Honestly, this leaves either Sin-Cong/Siancong or Madripoor then. Sin-Cong would be too much like Vietnam for it to work really well. Like, it'd be a bit too obvious and it might kinda make it harder to make it be taken seriously. Madripoor meanwhile works better and could stand as this sort of counterpart to Hong Kong and Singapore. Heck, would work well being this secret base of operations that would allow the Ten Rings to function as a global syndicate and wanting to go after Tony's weapons!
WI: Pop Culture in a world without 9/11?
- Thread starter woweed
- Start date
Honestly, this leaves either Sin-Cong/Siancong or Madripoor then. Sin-Cong would be too much like Vietnam for it to work really well. Like, it'd be a bit too obvious and it might kinda make it harder to make it be taken seriously. Madripoor meanwhile works better and could stand as this sort of counterpart to Hong Kong and Singapore. Heck, would work well being this secret base of operations that would allow the Ten Rings to function as a global syndicate and wanting to go after Tony's weapons!
i would've mentioned Siancong, but i'm not sure it was even a thing in any of the comics at the time (for those unaware, "the Siancong War" is how Marvel eventually reconciled the 'Nam-era origins of alot of their characters with the floating timeline of the main continuity) and i couldn't think of any Middle Eastern ones off the top of my head, whereas for DC Comics i can immediately name Bialya and Qurac. the one other good option in my mind, Genosha, might've been off-limits since it's intrinsically linked to the X-Men, which Marvel Studios wouldn't have had the film rights to at the time, and Latveria is absolutely NOT a good fit for that kind of story.
I think Siancong was first mentioned in like the 1960s, so we're good there. Meanwhile, the thread does say without 9/11, so Middle East doesn't get as big a focus. That said, I'd say Madripor would work, or at least a counterpart of it given its association with the mutants by disqualify it.
I've said this before but this video explains it better than me. 9/11 killed the Dino Crisis franchise. Instead of city attacked by dinosaurs, Dino Crisis 3 was abruptly changed to a spaceship setting because ruined buildings still evoked memories of the terrorist attacks.
The video also briefly explains what forms of pop-culture were affected following the attacks.
And what broader ramifications would this have had for gaming as a whole? Would we have seen more city destroying games?
It killed the franchise for one thing. Capcom went for Dino Stalker instead, a spin-off for Dino Crisis in a first-person shoot light-gun style that was released for the PS2. The game didn't sell well either but it has recently had more following now that dinosaur fans long for a Jurassic Park or a dinosaur shooter or survival game.
And to answer your question, any part of games involving the destruction of a city by a hostile force or hijackings were removed from games and films.
We would not have city-destroying games in the years after 9/11 up until Rampage: Total Destruction was released.