• @[email protected]
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      281 month ago

      God-Emperor (mostly dead sitting on a cybernetic throne preserving his life, requires like 100 psychics a day to feed on to live) wants to spread his Religious-no-religion religion across the cosmos, and the brutality with which is required is a small price to pay for industry.

      And then they choose to like the guy unironically. But if they’re really into Slaneesh then they just get a special brand of weird.

      • Miles O'Brien
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        211 month ago

        requires like 100 psychics a day

        1,000 per day. Every day. For Ten. Thousand. Years.

        So you know, just a drop in the bucket, no big deal.

        And to be fairrrrrrr… The emperor himself wants no religion at all, and it’s the corrupt and zealous officials that spread the “the emperor is a god” thing, he straight up destroyed a planet because a chapter of marines converted it to Emperorism once. That was before he got stuck on his death throne, obviously.

        Anyone who genuinely admires ANY of the factions in 40k just doesn’t understand it.

        They all suck. There are no good guys. Honestly I’d say the closest thing to good guys there are would be the tyanids, because they’re just doing what tyanids do. You don’t get mad at cows for being cows. Or wolves for being wolves. They are what they are and they do what they do. It isn’t malicious intent.

        It’the A̴l̴l̴ C̶̳̑ọ̷̓͂n̴̼͕͂̄ṡ̴̹̕u̶̘̿m̶̜̿͜ȋ̵̲́͜n̴͈̜̎g̴̰̝̈̇ Ḩ̴̛͖͚̣̯̟̗̮͔͓̝̜͆̓̈́̈́̇̓͒̕Ừ̶̲̓̃̂̉̎͛̀̒̕̚N̵̨̳͈͙̘̭̩̹͈̙͈͙͕̮͋̿̆͐̅̇͆̅̋̈G̵̛̛͇̗̘͓̐̓̆̓̌̓̃̀̂͛́̉͘͘͝Ę̸̙̩͈͕̒̄̋́̍́̔̔̉͝͠R̸̛͇͚̜͍͉̺̋̽̀̎͌̈́͗̀͌̓̊̂͜

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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          101 month ago

          I think the problem is that despite everyone being evil, they are all also cool, and there is no real satire in it when there is no point being made.

          • Miles O'Brien
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            51 month ago

            they are all also cool

            looks at nurgle

            Uhhhhhh I’m not so sure about that one.

            But hey, if you want papa nurgle’s blessing, go for it.

            While the runners these days may not have any kind of satire in mind, it’s pretty obvious a large portion of the Imperium is based on a mixture of 1940s German and (80s-now) modern American ideals, as well as capitalism in general. The Eldar are arrogant isolationists and the dark Eldar are gluttonous.

            Most of 40k can have parallels drawn to modern society and the dials are all set to overload.

            While they may not have a direct point, I do think it still can have a message.

            “don’t be like this”

            Too bad we are failing…

              • Miles O'Brien
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                31 month ago

                Given the time it was created, that’s not surprising.

                Also a good time to remind everyone that thatcher’s grave is a gender neutral bathroom.

        • @[email protected]
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          41 month ago

          Look at this traitor here^^^^

          All praise be to Omnissiah. May his leadership and grace guide you to the one true path. Give yourself to him and become one.

          Yeah they are really fucked up, but man…what great lore! Best thing about 40k baby

        • skulblaka
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          71 month ago

          The tyranids are an expression of entropy more than they are a species, they’re very nearly a force of nature. They’re not really “good” or “bad” in the same way that gravity isn’t good or bad.

          Now the Orkz I think are just fun and good dudes. They don’t really hate anybody in particular, they just LOVE to FIGHT and will keep doing that unless stopped. They will gladly fight amongst themselves if no one else appears to fight with them. They don’t really have grand dreams of conquest beyond swarming over the horizon to fight whatever is on the other side of it. The optimal end state of Ork supremacy isn’t galactic domination, it’s one big WAAGH cloud that rips across the galaxy in a giant loop and takes long enough doing it that the survivors can settle back down and bunker back up before the Boyz come back to town. They don’t even necessarily want to win, they just love to fight, they think it’s the best activity that you can do, and they want to share that with any and everyone.

          From anyone else’s perspective this is a horrifying wall of green skinned, brutal cunning monsters that will sprout up out of literal nowhere and reproduce faster than you can print more bullets for them. But from the Orkz perspective they’re basically just asking you to join their football game. They’re fun guys.

