Grezzo 2

One bored Italian troll decides to piss off everyone. Even the Pope.

Actually, it's about ethics in Video games

Cutscenes

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Christ died for our articles about Christianity

Schismatics

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Devil's in the details

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Grezzo 2 (also rendered in Italian as Grezzo Due) is a 2012 total conversion "joke WAD" for the 1993 first-person shooter Doom by id Software, developed by Nicola "Nic" Piro, a member of the metal rock band "Karashow". The game's plot revolves around a pagan farmer named Piro, who goes on a sacrilegious rampage and slaughters everyone and everything, even God and Jesus themselves.

Plot

Embittered over the rise of Christianity, Piro embarks on a spree killing, with his first target being the church hosting his grandparents' silver wedding anniversary. Piro massacres the event's reception, and dies shortly thereafter; he then falls into the afterlife to be judged by God, who is depicted as a short-tempered, foul-mouthed man adorned with cultist robes. Depending on the player's actions, Piro can either fight and kill God, or avoid the fight and escape the afterlife.

After returning to Earth and killing countless others, Piro initiates a plan to kill baby Jesus, thus averting the inception of Christianity. Piro then infiltrates the womb of the Virgin Mary and slays the gestating Jesus within. Piro then impregnates Mary, from whom a reborn Piro emerges, killing her. The reborn Piro pulls out a banjo and plays a song for the Three Wise Men who stood at the Virgin Mary's side.

What's the fuss about it?

While the game's mechanics are largely inherited from the base Doom game (shoot enemies, stroll your way through the exit, rinse and repeat…), save for added sequences such as a motorcycle segment among others, arguably the game's main draw is with its gratuitously blasphemous portrayal of not only local Italian celebrities and authority figures but most prominently Christianity itself, particularly Roman Catholicism, whose home base is in the Vatican. The game's level of violence and graphic sexual content gained it so much notoriety that it was banned on the streaming service Twitch on obscenity grounds. Among those religious figures parodied in the WAD is Padre Pio (born Francesco Forgione, (25 May 1887–23 September 1968)), a Capuchin friar and mystic who gained notoriety for his alleged stigmata and is widely venerated especially in his native Italy. In-game, Padre Pio appears as a stand-in for the Cacodemon in the original Doom.

In an analysis by TV Tropes, Grezzo 2 can be interpreted as an irreverent yet relatively serious commentary on Italian culture and the people, organisations, and phenomena that are holding back the country. The Roman Catholic Church for one is mocked, aped, and desecrated in every possible way and at every possible opportunity in the game, depicting it as an evil, omnipresent, and corrupt organisation bent at world domination. The blasphemous portrayal is reflective of the gradual breaking of social taboos in the Italian Republic, where more progressive groups have started criticising long-standing institutions such as the Catholic Church for its stranglehold on Italian politics and culture, namely its opposition towards divorce, same-sex marriage, and birth control and hushing up of sexual abuse cases committed by its clergy, as well as its assertive control over the country's politics, urging the faithful to vote for the Christian Democracy party and has (historically) excommunicated those with communist ties through the Decree against Communism. A great many Italian celebrities and other notables were similarly ridiculed, in particular Italian wingnut YouTuber Matteo Montesi, whose voice was used for most of the Catholic enemies depicted in the game. The WAD mocks and apes at Montesi's Catholic fundamentalism and belief in reptilian conspiracy theories.

Other reviewers note how the game's gratuitous use of graphic violence and torture also serve as a form of shock commentary musing over the use of violent imagery and the outrage it generated, e.g. the ability to kill dogs in Wolfenstein 3-D.

In an interview with Vice, Nicola explained that "I really wanted to create a game that would piss off any mother, any religious organization, something vulgar and unheard of." In another interview, Piro mused that Grezzo 2 is also reflective of his worldview: "For me, the world is like this: the Pope is obviously a monster, an enemy, and everything is taken to excess!"

Blasphemy aside, Grezzo 2 also gained polarising reception from within the Doom community for its extensive use of copyrighted content cribbed from both retail games and even mods from various other Doom modders, specifically WAD files and their associated assets modified to some degree. Most of the game's other content was also kanged off a typical Google Image search, a list of which would be too long to include.