Games

You don't think the body count reinforces revenge being bad? With the looks of terror on their faces as Ellie slices their throat, the cries of "Sheila!" or whatever when you blow Sheila or whatever up, the dogs whining at their dead owners' sides, seems to me that all of this feeds into revenge being bad. You see the cost of those actions too, whole settlement aflame as Ellie hunts down Abby, slaughtering everyone in her way whilst Abby is trying to walk away from it.

You're a killing machine in that game, but everywhere you go the violence is always extremely messy, upsetting, and visceral, and Ellie has pretty severe reactions to it as well in cutscenes. Both Ellie and Abby even say hateful and petty things under her breath whilst you're taking them out, hardly presenting them in the best light whilst they're slaughtering people in their pursuit of revenge. Enemies beg for their life when you grab them, Ellie has to be talked down from murdering a pregnant woman. At one point she tortured, brutally, a woman who looks a bit like Dina. I'm not sure the ludo-narrative dissonance argument applies here, surprisingly, despite basically being Rambo from a gameplay perspective.

Now Uncharted? I love those games, but you destroy legions worth of bad guys, it's ridiculous, and in a serious narrative Drake's charming affableness whilst doing it would have to be a cover for a full on psychopath or something. There aren't many action games, especially shooting, where this argument doesn't apply really. It's just somewhere you need to suspend your disbelief. That or only play games where you kill a reasonable amount of people? What would that be? 15? Even that seems high, but 12 hour game a game where you only defeat 15 people isn't an action game.