2023 Has Been An Excellent Year For Fans of Blood And Gore In Video Games

Gore in video games has always been a fairly sensitive topic due to censorship in some countries. And, while we may not have seen many games that feature explicit gore in the last few years, it appears 2023 will be changing that.

It has been nothing short of a dream for fans of the genre to see modern games with realistic gore made with today’s tech. However, as it goes, even games based on war and violence don’t feature realistic gore, as we see in the case of Call of Duty and other FPS games. Indeed, it is true that kids also play these games, but most modern games already come with a feature to turn off decapitation and dismemberment.

While some games try to avoid being too graphic, trying to control gore in a game where the enemies are literally trying to eat your brains makes it dull and less entertaining. The same goes for many games where the primary narrative is a zombie apocalypse, a survival-horror setting, or even games that depict the realities of war.

Lack Of Realistic Blood And Gore In Modern Games

Imagine playing a modern first-person shooter game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that features extremely realistic graphics, but when you shoot an enemy in the head, all you see is a little blood splatter, and then a puddle shows up under the body. Even if you fire a rocket at someone, all they do is fly a little off the ground from the impact with all of their limbs still intact.

The lack of these tiny little details in video games doesn’t only ruin the immersion but also makes the game look extremely unrealistic. Not to forget how the dead bodies immediately turn into weightless ragdolls in almost all games that will be dragged by the player or any other NPC that dares to walk over them.

But then, a few games have depicted gore and violence quite well in the past, but those are rare. I mean, look at DOOM Eternal. The game came out a few years ago, but it made the player feel like a God that would tear apart the limbs of anyone who dared to stand against them. And it fits the narrative as well, where the Doom Slayer is supposed to be someone the entire hell fears just because of how terrifyingly brutal he is.

The Last of Us Part 2 is another great example of an older game. However, unlike DOOM Eternal, it is nothing too fancy. The Last of Us Part 2 features a more realistic approach to gore and violence. Even the sound effects feel pretty much real and are as good as the visual effects. The game features extreme dismemberment details without being too excessive in depicting gore.

Atomic Heart

In 2023, we’ve got plenty of games already that depict blood and violence pretty well so far, with a few set to release later this year. Let’s talk about Atomic Heart. The game is mostly about robots, so there isn’t really that much blood being splattered everywhere, is what you might’ve thought, but that isn’t the case. Atomic Heart excels at depicting the damage caused to the robots and the rest of the environment.

It doesn’t matter if you use a gun or a melee weapon. If you hit something in Atomic Heart, it is going to leave a mark, literally. It adds to the immersion, as you can see the robots getting visibly worn down after each of your hits. It also makes the game’s combat much more entertaining, and it would be interesting to see this mechanic in the games to come.

Dead Space Remake

The Dead Space remake does justice to its classic original by improving upon its key features while fixing some of its significant flaws. You can still chop off the limbs of necromorphs with your plasma cutter or any other weapon and even decapitate them, just like in the original. However, there is a multi-layer mechanic in the game that causes visible damage to the enemies if you hit them in the same spot repeatedly.

If you hit a necromorph repeatedly in the same place, you’ll see that the area now reveals muscles and bones, and there is even some blood around the wound with some enemies. However, the one thing holding this system back is the fact that this mechanic doesn’t apply to bosses. Regular mobs take only a few hits to die in regular difficulty, which makes this multi-layer dismemberment system much more prominent in high difficulty.

Resident Evil 4 Remake

The original Resident Evil 4 was a classic, and the remake is just as good, if not better. The Resident Evil 4 remake was released recently and has introduced improved graphics alongside many new additions to the game that were lacking in the original. One thing the game borrows from the original and further amplifies significantly is the game’s gore system.

You can tone down the amount of gore you’d like to see in the game from the settings menu, but if you want to see it all, the game won’t hold back anything. Just casually blasting half the bodies away of generic mobs with your shotgun as the corpse lays there on the ground in two pieces with tiny parasitic tentacles wiggling out of one half of the corpse.

Future Game Releases Featuring Extreme Gore And Violence

We’ve already got a few great games this year, but plenty of them will be coming our way soon. Let’s talk about Mortal Kombat. The franchise is known for depicting extremely brutal fatalities for a couple of decades. Mortal Kombat 12 is set to release in 2023, and the game will likely be introducing many new changes and mechanics to keep up with other fighting games, such as Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8.

On the other hand, we have Dead Islands 2, which is a sequel to a decade-old game. Dead Islands 2 is supposed to be a role-playing action game that will take the player on a zombie-slaying adventure. The flesh system in Dead Islands 2 is also fascinating, as it progressively shows the brutal damage that you’re doing to the zombies during a fight and how that zombie walks back to you with half his face ripped off.

Takeaway

We’re about four months into 2023, and we already have a couple of titles that do not shy away from a little blood and violence. There are plenty of games that will be coming out in 2023, but from what we already know about these games, it is quite clear that they’ll be featuring lots of gnarly gore. But, for now, we’ll have to enjoy what we’ve gotten so far into the year.

For now, most of this blood and gore is restricted to the survival-horror genre and a rare few action role-playing games. Hopefully, more studios will accept that blood and dismemberment make a game feel much more realistic. Some players may indeed feel uncomfortable, but then the feature to tone down and even turn off all gore and violence in video games exist for that purpose.