          • Miles O'Brien
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            101 month ago

            But from the Orkz perspective they’re basically just asking you to join their football game. They’re fun guys.

            Different cultures I guess but in my neck of the woods, the hooligans down at the local football club don’t rip my arms off if I refuse.

            Oh sorry, I just realized I’m whispering.

            OI YA GIT, HUMIES AIN’T GOOD KRUMPIN’, MOST OF EMS IS TOO SMALL FER PROPPA FIGHTINZ, CEPT THE BIG BOYZ WITH THE BIG DAKKAS

        • @[email protected]
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          41 month ago

          1,000 per day. Every day. For Ten. Thousand. Years. So you know, just a drop in the bucket, no big deal.

          3,650,000,000 psykers are sacrificed since the Emperor went on the Golden Throne. That’s just over half the population of Earth.

          Writers have issue with scope. 1,000 a day seems shocking until you compare it a 1,000 out of a galaxy of trillions or whatever comes next. It is a literal drop in the bucket.

          I think the 1,000 was picked cause it’s high enough of a number for our brains to be like “That’s terrible!”

          • Miles O'Brien
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            51 month ago

            Honestly I keep forgetting the Imperium supposedly controls over 1 million worlds.

            They really do have a problem with scope.

            Space marines are bad ass in a fight but there’s only 1000 per chapter if they’re adhering to the codex, but that’s nowhere near enough for an entire galaxy.

            • @[email protected]
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              21 month ago

              Totally agree. Space Marines are demi-god, death machines however there would be no way a 1,000 of them could take an entire planet, as you correctly pointed an entire galaxy.

              My head cannon is that the Guard does all the work and their achievements are forgotten while the Space Marines get all the credit.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 month ago

              Well they don’t want to sacrifice all of their psykers. It is cheap, just a small part in the vast war machine.

            • I Cast Fist
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              31 month ago

              Even at a planet scale, 1k troops are not enough. Sure, each is worth 100 men or whatever, but that makes them always spread too thin. In a planetary invasion, which orks and 'nids often do, if they can’t trick the enemy into chokepoints, they’re fucked big time.

              The Armageddon war had, what, 20 chapters deploying marines there? And that’s with massive support from the local IG regiment, plus space navy

      • @[email protected]
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        1 month ago

        I have no doubt it’s satire, but for me it’s always been more of a fun escape into a ridiculous, militarized sci fi fantasy world. I’d never want to genuinely set foot in that world though. Except the sexy coed showers. Booyah!

      • Miles O'Brien
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        661 month ago

        My dad legitimately thinks that’s a great action movie. And to be fair, it is.

        But he doesn’t understand the deeper meanings.

        More meat for the grinder is totally just a bad ass thing to say! Not at all like an orphan crushing machine, for sure.

        • @[email protected]
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          441 month ago

          “The mobile infantry made me the man I am today” shows off two missing legs and one missing arm

          • Miles O'Brien
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            321 month ago

            All the teachers are injured and in need of prosthetics and assisting devices, all of them served.

            As Rico’s dad said, it should be illegal to use schools as recruiting centers.

            • drzoidberg
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              261 month ago

              And while they all need a prosthetic, none of them have one unless it specifically pertains to something that will benefit their military job.

              The front desk guy needs 2 legs and an arm, but only has an arm and is in a wheel chair. The arm helps his job stamping new recruits in. The legs serve no purpose but to make his life better, but unnecessary for the job.

              Ricos teacher needs an arm, but while he’s teaching, he doesn’t have one. Once he’s back on active duty, he’s allowed a prosthetic arm because it helps the Federation. He doesn’t require an arm to teach.

              If it’s not required for your specific position, you don’t deserve to be made whole. It’s a pretty fucked up society overall, and not nearly enough people understand that the humans aren’t the good guys.

              • @[email protected]
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                101 month ago

                In the book there’s an additional interesting scene with Rico and the recruiter: Rico runs in to the recruiter as he’s leaving the office. The recruiter does actually have prosthetic legs, and he’s walking out the door. Rico asks why he didn’t have them on before. The recruiter explains that his job is actually to scare away recruits. He’s supposed to show potential recruits his missing legs as a consequence of his service. That way those that aren’t really serious about it, those who are doing it because it just seems like a cool idea, don’t go through with signing up. He then explains that the government doesn’t require him to be a living warning sign in his off-time, so he puts on his legs and goes about his life that way.

