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What games have the worst ideology? Bonus if the ideology is subtle but insidious. (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I can think of some obvious examples to start with, but my subtle but insidious nominee is Fable III. Fittingly for a pretentious grifter like Molyneux, the game requires you to raise a specific amount of gold or your kingdom is destroyed and you get a bad ending. The goalposts are moved by the game if you raise money in ways it doesn't approve of, and it is simply impossible to reach the fundraising goal in any way that isn't at least Enlightened Centrist levels of evil, the kind that lanyard-wearing neoliberals giggle about. That's right, you need to be at least this evil or your kingdom is destroyed. So deep and really makes you think about the hard decisions that are made by the ruling class, doesn't it? :zizek:

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Company of Heroes 2 which portrays the USSR as evil for conscripting its people to fight in die in a "pointless" war to... checks notes ...defend itself from an army hellbent on waging a war of extermination against it. But that's just low-hanging fruit.

For something more subtle, I'd say most games that lament the "Evils of Humanity" feel pretty reactionary. The idea that something bad is inherent to humans (war, crime, bigotry, corruption, etc) and we just have to learn to accept it, without any other investigation into the matter. One game that comes to mind is Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux where

spoiler

the new ending has the main character turn immortal and get stuck into an endless cycle of needing to purge the Dark World over and over again because humanity cannot stop its self-destructive tendencies. Keep in mind that this is supposed to be an allegory for climate change.