The Zodiac Killer terrorized the Bay Area in the 60's. Watch Dogs 2 is bringing him back as a pre-order bonus mission. To be honest, I'm not sure I'm totally on board with that. There were real victims to these crimes and using it to promote a video game seems kinda cheap. This is a monster who definitely killed 5 and injured 2 more, has claimed 37 victims, and is believed to have been involved in more than 20 deaths, but there's an opportunity to capitalize on that for a video game, so why not? I don't know.
Maybe it's hypocritical of me because I don't bat an eye when we use wars to frame a game. Word War I decimated whole communities as certain battalions were made entirely of young men from the area. World War II saw 50-80 million people killed. But I've never felt the slightest trepidation about the Battlefield or Call of Duty series using that. Maybe because it's a serial killer, and the crimes are so much more personal that has me feeling a little more uneasy.
But as I think about I believe it really has more to do with the idea that killers like that shouldn't be made famous. How many heinous crimes have gone down in the past 2 decades from sad little copycats who would rather be known as a monster than forgotten as a nobody? And how often do misguided parents and politicians try to score points by misplacing blame on gaming as a result?
No, I'd rather have these nobodies remain nobody. Let killers remain nameless and don't give them a single line of ink for their crimes. School shooters, serial killers, I don't care who you are, and I don't want you in my video games. If I want to solve a riddle and find a murderer, I'll play as the Batman and go after the Riddler. Let the Zodiac fade in history so we can all forget he ever was a thing, until we do we give the monster the one thing they always wanted, notoriety. It's not by catching this kind of monster we defeat them; it's by forgetting they were ever even there.
Trailer for the Watch Dogs 2 pre-order bonus below. Watch it and form your own opinion.
