“Press LT to prepare and RT to let loose.”

August 23, 2019 11:16 AM

A Brief History of Peeing in Video Games [Slate] “Gamescom 2019 kicked off in Cologne, Germany on Monday night, and as usual, the annual trade fair has been full to bursting with announcements, trailers, and exciting new details about upcoming games. But one development is making a bigger splash than the rest: Visionary video game auteur Hideo Kojima’s next game, Death Stranding, will feature the kind of hyper-realistic urination gameplay action that gamers crave. Drench your eyeballs in this leaked footage from Gamescom’s opening night stream to see Death Stranding star Norman Reedus take the most lavishly digitized piss in video game history.” [Death Stranding - Extreme Peeing Action][YouTube]
posted by Fizz (30 comments total)

And Fizz is back like he's never been gone :)
posted by filthy light thief at 11:30 AM on August 23, 2019 [13 favorites]

FPPs today
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:33 AM on August 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

I have no idea how these people got their dicks wedged into their MetaFilter, or why.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:37 AM on August 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

Oh hey it’s a new post from fizz! I wonder which of the myriad of video game topics he’s chosen to post about today!

*reads post*

God damnit.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:41 AM on August 23, 2019 [19 favorites]

I'm hearing these last sentences in Griffin McElroy's voice
posted by Countess Elena at 11:41 AM on August 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

("piss sounds pretty good right about now")
posted by Countess Elena at 11:43 AM on August 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Robert Yang, of the NYU Game Center, made a game about 'Tea Rooms', which were an early part of homosexual culture, where public restrooms would serve as a pick-up spot through a complex system of cultural cues. It indirectly involves pissing.

Yang replaced all genitals in the game with guns, due to Twitch's severe ban on nudity... "I have swapped out any pesky penises in my game for the only thing that the game industry will never moderate nor ban -- guns." So, probably NSFW, but no nudity.
posted by codacorolla at 11:50 AM on August 23, 2019 [17 favorites]

So is the point of this in Death Stranding just to re-assert the masculinity of a character who is walking all around with a fetus in his robo-womb?
posted by aubilenon at 11:50 AM on August 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Knowing Kojima, this is absolutely going to be an alternate solution to an enemy encounter.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 11:52 AM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

A golden glowing mushroom grows where you last pissed. So maybe this is a prequel to Super Mario Bros.
posted by Fizz at 11:53 AM on August 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Before the "Extreme Peeing Action" video I got an ad for the new Rambo movie
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:08 PM on August 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

So... my beloved City of Heroes, which recently got resurrected on a number of pirate servers, was experimenting with water-based powers at the time of the original shutdown. The game also lets you recolor various power and costume effects. I think you can guess where I'm going with this.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:10 PM on August 23, 2019 [7 favorites]

Knowing Kojima, this is absolutely going to be an alternate solution to an enemy encounter.

A little context here: In his previous game (Metal Gear Solid 5) there was a horse poop game mechanic.
posted by neckro23 at 12:16 PM on August 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985)

Correction: An earlier version of this article included a highly idiosyncratic and disgusting interpretation of the events depicted in World 2-2 of the video game Super Mario Bros. At the request of Nintendo Co., Ltd., it has been removed.

Slate apologizes for mischaracterizing the plot of this video game.

That must have been a very idiosyncratic interpretation.
posted by autopilot at 12:21 PM on August 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

wow, a disappointing absence of the npc peeing in ac: origins which would be subtitled as "relieving" in the eagle vision view, and which is unfortunately and hilariously missing in ac odyssey, subsequently leading to me getting peed on by so many spartan soldiers who i thought were merely stopping to enjoy a pleasant view at a convenient murdering location.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:48 PM on August 23, 2019

That must have been a very idiosyncratic interpretation.

And yet upon watching the video linked in the article, that’s the only interpretation I’ll ever see again. I cackled so hard I nearly... well, you know.
posted by Meghamora at 12:52 PM on August 23, 2019

I was once extremely interested in Death Stranding. It wasn't until the round of trailers a few months ago depicting a more traditional, less bizarre video game experience that I began to lose interest. The reveal of the pissing mechanic definitely played a part in that.

