X-ray vision doesn’t make Sniper Elite 5 more brutal – it makes the violence bearable

Taste is different, that much is already clear. The X-ray slow motions in which Sniper Elite 5 celebrates his kills look incredibly thick. It’s not for nothing that the insanely over-the-top Mortal Kombat is the only other game that uses this sort of visual effect.

Some might even call it glorifying violence, but at least you revel in the damage done by a heavy metal projectile on its way through the body of a Nazi at a slower pace. You can even regulate the speed and rotate the camera for the most morbidly effective take.

There has long been a suspicion that such grotesquely enjoyable eye, liver or testicular destruction is intended primarily to win over impressionable teenagers. And I don’t want to play the psychic and pretend I know that’s not exactly what Rebellion had in mind. But in my eyes the x-ray killcam is an important tool to make this game bearable at all. This may not sound intuitively correct, but it actually reduces the violence rather than increases it.

That seems paradoxical because it drives even closer to the damage. But here’s the thing: when the top layers of skin, lips, eyelids and hair give way to the grotesque visage of a skeleton with a little too much holiday flab, the target’s feigned humanity also fades from our perception. The game actively pushes us into an uncanny valley for the flight of a bullet, where we endure this explosion of virtual violence a little better. The human-machines are deliberately degraded to beefy crash-test dummies. How do I know? Because Sniper Elite often omits the X-ray view and these kills seem much more cruel to me because they are more succinct. drier.

One could certainly write one or the other moral-psychological treatise on whether this act in itself – this conscious dehumanization of the opponent through alienation – should not also be a little dismaying from a humane point of view. Different construction site (or same construction site, different floor). For the purpose of this game, however, the effect is interesting and important: Overly realistic headshots, in which rows of parts of the skullcaps of convincingly human-looking actors are blown off, while every life drains from their sagging faces, are not to be seen. A Nazi skeletor who never blinks and who seems to be looking at his teeth in surprise while they are just learning to fly, more likely.

I like Sniper Elite 5. A lot. But I’ll also admit that a more serious tone and sober portrayal of its sniper component would really piss me off. That’s why I’m grateful for this actually tasteless and sometimes sensational trick. He looks like a video game through and through, and periodically signals “we’re not that serious here”. It’s a deliberate break from the horrors this game deals with – and entices us into. A relieved laugh is also allowed when a slow-motion shot goes where it hurts the most.