Beyond the obvious, of course.
“Bioshock Infinite” is, of course, the next in the beloved franchise of political polemics disguised as first-person shooters, this time tackling mindless nationalism, among other things. Since it’s set in 1912, and Irrational doesn’t exactly screw around when it comes to throwing in little details, it’s pretty heavily researched.
So, in their trailer for the Spike Video Game Awards, they feature “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”, a hymn, and, of course, use the 1912 version of the song.
The version without the word Lord in it. Yeah, you get one guess how that went over.
Yes, just like that comic shop owner who threw a hissy fit over a grunting noise, Christian gamers starting sulking about how the song was “changed” and their faith was being sidelined because boo hoo, pop culture is mistreating their faith. The atheists on the Internet, of course, acted like mature grownups about this, meaning we had flame wars out the wazoo. It got so annoying, so quickly, that Ken Levine weighed in on Twitter to shut it down.
Turns out that the word “Lord” wasn’t added to the chorus until the song was rewritten in 1935, and they were just using the historically accurate version. We’re still expecting this to make Fox News, possibly with a “Gamers Hate Jeebus” headline.
[ via the historically accurate Ars Technica ]