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Helldivers 2’s Politics Appear To Be Flying Over The Heads Of Some (www.forbes.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

201 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There is currently a very funny, kind of sad dust-up over Helldivers 2, in which self-proclaimed “anti-woke” gamers have previously heralded it as a rare game where they believe “politics” does not play a factor. Their faith was been shaken by an Arrowhead community manager they believed they found to be (gasp) progressive who was then subsequently harassed, but their head-scratching reading of Helldivers 2 as a “non-political” game is worth examining.

The only thing that makes sense is that these players have the shallowest of surface-level readings of the game. You are a patriotic soldier serving Super Earth. You must kill bugs and evil robots trying to hurt your brothers-in-arms and innocent citizens. There are no storylines to insert progressive causes into, everyone wears helmets so no “forced diversity.” Therefore, no politics.

Of course, this is…wildly off the mark, as Helldivers 2 is about the most blatantly obvious satire of militaristic fascism since the film that inspired it, Starship Troopers.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I first saw it as a kid and didn't like it too much because I took it too seriously. Rewatched it years later and I didn't like it because the satire was just so way too obvious and forced to be enjoyable.

So I can kinda understand how it could over someone's head since it did over mine (when I was like 10).

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago

Of course it's age restricted so you're not really supposed to watch it at 10. But anyway a 10-year-old isn't really the target demographic, at that age you're not going to have a developed understanding of politics yet so that's not really a problem.

When I first watched the matrix I didn't really understand what that was about either.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You missed Goldilocks zone for watching it, apparently.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah. I'm hoping I'll still hit it at some point in my life. The action is and always was awesome, but the overall tone went from way too scary to way too cheesy for me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I don't like it because I think it was both bad at being a Starship Troopers movie and bad at satirizing Starship Troopers.

At least read the whole book, Paul. Maybe then you'd have known Johnny Rico was Filipino and that particular reveal was actually a rather important detail when it was written. You did a white washing by accident, you crazy Dutch bastard.