to Senua’s mental state, therefore in harmony with the game theme, does not matter. What matters is that the monitor that I bought at a high price is filled completely and that the image is as clean as possible, we write off the rest as nonsense.
If you think about it, those black bars are a symbol: those who couldn’t wait to remove them consider the video game as a B series medium in which there must be no artistic choices that break his expectations. Video games are toys, toys belong to those who buy them who must be able to do what they like with them and must find exactly what they wanted, without making the slightest effort to understand the motivations behind what they perceive as defects. We hide behind the principles of freedom of choice and freedom of criticism what are simply infantile whims.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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