UAE cracks down on God of War

M

MegaDrive20XX

Segatron Genesis... call me the wizard.
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=26347071

God of War protagonist Kratos kills more deities before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. That lack of reverence--combined with a sex-themed minigame and wanton violence--may be what United Arab Emirates authorities had in mind when they originally banned the game for containing material offensive to the religion, values, and traditions of the country.


That ban wasn't quite effective enough, given that UAE-based Gulf News is reporting on a new crackdown against the distribution of the game stemming from complaints of residents in the country's Sharjah municipality. One resident was quoted in the story as saying that pirated copies of God of War weren't difficult to come by despite the ban.

An official with the municipality told the news agency that the government recently confiscated copies of the game in inspections, and will continue to seize all games offensive to religion, values, and social norms.

I'm no rocket scientist, but isn't God of War.....GREEK MYTHOLOGY based? Not ARAB MYTHOLOGY?

Seriously, UAE has nothing better to do. How about helping out with the War, instead of complaining about a video game, UAE? kthnx.
 
MegaDrive20XX said:
I'm no rocket scientist, but isn't God of War.....GREEK MYTHOLOGY based? Not ARAB MYTHOLOGY?

Seriously, UAE has nothing better to do. How about helping out with the War, instead of complaining about a video game, UAE? kthnx.
Click to expand...

Seriously wth.


PS: kthnxbai haha
 
Values might also include the brutal deaths and afforementioned(probably spelled that wrong) sex scene.
 
IIRC, one Middle Easten country actaully banned Pokemon, but I can't remeber the reason (though it had something to do with religion...)
 
Sex and Violence I can understand. However, the religion accepts, is just history! You can't deem that offensive! The Greeks did believe in those Gods and many stories were written about them. Are they trying to erase history I suppose?
 
Yeah but even if they think it's false it still happened and people did believe in that stuff. I don't think the game is trying to say it's true or anything.
 
MegaDrive20XX said:
Sex and Violence I can understand. However, the religion accepts, is just history! You can't deem that offensive! The Greeks did believe in those Gods and many stories were written about them. Are they trying to erase history I suppose?
Click to expand...

It's just the simple idea of deicide, which is a word I might have just coined. :lol

But seriously, the whole premise of God of War is that Kratos is rebelling against his gods, which in this case means killing them, and he's actually somewhat successful in doing so. Personally I think that's a super awesome premise for a video game, but in many ways Greek Gods are much more than the anthropomorphic representations we associate with them. By attacking and killing them Kratos is essentially attempting to undo the foundations of Greek society, and in a country that still places a lot of importance on religion and the values that stem from it... I can understand how they might see this video game as giving people the wrong idea.

It is also true of many greek mythological tales that mortals often rivaled the gods and attempted to usurp them or become immortal. In every case, with the exception of Hercules I believe, any greek who became so proud as to believe that they themselves could become a god was often put in their place very quickly and painfully. In most cases, hubris (arrogance) was the fatal flaw of the tragic hero, so Kratos is actually a stark contrast to most of the heroes of the greek age because he is victorious. Which undermines a lot of the didactic greek myths.
 
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