Just kidding, haha! It's not Crysis 2, it's a picture of Wall Street following 9-11. This is Crysis 2:
No, I am not attempting to politicize a first-person shooter (or joke about a tragedy). I just find it worthy of note that nobody else yet has pointed out the visual symbolism. Crytek's Cevat Yerli spoke of an international sense of attachment to, and desire to defend, the city of New York as one of the emotional forces driving Crysis 2's world, but 9-11 never came up. Nobody at all made that association when looking at screenshots of the city covered in drifting ash?
Really, it doesn't seem like anyone has, and if they did, they didn't consider it significant. Again, I'm not necessarily saying anyone should. It just seems we've come a long way from the time when Fallout 3 concept art of post-apocalypse Washington, mistaken for an extremist fantasy, raised government hackles.
For more context, you should watch "The Wall" trailer for Crysis 2, which opens with a series of missives and memorials for lost loved ones trying to find one another in the midst of disaster. I've lived in New York City since 2002, but when 9-11 happened, I remember commuting to work in Massachusetts, listening to Howard Stern on my car radio. I'll never forget the poignancy in hearing the abrasive shock jock serving as something of a community pillar, using his broadcast platform to take calls from people who were trying to find other people, unsure whether or not they were alive.
Is there an intentional recollection in the imagery of Crysis 2 that's no longer painful enough to employ in entertainment? Or is it truly that we can now use visuals and concepts like these without even making the connection?
Is it that we're intended to make the connection, in the world of Crysis 2, with the sense of violation we felt at the images in New Yorkers' backyards at that time, and that it doesn't need to be said? Or is it that it's simply become okay to bash up New York again, the way we can and do with any other game world?
Does this mean it's not "too soon" anymore? Does this mean we've "healed", if we can look at this and just see a video game?
