#also. yeah. i didnt like cloudpunk

[zevranunderstander]

im not saying this is a given and that every video game needs to do this to be “good”, but i recently rewatched a bunch of hbomberguy videos and in his fallout new vegas essay he talks about the moment with caesar’s legion where you argue about actual hegelian dialectics w caesar and he also compares this moment to disco elysium in his essay and i just have to say that this is such a cool way to engage players into thinking about pretty deep philosophical and ideological questions without making it all that clear that you are *discussing philosophy* and the apporach is so unique to video games.

like, you create a character/faction who clearly is not the good guy in the story but they give you the chance to “debate” them in a sense - the way caesar talks about his motives and ideology forces you to think for yourself. like, this is *not* a moment where you are supposed to see that “oh, maybe this faction isn’t as bad as i thought they were - what a surprising twist! they are equally moral as the NCR!”, like if that is your takeaway from the moment you are actually super fucking gullible, because, yeah, ceasar is quoting smart men he read a book about and yeah, he might actually think that his approach is correct but you need to apply your own knowledge of morality to the situation.

like if you see these people torturing and killing civilians and latching people to crosses and calling everyone that isn’t like them a “degenerate”, then maybe the ideology of their leader doesn’t matter. also, you have to think about if he is just misusing said ideology to *sound* like that is what he is doing, to *sound* morally right so that people join him, despite knowing it’s bullshit. like, the game doesn’t force you to come to the correct conclusion, you have to actually think about if what he says is actually meaningful and correct and the game does not chew up the right answer for you. like you can end this game working for the actual fascists because they have a compelling leader figure and maybe joining the faction makes you see it for what it is. like, if you aren’t smart enough to realize that ceasar’s legion aren’t the good guys, you have to play along with them until you yourself go “wait, are we the bad guys?”.

disco elysium also does that a lot, like it never just *tells* you if a person is morally correct in what they are saying or if they might try to decieve you by sounding big and impressive to hide their very bigoted agenda. you have to actually think for yourself a lot and realize, that even people who might have *some* correct opinions, do not have all of the correct opinions. that is why i loved that they made kim, who is probably the most beloved character in the game and someone you often look at as a moral compass, a centrist. like. he isn’t a confrontational person, or anyone who is looking to change the status quo and a lot of his morals and ideals he has otherwise don’t mean all that much if he tries to keep his head down all the time. like, you could actually look at kim in the game and say “he usually has opinions i agree with, he probably is right about that”, but to the game kim being a centrist is actually more of a moral failing and a character flaw than just a reasonably held belief.

while i have some beef with the explaination as to why the deserter *did what he did* and there is like, a billion more examples of three-dimensional characters in the game, i loved that the deserter - the only *actual* communist you meet in the game - is a massive asshole, who is incredibly sexist and racist and just a complete cunt, not so that you go “wow, so communism sucks too :/”, but to see his failings and also the failings of communism to be something you need to be mindful of when calling yourself a communist, that you still have to be a good person and also have an actual community. like this guy doesn’t exist so that you go “communism bad, actually”, but that you can see that he isn’t wrong about everything, but he still *is* wrong about things.

like, i love that, i love the way these games tell you “if you take people to be either 100% correct or 100% incorrect all of the time, you will never learn to actually find your own standpoints on topics but always just copy other people’s morality. if you don’t learn to think about your own ideology, you will copy other people’s flaws and harmful ideologies without realizing it and you will have to learn the hard way that you are wrong”.

and a lot of games that try to discuss political ideology or societal issues (cloudpunk comes to my mind rn, but they are not the only ones doing that) are so scared of “confusing” players by having bad people have good traits and good people have bad traits or have a person with a bit of a misguided ideology or have people try to convince you that their bigoted ideology is actually good, because they are scared that people will think they endorse bad ideologies or advertise fascism. and bc of that they make people really one-dimensional and always point out, who is right and who is wrong and people basically lay out their bad intentions for you, so that you don’t actually confuse them to be a good person and i think we should force players to actually use their brain sometimes