Sort of weird that Ubisoft spent so much time on this game and pointing out Mont Blanc half a dozen times when an Italian wingsuit user died on June 8th. In April two Germans dies a few mountains over on summit of the Aiguille Verte that I think is in teh game as well.

Well, to put it in context, remember that game companies put out shooting games and driving games despite all the fatalities tied to guns and automobiles around the world. Art imitates life, I guess.

I hope this does not come off as dismissing your point entirely. I see what you're saying but I don't think fatalities in what is a dangerous pastime like wingsuit diving precludes making a game about it and trying to show it off in an impressive way at an E3 event.

They can't change their E3 plans with a bunch of prepared presentations to react to an unfortunate extreme sports accident like 5 days before. It's one thing to acknowledge the massacre in Orlando during Aisha Tyler's opening monologue because that costs nothing, but changing a bunch of the shit in the Steep trailer for an accident that nobody really knows about takes man hours that probably aren't worth spending.

It was crazy how people kept dying in the game, and no one acknowledged it.

@sterling said:

I agree that was 100% crazy. The screams and bone crunching especially were nuts. Like, I know you're going for some kind of "THIS IS REAL" angle with the Go Pros on the helmets and everything, Ubisoft, but Jesus Christ. Look dawg, sometimes when you jetpack around in Pilotwings you fuck up and crash, and crashing a jetpack is probably certain death, but it's just like "whoops, you hit something, let's try that again" and then it respawns you or you retry the mission or whatever, it's not like Steep's "yo check it out, severe spinal injury for that dude in the wingsuit."

Yes, the game should allow you to crash at high speed into stuff, but it seems really macabre to accentuate how horrific those injuries are.

I'd say it puts into perspective the consequences of reality. A great way to cover your ass, should an inspired kid decide to try something that's way out of their league-- actually a way to remind that kid before they strap the skis on.

At least something like "these are very dangerous sports" and nothing else would've covered it.

I was thinking that originally but by the end it started to feel more campy, like a big wipeout in skate or something.

Or something like, "and it looks like so and just bit it, he can now re-spawn from..." or something like that. But just not acknowledging it made it super creepy to me.

I guess it could be like that. We don't know. Because we didn't see the player bite it. It could slow down and show you some damage to the body thing like skate. I would prefer that I think. Than just hitting the ground, hearing bones break and my character scream in pain. I cringed along with Vinny when that first dude hit the ground.

@sterling said:

Yeah, skate videos and the injuries in them work because, for the most part, that's a part of skate culture. Either you get a bad scrape or bruise but you walk away from it, or you get a real fucked up broken bone and you're in a cast for a few months, or it's a big injury and it's a bummer of a life lesson. You take your bumps, you survive, maybe you learn. But the fuckups in alpine sports are pretty much "nope, you died, you hit the ground/a tree at 100 mph." It's different.

To me it's very much along the lines of what the Skate games have done with wipeouts and falls. These are dangerous sports.

The first casualty in the trailer was the most extreme by far. Everything's campy and then suddenly a crash and scream accentuates the trailer.

The games realistic graphics makes things feel pretty bad, they really should have gone a more fun cartoony look cause it even made me feel a bit uncomfortable watching at times.

had no problem with it and i even found it a bit goofy (ala skate i suppose) by the end. just seemed sort of ridiculous, and i was able to separate it from reality pretty easily.

dat go pro view + vr though already makes me nauseous.

First thing I thought when I saw this game is you should only get to play until your character dies.

Shame everyone in the game's wearing GoPros. Just makes it so every spill could go all Michael Schumacher on them.

I make a point about not shying away from the grit of things but as someone who's skied since they were three years old, that's maybe one of few contexts where I don't want to be reminded of the fragility of life. I will take your arcadey alpine sports game. Hell, I'll take your ultra realistic alpine sports game. Maybe just tone down the memento mori.

I thought the entire gameplay walkthrough was hilarious and I hope they don't change a thing besides improving on the framerate. Y'all need more FUN in your life. Those crunches and screams were pretty great and I woke up my girlfriend laughing at the dude skydiving into the church bell with the loud "Booooooonggggggggg~"

It's a video game. You do things in video games you wouldn't do in real life because of the danger. This doesn't even come close to "No Russian." If we can handle that then we can handle this.

The first death felt really brutal. The guy yelling "Nooooo!" just before he slammed into a mountain, breaking every bone in his body was unexpected.

It's about context. I don't think they need to tone down the violence, it's just incredibly unexpected given the context. Yes these are dangerous sports, but these sports are traditionally handled in more of a video game-y sort of way. The wipeouts are either way over the top or barely handled at all to the point that it doesn't stand out.

