Too real?

 Re-record

Some conversations never really end but are actually recycled in the grand tumble dryer which we call the debate of culture. Come to the conclusion and reach the point you stood on twenty years ago and you may find that staunch field being challenged all these years later when the landscape is new but the question is the same. When Mortal Kombat first rocketed on the scene with a blood-splattered uppercut, the pearl clutchers in the world wailed about how realistic is was- claiming that the game blurred the lines between reality and fiction so much it would desensitise people to the concepts of violence and brutality. The same rough talking points were brought up again with the rise of Grand Theft Auto as a powerhouse game. Then again with Call of Duty. And now once more with the, as of yet still unreleased, 'Unrecord'.

You've probably already seen the footage, or guessed that gaming would be heading this way eventually, but with the release of Unreal Engine 5 the availability of movie-studio level graphical quality has fallen into the hands of literally everybody. To the point where we're already seeing absolute trash-tier Steam dumpster games with the fidelity of high quality AAA releases at least in looks. It's a skin deep mask, but enough to give the average viewer a pause to double check what they're actually looking at. And those are products by Devs who know next to nothing about what it is they're even doing with the software. So what about developers who actually do know how to manipulate the Unreal Engine software to create something interesting and unique? What about a team that could already create impressive visuals through development software? What could they do with the sheer power of Unreal Engine 5 at their fingertips? Well it seems them can make people question reality.

To be honest, I actually know next to nothing about the developers behind the early gameplay teaser footage currently known as 'Unrecord'. All I know is that they use the handle 'DRAMA', and that the footage they put out is so realistic it makes that industry standard tech-demo games we're due at the start of every console generation blush. It's simply a first person shooter, from the prospective of a body cam, through a standard abandoned building setting- but by god does that aesthetic simmer with authenticity! The streaks of unintelligible graffiti, the heaps of unidentifiable clutter, the poking ribbons of light- you would be mistaken for believing this was a real dive into a turned-over crack den. And then when you see the action... if you ever need proof about the power of movement in animation, look no further than this gameplay footage.

From the jostle of the camera to sell the illusion of a body cam to the humanoid fumble of the hand movements, flawed enough to feel real but complex enough to be the hands of a professional. Then there's the subtle work- the lack of perfect centering better matching the aesthetic and the near-professional level sound effects which shun the bombastic and satisfying blasting rattles of traditional game firearms for something more muted, and fittingly, realistic sounding. Honestly, at first glance it all looks like the live feed of someone's grim snuff film. The developers had to release another video showing the manipulation of the game space to prove it wasn't just a live recording they added effects to in order to make feel like a game. And now we've teased reaching this point, maybe it's time to open up that old 'is this too real?' debate.

In times past it's been a damn near ridiculous proposition; affixed to games like Fallout where the entire human race is made up of potato-faced people, or Mortal Kombat- where human skin consists of 90% blood squips and strangely clean science-classroom-skeleton-grade anatomy.  Even classic movies like 'Evil Dead' were victimised under such a belief in the era of the 'video nasties', wherein for UK distributors such productions were banned from releasing. Which, of course, made them sought-after and popular films through merit of the, as of yet un-coined, 'Streisand effect'. And the fear is always the same: That the moral integrity of the viewers could be at risk of being corrupted by the disgraceful immorality of the 'art' in the way that it blurs the line between reality and fiction.

Now the question of whether art can be powerful enough to make someone who was otherwise moralistic and upstanding fall from grace and become a serial killer is an utterly ridiculous proposition by my reckoning, I'm personally more interested by the effect that media can have on the individual in a more quiet sense. Some of my favourite games of all times are one's that have moved me or shifted my perspective on life to look on situations I've been in with entirely new eyes; media that has altered me in small internal manners. I know art can do that, and I think a great game needs to do that. So with those eyes, what effect might a hyper-real first person shooter that seems so real your mind can't tell the difference do for someone? Desensitisation is very real, and though I don't think a normal person will become a mass shooter from playing a game like this, I could certainly see a young developing mind who grows up on games of this visual calibre in the future becoming just that little bit desensitised to seeing footage of real combat in warzones on the news. Heck, the US military are getting desperate: how long before they start producing games like this for recruitment purposes. (Who's to say this game isn't funded by them already? 'DRAMA' seems pretty mysterious.)

Of course when you start throwing around ideas like this then the natural next question becomes 'What exactly are you proposing to do about it?', which is where things become tricky. People are already reporting how the footage of this 'Unrecord' makes them a little uncomfortable to see, which could just be a general unfamiliarity to this new level of interactive fidelity, or a genuine sign that we may be scrapping our faces on the edge of that unreal valley. But banning, or even restricting, games like this for what their software is capable of producing is a vast chasm of a pitfall. Banning art is never the way to go, and censoring art is a delicate balance that is very rarely handled with grace in our modern age. Just ask Sony with it's insane over-corrections in recent years, or the Roald Dahl estate with rewriting his old books. (Poorly.) Mediation must meet and accord with sensitivity.

To my mind, Unrecord is still a demo for a game that might never be made. And what Unrecord even depicts is clearly geared in such a way to be realistic. The bodycam perspective alone does a lot of the heavy lifting to train the eye to believe the footage, remove that and the game will lose a heavy layer of it's believability right there. Additionally, at no point do we see an actual person because character models are a whole other kettle of fish to get looking genuine. When we see games crossing that barrier, that will be the point to start panicking. What we've seen here today is a gentle nudge that games will get to a point of graphical perfection, where a game looks as true to life as the world around you, and preparing for that eventuality will help make us less headlamp-struck in the moment. Plus, if you think this is the scary part of evolving tech- just wait until adaptive learning AI with Speech generators get coded into games so that enemy NPCs can start cussing you out with highly targeted jabs mid-fight to knock you off your game. I'm telling you, the future be wilding!