It’s laden with childish comments from Skullface about Chico needing to become a man and references to Paz as Chico’s "girlfriend" or a girl he’s trying to impress. These all add up to make what could have been an evocative scene extremely cringeworthy and sickening to listen to it feels like the subject matter is not being taken seriously in the slightest and instead, the game is doing its best to create snappy, easily quotable lines of dialogue rather than anything even bordering on meaningful. Either you take her now or you are strung up next." Does she look sweet or sour? A man has to know these things. The tape in itself is a catalogue of poor writing and voice acting, with Skullface’s typical American "baddie" voice and the oft-quoted series of increasingly disturbing lines, said to Chico after Skullface has stripped Paz: "Do you like what you see?" "It’s like… fruit. This character forces two people to have sex with each other against their will, this caricature is used as a vehicle to incorporate difficult themes like rape and sexual assault into a series which is renowned for being playful and not taking itself seriously. A character who looks like a zombie and seems to be evil for the sake of evil, from a series which is known for its ludicrous, over-the-top antagonists. The thing that immediately jumps out and makes me extremely uncomfortable is the fact that I’m discussing a game which has a character called "Skullface". The tape in question is picked up as an extra during one of the missions, is just under 10 minutes long and depicts the torture and interrogation of Paz and Chico and the dual rape of Paz and Chico (Chico is forced to rape Paz but as he’s a child and is forced by Skullface into the act, is also raped by Paz). But to criticise Kojima? Someone whose stories we’re not supposed to take any notice of and we’re supposed to just humour and pat him on the head and say "It’s OK, we don’t expect you to tell meaningful stories". It’s even easier to criticise overtly sexual, even comical, depictions of women. It’s easy to say that the world of GTA is sexist. It’s easy to question the function of sexual assault as a catalyst for story progression in Tomb Raider. Every other detail of the game engulfs this miniscule, unimportant tape. The length of the game is the main talking point, not the rape or child rape, not the fact that this is used as a reward, not the fact that there is no warning that this will happen. Instead, publications have focused on dismissing the fact that the main mission can be completed in 10 minutes on a speed run and convincing readers not to write it off just yet, it really is worth playing, oh and there’s even some depth in its depiction of Guantanamo Bay. Or, that in spite of ESRB’s inclusion of a sexual violence warning, PEGI have included this under the "violence" content warning and as such no mention of sexual violence appears on the box or in game. Yes, the same publications that questioned the implied rape in Tomb Raider, who were disgusted by the torture scene and sexism in GTAV and raged about the oversized breasts in Dragon’s Crown, didn’t think it necessary to highlight the fact that a tape depicting rape is used as a reward for the completion of a mission in Ground Zeroes. There have been plenty of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes reviews, some of which have been greatly revered and lauded as brilliant pieces of writing but, barring the Telegraph’s review, they have all failed to do so much as acknowledge the existence of tape number 4 which depicts rape and child rape in the form of an audio recording.
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