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.
Spacetravel is fueled by bugblood (element 710, or “oil” upside down) which the government actively “farms” by letting them rampage freely around civilian worlds, for the benefit of the homeworld. They likely engineered the terminids to increase the 710 production, making them more aggressive.
The Automatons are the direct descendants of the cyborgs, whom Super Earth keeps enslaved on Cyberstan, for the crime of disagreeing with the government.
These things aren’t subtle at all, or hard to see in-game. Every dead helldiver is a direct result of the actions of the government.
Also, uh, try walking out of bounds. What does that tell you?
They are also depicted in Black-Red-White pattern, with skulls on their heads, are deemed to be “socialists” by the government, and are rebuilding coming off of a punishing defeat, sound familiar?
There is a deliberate series of conflicting points of satire in the game precisely to make it so you can read it multiple ways.
Which is a very on the nose parody of the US foreign policy regarding the middle east, and the US crucially isn’t a military dictatorship.
Every dead soldier always is, doesn’t make their cause automatically unworthy. Obviously in this case it is, that’s the joke, but that’s not an argument in itself.
Also I know plenty of dead helldivers who caused it to themselves, but I digress.
My point is, the game is political satire, but it doesn’t have a single valid interpretation. Nothing does, but this does even less than usual.
It satirizes fascism, but also liberalism, it satirizes those who look at an oppressed group and can’t see their current evil behaviour because of their oppressed path, it satirizes those who see conspiracies everywhere but in plain sight, I’m sure there’s jabs at communism too (or maybe that was just twitter lefties identifying with bugs again…)
There’s a lot of variety because it’s not some garbage propaganda piece, but an actually well made piece of satire and, as such, it should make you think not tell you what you ought to think.
*looks over at the Palestinian genocide being supported so hard by the US military industrial complex it might actually cause the sitting President to throw their entire campaign over refusing to budge to voters REALLY not wanting the US to support Israel in committing ethnic cleansing…. *
You sure about that one? Yeah it doesn’t say “Military Dictatorship” on the tin but ommm….
What does foreign policy have to do with local governance, exactly?
The US is not a military dictatorship. There is no debate about it. Case in point: you are allowed (or would be in case you’re not from the US) to post this and not get disappeared by the FBI tomorrow.
The US has a very hawkish foreign policy that you can absolutely condemn and disagree with, but words mean things and “military dictatorship” does not mean “mean to brown people.”
I am sorry, voting has no measurable impact on what and how the military and government of the US chooses to commit genocide and fight wars.
Edward Snowden would be put away in jail for the rest of his life for the second he stepped on US soil for speaking up against the US government.
I am equating living under a typical military dictatorship with living in the US? No, but honestly we aren’t very far from a military dictatorship given how incredibly, incomprehensibly powerful the military industrial complex is in the US. There has never been a more powerful military either in absolute terms of force or in relative terms of force compared to similar peer militaries, it doesn’t really matter that we can vote, the votes don’t have any meaning against that degree of entrenched power.
Its pretty easy to aim at lib or fasch and hit the other. They’re kind of fucking. Have been since that one free city in the alps with all the cocaine and nonstop street fights, orgies, and street fight orgies at the end of, I wanna say, the Austria Hungarian empire?