The future of gibs

This has probably been covered in some form before (possibly even by yours truly), but I suppose the curiosity of it has gotten the best of me once again ...Anyway, in the early and mid 90s, exploding giblets were depicted as heavily pixelated globs of meat and flesh being flung in all directions. These days, the effect is quite a bit more detailed; take a look at the recent Mortal Kombat, for instance, or Unreal Engine 3's "Samaritan" demo, with its slow-motion exit wound.

If that's what we have now, how gruesome will it be in 10 years? I know I'm not alone in saying that it would be pretty awesome to see characters with fully destructible digestive, circulatory, endocrine, and skeletal systems, which some modern games have partly implemented. But if we reach a point that a player can stomp on an opponent's disembodied bladder and watch as urine spurts out, I have a feeling even most hardcore gibsters will find themselves shaking their heads and saying, "This is too much." Or will they?

By then, we'll all be playing Farmville or rail shooters on the iPad X, so it won't matter much.

Personally, i'm excited to see gibs in fully functional, commercial Virtual Reality.. Full immersion while super shotgunning my friend in the face? Oh yeah.

I say, bring on the violence. Movies are only now getting more and more gruesome while a few milestone titles in the previous years ventured out and discovered new level of violence. Socially accepted violence that is, which sounds very redundant in itself.

I'm sure in future titles, once the gore-level reaches at a questionable standard; More features will be implemented like in older games about 'Violence Lock'. Turn it down a notch, simple. Other than that - DON'T FUCK WITH MY GIBS!

I don't know about that, if anything gibs are seriously a rare finding nowadays in shooters. Quake had awesome, huge gibs. Now when you blow things up with a rocket launcher/grenade they just fly back all in tact with fancy rag dolls.

Not discounting the "new" Wolfenstein and CoD: World At War which are pretty gruesome.

I'd much rather see just body parts flying around (like Quake and Unreal) then seeing details. It feels much more satisfactory when you see the entire person (or monster) just simply explode to bits.

I always felt that the gibs in Doom are the way it should be. I'm bad with realistic gibs; even some hospital dramas make me feel uneasy. But the more cartoony gibs are, well, cartoony enough to be shrugged off as nothing more than representations as how kick ass your big weapons are when they can make your enemies assplode...and when playing games I want to feel that I'm awesome, NOT like I'm going to throw up the next minute. :P

I guess my thing is, I want to see totally dynamic gibs--that is, when you shoot someone, I want to see the impact affect the specific part of the body it hits. I don't want to see huge chunks and textured blood, but rather, actual fluid dripping out, and actual pieces of flesh contort and deform as the weapon penetrates the body. Basically, I want to see totally unique deaths that reflect how they would probably look in reality. Is that too much? Because we're not that far from such a display of gore.

Well, if a player chooses to stomp on a dismembered bladder, who will they react with shock and outrage at? Remember, Primal Rage allowed for pissing on your opponent, and Shadow Warrior had all sorts of organs flying through the air upon gibbing, including a liver with green goo oozing out of it.

I personally don't care what happens in the future, as Humanity's taste for _________ runs the gamut, and who is a reliable authority for determining what we want to experience other than ourselves?!

Duke 3D had some awesome gibs. It had the generic organs plus some monster specific pieces.

Iori makes a good point. The player has no one to blame but himself if they choose to exploit whatever interactions the game's gib effects offer. And to Jodwin, I wonder how many gamers share your opinion. I remember talking about this with a number of students in a graphic design class, and they seemed uneasy at how obsessed I was with seeing realistic gore. They held a similar attitude to yours; that when cartoonish and silly, it's appropriate, but gritty realism might be cringe-inducing.

When it comes to sheer VIOLENCE Manhunt is easily king. Not everyone's cup of tea, both the gameplay and the subject matter, but it's one of my all-time favorites. Not very gory really, save for the shotgun headshots and the last death in the game has some innards falling out but that's about it, the blood is also very simple and generic. Whereas Doom's violence is more cartoony, it makes up for the blood and gibs.

If a game could combine realistic gore like Soldier of Fortune II and the violence of Manhunt, just imagine...

The gore system in FEAR3 was pretty interesting. Shooting an enemy in different spots would change the spot where they were hit to a more gory appearance. So if you hit them in the side of the face it would expose bone, muscle and blow out their eye revealing an empty eye socket.

Of course it could look pretty cheesey at times. One time I hit an enemy with several shotgun blast turning everything from his waist up into a bloody mess, however he was still standing and even more, could aim just fine without his eyes. Also didn't seem to have any trouble speaking

I forgot to mention F.E.A.R. the shotgun is great stuff.

Cyanosis said:

I forgot to mention F.E.A.R. the shotgun is great stuff.

Blowing replicants clean in half with the shotgun was pretty satisfying. Come to think of it, gore seemed like one of the central elements in the FEAR series. Anyone who's shot the tank of one of those biohazard suit soldiers in FEAR2 will know what I'm talking about

I prefer Doom's invisible bin bag method.

