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.
There’s usually some kind of technological leap that gets around the light barrier in space travel sci fi and fantasy. It’s possible they are just using a “space isn’t that big” model, which would make it possible. The movie doesn’t really go into how they travel, which I was ok with because it is all made up, but I did end up making a “they figured out ftl travel” assumption.
Federation ships explicitly have warp drives in the movie, allowing FTL travel.
My bad, I should have said I didn’t remember if they addressed that in the movie.