This reminds me of something I’ve always hated about the first Mass Effect.
Your character is some shady special forces type who is literally above all laws in the galaxy and you come across a racist rally. The’re protesting the end of the war between humans and one of the species of aliens. Not the war, the end of the war. And going on about how humanity needs to ‘stand on its own’. Mind you, the whole game is about racism, so they put thought into this interaction. Your character can either be a Renegade where you hit people, act racist, and kill people for nothing, or a Paragon where you act like the biggest lib in the galaxy and do a bunch of needlessly self sacrificial stuff.
So you, a squad of heavily armed soldiers who are above the law, come across a rally of extreme racists who are known to be violent. The spokesperson for them comes and asks you to endorse his run for office, and as Renegade you can agree but as Paragon you just say something like “I disagree, but I respect your right to your opinions”. No! The opposite of racism isn’t not-racist, it’s antiracism. Fuck 'em up! To borrow some analysis from Ibram X Kendi, a neutral option on racism doesn’t exist. If your actions/policies create or sustain racial inequities, your actions/policies are racist. So fuck 'em up! Your character has the power to amplify or shut down their shit, walking away is choosing to allow it to continue, and that’s choosing racism over antiracism.
Space Nazis get the airlock, collaborators get put against the bulkhead.
That’s something I hate about all modern video games. They don’t explore anything further to the left than “liberal democratic capitalism”.
Games like the Outer Worlds, Greedfall,etc would benefit from things like that.
I haven’t played the Outer Worlds as thoroughly as I have Mass Effect, but I remember the game letting me play a political terrorist. When I wanted to kill the capitalists the biggest obstacle was that the capitalists typically had expensive guns and a large security force.
Fortunately, that security force was used to thrashing unarmed workers. I did my civic duty and gave the private security force a free lesson in how to block sniper bullets with your teeth.
Considering that in the same game, you get the option to physically assault a journalist because she writes less-than-verbatim accounts of your exploits (i.e. journalism), it seems like a major oversight to not also have Shep. just headbutt a racist or two
Don’t feel bad, they deserve it
GOTTEM
