One of my favorite video games — God of War III — includes a scene in which the player (as the fictional Greek warrior Kratos) must infiltrate the personal quarters of the god Poseidon and rescue a woman known as “Poseidon’s Princess.” The Princess is being held captive, one of her breasts exposed by an obscenely revealing garment. To beat the level, you have to free her, but then use her body to jam an enormous wheel that opens the gate by which you must exit. It’s an absolutely grotesque moment of gratuitous carnage.
What to do with a moment like that? The game is otherwise a masterpiece: it’s visually lush, narratively compelling, and a joy to play. Its controls — the designated system that translates the controller’s set number of buttons and joysticks into the character’s full range of motion — are fluid and elegant. And yet I can only describe the sacrifice of Poseidon’s Princess, an unavoidable part of God of War’s narrative, as appalling and immoral.
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