Anyone else get irrationally annoyed when games anachronistically whitewash deeply shitty societies to the point that it turns into apologetics, just to avoid grappling with problematic themes?
Anyone else get irrationally annoyed when games anachronistically whitewash deeply shitty societies to the point that it turns into apologetics, just to avoid grappling with problematic themes?
The specific example that made me start thinking about this was how AC Odyssey has a sidequest where a slave doesn't want to be freed because he thinks being a slave is cool, actually, which is both absurd apologetics but also misses that in Greek and Roman systems manumission was a form of social control that both rewarded and indebted slavers' most loyal collaborators. That turned into thinking about how just absolutely absurdly shitty classic Greek society was in general, and how AC Odyssey made it this weird wholesome egalitarian slaver dictatorship where everything's cool and good except for the bad mean guys who are indistinguishable in methods or goals from anyone else.
That's also one of the things that pisses me off about Starfield so much, how the "good guys" are a pair of far right colonial empires: one is literally just the fascists from Starship Troopers, and the other are a bunch of feudal ancap dictatorships. Even the villains are just saturday morning cartoon villains who are bad and mean but don't really ever do anything distinct from the "good" factions except be ontologically opposed to you, the main character.
Someone else pointed out recently how HOI4 ends up effectively doing Nazi apologetics the same way, where in trying to avoid giving their worst fans a holocaust button they just outright remove all the actual horror and material actions the Nazis did altogether.
And I don't think I even need to get into how rampant this problem is in liberal fantasy settings, which are always full of apologetics for monarchism, because that's well tread ground for criticism. It's enough to make something like how the original Mount and Blade handled the in-universe nobles as being inherently sexist and classist pieces of shit who were obstacles for a female and/or commoner PC to fight against and overcome almost refreshing, instead of it just being like "yeah these awful pieces of shit who are all definitely mass murderers and worse are actually cool and nice to you and not really all that bad really" like so much feudal apologia media does.
And yeah, there's a point to be made about not wanting to grapple with problematic themes and all, but where there's the line where that just turns into apologetics for the very problematic thing you're trying to avoid dealing with at all?
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i had to quit and uninstall AC odyssey after a recent replay when it portrayed the slaveowning family of the king of sparta as some lighthearted suburban family that just liked to play fight with sticks. not a slave in sight outside of that one obnoxious "slaves are hapy actually, don't ask about how house slaves were made/treated in ancient societies please" (hint: it involves castration so you won't fuck the owners wife while he travels for business, best case scenario you get your dick attached to your scrotum with a piercing) side quest, when the vast majority of sparta's population was slaves (significantly outnumbering the proportional population of slaves in rome or athens, for example), with a small peripheral artisan class in addition to the military aristocracy. i had enjoyed that game in the past, too.
Also the Helots (Spartas slaves) were owned by the state and, during the Agoge (training to become a soldier/citizen) it was expected that the boys killed one Helot, at least, during their training.
So yes, the Ubisoft despition of Ancient Greece is beyond ahistorical and fucked up. The average liberal brained videogame.
Source: Sarah Pomeroy.
It would have even been easy to show this, since that specific treatment of the Helots is mostly after 464 (Plutarch) and reached its peak during the Peloponnesian Wars (Thucydides). Would have been easy to have Kassandra come back to Sparta to see that the already oppressed serfs are now entirely reduced to slavery.
i had to quit and uninstall AC odyssey after a recent replay when it portrayed the slaveowning family of the king of sparta as some lighthearted suburban family that just liked to play fight with sticks. not a slave in sight outside of that one obnoxious "slaves are hapy actually, don't ask about how house slaves were made/treated in ancient societies please" (hint: it involves castration so you won't fuck the owners wife while he travels for business, best case scenario you get your dick attached to your scrotum with a piercing) side quest, when the vast majority of sparta's population was slaves (significantly outnumbering the proportional population of slaves in rome or athens, for example), with a small peripheral artisan class in addition to the military aristocracy.
As usual the "historical accuracy"
crowd is silent about that and is only mad about feeeeeeeeeeemales or 
Go figure, hooded super man of history secret stealth spy badass killer murder fantasy game is reactionary. I for one never saw it coming. 😏
I can't enjoy "you are the secret agent of the secret society that knows better than everyone else and that's a good thing because the masses are panicky animals and can't handle the truth" power fantasies anymore.
Yeah, I kinda got sick of that with Fallout 4 when I ran the institute ending. Then I did another run as the minute men and it felt a lot less developed, but more satisfying.
The 4th or 5th time the Assassins ended up being more reactionary than the literal "We are a secret society trying to destroy human agency" side I began to realise the series had strayed from its already radlib roots.