I'm sitting here on St. Patrick's Day, and just as I do every year, I deck myself out in green because I live in Chicago and people are really into the holiday here. But I also always find myself realizing I know little about Irish culture outside of what Irish music sounds like, what Irish food tastes like, what appears in movies, and (of course) potentially unfair stereotypes including the drinking and fighting.
And I thought about it, and realized I couldn't name more than one game with any Irish influence, and that was The Saboteur. I didn't even play the game, but I didn't gather that your main character wasn't a drunken lunatic (such as Irish from Red Dead Redemption,) so I include the game here. But can anyone name games that have distinct Irish influence? They can be modern influence OR more mythological influence so long as it's not just a single Irish character who has a drinking problem and is a little bit out of his mind.
Irish-Influenced Video Games
The McReary family from GTAIV and the guy from The Saboteur are the only ones I can think of. I know some site (destructiod or kotaku or something like that) ran a list of the best irish game characters a few years ago but can't remember any of the others.
Ireland is pretty much like every other Western developed country.
Source: Visited lots of countries.
It could be argued that Gears of War was inspired by Irish Mythology, they just turned underground malicious fairies that stole your children and inspired you to dance till you died into underground malicious space aliens that look like steroidal crocodiles.
The pilot from Mercenaries 2 was Irish.
There was a couple dudes in Fallout 3 but cant remember their names.
And the guy from Bioshock (dammit no good with names). Atlas? maybe?
irish culture is very nearly an oxymoron. i'm not trying to say anything bad about irish people; they just never really got the chance to develop much culture of their own because they were always being taken over by other cultures (normans then the english). there are really only a few things that are uniquely irish. that isn't to say that those few things aren't interesting and held in very high esteem by irish people. it's just that irish people mostly just have a history of being oppressed and poor.
after seeing a hurling match in dublin, i wondered if there'd been any games made of it. yup. so there's that.
Irish people are badly represented in games because its always the negative stereotype presented in games, the only game to feature a non stereotyped Irish person was Bioshock and he didn't even turn out to be Irish. Only Irish influenced games would be the Gaelic sports games that were made a few years ago.
i'm really not trying to disparage ireland at all, but irish identity and culture is more of a fantasy than a reality. i got the impression that irish people in the 21st century care more about english football than gaelic sports. ireland doesn't produce much of the media it consumes, either. again, there are obviously traditions that people respect, but it's really hard to talk about irish culture outside of oppression. that a culture in itself, but still.
unless someone is making a video game version of something written by oscar wilde or james joyce, i don't think you're going to see much positive representation of the irish in games.
edit: i can't stress enough that all i'm commenting on is how little of ireland's history was spent with ireland being independent. i love ireland; i really do. i think it's a great place with great people. it's just that when you spent most of your history with people struggling not to starve, it's harder to develop cultural traditions and institutions.
There is that Balor of the Evil Eye. Does anyone else remember that hurling game they made a few years back? Was that even good?...
i'm totally going to admit that i may have put my foot in my mouth. i'm kind of embarrassed.
it's messed up and not culturally insignificant how the island was controlled by other peoples for most of its history, but i think i arrived at my conclusion a bit haphazardly.
owe you a smithwick's.
" @ShaneDev: . ireland doesn't produce much of the media it consumes, either.As someone who works within the Irish media this (and almost everything else you've been saying) is dead wrong. Part of the most recent struggle against foreign rule was efforts by various groups to get Irish culture back in the limelight. The GAA came from this as did some of the greatest writers the world had ever seen, all of whom gave uniquely Irish impressions of the world. You've acknowledged that you put your foot in your mouth but you are really, really far off the mark about us in general, you gave a better account of yourself than the ignorant prick with the avatar of the woman in glasses though. You're right about Smithwicks though cause it's fucking lovely.
As for Irish characters in games there haven't really been that many. Atlas doesn't really count and Irish is probably an American, ditto for the McCrearys in GTA. I guess Jaunty from Shadowman is Irish but then he's not the best example. I remember some anime game was set in Doolin and they seemed to have the place mapped out fairly well, right down to the old style blue and white phone boxes. On the other hand Havok physics were developed in Ireland so a ton of games are influenced by Ireland.
i lived in dublin for a few months; it's not like i'm totally ignorant of how irish people live. and if you want to tell me that the average irish person knows more about the work of james joyce than they do the work of matt groening, i think you might be kidding yourself.
this isn't unique to ireland, though. american movies and tv are popular all over the world.
If you use your metric for culture (something that can't be contributed to by any other culture/invader etc) then practically no country can claim to have a culture of its own, least of all America.
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