It’s a sandbox! (And yes, I’ve also written about why it’s okay that you can kill strippers in these games, too-though that link is nearly a decade old). Naturally, they’re bullet-fodder in GTA games, but then so are little old grandmas and strippers and grocery store clerks. And just like not all cops are good, not all cops are bad, either. I called this embarrassing at the time (and I stand by that analysis) both because Overwatch is about a futuristic police force and because it’s a video game. 'She can be that character, or she can be a riot cop, but she can't be both.' 'Brigitte is a character who, in lore, is shown as a valiant defender of the just and good, a modern knight in armor following in the footsteps of her idol Reinhardt,' the Vice piece opined. One was actually pre-BLM and a response to a very silly article in Vice about the character Brigitte who, at the time, was given a riot police skin. I’ve actually written three articles defending Overwatch from silly critiques about cops. Musk’s comments also echo a lot of activists during the heady days of Black Lives Matter, when anything and everything cop-related was labeled as problematic and the hew and cry was so loud that Epic Games removed police cars from Fortnite (though they quietly added them back again later after everyone sobered up).

Last I checked, the 190 million copies of GTA V sold haven’t caused any uptick in real world violence. Musk’s comments echo old, dated, backwards ideas that video games cause real world violence. No cops were harmed in the making of GTA V and none will be harmed in the making of GTA VI. This is every bit as fictional as NYPD Blue or LA Confidential. Said cops are no more real than said dragons. You don’t “do crime” or “shoot cops” in Grand Theft Auto any more than you slay actual dragons in Elden Ring.

Not everything has to be meta, min-maxed and boring.īut I will not defend Musk here.

You’re allowed to have weird, funky builds that don’t make perfect sense. “Let’s embrace all builds and all play-styles instead of trying to score cheap political points or shame people for playing in ways we think are “dumb.” That’s called gate-keeping, isn’t it?”īasically, this felt like a cheap shot to score political points with readers by build-shaming Musk, which goes directly against the ethos of FromSoftware’s Dark Souls games (including Elden Ring) which give players tons of ways to play on purpose, and make discerning the best way rather difficult and cryptic and vague.

Overwatch twitter