                • @[email protected]
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                  71 month ago

                  Yeah, but the film is a glaringly obvious satire of the society it depicts, the book isn’t.

              • Miles O'Brien
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                121 month ago

                Not only are they not the good guys, the military started a fight where none existed in order to justify its existence.

                Buenos Aires was 100% a false flag, there’s 0 chance bugs in any system other than this one could have, in less than ten thousand years, encountered humanity and started lobbing asteroids at them.

                Even if they had the knowledge of where humanity is from, and the ability to target asteroids in order to reroute them, they simply don’t have the technology to speed an asteroid enough to be a threat to another planetary system.

                The military hauled an asteroid to hit a human population center. 100%.

              • @[email protected]
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                31 month ago

                Making the aliens actual bugs in the movie was a mistake and washes the rest of the critiques inside the movie away with it.

                • @[email protected]
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                  81 month ago

                  I really disagree. The aliens being insects is perfect because it provides a justaposition with the human characters. The idea is that the insects are a swarm of mindless drones. Meanwhile, the humans are…well, also a swarm of mindless drones. Which is sort of the point of the movie. The fascist society they inhabit actively dehumanizes them and robs them of their ability to think for themselves. The visuals of the film reinforce this in the larger fight scenes: the mass of gray bodies that constitute the human forces all blend together into a single swarm, much like that of the insects. And by the end of the movie Rico is completely hollowed out as a character: literally just inhabiting the same role as Rasczak, and even parroting all of his phrases from earlier in the film.

          • Yeather
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            11 month ago

            In the books it’s explained the man is missing his legs specifically to scare people away and show them the potential consequences of service, so people really understand what can and does happen and do not sign up just for fleeting glory or to look cool.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 month ago

              I really didn’t feel like that needed to be more obvious than it was in the movie. Where would you even find trees to make even more massive clue-by-fours to hit people over the head with?

        • @[email protected]
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          211 month ago

          Wut?! How can someone not understand Starship Troopers is satire? What about all of the propaganda cut ins?!

          • @[email protected]
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            371 month ago

            There really is no limit to how dense some dipshits can be. Hell, there are even fascist Star Trek fans, despite the show beating them over the head with stuff like this all the time!

            • Miles O'Brien
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              231 month ago

              “star trek went woke”

              BITCH STAR TREK WAS WOKE FROM DAY ONE GET BENT

            • @[email protected]
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              161 month ago

              Unfortunately that’s rather understandable. A largely ‘white’ and mostly male cast of mostly humans running around saving the day and ‘defeating/ enlightening’ backwards ‘alien’ cultures in what are basically military ships.

              So if you ignore the messages and the actual stories being told and only look at the superficial stuff (as MAGA Morons are wont to do) it does, sadly, pass the facist vibe check.

          • Miles O'Brien
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            81 month ago

            Honestly I don’t know. Even when I point out super obvious ones, I’m “reaching to make a point”

          • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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            81 month ago

            A lot of - I dare say most - people reach for fiction as a form of escapism, and they do need a suspense of disbelief to enjoy it. So if someone points out that in-fiction events are obvious caricatures of real ones, they don’t like it because they don’t want to see it, that’s why they are there and not in the real world.

    • @[email protected]
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      141 month ago

      It’s just a glaring lack of critical thinking brought on by our (sometimes willingly) ignorant masses. Satire is dead in this country because we didn’t have the capacity to comprehend it.

    • db0
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      I really blame the games industry as a whole for this. They keep making games with Space Marines as the protagonists, where their violence is presented as justified, when a lore-friendly space marine game should be like “No Russian” missions all the time and the resulting failure this causes to their Empire. This constant “whitewashing” of the lore, is what has attracted a ton of people.

      • @[email protected]
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        131 month ago

        GW constantly pushes Space Marines and to a lesser extent the Imperial Guard as a majority of time as the protagonist. People don’t have the media literacy to understand that protagonist does not equal the hero. The protagonist is just the main character of the story and they can be evil or good or anything in between.

        I feel like the satire is being washed out to support the line that shall always go up.

        But hey, Space Marines goes “Pew! Pew! Pew!”