Say what you will about Dwarf Fortress, but imo one of Toady's greatest design decisions was, in a game that simulates almost everything, to forgo Dwarven elimination.
posted by glonous keming at 12:58 PM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

FIZZ
posted by cortex at 1:20 PM on August 23, 2019 [6 favorites]

It says a lot about the history and culture of video games that, for all the peeing being depicted, none seem to allow the player character to sit on a toilet. The Sims is the only one I can think of that depicts urination for female characters graphically, and Leather Goddesses is the only one that will let the player choose a female gender and use the bathroom.

The upcoming Scum will apparently have all that covered, including defecation and urination as a gameplay element in that the evidence can be used to track players.

Graphical improvements are nice and all, but I'm really hanging on for a game where the Bristol Stool Scale factors into scoring.
posted by subocoyne at 1:52 PM on August 23, 2019 [5 favorites]

A golden glowing mushroom grows where you last pissed. So maybe this is a prequel to Super Mario Bros.

Mario as a post-post-apocalypse far-future fantasy world actually explains so much that I’m surprised I haven’t heard that theory before.
posted by invitapriore at 2:11 PM on August 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

i didn't read the article but i hope it mentions conker's bad fur day. a cornerstone in the history of video game urination.
posted by Bwentman at 2:56 PM on August 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

wb Fizz!!

I remember Leather Goddesses, though I don't remember anything about it past Sandusky.

Sadly, no mention of the Dishonored games. The player is above such things, but the guards piss, which makes them easy to get behind them and take them out.
posted by zompist at 3:11 PM on August 23, 2019

It says a lot about the history and culture of video games that, for all the peeing being depicted, none seem to allow the player character to sit on a toilet.

The save function for No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2 is literally this. Travis finds a toilet whose design varies depending on the level you're in -- his apartment, a port-o-john, a baseball stadium restroom, etc. -- then drops trou and has a seat. The only semblance of modesty comes from the save screen covering up his middle section without hiding the look of relief on his face. He gets up, zips up, there's a flushing noise, the whole thing.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 3:34 PM on August 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

That retraction notice is far funnier than I imagine the original could have been.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:41 PM on August 23, 2019 [3 favorites]

The save function for No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2 is literally this.
I learn so many wonderful things on this website.

This previous post on video game toilets seems tangentially relevant.
posted by subocoyne at 4:05 PM on August 23, 2019

I was trying to remember what No More Heroes was called! I found it impossible to google because all I could remember was like, cell shaded, a red jacket???, a cat (I think?) and the apparently unforgettable toilet save points.
posted by Mizu at 4:30 PM on August 23, 2019

The Sims is the only one I can think of that depicts urination for female characters graphically

In Oxygen Not Included all the characters sit down when they use the bathroom.
posted by sideshow at 4:54 PM on August 23, 2019

The Hitman games have a long history of jokes around people peeing. It sort of makes sense; the whole point of the game is observing people and figuring out when they are distracted or vulnerable, then sneaking past them or, um, neutralizing them. Anyway I distinctly remember the peeing guard in Hitman 2 (vaguely NSFW). Mostly because the animation is so hilarious. The penis model is just a finger, but the way it sort of waggles around is hilarious, particularly when he gives it a good shake at the end and wipes his hands on his tux jacket. Real classy game.
posted by Nelson at 5:04 PM on August 23, 2019

It’s been a while since I played it but I assume that Heavy Rain had a peeing sequence in which you have to unzip, pull out, urinate, tuck back in, zip, and flush using a different controller gesture for each action.
posted by ejs at 11:07 AM on August 24, 2019

I wasn’t expecting “ml of urine remaining” to actually be a HUD display element, but I suppose it was inevitable given technical evolution.

The metal gear games have rendered some form of urine in every single 3D offering, from Otacon pissing himself in MGS1 - the first realistic depiction of that I ever saw in a game - immediately followed by the ability to stand in the stream of a guards urine, call up your superiors while it’s happening, and engage in conversation about it in the second. This was inevitable, I suppose.

I’m sure that death stranding will have all sorts of scenes featuring women who are treated as equals to the player character and totally not there to fulfill whatever erotic violent fantasy that Kojima is feeling at the moment.
posted by MysticMCJ at 11:31 AM on August 24, 2019