I really have no interest in gibs at all, even at Doom levels of realism. Never understood the appeal, probably never will. I like violence as an expression of power, but caring about broken body parts is just the result, the aftermath and holds no interest to me ; I'm already off to shoot another dude or demon.

Radon said:

Personally, i'm excited to see gibs in fully functional, commercial Virtual Reality.. Full immersion while super shotgunning my friend in the face? Oh yeah.

I bet your friend is going to be more excited about doing something else with a perfect virtual reality. :p

I've always liked the idea of hyper-realistic gore. Watching it freak out society a bit might be fun too.

Fuck gibs. Bring back Doom-esque death animations.

GoatLord said:

how obsessed I was with seeing realistic gore.

You could take a trip to the ganges river:
http://www.chinasmack.com/2010/pictures/filthy-india-photos-chinese-netizen-reactions.html

Did you know you can sell human skulls on ebay for 'medical purposes'?

1) collect human skeletons in ganges river
2) sell on ebay
3) ?????
4) profit

Just a little entrepreneurial tip for you all in these tough economic times. Or you can start a cult- (I edited this semicolon to a dash;- I hope I made the right decision) those are very lucrative too. Just don't do anything ethical; no money in it.

Aliotroph? said:

I bet your friend is going to be more excited about doing something else with a perfect virtual reality. :p

Whatever that input device will look like, you should never buy it used.

DoomUK said:

Fuck gibs. Bring back Doom-esque death animations.

As much as I agree, I think with enough development of realistic gibs, "Doom-esque death animations" would naturally be implemented, too. Because I'm not just talking about bodies being blown to pieces, but rather the emulation of any kind of ballistic impact. When the hardware gets powerful enough, we'll see the kind of novel detail from Doom's death animations--fluid blood spilling out and the body; total collapse resulting from being sprayed with bullets.

I kind of like Brutal Doom's gibbing effects. I've never played Doom for the gore (okay, maybe when I was 12 years old and an angsty pre-teen), but it's kind of satisfying to shoot a rocket into the midst of a bunch of imps or blast a former human with the SSG at point blank range and watch the chunks fly.

Also, best thread title ever.

Some of the gorier skill shots in Bulletstorm are what I'd like to see more of in other games.

QuakeLive is proof that virtually killing people can be fun without a drop of blood, but dammit, it's still fun. It's satisfying. Left 4 Dead 2 is the only game I've seen with blood that actually drips down as if it were fluid.

Games need gibs like where you shoot their stomach with a shotgun everything flies out and you have pretty much just gutted them. And then of course you can still keep at 'em. Shoot a gun out forward, kill who you must, and then fire a rocket launcher and everyone, dead or alive becomes a mess. Like Quake 3. In fact, games should all have gibs like Quake 3. I say no gib was as satisfying as a Q3 gib.

Some game called Vivisector had some gruesome gore from the sceenshots. Even a shotgun blast could cause blood and head parts everywhere.

The gibs in Strife are still my favorite - SPLORTCH!

I'm a huge fan of slasher movies and blood and gore and suffering but I'm with Phml in that gibs don't really mean anything to me unless they are a result of some kind of overpowered attack. Watching the floor quake when you throw down an opponent on Streets of Rage gives me the same kinda satisfaction. With that, I'm really not very fond of the chaingun guy's, hellknight's mancubus's or archvile's death animations.

The chaingun guy's death can be pretty cool if they are thrown back into a wall with a single shotgun shot, but it appears pretty funky to me that finishing him off with a pistol would dislocate his arm, split his head, and eject his eyeball. I also find it unusual that the higher tier monsters would withstand two or three full super shotgun blasts unscathed but at the final blow crumble like a house of cards.

In more recent games like some of the latest Mortal Kombats, some of the lame little jabs and kicks will send blood spurting into the air like a fountain. Seeing stuff like that really reduces the effectiveness in the appearance of other attacks that also deliver similar visual consequences despite doing more damage. Also in Doom 3 it was hideously easy to gib any of the enemies which was pretty lame too.

I'm all for gibs but they need to be in response to overkill, not just phoned in for visual appeal.

Dr. Durr said:

Some game called Vivisector had some gruesome gore from the sceenshots. Even a shotgun blast could cause blood and head parts everywhere.

To a certain extent, this is what shotguns do.

As I've previously stated, I think the best direction is for the death animations to reflect reality. Gibs would fly about, but according to the ballistics. It would be great to see hundreds of individual chunks separating as the bullet creates an exit would and deforms the skin. On a related note, here is a really kick-ass real-time blood effect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1IsxDQ5cPg

The example is two-and-a-half years old, but it would be great to see this instead of static textures and fuzzy vapor trails like in most modern games.

If death animations "reflected reality" then people would whine that they are unrealistic. I think gore in games is overrated. Quake Live being case in point of a game with NO gore that happens to still be quite violent.