      • @[email protected]
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        131 month ago

        The article discusses this; basically the video games want you to at least slightly like the protagonist you’re playing as, which means they can’t entirely be the monstrous caricatures they were designed to be.

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝
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          101 month ago

          I don’t get it why not though, Spec Ops The Line was not a technical marvel or an outstanding gameplay experience even for its time, but we are still talking about it for its message.

          • @[email protected]
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            1 month ago

            Dude, you can genetically modify a race to live shorter lives, taste good and make them more subservient and weaker. That shit is beyond genocide. From chattel to cattle.

      • Tar_Alcaran
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        511 month ago

        I would LOVE to see a WH40k setting where the space marines are lore-accurate murdering an entire multi-billion hive-city for some minor heresy by a few thousand of the people on the 925th-sub-basement, and you’re playing random ganger Scumface Mc Spikearms who’s just trying to survive.

        • db0
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          1 month ago

          Apropos , the Necromunda video game was such a disappointment :(

          • Tar_Alcaran
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            161 month ago

            yeah, agreed. But Rogue Trader was remarkably on brand.

            There were a LOT of parts where you basically had to decide the life and death of tens to hundreds of thousands. And often, the ethical thing was NOT the in-game right choice. For example, you could allow refugees aboard, it gets you nothing, but some of them will try to sabotage you. If you kill them all, you even get piety points for killing (some) heretics.

            I recall one of the developer replying to a comment that said “If I’m evil, I get cool items, if I’m good, I get nothing, why is that?” and they replied with “If you’re doing it for a rewards, you’re not really being good, are you now?”

            • @[email protected]
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              51 month ago

              “If you’re doing it for a rewards, you’re not really being good, are you now?”

              This is moon logic. Yes, that’s how it works in the real world, but you aren’t in the real world. You’re playing a game.

              • Tar_Alcaran
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                101 month ago

                You do in fact score points in the “people love me” stats if you do things like that. But the “people love me” path is far less powerful than the either of the “Religious fundamentalists love me” paths.

                • drzoidberg
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                  21 month ago

                  RDR2 I think did it really well. In RDR2 you have that good/bad meter, and people react to your presence based on that. Do good stuff, and they’ll greet you nicely. Do bad, especially in a specific town, and they’ll shoot first ask questions later. You didn’t even need to do anything if your bad meter was even full a little bit, they’d just be more hostile to you, and scales based on just how far the meter was on bad. Anywhere from NPCs mouthing off telling you to kick rocks, getting punched, getting shot at, and having a posse gathered hunting you down.

                  I don’t think warhammer can do that though, because if you know anything about that universe, you’re solidly in the evil category. But that’s every species, even the “good” sect of the Eldar aren’t exactly good guys.

              • @[email protected]
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                11 month ago

                A Warhammer game. Being good is meant to be hard and I never consider evil options any more in games because they are just stupid when there is no reason to do it.

        • @[email protected]
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          101 month ago

          So a WH40K/Spec-Ops: The Line mashup.

          The Line was an anti-shooter, in the sense that it felt like a generic third-person shooter while constantly hammering the “you shouldn’t be having fun playing this because war is awful and full of atrocities” messaging. It was actually a fairly decent critique of the shooters that were prevalent when the game was developed. It came out when games like Gears of War, Resident Evil, Mass Effect, and Red Dead Redemption were dominating the third-person shooter market, while the FPS market was dominated by Halo and COD.

          • Tar_Alcaran
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            Eh, I feel the message of Spec Ops was really sabotaged by the poor in-game systems.

            There’s a mission where you have to defend a point, and you get the option to drop white phosphorus. But that mission is really easy, and you can easily play it for hours and hours, killing an infinite number of enemies. It doesn’t progress without pushing the button.

            And then it berates you, the player, for pushing the button.

            This feels really weird to me. I can see the point in the distance, but it really doesn’t work for me, since you can obviously just murder people till eternity as well.

            And the game has several hidden “better ways”, like shooting the rope at the hanging, where it will reward you for doing it better. But it doesn’t have that option elsewhere, like the white phosphorus option.

            Honestly, there’s a big disconnect between some of the scenes, and the heavyhanded message.

