• ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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      7 months ago

      It’s not really liberal bullshit, it’s more so a pretty good story about the themes of the cycle of violence, the blindness of wrath, the degradation of morality and “righteousness”, the horrors of war, “just following orders”, and that war is not some action packed video game as it has real devastating consequences.

      It’s an homage to Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now with its themes and presentations. While the US Army are the main faction that the characters come from, so are the “villains” and no one is presented in a good light. You start the game as a gung-ho America#1, Call of Duty special forces operative, and by the end your character is a broken, hollow shell of a man.

        • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
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          7 months ago

          Yes, that is what I was referencing.

          Funnily enough I had forgotten the authors name, but seeing it now, the main antagonist of Spec Ops is named after him.

          That should also give you insight onto the mindset of the creators and the themes behind the game, as Heart of Darkness was a scathing criticism of European Colonialism in Africa along with imperialism, racism, and the concepts of “power” “morality”, and “civilization”. Further, Apocalypse Now is about the disastrous consequences of the Vietnam War, American intervention, and the MIC.

      • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
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        7 months ago

        You start the game as a gung-ho America#1, Call of Duty special forces operative

        Funny you mention CoD, because this game came out during the apex of that kind of games, more or less when Battlefield 3 was released. The market was oversaturated with FPS games of the kind of “Shoot the US’ enemies (in their own home country) and save the day”: it was a direct commentary on these kind of games. A brilliant game and to this day my favourite campaign in a shooter video game.

    • good_girl [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      It’s… fine? My main issue with the way the game handles things is that it starts to blame you, the player, and pulls the ‘you can stop these tragedies by turning off the game’ card which I find kind of off-putting. You have no real choices in the game, the story basically plays out in a straight line so blaming the player adds a level of ludonarrative dissonance in my opinion.