There were straight-up, bloodcurdling screams that you could see a real person making in their final seconds before a sudden death rather than a dumb video game character going ragdoll and flailing around with goofy physics. That's kind of weird for these kinds of games. We just haven't seen it in a sports game before and I think that's why it stands out. We expect violence in a Call of Duty. We expect blood, shooting, and screaming. In fact that's part of the draw. We don't expect that in a sports game so it stood out as kind of odd.

When that hang glider landed after the race he probably should have started fucking weeping openly since he just watched what was probably one of his best friends die horribly. Instead he was just like, alright cool got that shit done. It was just weird.

If anything they can advertise this game as a much safer alternative to actually going out and skydiving/wingsuiting/skiing.

@immunity: what if I told you I expect it in an extreme sports game if someone looks like they're dying? Just like you expect it in a Call of Duty game because they're dying there. Also, missions like "No Russian," isn't exactly expected out of FPSs. In a game where getting the right line from top to bottom would mean life and death in real life, the cringe worthy brutality adds to the consequence of failure. It'd make me feel like I really fucked up and would be in the back of my head the next time I give it a shot.

I was with Vinny during the stream, it's super crazy how they build up these people as real sports people, talk about their feelings, their lives, then smash them into rocks at a hundred miles per hour and pretend it didn't happen, but if it was any other sports game that wouldn't have an impact at all would it, You Failed! Wipeout! Game Over Dude!.
The grounding in reality, the focus on the little details, having fun on the mountain with your friends then being critical of your performance, the added tension gives this game the little extra something it needs to not just be a dull snowboarding game, my friends want to play it and they wouldn't be into this sort of game at all usually.

@flashflood_29: I'd say that's probably not what most people expect, but I have no data to back that up. I'm just assuming most people don't watch extreme sports expecting someone to die. Fuck up and wipe out, but walk away in the end, yeah sure. It's like F1 or Nascar, people want to see a crash, but not see someone carried out on a stretcher afterward.

Tonally it just came out of nowhere, since we've never seen a sports game try to depict death so brutally and also casually shrug it off. Like I said originally, it's fine and I don't expect them to change it. If that's what they're going for that's cool. It just took me, and apparently others, by surprise and I think that's why. If they're trying to make a fun mountain sports game for the whole family, then they've gone too far in that spot. If they're targeting a more mature audience, then maybe it works, but it's still likely to turn some people off.

@immunity: whoa, I never said people watch extreme sports expecting people to die. You completely misinterpreted my post.

It's a voluntary thing where the accompanying risks are acknowledged by those who take them. I'll agree that game's tone is a little off but games are divorced from reality and the risks in such a way that it's not intended to be insensitive.

I dunno, it seemed kinda cool to see a game with money poured into it that didn't involve shooting dudes or snapping dudes necks, or kicking dudes in the face.

But, I suppose death hangs over everything in the end.

Thanks Beastcast.

I think my point is people have been dying on Mont Blanc for decades. It not like a new thing, so it IS strange for them to make the setting of a extreme sports game there specifically naming those mountains with real names. I get ist for some people the names of these mountain are just that names. But there are infamous mountains for some really huge losses in the extreme sports, they are bueatiful too, but very well know for deaths.

I can see being proud to model them, they are the real deal and very speciatular peaks; but people die every year on those peak. People don't just die plain skining on them, they die parachuting, wingsuiting, and paragliding on them. Imagine setting your 'base jumping' game on the old New York Twin Towers.

I know it seems like a frivolous, non-issue for some gamers; yet those peaks are known for extreme sports deaths not just extreme sports or beauty. I'm not saying ban the game, but I think just calling the peaks with fantasy names would be a better option. And, sure, I coudl be off the mark....but I don't think I am given how infamous these peaks are for extreme deaths.

@monkeyking1969: Unless there has been a mass shooting, a horrible plane crash or some other kind of terrible disaster on that scale I really don`t think the Twin Towers comparison is fitting (not even mentioning the things the twin towers symbolize).

If people had stopped using te mountains because of the deaths I would be with you. As other people have mentioned extreme sports are voluntary activities and people know the risks. Even so Mount Blanc is still a hotspot for extreme sports. If out of respect for the deaths or the danger people had stopped using the mountains I would be with you, but considering the fact that it is still a hotspot for extreme sports I think that it`s OK for them to use the region. I could understand if you would want them to not make the game so (seemingly) carefree, but I don`t think setting a game in that region is disrespectful.

You assume that people in extreme sports would ever stop doing anything even when their friends die. Extreme sportsman say that nothing woudl make them stop, it not about not caring it about not being how their minds function. So, it a bit unfair to say the bar that need to be passed is for them to stop.