            Contrast it with “no Russian”, which is a map that’s offered with zero commentary, letting you shoot unarmed civilians, but not punishing you at all if you don’t. And no matter what you do, the end result is the same. That’s a system that fits with everything in the game, it doesn’t have to swing a message in your face, and it doesn’t have to break with normal gameplay to insert elements required for the message.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 month ago

              I think it forms part of bigger meta narrative, and the end of the day you still go through with the white phosphur attack as the game is forcing the choice on you to proceed as the only way to solve the problem - which is what the character believed in

              Its message is,to me, “are you having fun” playing a game of murder -it forced, albeit clumsily, the reality of war when you feel you have no other option - a choice you are forced to make like pulling the trigger of a gun. You can leave the game and not do it or you pull the trigger.

              You are still killing after that point soon after, with character quick to stat blaming others and you are still going on for the ride by playing- to finish the game, to get to Komrad- it comes off pretentious i admit, but the wp was acting as a turning point and was using a blunt force narrative to make you start asking questions about the character’ sanity

              Could it have been done better - sure, but the thing is you, the player, still went through with it and pressed the button instead of putting the game down and refusing - it is trying to sell the point of view of the player’s character you are playing decided that it was the “only way” and by continuing to play the game you have accepted the condition forced upon you and continued to be complicit in the events that unfold because you wanted to see the story through.

              “No Russian is shock value, but there really isn’t much player consequence as it doesn’t matter what you do so long as you keep up, you could even skip it”

              If you wanted to avoid the nastiness of what you were doing you could in No russian, specs ops decided to comfront the player with deciding for the player to either accept the nastiness or don’t and if you want to see the story to completion you better get your hands proper dirty and not half ass it.

              Again, conveying that is not easy and what they did could have been conveyed better. You are seeing things from the perspective of a dude with severe ptsd and you have been murdering people up to that point on fragile pretense

              spoiler

              Especially since the whole point was to scout for survivors and head back - and that turned into a quest for Konrad that destroys whats left of Dubai on the orders of a broken man

              • Tar_Alcaran
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                11 month ago

                Could it have been done better - sure, but the thing is you, the player, still went through with it and pressed the button instead of putting the game down and refusing - it is trying to sell the point of view of the player’s character you are playing decided that it was the “only way” and by continuing to play the game you have accepted the condition forced upon you and continued to be complicit in the events that unfold because you wanted to see the story through.

                My problem is that the game does tries to do it both ways. It tries to give you in-game options to “be less bad”, in the crowd scene and the hanging scene, doing a very game-y thing by going straight. But then it ALSO does the WP scene where it’s going for “The only winning move is not to play” thing by breaking outside the game.

                And that ruins both angles for me, it feels really lazy, like they just kinda shoehorned the angle in and felt super smart afterwards, when to me it just feels like they’re covering up for bad writing. They didn’t commit.

                “No Russian is shock value, but there really isn’t much player consequence as it doesn’t matter what you do so long as you keep up, you could even skip it”

                If you wanted to avoid the nastiness of what you were doing you could in No russian, specs ops decided to comfront the player with deciding for the player to either accept the nastiness or don’t and if you want to see the story to completion you better get your hands proper dirty and not half ass it.

                You couldn’t skip No Russian way back when it first released, that was patched in later because of the massive public outcry over that map. That’s not really my point, my point is that as a writer, it’s fine to engage inside the game with the characters OR place it on the reader/player, but doing both makes both miss the mark.

                • @[email protected]
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                  11 month ago

                  I know this is subjective, but I had embraced the narrative and got into the character’s head as he slowly lost patience with everything

                  My decisions were at :

                  “The hanging was screw you, I am not playing by your rules”

                  and

                  at the crowd scene, things leading up to it made me just as frustrated at the characters, that I also was getting sick of things, and gunned them down because I got tired of it all and I inhibited the character - that was a point that I felt just as tired as the characters and thought everyone can die, no one here is worth the effort,

                  Them doing the cop outs does make the scenes weaker, I agree, - the hanging I feel was early enough before things went off the deep end, but the crowd scene, for me, was memorable because I made a mistake in the heat of emotion, when I let myself be engrossed in the role-playing as the soldiers physically, mentally and emotionally break down, it was what stuck with me especially when you reach the end and you realize how you’ve been played for a fool the whole time.

                  Would it have been better if it was tighter and they fully commited to that descent into madness, yes. Did they have to go so heavy with the messaging, not really.

                  The no russian mission, I felt initially shocked the first time, but once the police arrive my illusion was broken. You can just walk through the whole civilian section and do nothing and be blamed for the attack anyway - it had more impact if you were killing people but it also has initial shock value but it is all an illusion like the choices in Spec Ops.

                  There was a bit of a disconnect with how was it, 5 men in only body armour made a fool out of russian equivalent of swat - they were performing riot police procedure on men armed with machine guns and grenade launchers - no different than spec ops in the last stretch of the game where you are killing juggernauts and armoured vehicles, the airport guards I can understand - but the special police were funneling into killzones - and maybe that was the idea for the context for war but it was like the North Hollywood Shootout, only both sides were carrying equivalent weaponry and only one side was really using it

                  I know Makarov was connected with politicians and the whole thing could have been decided to be green lit as a false flag to have a pretext.

            • @[email protected]
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              21 month ago

              See, I always thought this comparison falls flat, because No Russian and Spec Ops both give you the same amount of choice - either you complete the mission or not - and both give you no alternative way to proceed and no way to prevent it other than close the game. That Spec Ops makes you push buttons for the bad thing to happen rather than allow you to chicken out and be a passive rather than active participant is a point in it’s favour.

            • @[email protected]
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              61 month ago

              I always hear people talk about the white phosphorus part of the game, but the game doesn’t give you a choice there. I much prefer the parts where you are actually given a choice. The one that I remember the best is the civilians, you don’t have to kill them and I just fired a warning shot and they quickly dispersed. Apparently some people will gun them down.

              • Tar_Alcaran
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                71 month ago

                You hear people talk about it, because it’s so bad and jarring and forced. People keep bringing up specops as some great writing inversion of a shooter trope, when it really just doesn’t get what agency is.

                If you don’t give a player agency, you can’t then berate them for doing something wrong, because they didn’t actually do a thing. The phosphorous part of the game is a thing you don’t get a say in, but the game blames you as a player.

                It’s like me blaming you for reading the word phosphorus, when you had basically no choice in that.

                If you don’t give agency, you can only ever blame the character. And the writer made the characters, not the player.

                • @[email protected]
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                  11 month ago

                  Maybe that’s kind of the point? Both the player and the character chose to be there in the first place and civilian casualties are accepted as an inevitable during war.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 month ago

        I would like some more grimdark in warhammer games. At this point Rimworld seems better for it, as you can commit most warcrimes in that just fine. Even new things that are not yet yet in the Geneva suggestions! Like executing POWs with eldritch horrors after you have harvested them for most of their organs to sell on the blackmarket.

    • @[email protected]
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      281 month ago

      Yeah, this was on full display when Helldivers 2 launched. So many people just didn’t get the satire, and unironically leaned into the messaging.

      For the unaware, Helldivers 2 is basically a Starship Troopers video game.

      • @[email protected]
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        161 month ago

        Starship Troopers the book was flat out propaganda. It’s only the movie that is satire.

        • @[email protected]
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          121 month ago

          The book is an exploration of and presents an argument for militarism. That alone doesn’t make it propaganda. While many of the sentiments, implications, premises in the book carry a clear bias, the book nevertheless invites the reader to engage with and reflect on the ideology rather than aiming to manipulate and indoctrinate the reader.

          I’d say the earnest argument presented by Heinlein in ST is flawed and morally objectionable, but not a piece of propaganda.

          • @[email protected]
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            51 month ago

            So the book presents an argument for and has a bias towards militarism, but it’s not propaganda? Are you also going to tell me that Atlas Shrugged invites the reader to explore whether capitalism is good or not? Hard disagree.

            • @[email protected]
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              51 month ago

              I mean… yeah? I don’t agree with it, but I feel like its to detailed and nuanced to be merely propaganda. Propaganda would be shit like the Red Dawn remake or almost any movie involving the US military that tends to be to shallow to be anything but propaganda.

              • @[email protected]
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                21 month ago

                It’s nuanced like a brick is from what I remember and was basically a commercial for the military. The enemy were nonhuman arachnids, which doesn’t come off as terribly subtle.

            • @[email protected]
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              41 month ago

              I think it would help if you clarify what “propaganda” means to you, as I have a sense we mean different things.

              For me, I understand propaganda as media/content/communication aimed at manipulating people towards a particular point of view. It’s often characterized by reduction, misrepresentation/deception, disingenuous argument, and etc. That is also to say that I make a distinction between manipulation and persuasive argument. So, a piece of content can make an argument, display inherent biases, employ persuasive techniques, without being propaganda. That’s because all forms of expression necessarily hold an ideological position.

              • @[email protected]
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                21 month ago

                It was basically a commercial for the military from what I can remember. There wasn’t subtlety. The military was put on a pedestal. People that hadn’t been in the military didn’t get to vote. The enemy were reduced to inhuman arachnids. It’s propaganda in the same way Top Gun is.

                But my point was mainly the movie and book were very different.

                • Yeather
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                  11 month ago

                  Are you arguing the book is propaganda or the society of the book is heavily propagandized? The book itself is not propaganda if you fully read it. The horrors of war are on full, gruesome display. Heroism, cowardice, death, and dismemberment to the humans and arachnids. The society of the book is heavy on the propaganda, but the book itself is not propaganda.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 month ago

      Yeah I am having a great time with Helldivers 2 but damn if I don’t feel this pretty much every time I play

    • @[email protected]
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      21 month ago

      Ooh, thanks for sharing this. I clicked on it thinking I had already read it before, but this is actually new to me. It looks interesting

  • @[email protected]
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    28 days ago

    Does programming count as a hobby? I waste my free time on it… There’s this funny stereotype, of a queer programmer with long, quirky socks, and maybe even a fursona. Despite being a small percentage, such types are often overrepresented online. It used to bother me a little.

    Nowadays I’m so, so glad when someone I’m talking to is part of that group. It usually means I don’t need to worry about them being weirdly sexist, like women don’t suffer enough in STEM already, or insisting that we need to keep politics out of tech (i.e. they want their politics to rule, unquestioned).

    (Need something more tangible? Look no further than uncle bob (skip to the bottom). I’ve seen his books in classrooms, in the office, and let’s not speak of online mentions. This is a relatively well-known, respected name in the industry. If you get to know people, you will meet many, many uncle bobs out there.)

    Silly feelings on my part? Perhaps. One less thing to worry about, though.

  • Rolivers
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    171 month ago

    Hydroponics as well I guess. My DIY automated grow room with a water pump, grow lights, heater and plant shaker (for pollination) always has people think I’m growing weed but I just want chillies and tomatoes.

  • @[email protected]
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    401 month ago

    Me but with anime and pedophiles

    If someone enters a conversation saying child-coding isn’t a thing, they get a free block

  • @[email protected]
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    151 month ago

    Something about people finding someone who shares their interest in hobby and immediately starts to question them politically amuses me.

  • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮
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    1 month ago

    Old school games enjoyer: “Games used to be awesome… modern games are garbage”

    🚨

    Morrowind is better than Skyrim

    😎

    I particularly enjoy the telvanni lore

    🚨

  • paraphrand
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    181 month ago

    Oh, you have an anime profile picture and are posting on Twitter in 2013?

  • @[email protected]
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    271 month ago

    I used to enjoy conspiracy theories, because I thought it would be cool if they were true.
    Things like cryptids, aliens, etc…
    But now all the conspiracy groups are filled with stupid right-wing science deniers.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    Try being a classicist… it’s rough out here. Can’t really say I love Greece and Rome without sounding insane.

  • Tar_Alcaran
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    181 month ago

    Ah yes. I have this conversation occasionally. I know a lot of people who started explaining their reenactment hobby as “I’m with a reenactment for a british regiment and we do mostly ww1 and ww2, for a british group, playing allied soldier”

    Thankfully, I just do medieval and napoleonic.

  • strawberry
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    361 month ago

    80% of car guys are racist and conservative 😩

    literally everyone I work with is

    • @[email protected]
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      121 month ago

      Dude tell me about it 😭 especially if you’re into overlanding or any kind of off road. Luckily I also have an old Miata and the tuner crowd seems to be chill

  • catsarebadpeople
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    431 month ago

    Nazi punks fuck off. This is not a good example. Every metal enjoyer I know is progressive. It’s one of the few communities that is still mostly sane and decent.

  • @[email protected]
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    371 month ago

    If depression takes away all your hobby energy, then there’s no hobby to set off warning bells.

  • @[email protected]
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    251 month ago

    Warhammer 40k. I like to paint little green guys and then move them around a battlefield.

    A good half of the poeple in this hobby are almost entirely irredeemable